Typewriter. Photo by darkday/Flickr.
A Letter to Readers: The Next Phase Has Launched
Ladies and Gentlemen, a little history is appropriate for those of you who have not been following the tragic murder of my son at Bumrungrad International Hospital in 2006. The investigation into the circumstances of his demise are thoroughly detailed—as well as many other well-kept secrets about covert corporate reach into outsourcing American-insured patients internationally—in my book, The American Medical Money Machine: The Destruction of Healthcare in America and the Rise of Medical Tourism (available on Amazon and in book stores).
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 12 May 2015 by Dr. James Goldberg
Learning of my son’s death at the Mecca of Medical Tourism, Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, I started to dig into what happened to a 23-year-old boy, my only child.
A three year investigation led me back to the United States where I was amazed to see what a tangled web the corporate medical mafia has spun at the expense of the people who, at the start of our democracy, delegated rights to the government to protect and preserve liberty, freedom and justice. It was a republic—which has now mostly been bought and sold into oblivion—and is still called a democracy by some, but which I call a capital-driven totalitarian nation.
I have attempted to make my findings as transparent as possible through the original (now non-operational) website Bumrungrad Death and subsequently via my current website, The American Medical Money Machine, which is reconstructed for ease of information access and new revelations. The websites, exposure to social media and my book, accompanied by a series of press releases, have been made available worldwide.
More is required!
I think grassroots action is an open door for telling the story and informing those hankering for office to become truly responsive to the real needs of the people. One could argue that the wave of violence sweeping the cities of America is really an expression of revolution or revulsion. We are approaching a boiling point.
Because this problem is so deep-seated and endemic, I have targeted some particularly bad actors who are little known in this world of greed: The Joint Commission (JC) and its tentacle arms, the AARP, an insidious marketing play controlled by insurance giants such as UnitedHealthcare. The JC and the AARP enjoy 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt status. That means they get to steal more and the taxes they would have paid are absorbed by people desperately hanging on merely to survive.
Giants like these have the help of clever “Big Four” accounting firms such as KPMG, with senior partners hardly immune to scandal and prison.They are doing their job and I am doing mine, but I need your help. These Ivy League manipulators can be brought to their knees. They have conspired, I am informed and believe, to play around with tax laws in order to deceive and commit fraud on Americans… and now, the world. This must be exposed. People must understand the details of how they have accomplished their goals.
My approach is to expose this information in pieces. Agglomerating it together would simply be overwhelming. Hence a series of “releases” will be forthcoming: to let you know how the public has been tricked and befuddled.
Thank God for the Internet and social media. Let’s use it to embarrass the medical vampires and shine a bright light on the hidden corruption of the medical mafia.
Let’s petition those in power and those aspiring to have it. Let them hear the voice of the people who are being crushed—literally and figuratively—to death through money manipulation at the price of your health.
The birth of the Medical Mafia
If one cares to look, the medical propaganda machine is controlled by less than 10 corporations. 10!
Yes, you may have insurance, but at what cost and with what benefits? Paid benefits for patient care are at an all-time low while insurance profits have never been higher. Doctors are fleeing medicine and patients are forced to wait months for treatment. The shortage of doctors grows and far less well-trained people are being substituted to triage you, your family and friends.
Medical wars are particularly salient, because we are dealing with life and death—of you, your family and your friends. Also, the medical mafia controls roughly one-third of the economy of the entire country. This is big money that’s getting bigger by the minute. Sadly, those designated to police the corruption, have joined the ring: the ring of the cash register at the expense of your life, health and happiness.
It would be an understatement to say that I am furious that since 1965, the greed machine has taken over and its power is now nearly complete. This is the year the government moved into the healthcare mob business with the Medicare Act, an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935.
- Insurance companies practice medicine without a license and have denigrated doctors into to being called providers: providers!
- Pharmaceutical giants squeeze the public so tight that many have to decide to go without medication or trade food for drugs! What a disgrace.
- The Joint Commission and the AARP operate as charities while they rake in hundreds of millions to feed their own fat cats instead of truly caring for our sick, our poor, our veterans or our elderly. This is a crime!
Medicine is a wonderful place to see how the super powers have flexed their muscle. It seems when we are at our vulnerable worst, these government shills are at their megalodon best.
Onward
I have written none of this from a political position. I’d like to believe that my social studies classes in the 60s still mean something. I have watched these fundamental concepts erode. Where are the checks and balances, a Constitution, a Bill of Rights? All but gone is the social contract in which the people created a government conceived to represent and protect them.
I hope you will join me during this next phase of my investigation into the American Medical Money Machine as I explore these questions and more:
- Are the JC and AARP taking advantage of their tax-exempt status and unfairly competing with private, tax-paying corporations?
- Do they honestly operate to further the common welfare and well-being of the community as required by the IRS?
- Why did the JC alter its original 1965 organizational structure as authorized by Congress? Why are they now a maze of separate tax-exempt corporations?
- What is the reason the Health and Human Services, via their General Counsel’s office (now guided by Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell), refused to disclose how much they would permit the JC to charge for accreditation, when HHS is sanctioned by law to set their fees?
- If the Joint Commission International (JCI) is not a formal company of the JC why are they accrediting 750 hospitals abroad as though they are?
- What’s behind the link between AARP and UnitedHealthcare and should a tax-exempt company be involved with selling insurance policies?
Stay tuned!
Revoking the tax-exempt statuses of the JC and AARP might sound impossible, but it’s not unthinkable. In March 2015, Blue Shield of California had their tax-exempt status revoked some 18 years after their sister organization Blue Cross of California (now part of Anthem) lost theirs in 1997. In fact, more than 83,000 California non-profits have lost their tax-exempt status. And guess what: many of them are medical organizations.
