(Make them) Let them eat broccoli

Interesting N&R letter to the editor from High Point’s Max Roseman, in its entirety:

Who opposes “Obamacare”? Who poured tens of millions into a malicious campaign to vilify “Obamacare”? Who unleashed hordes of lobbyists to kill this bill?

Relentless anti-Obama zealots, that’s who. All that money bought negative propaganda, which turned a majority of Americans against health care reform. Lies became truths, rumors became facts (death panels and rationing of health care).

A majority of Americans will not be affected by “Obamacare.” Such as, employer-provided health care, individually purchased insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. All status quo. The millions who are without coverage will ultimately be insured.

These loud, brainwashed protesters have nothing to fear from “Obamacare.” The negative assault leads to wild extrapolation of the facts: Government forcing us to buy broccoli, or some other nonsense.

Follow the money. Who is susceptible to financial loss? Insurance companies (that contribute nothing to your well-being) and price-gouging pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. These are powerful entities that threw their substantial weight around.

They may have won the first skirmish in the politicized Supreme Court. Hopefully, we the people will exert our own power to make this compassionate legislation a reality.

I’ll assume Mr. Roseman knows the ‘nonsense’ about the government forcing us to buy broccoli was raised by none other than a Supreme Court justice during the Obamacare hearings. An absurd hypothetical, perhaps, yet a necessary one to graphically illustrate how government requiring an individual to purchase a product “changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.”

Which I guess us full circle. You can put broccoli in a food desert, but you can’t make the locals eat it. At least not yet.

Senate investigation of LabCorp

The Times News reports Burlington-based Labcorp is not cooperating with a Senate investigation:

The inquiry is aimed at what’s termed as “pull-through” plans, which allegedly provide deep discounts on lab testing to insurance companies in exchange for their network doctors using a single, exclusive lab company for all their testing. The discounted rates are allegedly offset by billing Medicare and Medicaid at higher rates.

LabCorp is embroiled in a ‘pull-through’ lawsuit in New York and recently settled another lawsuit in California.

Guilford County ‘food deserts’

I wonder if Trader Joe’s — which by the way is still interested in the proposed Friendly Avenue/Hobbs Road location —- would consider a federal subsidy to locate in one of Guilford County’s 15 food deserts?

Guilford is one of nine North Carolina counties to be awarded a $400,000 Centers for Disease Control grant to study the problem of ‘food deserts.’

Department of Public Health epidemiologist Mark Smith says “you see obesity, diabetes and heart disease more in these areas,” but a recent UNC report “found that people didn’t eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods.”