Save the Billionaires (or not)

Save the Billionaires (or not)

Started
March 22, 2023
Signatures: 4Next Goal: 5
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Why this petition matters

Started by Chris Schwab

We have a dream (I only steal from the best – Martin Luther King) and that dream is even billionaires can change their stripes and find a road to redemption!  (actually this is more about saving kidney dialysis patients, but read on) Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett and their Berkshire Hathaway holding company have made a fortune putting on blinders and looking for monopolistic companies – wonderful money-making machines, but don’t dig too deep! Yes, definitely don’t dig too deep – makes it easy to deny culpability! Hear no evil, see no evil.  Unfortunately we've seen some evil.

For over two decades my friends and I have been digging a little deeper for them, here is some of what we found in kidney dialysis: just the numbers and so many scandals, lawsuits. Apparently “product” review isn’t a big priority for Berkshire. How can this be a person might ask? Where is the government oversight?!!? Apparently it has been in the pocket of the corporations that need the watching, a field of medicine that is mainly controlled by a duopoly of the large for-profit dialysis companies DaVita and Fresenius (and they don’t really compete – just stake out their areas)

I first got the info about the lack of oversight the national ESRD networks provide from Dr. Kenneth Bays, a patient rep on one of the networks. He actually wanted to help improve things and didn’t want to be there to protect the poor abused clinics from the patients!  So he got tired of being stymied and he quit. He then provided testimony at the US Senate in 2000 and helped found the organization DialysisEthics. This is an area of medicine where choice is severely lacking for a vulnerable population – people didn’t choose to get sick and there is little to no choice when it comes to doctors and clinics, you get what you get. You’ve been shown the results.

What is the solution? After more than twenty years of watching this and talking to many wise and experienced people, the solution looks to be busting up the big dialysis companies. Turn back the clock to before Wall Street showed up. Back to the days when patient care was a priority and not the bottom line of the large for-profits – and CEOs lining their pockets! Back before the rising mortality rate, unique in medicine. Back before there was self-oversight. As Dr. Bays would say back before “The fox was watching the hen house”.

Other concerns the dialysis companies have been guilty of:

- using underpaid, under-trained, overworked staff (staff used to be mostly nurses vs. mostly techs now)

- shortening of treatments

- had the Highest Mortality Rate in the industrialized world! All for sky-rocketing costs! (see the numbers again)

Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett are getting up there in age (Buffett is 92 and Munger is 99!) Their investment style served them well in this world – it may not play so well in the hereafter! They may want to hedge their bets and bust up Davita! Berkshire owns 40% of DaVita, but is only < 1% of the Berkshire portfolio! They could bust up DaVita with their lunch money! Get these companies to watch each other and compete for national oversight.

As you may have gathered by now, it is the kidney dialysis patients that need our concern.  But a couple of billionaires may need to be shown the way!

So please sign the petition! It can be taken to the ‘Save the Billionaires (or not)’ Walk’ May 2024 and presented to Berkshire at their event. Feel free to show up at the Walk! Strike a blow to change this country back from “We the corporations of the United States” to “We the people of the United States”!

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Still not comfortable signing a petition?  Then it is suggested to check out this Reading List!

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#More Info
- 'Save the Billionaires' Walk' updates
- BillionaireRedemptionOrNot Blog
- a spiritual brother, gritty fighter, and inspiration to fight to the end: Brent Smith at the 2000 US Senate hearings
- 2007 Colorado state bill pushed by a group headed up by this DE member for the certification of kidney dialysis technicians (renewed in 2012 and 2019)

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Signatures: 4Next Goal: 5
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