Got Sick? How's Your Credit?

Articles like these give me the creeps. There's apparently a new movement in the US where hospitals -- especially those who ordinarily provide subsidized medical care to those without insurance (or with insufficient coverage) -- are now running credit checks on patients without their knowledge or consent. They call what they use "financial analysis software".

An example of how this plays out would be, as discussed in the article, where a part-time hair salon employee earning $6500 a year was refused subsidized treatment (for which she would have qualified based on her income) because the hospital in question ran a credit check and discovered she had a $1800 line of credit with her Visa (never mind that she had a $1200 balance on it at the time). When she applied to have her $371 bill waived, the hospital refused and tacked on $400 in attorney fees. The case was later dropped without explanation, but not until she'd gotten help from a legal aid lawyer.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Some of you may already be familiar with the original Zeitgeist movie, directed by Peter Joseph. It ended up becoming a veritable internet phenomenon. I remember there being quite a bit of controversy last year when Wikipedia came under fire for deleting its entry about it, leaving many crying "censorship". That entry is back up now. The original Zeitgeist movie was a three-parter focusing on the Jesus myth, the 9/11 attacks and an exposé of the formation and function of the United States' Federal Reserve Bank. Its purpose was to reveal the myths that have been used over the years to maintain the established order in the United States.

Zeitgeist: The Addendum is a continuation of the first movie and seems a bit more focused in its purpose. It seeks to explain how the global monetary system uses debt to control how the world is governed and leaves the interests of transnational corporations trumping those of ordinary people. Some of this was ground covered in a great little animated documentary by Paul Grignon called Money as Debt. Zeitgeist: The Addendum takes it further, however, by attempting to outline steps that can be taken to weaken this debt-based monetary system which Joseph presents as being at the root of all social instability. Joseph presents a case for the social transformation necessary to end a status quo propped up by corruption , where sustainability and the interdependence inherent in community could lead to a better world for all.

Documentary: Money as Debt

This animated 45-minute documentary explains how what we now know as money was created, and it explains how the fractional reserve banking system that's evolved now props up and controls entire economies by encouraging and ensuring debt; it also suggests the need for reforms to this system. Your notions about work, the value of a dollar, and the banking system will be irreparably changed after you've viewed this.

Producer Paul Grignon says of it:

Money created as interest-bearing bank credit is a magic trick, a fraud - now 3 centuries old; one that very few people have seen through despite, or rather because of, its utter simplicity.

It is my intention to make this mysterious debt-money system comprehensible to everyone. It is also my intention to foster sufficient understanding of the problems with this money system that citizens will be motivated to join the monetary reform movement and/or create local alternatives to the global monetary system - a system in which most of the productive people of the world are collectively chained to an ever-increasing and perpetually unpayable debt.