National Healthcare

A Doctor’s Response To Obama’s NYT Op-Ed

Aug 17th, 2009
by Rick.
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h/t American Thinker

Mr. President, I just read your op-ed in the New York Times.  You must either be incredibly ignorant (e.g., pediatricians performing tonsillectomies, surgeons being paid $50,000 for an amputation), or else you believe that Americans are incredibly stupid.

You justify a hasty and massive healthcare “reform” to save money, by spending an additional trillion dollars.  You would fix a “broken” and broke Medicare system by adding another 47 million beneficiaries to government programs while arguing this will reduce overall costs.
I’ve itemized your inaccurate claims, with my comments in italics.

You assert that your healthcare reform will:

  • Force insurance companies to insure pre-existing conditions. That’s like allowing bettors to wait till after the race has been run, to place their bets. That won’t cut costs.
  • Eliminate lifetime limits on coverage. Unlimited lifetime coverages must increase premiums to pay for them and will raise total costs.
  • Require insurance companies to pay for routine examinations, preventive care, and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. Once again, how can you be insured against a sure thing? The only way my company can pay for a colonoscopy is to add enough onto the premium to pay for it, plus their overhead.
  • Make Medicare more efficient, so tax dollars won’t enrich insurance companies. Insurance companies do not derive income from Medicare, because it is a federal program. Incidentally, its costs per patient have increased much faster than private insurance.
  • Cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. These programs have been in effect over 40 years — and I’ve seen the waste and inefficiency for most of that interval. Did you just find out about the waste and inefficiency now, and why hasn’t something already been done about it?
You claim that:
  • “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But didn’t you just imply this week that Medicare Advantage subsidizes insurance companies and should be eliminated to save money?
  • “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But large numbers of doctors have indicated that they will quit or retire if this plan is enacted
  • “You will not be waiting in any lines.” Maybe you won’t but we will. Your plan will add up to 47 million new insureds, with no increase in the supply of primary care physicians that are already in short supply.
We physicians live with our healthcare system, all day and every day.  We care about being able to heal.  We hate disputing with insurance companies, and especially with government bureaucrats.  Certainly changes in insurance practices are needed, and would have occurred long ago, absent a government record of 60 years of meddling with the market.
As you say, “…let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations” such as those in your op-ed, “that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed.”
And I agree, this is about America’s future:  whether Americans will remain free, or be ruled by an increasingly intrusive and authoritarian statist government.

G. Wesley Clark, MD

(Doctor Clark is not related to the retired general of the same name)

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It All Depends On What Your Definition Of Evil Is

Aug 14th, 2009
by Rick.
1 comment


 

Harry Reid seems to believe that people expressing their opinions in opposition to an Obama and Democrats  takeover of health care are on the same level as those who fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. Let's compare how both President Bush and Sen. Harry Reid utilized the word "evil".

"Tomorrow, when you get back to work, work hard like you always have. But we've been warned. We've been warned there are evil people in this world. We've been warned so vividly. And we'll be alert. Your government is alert. The governors and mayors are alert that evil folks still lurk out there. As I said yesterday, people have declared war on America and they have made a terrible mistake. My administration has a job to do and we're going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers." – President George W. Bush, September 16, 2001

People who are disrupting town halls with "lies, innuendo and rumor," and not letting others speak are "evil-mongers" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada)

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Health Reform Author Cornered, Can’t Answer Question On Funding

Aug 7th, 2009
by Rick.
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Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) faced constituents at a town hall doubleheader. With a clear majority of those in attendance voicing opposition to Obamacare, DIngell appeared clueless when confronted by constituents with questions about the bill. One father concerned about coverage for his son who suffers with Cerebral Palsy, was told by Dingel that he’d put in an amendment to cover his son. The dad raised the BS flag.

At the meetings conclusion, with shouts of “kill the bill” echoing through the venue, Dingell may have thought the worst was over. But, not so fast. One angry constituent demanded to know where the funding was coming from. Face to face with Dingell she demanded he answer one question, “Is the money coming out of my paycheck?” Dingell was speechless.

Note the arrogance of Dingell’s inference that he know what is best for “his people”. Add to that his proclamation that he’s been in congress for 50 years, and you have every reason necessary to vote him out of office in 2010.

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Could There Be A Peasant Uprising Afoot?

Aug 3rd, 2009
by Rick.
18 comments

More and more Congressmen are finding out that the unwashed masses they represent are not happy with what is going on in the halls of Congress. The arrogant and dismissive attitudes of those who are supposed to represent the people continues to build a groundswell of protest from coast to coast. And, it’s all being caught on video.

Gateway Pundit, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, and Michelle Malkin have more coverage on the spreading revolt.

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Steven Crowder Exposes Socialized Medicine

Jul 18th, 2009
by Rick.
1 comment

This is a must see for everyone, especially those who somehow have fallen for the Socialist promise of quality care for all managed by the government. As Steven Crowder will show, the age old adage of, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, applies to your health care as well.

Take Crowder’s advice and pass this on to everyone you know. Their life just may depend on it.

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The Govenment’s Power Grab For Your Health Care

Jul 16th, 2009
by Rick.
1 comment
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Eliminating private health insurance and converting to government controlled health care is, in fact, what Democrats in Congress have planned for America. IBD Editorials found the shocking details 16 pages into the 1,018 page bill.

Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

Blue Dog Dems are becoming wary of this bill and their political futures if this legislation passes. As Michelle Malkin suggests,

Buck up the Blue Dogs with a phone call – Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121:
Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.)
Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Baron Hill (D-Ind.)
Jim Matheson (D-Utah)
Charlie Melancon (D-La.)
Mike Ross (D-Ark.)
Zack Space (D-Ohio)

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The Numbers Don’t Lie, Nationalized Health Care Means You’re More Likely to Die

Jul 7th, 2009
by Rick.
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Here are some statistics that should send a chill through anyone that may visit a doctor in their lifetime.  Nationalized health care is a disastrous proposal that will put your life at greater risk.

Via Doug Ross@Journal and Hot Air here are some of the scary numbers.

81: Average percentage of those who survive a diagnosis of prostate cancer in the United States versus 43% in Britain under their National Health Service.

90: Number of days, on average, each Canadian patient must wait for an MRI under the Canadian government-run health care system.

10,000: Number of Canadian breast cancer patients to file a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals because, on average, they were forced to wait 60 days to begin post-operative radiation treatments.

$311,000,000 ($311 million): The amount of additional funding requested last month by the Obama administration simply to combat Medicare fraud. Medicare fraud is estimated at $60 billion annually.

$3,600,000,000 ($3.6 billion): The amount of added malpractice insurance costs to the current health care system instigated by an out-of-control trial lawyer lobby that donates heavily to Democrat causes.

$10,000,000,000 ($10 billion): The estimated amount of Medicaid fraud, based upon FBI estimates. Criminal practices include billing for nonexistent, overstated, or unnecessary services, kickbacks to patients, inflated costs, etc.

$60,000,000,000 ($60 billion): The estimated annual amount of Medicare fraud, due to widespread criminal operations that victimize taxpayers and specialize in dead doctors, fake patients, non-existent treatments and the like.

$107,000,000,000,000 ($107 trillion): The estimated shortfall of the Medicare and Social Security programs, which are utterly and completely bankrupt; they can be legitimately called an “enormous version of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi

Make sure to read the entire post in order to grasp the full impact that Obamacare will have on all of us.

Michelle Malkin provides several links to what is going on in Washington regarding Obamacare.  It looks like more of us are letting their Senators know that this recipe for disaster must not pass.

I have personally witnessed the bureaucratic nightmare and inferior quality of care provided to my in-laws in the Netherlands.  Be careful what you wish for America, you just may get it.

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Obamacare: Good Enough For You, But Not Your Congressman

Jun 28th, 2009
by Rick.
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When it comes to Obamacare, it appears what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander. In another, “let’s rush this legislation through before they find out what’s in it” campaign to nationalize health care, the Democrats are banking on the public not knowing what is contained in this legislation. Unions are being exempted from compliance due “contractual obligations”, and as John Fund explains in the Wall Street Journal Online, Congress won’t be bound by these new laws.

Beware Obamacare’s Fine Print

Congress’s Health Care Double Standard

In a desperate scramble to pay for the soaring costs of President Obama’s health care plan, the Senate Finance Committee is contemplating taxing for the first time the health insurance benefits workers get from their employers. One approach would tax the benefits only of workers earning over $100,000. An alternate proposal would tax the value of health care benefits that exceed a cap.

But the taxes wouldn’t be applied equally. Union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would be exempt, even though they often have the richest and most extensive packages of benefits. Union officials have told Democratic leaders of Congress that because collective bargaining agreements can last several years, they should be exempt from any tax because contracts can’t be changed quickly enough to avoid it.

The real reason, of course, is that unions have political clout and are exercising it. The exemption is “a means of making sure that unions are foursquare behind any reform bill that comes out,” Henry Aaron, a Brookings Institution scholar, told the Washington Examiner.

There’s a reason the Obama health care plan is being rushed through Congress this summer — because the American people would likely never support it if given time to absorb and understand such fine print. If the union carve-out isn’t sufficient to excite public anger, wait till you hear about the version of the Obama plan prepared by Senator Edward Kennedy, which would specifically exempt Members of Congress from many of its provisions.

As the U.S. Office of Personnel Management notes, Members of Congress “enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country.” According to page 114 of the Kennedy bill, a similar array of choices would not be available to other Americans in the future. Instead, they would be shunted into health insurance plans under the straightjacket of whatever the government decides is a “basic” plan.

The goal would be to restrict care for the general public in order to control costs, while making sure Congress gets the gold-plated attention it’s accustomed to. Ultimately, the rest of us would be asked to trade a private insurance company as gatekeeper for a government gatekeeper. The difference, of course, is that most of us can fire our insurance gatekeeper. Just try to do that once the government fills that role.

–John Fund

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Everything Is On The Table…Except Transparency And Accountability

Jun 19th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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Spend and tax that’s the Obama way to “prosperity”.  But, then there’s those pesky little problems that keep poppng up, the deficit and the national debt we’re leaving to future generations.

Why Ruin The Best Health Care System In The World?

Mar 27th, 2009
by Rick Barton.
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Are you ready for President Obama’s Nationalized Health Care? Get prepared for a rapid deterioration in the quality and availability of health care if his plans successfully make it through Congress.

An Op-Ed in Investors Business Daily today, entitled “How U.S. Health Care Really Stacks Up”, sheds the light on the realities of nationalized health care in comparison to our current system.

The National Center for Policy Analysis has published a study, “10 Surprising Facts About American Health Care,” that shows how Americans get something for the extra dollars they lay out. To wit:

• “Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.” Breast cancer mortality: 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom than in the U.S. Prostate cancer mortality: 604% higher in the U.K., 457% higher in Norway. Colo-rectal cancer mortality: 40% higher among Britons.

• “Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.” Rates for breast cancer (9%), prostate cancer (184%) and colon cancer among men (10%) are higher than in the U.S.

• “Americans have better access to treatment of chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.” Roughly 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statin drugs. Only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians who could benefit receive them.

I can personally attest to the problems that the Dutch have, as my wife is from the Netherlands. Her mother suffered from cardiac arterial blockage. After a successful angioplasty and stent implant she was placed on the statin Plavix. Three months later she went to refill the prescription and was told by the pharmicist that more than 90 days was not authorized by the government and to take an aspirin instead. She was fortunate to have a very persistent cardiologist and was able to be approved for further use of the drug. Others as noted above are not as fortunate.

• “Americans have better access to preventive cancer screenings than Canadians.” Nine of 10 middle-aged American women have had a mammogram; 72% of Canadian women have. Almost every American woman (96%) has had a pap smear; fewer than 90% of Canadian women have. Roughly 54% of American men have had a prostate cancer test; fewer than one in six Canadian men have. Almost a third of Americans (30%) have had a colonoscopy; only 5% of Canadians have had the procedure.

• “Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom.” Canadians and Britons wait about twice as long, sometimes more than a year, to see a specialist, have elective surgery or get radiation treatment.

• “People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.” More than seven in 10 Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Britons say their health systems need either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”

Perhaps a look at our very own government run heath care system, The Veterans Administration, can shed light on what happens when a bloated bureaucracy takes charge of health care.

Via Bloomberg.com:

March 19 (Bloomberg) — More than 2,000 people may have been put at risk of AIDS and hepatitis by sharing insulin pens and cartridges in two Army hospitals, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The FDA posted a warning today against sharing the disposable insulin shots after the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, last month said 2,114 diabetic patients may be at risk “as a result of incorrect procedures.”

The sharing occurred from 2007-2009, the FDA said in a statement issued today… …“They were changing pens and weren’t following the manufacturer’s procedures,” said Clarence Davis III, a spokesman for the hospital, today in a telephone interview. “There is an ongoing investigation to determine how it happened. It wasn’t cost-cutting.”

Two full years passed before the procedures were corrected and thousands of patients were put at risk.

Our system isn’t perfect, but why emulate those systems which are much worse?

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