Senate passes Health Plan fix

I did a search on the N.C. Board of Elections to check out campaign contributions to Tony Rand for the 2008 race. Anyone can check out campaign contributions and expenditures. Remember though, that individuals who give candidates $500 or less are not required to sign their names to their bribes, uh, enticements, uh, presents, uh, money.

Sen. Rand's list of donated $$ includes, oddly enough, about $20,000 from the Teamsters channeled thru a Va. Beach office, then thru a Washington, D.C., office of something called "Drive." It's a Teamsters front.

BCBS gave Rand substantial donations, along with hospitals, hospital PACs, doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical PACS, plus other medical PACs. Rand, like most Demo-rats, picked up at least 50% of his other cash from lawyers. Wonder why?

Because the mimeographed sheets of some campaign receipts were so badly reproduced, and because of black-outs and smudges on some receipts, it's difficult to say the exact total campaign $$ Rand was handed in 2008 but it's conservatively between $30,000 and $62,500 from the medical community and BCBS.

So, yep, good ol' Tony was bought by BCBS and doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Proving the time-honored American slogan, "You get what you pay for."

or translated into N.C. General Assembly-ese: "Money talks and everything else walks."

And the N&O and Fayetteville Observers didn't investigate this conflict of interest because ..... why?

I only have one word to say...

UNION !!!!!!!!!!!!!

For years State Government has placed the burden of fixing its short-comings on the backs of the very employees that keep the State itself running.....little to no raises, hiring freezes, job cuts, and now (AGAIN) health plan changes.
In my career I have seen HMO's, Flex, Indemnity, and PPO plans. Through every change, the Legislature has given us choices on how to manage our own healthcare only to eventually take them away. When the PPO options first came out, I was a little leery in changing....and then they MADE me give up the Indemnity Plan. After choosing the PPO Plus plan like may others because of the low co-pays, deductibles, and medicine costs, AGAIN they are taking it away.
Most of us took the option to pay for the PPO Plus because the premium cost balanced out with the lower costs of care. Now they have the nerve to tell us, at a time when extra money is a luxury, that I have to give up the best option they have presented us and pay MORE for everything. They are only going to give us a few months to adjust. Then they raise all covered member areas of the Basic and Standard Plans, take away routine eye exams, and tell us to stop smoking & lose wait or you're going to pay more. To top it off, they only give smokers a year to quit BUT overweight people two. And smokers even have to prove every year that they have stopped but overweight people can get a waiver and stay that way. And what if you are undergoing needed / continuous care that you can hardly afford now....how are you going to pay for more when you don't have it?
I could go on and on......BOTTOM LINE: Stop punishing the very people that you count on every day to keep the State moving ahead. Stop passing on to the employees the cost of poor money management & budget decisions in the Legislature. Stop trying to run our lives and let us have choices in how we live and manage our health. Besides, are any of them going to pay members' bills when they get sick or injured but can't afford to go to the doctor unless they miss payments? What would you rather have - a healthy fellow employee or a sick co-worker that can't seek treatment because it will cost too much?

I hope Tony Rand is first in line for the weight management program. The last picture I saw of him he was quite a porker. Having received over $30,000 in his re-election coffers from Blue Cross/Blue Shield since the year 2000, it is obvious Rand beds and boards with Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He tries to say it is the fault of state employees that costs to the state from BCBS are so high, yet his oversight committee does nothing to oversee BCBS. At the very least Rand needs to resign from this committee totally to remove any appearance of being influenced by BCBC. There is no telling how much money he is getting from BCBS under the table.

This is positively criminal and will cost more in the long run. But at least BCBS and the pharmacists will be happy.

We all owe our souls today, not to the company store, but to the medical/industrial complex. They always get their raises.