HAPPY 4th of JULY !!!

ENJOY!!

AC BOARDWALK JULY 4TH WEEKEND -FRI.

Took a bike ride this morning into AC. It's July 4th fri. and you'd think it would already be crowded in AC, right? Actually, the boards were pretty empty. Most of the shops were closed or empty. It looked pretty pathetic for what should be the busiest weekend of the season. It was much more crowded in Ventnor, particuliarly on the southern end where NO DUNE exists. Margate was happening, the stores filled , the breakfeast spots filled , traffic bumper to bumper, bike riders everywhere. AC was a Ghost town.

MORE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

Obama's False Friends of Health Reform

by Wendell Potter

I'm hoping President Obama realizes that some of the folks who've been currying favor with him are not, as they claim, bringing "solutions" to the health care reform table. Most Americans -- especially those who voted for him -- want nothing to do with the kind of "reforms" they are peddling.

If you watched the president's televised Q&A on ABC last Wednesday night, you probably noticed that one of the people in the audience was Ron Williams, the chairman and CEO of Aetna, Inc., the nation's third largest health insurer, and currently one of the most profitable. But there are a few things that you should know about Williams.

Back in the '90s, Aetna set out on an acquisition binge in its quest to become the biggest health insurer in the country. It got there by the end of the decade after spending billion of dollars for several competitors. By 1999 it had 21 million health plan members, the most any insurer had ever had at the time.

But, as often happens after buying sprees, Aetna soon came down with a bad case of buyers' remorse. As it turned out, some of the customers it had paid top price for were not as profitable as Wall Street analysts and the big institutional investors who owned most of Aetna's stock expected. When they took a closer look at what Aetna had bought, investors started deserting the company in droves. As a result, the company found its stock price in a free fall.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on August 13, 2004, Aetna's pretax profits as a percentage of revenues began falling dramatically after peaking at about 12 percent in 1998. By 2001 the company was a basket case as far as Wall Street was concerned. It had to do something, and fast.

Probably the most important thing it did to turn itself around was recruit Williams from rival WellPoint, the ambitious for-profit company that was gobbling up Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans from coast to coast.

As the Journal reported, Williams promptly ordered a $20 million revamp of Aetna's data systems. Health care analyst Joshua Raskin told the Journal that the new system that emerged from that investment, which Aetna dubbed the Executive Management Information System (EMIS for short), was "the single largest driver of the Aetna turnaround." Why? Because it helped Aetna "identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts." How did it do the dumping? By jacking up premiums to unaffordable levels.

By the time the dumping -- or purging, as it is frequently called in the industry -- was done, Aetna had shed eight million of its 21 million members. It shrank so much that by the time it emerged from the Ron Williams-led turnaround, it had fewer members than when the company started out on its multi-billion dollar buying binge.

While Aetna was shedding those eight million men, women and children, by the way, it also reportedly shed 15,000 of its employees. Wall Street likes it when insurers dump employees, too, because the workers who don't get the ax have to assume the responsibilities of their laid-off colleagues. That theoretically boosts productivity, which Wall Street likes. And reducing the payroll leaves more money for profits.

The health insurance industry and its allies are working hard right now to convince you that the creation of a public insurance option would put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. As the 2004 Wall Street Journal article makes it clear, however, EMIS was at its heart a system that put corporate bureaucrats between people and their doctors. Here's what it saId:

Mr. Williams says EMIS helps him ferret out creeping costs so Aetna can react quickly. Sitting in his first-floor office in Hartford overlooking the Aetna parking lot, he taps on his keyboard to see whether some of the health insurer's members are visiting emergency rooms too much for nonemergency reasons, such as for the flu or a sprained ankle.

Did that send a chill up your spine like it did mine? And know this, if Aetna's CEO can keep an eye on your trips to the doctor, so can the CEOs of all the other big insurers.

The insurance industry claims that this time it really and truly supports legislation to reduce the number of people without insurance, that they've changed so much since 1994 -- when they said the same thing but did everything they could behind the scenes to kill reform -- that you can and should believe them now.

The next time you hear someone from the industry talking about how much they are committed to reform, remember that just a few years ago, the CEO of one of the biggest health insurers was the mastermind behind a business strategy that cost thousands of workers their jobs and millions of other people their insurance coverage. That's the real "solution" the industry is bringing to the table -- and the kind of reform Wall Street can really get behind.

Ron Williams has been richly rewarded by Aetna's board of directors for leading the company back to a level of profitability suitable to Wall Street. They tapped him to succeed Jack Rowe as CEO when Rowe retired in 2006. And they rewarded him with compensation totaling nearly $65 million over the past two years.

(Rowe, by the way, was paid $22.2 million in 2005, his last full year as CEO. He played a big role in hawking the high-deductible plans that Aetna and the other big insurers are now trying to push us all into. He claimed that Americans enrolled in managed care plans have been too sheltered from the real costs of health care and that we need to have more "skin in the game," by which he meant that we should have to pay a lot more out of our own pockets when we go to the doctor and pick up our prescriptions, even if we have health insurance. The median family income in the United States is just $50,000, which means that most of us already have a lot more skin in the game than Dr. Rowe and Ron Williams will ever need to.)

The insurance industry's two biggest lobbying groups -- America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America -- warned members of Congress in a joint letter a few days ago that the creation of a public insurance option would unravel the country's employer-based system.

As they say where I come from, that dog won't hunt.

It is the insurance company executives -- in their never-ending quest to meet Wall Street's profit expectations -- who are doing the unraveling by purging employers whose workers have the audacity to file claims when they get sick or injured.

A final point about Ron Williams: Not only are he and his fellow CEOs trying to kill the idea of a public health insurance option -- a central part of candidate Obama's health care proposal -- but he is the leading advocate of an idea Obama rejected and which differentiated his proposal from Hillary Clinton's -- the imposition on all of us of an "individual mandate." Many insurance executives were wary of such a mandate because they don't like the government mandating anything, especially those pesky state mandates that force them to include certain benefits in the policies they sell. Advocates of an individual mandate eventually brought the skeptics, including many of AHIP's board members, around to their way thinking by persuading them that insurers could make billions more in profits if every American had to buy an insurance policy from them. Now you know the real reason behind AHIP's shift from neutrality on the issue to full-fledged support. It's all about the money.

© 2009 Center for Media & Democracy

Wendell Potter is the Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.

FOUR $$ MILLION MORE GOES INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO

SARGENT BEACH, TX

Four Mil. $$ to be dumped on this God forsaken beach? Take a peek @ a map and try and locate this place. It's to say the least off the beaten track. Not exactly Miami or San Diego or even AC. Dumping sand onto Gulf of Mexico beaches , which are some of the most Hurricane ravaged land on earth ranks right up their with throwing $$ @ Wall st. This is what your Gov't considers job creation folks. God help us. FDR built dams and power plants at least. Maybe, these stupid Projects are becoming a metaphor what has happened to our society. Like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" Congress and it's BIG CORP clients just throw $$ at anything these days. No wonder were in such a ditch!

@ the title link read more about this Porky Project. Marlowe and Co. ( K street Lobbyists for "the Sand Lobby") sure do a great job of feathering these bastards nests don't they?

LIFE AFTER PEOPLE

If you happened to watch the History Channel show called "Life after People" lately you might have caught AC, Lucy "the Elephant" and even Richard Helfant on it. Hell, even the Army Corp managed to unbelieveably get a segment pushing it's Beach Replenishment Projects. I couldn't believe it when I saw an episode the other day where an Army spokesperson actually claimed that without their Projects Long Island, NY was doomed. These are, as I like to say, shameless people. I loved the scene of AC though, with the dune on the boardwalk. LOL! That scene might happen in a Life with People!

IS AC back to Sq. one 1970's ?

The Traymore Hotel in its pre- demolition glory

I was present both of the days in spring 1972 when the famous AC landmark hotel The Traymore was imploded as they say. It was the end of an era for AC and the new AC wasn't to be born till the 2nd casino referendum was passed in fall 1976. Two yrs. after that another old AC hotel Haddon Hall would be re-born as Resorts Int'l Hotel and Casino and the present era would commence. By the way I was @ that opening and was the 2nd person in NJ to gamble legally. I was however the 1st to win ( @ a slot machine I won a qtr.). @ the title link today is a guest editorial in the today's AC press editorial area. It's an excellent col. by a noted local author and Superior Ct. judge. I don't agree with much of what he has to say but I do agree that we are on the cusp of another radical decline era like the 50's and 60's. The implosion of the Sands casino 3 yrs. ago marked the beginning of the end of the present era. Ever since that day AC has declined precipitiously. Today, we find ourselves losing business to some many different venues its getting hard to count them all. AC is in short in deep trouble once again and has started the hard process of re-inventing itself once again!

Read the Press col. its pretty good as far as it goes.

BALANCING ACT?

MIAMI BEACH

@ the title link is another story about how hard its becoming for beach communites in Fla., to maintain their artifically replenished beaches. If they think its hard now wait till the sea levels really rise mid-century! Fla., is going under the waves by 2100 by the EPA's own estimate. So, if your thinking of buying the family retirement estate in Fla. make sure you check out the EPA maps first!

SAN DIEGO - SURFRIDERS ASSOCIATION OPPOSE BEACH REPLENISHMENT

The old beach level in the 1970's

@ the title link is another story about the battle now raging on every coast between those of us that believe just tossing $$ into the ocean isn't fixing anything and those who want to profit from this procedure. That rising sea levels from rapid global warming and the subsequent melting of glaciers and the Greenland Ice sheet are going to accelerate the destruction of our existing beaches and barrier islands. Even if we start today to lower the levels of greenhouse gases we are pouring into the atmosphere ( which were not) the rising sea levels will go on for hundreds of years anyway. By 2100 the coast lines of America will look nothing like they do today. The "Sand Lobby" though could care less they go from one sinking community to the next with their greedy little project sucking up billions. They are like necromancers who stand by a dying person's family and promise them they'll save the dying person if only the family pays up. ( Kind of like our present so called Health care Ins. Industry). In any event, it's not working, except for the Army Corp. and it's legions of parasites and politicians ( same thing.)

22 Million More into the Gulf of Mexico

The Federal Gov't & the State of Fla. are pouring $22 mil. onto the beaches of one of the most Hurricane prone stretches of barrier Island beach in America, all this to protect a few homes in a place very few tourists even know about! You gotta wonder what Congresscritter , State Senator or one of their wealthy campaign contributors owns a Vacation mansion or two on this sunny Isle, right? Check out the rest of the story @ the title link. One more thing to note if you've read enough of these stories as I have now for almost 10 yrs. you'll notice certain talking pts. over and over again like this one as an example, “It’s like a highway, it’s infrastructure … and if you want that to be on your list of assets, you have to maintain it,” Woodruff said. Whenever I see these tag lines I know it's an Army Corp. project and the DC K street Lobbying firm of Marlowe and company has been in town. They hand these stock lines out to the local pols and journalists. This is a well oiled machine folks and it makes billions for it's clients. This is your money and it could be paying for a real Nat'l Health system, instead it's being arrogantly pissed in the sea to protect the vacation homes and businesses of a very tiny group of people and of course to feather the nest of the Sand Lobby and it's clients.