Kaiser Permanente is still fighting the good fight
The Covid emergency may be over, but this giant insurance company has a vaccine for whatever fears its members still have.
I’m a member of the Brownstone Institute’s Writers Group email chain, where I get all kinds of story ideas and get to read the thoughts of people who actually think like I do.
This morning one of my colleagues passed along some text from a press release from California-based Kaiser Permanente. The piece was about the government (quietly) declaring that the Covid emergency is now over! (Our national emergency didn’t last two weeks, it actually lasted more than 1,100 days.)
In my Covid research, I keep stumbling across references to different “Kaiser” organizations. I decided I should educate myself a little bit more on this obviously very important giant squid.
In 20 minutes on the Internet, I learned there are three Kaiser organizations - “the nonprofits Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the Permanente Medical Groups.”
I’m suspicious of all of them, but today I focussed on the Permanente Medical Group, which I learned is “the largest nonprofit health plan in the United States.”
Further website clicks revealed that the Medical Group “provides care and coverage for over 12.4 million members.”
The non-profit has “309,662 employees (including 65,005 nurses and 23,656 physicians as of 2022).”
It operates “39 hospitals and 715 medical offices.”
You can find a good quote from “The Godfather” to fit any story.
“Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”
If one is interested in the Science/Medical/Insurance Industrial Complex, my guess would be that Kaiser Pemanente (KP) bigwigs sit in the center of the board table whenever our nation’s masters of health care gather as a group.
Here’s what else I learned …
The first thing readers to “Bill Rice Jr.’s Substack Newsletter” should know is that KP is not going to let the cancellation of the Covid medical emergency keep this behemoth from their mission of “keeping you safe and healthy.”
Here’s the meat of the press release:
“If the government announces any changes, we’ll keep members updated with the latest information. Visit kp.org for information on COVID-19 care.”
Comment: It’s clear KP puts great stock in government announcements and “changes.” (In the 70 years of this company’s existence, I wonder if KP’s media affairs staffers have ever released a press release saying, “The government is wrong!”)
They didn’t with this news release, which included this vital healthcare information (emphasis added):
Tips for staying healthy
Even though the public health emergency is ending, it’s still important to practice healthy habits to protect yourself and your family from COVID-19. Please continue to:
Get vaccinated and keep up with boosters
Wear a mask when recommended, following any current Kaiser Permanente facilities’ guidelines by our local infectious disease, infection prevention, and safety experts
Stay home and test when you feel sick
Wash your hands
Comments:
It’s a “healthy habit” to “keep up” with with your “vaccinations and boosters.”
However, it has become somewhat of a challenge to maintain this habit as people no longer have enough fingers to keep up with all the vaccines and boosters they’ve already gotten.
And this number is going to continue to grow, which is probably why KP spends so much money on its website to make sure its 12.4 million members can keep up with their next round of safety shots (and where to go to get their next round of “no-cost” shots).
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that KP’s braintrust believes the boosters are “safe and effective” … at least for a couple of weeks, if members get at least four shots a year.
Keep wearing those masks if recommended by “our local infectious disease, infection prevention experts” … since these masks (and previous shots) did such a remarkable job “preventing” cases.
“Stay home and test when you feel sick.”
According to the website, “rapid tests” are fine and these tests will continue to be provided “at no cost” to members for at least six more months.
One assumes this means the insurance company pays the manufacturers of the tests.
But what this doesn’t mean is that these millions of tests are actually “free.” Or maybe I missed something. Maybe the non-profit Kaiser Foundation is picking up the tab for all of these tests?
If I had a penny for every Covid test some insurance plan had picked up (or not picked up) … I’d now have a billion pennies stacked up in my garage.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the insurance companies, testing companies, vaccine companies, all the government healthcare alphabet agencies and Congress that allocates the money (as well as the Fed which prints it) … must all be in this together?
“Wash your hands.”
I’ve never gotten a firm answer. If every person in the world washed their hands every two hours, would Covid have disappeared?
Still, I can’t badmouth this sage medical advice. After all, I dispense the same advice to my own kids every time they eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and every time they have a dirt clod war in the backyard.
The KP website isn’t very subtle; I get their point …
Out of curiosity, I also took note of the key links on the KP website, which are quite instructive.
The first big tab - surprise! surprise! - is “Vaccines and Boosters.”
I’ll save some words here and condense this information/guidance: Get your vaccines and boosters!
The second tab is … “Get a flu shot” - which includes this language (language apparently mandated by law): “It’s not too late to protect yourself.”
I sometimes like to re-state official medical advice in my own words: Summer will be here shortly, but it’s never too late to get your flu shot.
Another prominent tab is “Covid-19 testing” - which we’ve already covered.
I know I’m beating a dead shot into the ground, but by now shouldn’t all our previous vaccines and boosters have eliminated the need for people to keep getting tested? And what if someone does test positive? Should he run out and get another booster?
A fourth tab is “RSV” (not to be confused with RSVP).
When you click on this tab, you get this headline: “How can I protect my child from RSV?”
And we get the answer, which is …
…. “all eligible family members should get a flu shot and COVID-19 vaccination to protect children from complications.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve picked up on a theme here.
Alas, there is no RSV vaccine … yet.
I also took note of this boldfaced headline: “Is there an RSV vaccine?”
Answer: “No vaccine is available at this time, but at least 2 candidates are in late-stage clinical trials.”
Comment: Oh, thank God … Or, better yet, thank you Dr. Fauci and Kaiser and every one of our nation’s 1,000 Vaccine Promotion Agencies … I mean “Public Health Agencies” … I’d been worrying about this, but now I see that they’re working on it.
If your child is at least six-months old, he or she will soon be able to take advantage of this month’s “3-for-1” special- The Flu Vaccine, the Covid Vaccine and the RSV Vaccine.”
Parents don’t need to worry about keeping up with all the needed boosters, they can just bookmark KP’s website, which will tell them where and when they should take their healthy children to get their next round of “health and safety.”
This concludes my shallow dive into everything I need to know about Kaiser Permanente.
Except for this final editorial comment:
Of KP’s 310,000 “health experts,” I don’t know of one who has said, “Enough already.”
Apparently, the flu, Covid and RSV are going to keep happening forever. The great news for KP members is they’ve got a shot for that.
As noted, the "Kaiser" organizations include a medical insurance group and a network of hospitals and medical clinics that employ approximately 85,000 doctors and nurses. Presumably, the leaders of these organizations KNOW that all-cause mortality rates have sky-rocketed since 2021 (and the roll-out of the "vaccines."). They also KNOW that huge numbers of their "members" are going to the hospital and medical clinics for 100 different reasons (from heart attacks, strokes, brain fog, shingles, myriad auto-immune disorders, etc. They know healthy young people are "dying suddenly" like they never have before and that disability claims have spiked. They KNOW all this and they still haven't put two and two together. They haven't even suggested, "Hey, maybe we need to take a look at what's happening and why ... and maybe pause these vaccines until we get a definitive answer."
This tells me they are NOT obtuse. They must be some kind of psychopaths or sadists - criminals who are perfectly fine with "public health" falling into the sewer.
My husband got the J&J shot and one Pfizer booster because otherwise he couldn't visit his elderly father who lives abroad. Kaiser Permanente called him twice to ask if he didn't want to come in and get the bivalent booster. He was nice about how he said no. I would have told them to *&^% off.
Kaiser is obnoxious and will call you about cancer screenings. When I was working and had Kaiser, I did manage to get it across to them that I didn't want phone calls about cancer screenings. So they stopped. They threatened my husband with a colonoscopy if he didn't turn in his colon poop test.
After I got in Medicare, I dropped Kaiser and went with Medigap. Nobody bothers me. My husband stuck with Kaiser but now he realizes that his doctors are idiots.
But if you like vaccines, Kaiser covers them. Even Medicare Advantage Kaiser covers them, no extra charge.