Great Britain and Canada are finding that the relentlessly escalating costs of socialized medicine present a financially untenable situation. There is not enough money to meet the needs of the unrestrained demand. Of course, this situation was entirely predictable despite the dissembling and prevarication by liberals.
How are they contemplating addressing this problem? Rationing.
Since they can’t afford to pay for all the services demanded, the governments will selectively limit usage by restricting visits, procedures and other utilizations. In addition, there will be a requisite deterioration in quality of care.
Such an outcome was resolutely predicted and feared by millions of Americans who opposed Obamacare. In spite of this vociferous opposition, Obama and the arrogant elitist Congressional Democrats rammed the legislation through, needing corrupt stratagems in order to bribe some of their fellow ideologues to vote yes.
If Obamacare is not repealed or defunded, what is transpiring in Great Britain, Canada and elsewhere will occur here as well, long after the deconstruction of the world’s best healthcare system. And we will also be tens of trillions of dollars more in debt than necessary … and probably bankrupt.
The Doctor Will See You Later
Investors Business Daily 06/07/2010
Health Care: The British government has decided that it needs to cut millions of operations because the public system cannot afford them. This is coming soon to a hospital or doctor's office near you.
According to the Daily Mail, Britain's National Health Service is "preparing to cut millions of operations" so that it can save $29 billion by 2014. Procedures that will be "decommissioned," if we may borrow a particularly descriptive term used by one doctor, include hip replacements for obese patients, some operations for hernias and gallstones, and treatments for varicose veins, ear and nose problems, and cataract surgery.
Thus is the future of all socialized medicine. Bureaucratic rationing of treatment is inevitable. No system can forever meet the demand of "free" care. Jeff Taylor of the Economic Voice clarified the problem when he wrote last week that "the U.K. is broke."
"Our whole society and way of life is now built on the shaky foundation of debt," he writes in response to the NHS cuts.
"Our hospitals, schools, armed forces, police, prisons and social services are founded on debt. In truth we have not yet paid for the operations that have already taken place."
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously — and fittingly — said: The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money to spend. This is a universal truth, more universal than the health care provided in Britain. To trifle with it, ignore it, disrespect it, attempt to repeal it or arrogantly try to bypass it will always lead to trouble.
Yet the political left continually makes those mistakes and operates as if governments will never run out of other people's money. Until it does. And then the government has to make cuts and ration the benefits.
What have the congressional Democrats who rammed through their health care overhaul been watching over the years as both hard and soft socialist governments have either collapsed, continued to bring misery or become unsustainable? Despite ample evidence that a welfare state cannot thrive, these lawmakers have forced on the country a "reform" that will load Americans with a burden they will not long be able to bear.
Though it was sold to the public as a plan that, at $940 billion over the first decade, would bring down the deficit, the real cost for the initial 10 years could be as much as $2.5 trillion, including mandates placed on the private sector, according to an estimate by the Cato Institute.
It's possible that the Cato projection is off. But history shows us that it's more likely to be right than Washington's estimate. Government programs always cost more than the rosy initial projections that are used to drum up public support. It's another lesson that remains unlearned by most of our elected officials and the voters who keep putting them in office despite the problems the lawmakers refuse to stop creating.
Given our lawmakers' inability to learn from the health care policy blunders committed in Britain and Canada — which is reassessing its model because of ruinous costs — no one should be surprised when rationing by bureaucracy becomes a feature of the U.S. public health care system.
There should be no shock when waiting lists for treatment are simply rosters of Americans suffering — and in some cases dying — from a lack of care. No astonishment when those who do get treatment get substandard care, no dismay as a two-tiered system develops in which the more important among us get top-flight medicine while the rest get what the public clinics have to offer.
Our own polling shows that the disapproval of the Democrats' health care legislation is beginning to wane. That's as alarming as the heated opposition to the law had been encouraging. If we surrender ourselves to the soft tyranny of elected officials gone too far, we will be leaving an America that future generations won't want.
To no one’s surprise, the total theorized costs of Obamacare are continuing to increase years before the first patient is planned to be seen under the system. That is, if the nationalized healthcare fraud doesn’t die a quick death beforehand from strangulation by defunding or repealing. The whole process was interminably corrupt and opaque in order to be able to pass it against the vociferous opposition of a large majority of Americans.
Just to implement one of their ideological linchpins.
Fiscal Fraud of Obamacare Snowballing Already
Terence P. Jeffrey 6/02/2010
Remember the health care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently -- or, perhaps, unavoidably -- revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?
"This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades," Obama said when he signed the bill.
On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to "urge" his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years -- $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.
Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?
"It's absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians' services," said Waxman. "This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians' fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don't act, doctors' fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable."
It would not merely be unconscionable. If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors -- that, in fact, legally took effect on June 1 -- is allowed to stand, many doctors in this country will simply stop seeing Medicare patients. They will not be able to afford it. The cost to them of serving their patients will exceed what they are paid. Their profit margin will be swept away.
To make precisely this point, 12 national surgeons' associations -- including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery -- sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter last Wednesday warning her what would happen if Medicare doctors' fees are slashed as they are scheduled to be under current law.
"These continued payment cuts, rising practice costs and a lack of certainty going forward, make it difficult, if not impossible, for already financially challenged surgical practices to continue to treat Medicare patients," the surgeons' associations told Pelosi.
The letter pointed the speaker toward the results of a survey of more than 13,000 physicians done in February by the Surgical Coalition, a group of more than 20 medical associations. The survey asked these doctors what they would do if Medicare fees were slashed by the scheduled 21.2 percent.
Twenty-nine percent said they would opt out of the Medicare system entirely. Almost 69 percent said they would limit the number of appointments they would take from Medicare patients, 45.8 percent said they would start referring complex Medicare patients to other physicians, 45.3 percent said they would stop providing certain services, 43.8 percent said they would defer purchasing new medical equipment and 42.7 percent said they would cut their staff.
Almost 4 percent of the doctors said they would close or sell their practices.
Why did Congress plan to slash the doctors' Medicare fees in the first place? It didn't. In the past, the majority in Congress has routinely enacted budget bills that fraudulently assumed that on some future date the federal government would dramatically slash the Medicare fees paid to doctors, knowing that before that date arrived the majority would pass "emergency" legislation postponing the cuts to some still-future date. The majority in Congress does this so the long-term deficits caused by their spending bills appear to be smaller than they actually are.
As originally proposed, Obamacare would have ended this practice, permanently setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors at the true anticipated level. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that doing so would have added $208 billion to the cost of Obamacare over 10 years, forcing the CBO to declare that Obamacare added to the deficit rather than reduced it. That would have cost Obamacare votes on the House floor and quite possibly defeated the legislation.
So the congressional leadership stripped the "doc fix" out of Obamacare and left it to another day.
Waxman went down to the floor last Friday to declare that day had come. Unfortunately, for him, the Senate had already left town for its Memorial Day vacation. So, the current fix will have to wait until it returns.
Even then, the fix only accounts for $22.9 billion of the $102 billion cost of the bill the House did pass on Friday. Most of the rest of the money is for extending unemployment benefits and special targeted tax breaks.
The $22.9 billion fix for the doctors' fees -- if passed by the Senate -- would only last through September 2011. Then Congress will presumably do it all again -- or let the Medicare system collapse.
In the meantime, Obamacare is supposed to cut half a trillion in spending from elsewhere in Medicare, while Obama's budget -- not counting the $54 billion in new debt included in this bill -- is expected to add $9.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
This is just one hospital. Multiply this same story by every hospital in this country with every case and you can't even grasp the unlimited scope and cost of this problem. It is an absolute outrage that must be summarily stopped. It is bankrupting hospitals, forcing many to close. The costs of this unreimbursed care to the states is in the tens of billions of dollars per year at minimum with millions of taxpayers on the hook for these avoidable expenses.
The answer is secure the border and immigration reform.
In the 1950’s, Ronald Reagan warned us that health care could be used as a means to introduce and implement socialism. His words were quite prescient.
Though the public was and is vehemently against government run health care, the Obama Administration, Pelosi and Reid used bribery of corrupt politicians, and threats, lies or disingenuous arguments with feckless other in order to acquire enough votes to pass the legislation.
Again this was done in spite of overwhelming sentiment by the public against socialized medicine. It was a coup by a power hungry and ideologically driven government that disdains its citizens.
Now it is our turn …!
Obamacare Equals Socialism on Steroids
David Limbaugh May 13, 2010
We knew Obama was prevaricating when he told us his purpose to cram through Obamacare was to provide universal access to coverage and reduce costs, but how many people did he manage to fool? How many are still fooled?
He repeatedly complained that America spent more on healthcare than other nations "but wasn't any healthier." He grossly distorted the numbers of chronically uninsured. He lied about his support for a single-payer plan and in denying that the "public option" was a Trojan horse for such a plan. He misled us concerning his intention to federally fund abortions and the coverage of illegals.
He deceitfully insisted that he wouldn't interfere with the patient-doctor relationship, that patients could choose to keep their own plans, that his plan wouldn't lead to rationing and that it would increase the quality of care.
Perhaps his most cynical fraud was his line that he would not sign a bill that would add one single dime to the federal deficit. Along with the uninsured canard, this was his biggest selling point for Obamacare: Healthcare costs were skyrocketing, and he had the magic bullet to remedy that.
Well, we already have objective proof (courtesy of a delinquent Congressional Budget Office pronouncement) that this, too, was a lie.
Obama and congressional Democrats moved budgetary mountains (in the way David Copperfield moves mountains onstage) to create the CBO-supported illusion that his bill wouldn't increase federal budget deficits.
By asking the CBO to make absurd assumptions and by borrowing from other mythical funds (Medicare), Obamacrats were finally able to make the numbers balance, just long enough to give Obama cover to sign the bill.
But less than two months after he signed the bill into law, the CBO, in response to Rep. Jerry Lewis' request for a rescoring based on realistic assumptions instead of the bogus ones Democrats submitted, has already admitted its estimate didn't take into account "discretionary" expenditures that will add some $115 billion worth of costs.
With the publication of this news, the administration is now making noise, threatening not to fund the bill unless Congress finds sufficient savings elsewhere to nullify that "unexpected" cost increase.
Give me a break. Just how stupid can these people think we are? They knew about these false assumptions before Obama signed the bill, and they're not about to withdraw their wholesale endorsement for Obama's crowning legislative "achievement."
But as bad as Obama's lies were about the costs of his plan, many of us warned that a greater evil in Obamacare was its guaranteed path to reducing our freedoms.
Ronald Reagan was not just issuing platitudes when he said, "One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project . . . From here, it's a short step to all the rest of socialism."
No truer words were ever spoken, and you can be sure that Obama believes it, too, which is exactly why he misrepresented almost every aspect of his plan in order to get it passed — and even then, just barely.
His real purpose, as many of us have been telling you ad nauseam, is to greatly increase the size and scope of government and government control and, in the process, further radically redistribute wealth. He's a socialist. These aren't just words. He really is.
As it turns out, we don't have to wait any longer to prove we were correct about this, too. Obama has nominated Donald Berwick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
I discovered in research on my upcoming book that experts believe that under Obamacare, the role of the CMS will be greatly expanded to define the quality of healthcare for every insurance plan, set reimbursement rates for physicians in Medicare and Medicaid, and decide how valuable certain treatments are.
According to Robert M. Goldberg of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Berwick essentially "will get control of the practice of medicine."
It would be scary enough for a bureaucrat of normal sensibilities and saner politics to have such control, but RedState has uncovered the extent of Berwick's radicalism — like so many of Obama's other appointees.
Berwick is an Ivy League academic who loves wealth redistribution and believes that healthcare is an ideal vehicle to achieve it.
Berwick said: "Any healthcare funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must . . . redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition redistributional."
Berwick also lusts after the British system of socialized medicine, saying that America's healthcare system runs in the "darkness of private enterprise."
Pelosi to Aspiring Musicians: Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Care
Sounds like socialism … er, communism as in communist Russia of the 1970’s.
We need to stop this transfer of wealth and killer of motivation and productivity which enslaves working individuals and forces them to pay for those who are not contributing.
We have relentlessly been stating that Obamacare was not truly about improving the quality, cost or availability of health care but instead about government control and power. The following discovery exposes yet another example of this and adds to the litany of egregious mandates contained within this corrupt, dishonest, destructive and freedom and rights abrogating legislation.
A New ObamaCare Horror Story
Rick Manning 4/29/2010
America is discovering in horror just what Nancy Pelosi meant when she famously stated during the health care debate that, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
The past couple of days the news has been filled by reports that the Obama Administration’s own actuary for the Center for Medicare Services estimates that costs of the law are anything but revenue neutral and that they far exceed the ‘estimate’ provided to the public by the Administration. While many are chasing the question of if Obama knew about the higher estimates, when he knew, and if he suppressed them until the vote occurred, there is another massive problem discovered within the law.
Businesses will have to file 1099 forms with both the IRS and send them to the company that provided the services or sold the product for every expenditure that exceeds $600. If you react to this sentence the way my wife, who has run a small business did, you are saying, “that can’t be right, 1099s are only for contract employees.”
Well forget everything you thought you knew about 1099 forms, because Obama’s health care law has changed it.
In practical terms, here is what the new law means. Joe’s Plumbing prints up 100 color presentations at FedEx Kinko’s for a trade show in New Orleans, where they are staying at a Holiday Inn for six days.
At a minimum, Joe’s Plumbing will have to contact FedEx Kinko’s, the airline, Holiday Inn, the rental car company, and the organization sponsoring the trade show and get taxpayer identification numbers from them so they can comply with this tax law. The company will then have to send out 1099 forms to each of these vendors and dozens, hundreds or thousands more vendors, depending upon the size of the company, thus adding significant compliance costs to every business in America. Everyone from a company’s accountant, to building supplier, to carpet cleaner to janitorial service will be trading 1099 forms.
Yes, that’s right, trading 1099 forms, because at the same time, Joe’s Plumbing will also be receiving 1099 forms from every one of their business customers who spent more than $600 with them over the course of the year, which they will be required to keep and reconcile against their books.
Do you have any wonder why Joe’s Plumbing might be more than a tad bit irritated? The new Obama health care takeover just took a guy with a pipe wrench, pvc pipe and a plunger and forced him into Dante’s eighth circle of hell – tracking and filing IRS paperwork.
So, what kind of IRS rules will be put into place to set the framework for how all these tax forms must be filed and stored?
Actually, bombshell number two is that the IRS will not be setting these rules. Instead, those noted tax experts at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be writing and overseeing these tax regulations. Why? Who knows? It is the Alice in Wonderland world of the Obama health care bill.
U.S. Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA) has taken the first steps in alleviating this paperwork chokehold on America’s small business by introducing legislation to repeal this new burden.
Let’s hope that America’s businesses tell their Members of Congress to repeal what Lungren calls the “rat” tax, but what many observers believe should rightfully be called the preparation for the liberal Shangri-la of the VAT tax.
After all, once businesses are tracking every transaction over $600 and filing IRS paperwork on it, how much harder will it be for Congress to just say, add 10% to each bill and send it our way, extending taxation to every level of business unseen to unwary consumers who suddenly just see retail prices rise without knowing the increase is a new, hidden tax.
The requirement goes into effect January 2012. Better get a CPA on retainer. And stock up on toner and paper.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government, and the former Public Affairs Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Veterans Administration Hospitals, run by the Federal government, are notoriously horrific on myriad accounts and has been so for years. Negligence, poor patient care, disarray, confusion, bureaucracy are just a few adjectives that can begin to describe the “quality” or lack thereof associated with the VA. And this is just a fraction of the size that Obamacare will be.
So Obama and Congressional Democrats really believe that they can used this along with what has been learned from the Medicare program and the Post Office to provide outstanding care that exceeds what we have now, to more individuals and for less?
Wrong!!
As we have reiterated numerous times, Obamacare is not about healthcare. It is all about government control, power and spreading the wealth around.
Obamacare must rescinded or rendered impotent!
VA Claims Office Takes SNAFU to a New Level
Jana Winter FOXNews.com April 19, 2010
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder. He was surprised -- but not as much as one might think.
Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder.
There was just one problem: The claim was submitted for fibromyalgia.
Make that two problems: The claim was submitted by Glenn McBride, a 40-year-old man from Roanoke, Va., who most definitely does not get menstrual cramps.
It's a bad sign when your health insurance provider can’t figure out which gender reaches for the Midol. (Hint: it's the one without the prostate.)
The Department of Veterans Affairs is notorious for bungling health care benefits, and its Roanoke regional office, which handled McBride's claim, has long been considered among the worst.
In September 2009 a surprise inspection found the office was collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucratic incompetence. Literally.
Its filing system — floor-to-ceiling stacks of overfilled file cabinets and loose claims folders — weighed twice as much as the building's structure allowed, threatening the lives of everyone inside. Inspectors also found missing and improperly filed, stored and processed claims, among other problems. The regional office was ordered to overhaul the health care processing center completely.
By last month, six months later, there should have been some improvement. Instead, McBride received a letter that included this perplexing request for additional information:
"On the VA Form 21-4138, Statement in Support of Claim you sent on October 8, 2009, you included menstrual disorder. Please specify what you intended to claim for this condition."
McBride, whose 14 years of Army service included a combat tour with one of the most highly decorated units during Desert Storm -- and did not include any complaints about menstrual cramps, so far as he can recall -- insists this was not just a clerical error. He says it's one more example of the VA ignoring or messing up claims in order to avoid paying benefits.
"If the VA does not actually recognize the request, they do not have to give the award," he said. "Sort of like a perverted form of 'See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.' Most people just throw up their hands in frustration and walk away at this point. That is the VA's plan."
The VA, asked to comment about McBride's complaint, issued a statement in which it said:
"The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) mission is to be an advocate for Veterans. VA has a responsibility to assist Veterans during the claims process. Part of that duty is to include all possible issues that a Veteran references in his or her initial claim package. VA regrets any confusion that Mr. McBride's claim may have caused. VA Regional Office employees have reached out to Mr. McBride to clarify the confusion, determine the types of issues he wants to claim, and identify any outstanding concerns that he may have."
Jim Strickland, a veterans advocate who writes a regular health care benefits column on VAWatchdog.org and has his own benefits-related Web site, said he wasn't at all surprised to learn of McBride's "menstrual" letter. "There are 57 regional offices and every one is operating in total chaos and in crisis," he said. "Full frontal mass chaos. Every day."
Contacted in the middle of the week, Strickland said he'd already received two e-mails from veterans who were mailed the records of other veterans. And he provided his most ridiculous example of a nonsensical claims letter, one that managed to try to collect debt and to discuss overpaying the same debt -- at the same time.
For Gulf War veterans who fought during a certain time period, certain health conditions are considered presumptive, meaning that such a high percentage of that group has been diagnosed with the condition it's presumed that it was caused by military service, and coverage is automatically granted. Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, is a presumptive one for McBride.
Because of his years of experience dealing with the VA, McBride likes to provide as much information as possible when he submits claim forms. (He also gets a signed and time-stamped receipt upon delivery.) When he sent in his claim for fibromyalgia, he typed clearly at the top of the form: "This form is an official request for SERVICE-CONNECTION for FIBROMYALGIA." He included an extract of a VA "fast letter" regarding presumptive conditions — basically providing the VA with its own policy on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. "Menstrual disorder" is included in the VA's list of symptoms.
"The VA just breezed right through the facts and settled on the obscure," McBride said. "The Roanoke office clearly hasn't changed."
Strickland says the problem at the root of letters like McBride's is a bonus structure paid out to VA claims employees.
"The more work, the better the bonus is," he said. "It's strictly volume, not quality driven. There is no accountability whatsoever.
"The art of the Teflon Jacket has been perfected at our VA. They are really totally invulnerable to your criticism."
When the editor of VAWatchdog.org posted an April Fools Day joke -- "VA DOCTOR TRIES TO GIVE PROSTATE EXAM TO WOMAN
VETERAN (April Fool); VA physician: 'Nobody told me the patient was a female. How the hell was I supposed to know that?'" -- McBride sent in his "menstrual" letter.
It was posted on the same site under the heading, "Today's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? award goes to the VA's Roanoke, Virginia Regional Office."
The site's editor describes the award:
"Every now and then we get a story about the VA that just can't be. But, it is! Because, remember, we're not dealing with regular people ... we're dealing with the VA. That's when we throw up our hands and scream at the sky:
Fresh and ongoing from it initiating, feeding and perpetuating the housing debacle and collapse, the Federal government with its pernicious Obamacare is poised to destroy medicine and medical care as we know it here in the United States. If allowed to take root, gone will be the world’s best and most sophisticated healthcare system, home of most of the most important innovations and discoveries in medical care. In its place will be a near 3rd world level of “quality” of care encumbered by an oppressive and arcane government controlled system. At least in third world countries they don’t have swarms of attorneys pullulating like flies looking for their next jackpot.
It is commonly known that there will be a significant shortage of primary care physicians in the future which Obamacare will tremendously exacerbate for myriad reasons. Of course, neither Obama or Congressional Democrats considered this in their reckless haste to ram the healthcare reform legislation into effect. What a surprise – politicians didn’t anticipate something inherently important?
The end result? You will have the “right” of healthcare but you may not have a doctor to provide it to you. If you are ultimately able to schedule an appointment to see a doctor, you may have to wait an excessively long period of time to finally be seen, or be seen by a physician located far from where you live or work, or be herded through like cattle spending little time with the doctor who is massively overworked and overloaded with patients (and over-regulated).
Does the word “rationing” ring a bell? Or decreased quality of care? These were all important issues that were raised by those who opposed the Democrats’ plans but were ignored or denigrated by them and the press.
What is a “brilliant” solution for this problem that is being considered by the government? Have nurses act like doctors. Add a little more training, change some statutes and voila! Doctorlight. Easy! Just don’t be very sick or you might not make it to a real doctor.
And if the nurse gets a PhD, they can officially be addressed as Dr., adding to confusion but subtracting from quality. This proposal would place millions of Americans at unnecessary risk due to inferior training and as a consequence, inferior care.
Furthermore, given the government’s plan to reimburse these nurses the same or marginally less than real doctors, why would any sane person want to become a doctor? After all, for maybe $5 to $10 more per patient that a doctor would be reimbursed versus a nurse, that person would also have to go to medical school and residency for up to 11 or more years, assume debt to pay for school of $250,000 or more and then pay malpractice rates in practice that can exceed $100,000/ year.
This will surely dissuade many including the best and brightest from seeking a career in medicine and don’t we want our doctors to be smart and competent?
Sounds like another government plan causing unintended consequences.
Doctor shortage? 28 states may expand nurses' role
By Carla K. Johnson (AP) – 4/15/2010
CHICAGO — A nurse may soon be your doctor. With a looming shortage of primary care doctors, 28 states are considering expanding the authority of nurse practitioners. These nurses with advanced degrees want the right to practice without a doctor's watchful eye and to prescribe narcotics. And if they hold a doctorate, they want to be called "Doctor."
For years, nurse practitioners have been playing a bigger role in the nation's health care, especially in regions with few doctors. With 32 million more Americans gaining health insurance within a few years, the health care overhaul is putting more money into nurse-managed clinics.
Those newly insured patients will be looking for doctors and may find nurses instead.
The medical establishment is fighting to protect turf. In some statehouses, doctors have shown up in white coats to testify against nurse practitioner bills. The American Medical Association, which supported the national health care overhaul, says a doctor shortage is no reason to put nurses in charge and endanger patients.
Nurse practitioners argue there's no danger. They say they're highly trained and as skilled as doctors at diagnosing illness during office visits. They know when to refer the sickest patients to doctor specialists. Plus, they spend more time with patients and charge less.
"We're constantly having to prove ourselves," said Chicago nurse practitioner Amanda Cockrell, 32, who tells patients she's just like a doctor "except for the pay."
On top of four years in nursing school, Cockrell spent another three years in a nurse practitioner program, much of it working with patients. Doctors generally spend four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school and an additional three in primary care residency training.
Medicare, which sets the pace for payments by private insurance, pays nurse practitioners 85 percent of what it pays doctors. An office visit for a Medicare patient in Chicago, for example, pays a doctor about $70 and a nurse practitioner about $60.
The health care overhaul law gave nurse midwives, a type of advanced practice nurse, a Medicare raise to 100 percent of what obstetrician-gynecologists make — and that may be just the beginning.
States regulate nurse practitioners and laws vary on what they are permitted to do:
_ In Florida and Alabama, for instance, nurse practitioners are barred from prescribing controlled substances.
_ In Washington, nurse practitioners can recommend medical marijuana to their patients when a new law takes effect in June.
_ In Montana, nurse practitioners don't need a doctor involved with their practice in any way.
_ Many other states put doctors in charge of nurse practitioners or require collaborative agreements signed by a doctor.
_ In some states, nurse practitioners with a doctorate in nursing practice can't use the title "Dr." Most states allow it.
The AMA argues the title "Dr." creates confusion. Nurse practitioners say patients aren't confused by veterinarians calling themselves "Dr." Or chiropractors. Or dentists. So why, they ask, would patients be confused by a nurse using the title?
The feud over "Dr." is no joke. By 2015, most new nurse practitioners will hold doctorates, or a DNP, in nursing practice, according to a goal set by nursing educators. By then, the doctorate will be the standard for all graduating nurse practitioners, said Polly Bednash, executive director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
Many with the title use it with pride.
"I don't think patients are ever confused. People are not stupid," said Linda Roemer, a nurse practitioner in Sedona, Ariz., who uses "Dr. Roemer" as part of her e-mail address.
What's the evidence on the quality of care given by nurse practitioners?
The best U.S. study comparing nurse practitioners and doctors randomly assigned more than 1,300 patients to either a nurse practitioner or a doctor. After six months, overall health, diabetes tests, asthma tests and use of medical services like specialists were essentially the same in the two groups.
"The argument that patients' health is put in jeopardy by nurse practitioners? There's no evidence to support that," said Jack Needleman, a health policy expert at the University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health.
Other studies have shown that nurse practitioners are better at listening to patients, Needleman said. And they make good decisions about when to refer patients to doctors for more specialized care.
The nonpartisan Macy Foundation, a New York-based charity that focuses on the education of health professionals, recently called for nurse practitioners to be among the leaders of primary care teams. The foundation also urged the removal of state and federal barriers preventing nurse practitioners from providing primary care.
The American Medical Association is fighting proposals in about 28 states that are considering steps to expand what nurse practitioners can do.
"A shortage of one type of professional is not a reason to change the standards of medical care," said AMA president-elect Dr. Cecil Wilson. "We need to train more physicians."
In Florida, a bill to allow nurse practitioners to prescribe controlled substances is stalled in committee.
One patient, Karen Reid of Balrico, Fla., said she was left in pain over a holiday weekend because her nurse practitioner couldn't prescribe a powerful enough medication and the doctor couldn't be found. Dying hospice patients have been denied morphine in their final hours because a doctor couldn't be reached in the middle of the night, nurses told The Associated Press.
Massachusetts, the model for the federal health care overhaul, passed its law in 2006 expanding health insurance to nearly all residents and creating long waits for primary care. In 2008, the state passed a law requiring health plans to recognize and reimburse nurse practitioners as primary care providers.
That means insurers now list nurse practitioners along with doctors as primary care choices, said Mary Ann Hart, a nurse and public policy expert at Regis College in Weston, Mass. "That greatly opens up the supply of primary care providers," Hart said.
But it hasn't helped much so far. A study last year by the Massachusetts Medical Society found the percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients was higher than ever. And despite the swelling demand, the medical society still believes nurse practitioners should be under doctor supervision.
The group supports more training and incentives for primary care doctors and a team approach to medicine that includes nurse practitioners and physician assistants, whose training is comparable.
"We do not believe, however, that nurse practitioners have the qualifications to be independent primary care practitioners," said Dr. Mario Motta, president of the state medical society.
The new U.S. health care law expands the role of nurses with:
_ $50 million to nurse-managed health clinics that offer primary care to low-income patients.
_ $50 million annually from 2012-15 for hospitals to train nurses with advanced degrees to care for Medicare patients.
_ 10 percent bonuses from Medicare from 2011-16 to primary care providers, including nurse practitioners, who work in areas where doctors are scarce.
_ A boost in the Medicare reimbursement rate for certified nurse midwives to bring their pay to the same level as a doctor's.
The American Nurses Association hopes the 100 percent Medicare parity for nurse midwives will be extended to other nurses with advanced degrees.
"We know we need to get to 100 percent for everybody. This is a crack in the door," said Michelle Artz of ANA. "We're hopeful this sets the tone."
In Chicago, only a few patients balk at seeing a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor, Cockrell said. She gladly sends those patients to her doctor partners.
She believes patients get real advantages by letting her manage their care. Nurse practitioners' uphill battle for respect makes them precise, accurate and careful, she said. She schedules 40 minutes for a physical exam; the doctors in her office book 30 minutes for same appointment.
Joseline Nunez, 26, is a patient of Cockrell's and happy with her care.
"I feel that we get more time with the nurse practitioner," Nunez said. "The doctor always seems to be rushing off somewhere."
As we have mentioned myriad times, an overwhelming majority of physicians are resolutely opposed and in a state of perpetual outrage at the dictates of Obamacare. This may not necessarily be apparent given that most have elected to vent their disapproval in quieter ways such as e-mailing, writing and calling their Senators and Representatives.
One physician who did decide to be a little more overt in his vehemence, Jack Cassel MD, the Florida urologist who posted a sign on his door regarding those who voted for Obama, did get his message heard … and nationally. Unfortunately, the malignant and portentous Representative of his district, Alan Grayson (D – Florida) then initiated malicious verbal assaults on him including calling him racist and unprofessional and has indicated that he will seek professional sanctions and legal charges against him. This has become a dangerous and illegal pattern of Democrat politicians pursuing whatever measures possible to squelch First Amendment Rights. Threaten and silence the opposition into submission.
With this scenario fresh in mind and cognizant of the ubiquitous threats from the Government, media and even liberal loons, Dr. Joseph Scherzer, a Scottsdale, Arizona Dermatologist in practice for 34 years, felt that for the good of the country and patient care in particular, more needed to be shared with the public. He has bravely elected to speak out on the pernicious nature of the Obamacare legislation and its severe and adverse impact on medical care in America which will lead to irreparable harm to the world’s best healthcare system.
Neil Cavuto interviews Dr. Joseph Scherzer on FoxNews:
Many Democrats are revealing what countless opponents of Obamacare were claiming: the legislation had far more to do with wealth redistribution than it did with healthcare. This is not about quality of care or access or even reducing total medical care costs. If it were, malpractice reform would have been implemented and there would not have been an additional 159 new federal agencies created or the provision to hire almost 17,000 new IRS agents.
That is why the numbers never added up, the legislation was written in secrecy, negotiations were conducted behind locked doors by Democrats only with Republicans being totally excluded, opponents were gratuitously charged with racism, etc.
Obamacare was mainly aimed at redistributing wealth
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent
April 2, 2010
It hasn't attracted much notice, but recently some prominent advocates of Obamacare have spoken more frankly than ever before about why they supported a national health care makeover. It wasn't just about making insurance more affordable.
It wasn't just about bending the cost curve. It wasn't just about cutting the federal deficit. It was about redistributing wealth.
Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans."
In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." The new health care legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."
At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."
Summing things up in the New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."
Now they tell us. For many opponents of the new legislation, the statements confirmed a nagging suspicion that for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, the health fight was about more than just insurance -- that redistribution played a significant, if largely unspoken, part in the drive for national health care.
"I don't think most people, when they think of the health care bill, instantly think it's a vehicle to redistribute wealth," says pollster Scott Rasmussen. "But we do know that people overwhelmingly believe it will lead to an increase in middle class taxes, and we do know that people are concerned that it will hurt their own quality of care, so I think their gut instincts point in that direction."
By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off-message. Democrats knew there was no way they could ever sell a national health care bill to a skeptical public by basing their case on income inequality.
That's one reason they went to such lengths to argue -- preposterously, in the view of most Americans -- that the bill could cover 32 million currently uninsured people and still save the taxpayers money.
After Baucus' statement, I asked a Democratic strategist (who asked to remain nameless) whether fighting income inequality was one of his goals in supporting the legislation. Never, he said. "That's what the tax code is for."
"It was not to take something away from rich people, it was to provide something to people without coverage," he continued, making a distinction between striving for universal coverage and seeking to redistribute income. But he quickly saw that Democrats talking about redistribution could be politically damaging, echoing the controversy that erupted when candidate Obama famously told Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
" 'Redistribution' is an easy charge to make," the Democrat said. "I'm not surprised that it's an argument critics make; what I'm surprised at is that Democrats are making it."
This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all."
The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few.
And yet that is the bedrock belief of some who supported the health care makeover. So it's no wonder that we're hearing about health care as the redistribution of income. Of course, we're only hearing it after the bill has passed.
The following editorial appearing in www.humanevents.com scrutinizes Obamacare from a constitutional perspective. No where in our Constitution is the Federal government given the authority to mandate or control healthcare. Furthermore, there are several inherent issues and requirements that are clearly unconstitutional.
Of course, many Democrats and the far left treat these issues in an arrogant, perfunctory manner. “We want this healthcare reform imposed, Constitutionality be damned” are their attitudes.
Our recommended approach: Kill the bill on the basis of Constitutionality issues which are myriad. Then, vote these corrupt imperious elitists out of office.
Obamacare's Fundamental Flaw
by Gary Bauer 01/01/2010
The Left has always had an erratic relationship with the Constitution. Liberal judges are known for discovering constitutional rights that had eluded judges for centuries. That’s because some of those so-called rights, such as the right to privacy, have no basis in the text of the Constitution but rather somewhere in its “emanations” and “penumbras.”
But the alleged right to privacy has its limits even among liberals. The Left’s judges routinely rule that the right protects abortion on demand, but its legislators have no qualms about extinguishing the right of citizens to make other private healthcare decisions free of government coercion.
While much of the healthcare debate has focused on arguments over policy, a more fundamental debate is taking place over whether the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul is even constitutional.
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the loud affirmation of this fact may offer conservatives their best chance to pull the plug on Obamacare. It would be ironic if it is in the courts, liberals’ favorite venue for forcing social change, that the rule of law were restored and the personal freedom of the American people affirmed.
The power to regulate each citizen’s health care is not listed in the Constitution among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers not specifically granted to Congress are reserved to the states.
But among liberals, for whom it is an article of faith that government-run healthcare is a basic human right that no person of goodwill could oppose, any arguments about its constitutionality are irrelevant.
When pressed to address constitutionality, liberals often point to the commerce clause. The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate “commerce among the several states.” But that does not mean Congress can meddle in anything that affects economic activity. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate non-economic activities just because, somewhere down the road, they may have an effect on economic activity.
The most egregiously unconstitutional element of the health care legislation concerns the individual mandate, which requires each American to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $25,000 or one year in prison. The individual mandate is essential to the Left’s plan to impose government-run health care. Without it, because of the left’s insistence on barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions, people would simply obtain insurance only when they have a need for medical care.
The individual mandate is a way to keep costs down, but there is not constitutional authorization for it. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said, “…here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want…and…that’s not constitutionally sound.”
Back in 1994, during the Democrats’ last foray into healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office stated that compelling individuals to buy insurance would be “an unprecedented form of federal action” because “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the U.S.”
Liberals often liken the health insurance individual mandate to the law requiring all people who own automobiles to have auto insurance. But it’s a flawed argument. Only state governments, not the federal government, can require automobile owners to obtain auto insurance (and two states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, don’t).
Also, as legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation point out in a recent legal memorandum, “automobile insurance requirements impose a condition on the voluntary activity of driving; a health insurance mandate imposes a condition on life itself.”
The Heritage memo, titled “Why the personal mandate to buy health insurance is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” also notes that states require drivers to maintain auto insurance only to cover injuries to others. “The mandate does not require drivers to insure themselves or their property against injury or damage. Thus the auto insurance requirement covers the dangers and liabilities posed by drivers to third parties only…”
It would be an understatement to say that individual mandate advocates have struggled to defend its inclusion. In a series of interviews conducted by CNSNews.com, Democrat after Democrat failed to give a coherent answer about where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” of the Constitution giving Congress the authority, while Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he’d “have to check the specific sections,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) flatly admitted that he did not know.
Senator Blanche Lincoln should have taken the Nelson route but instead opined, “Well, I Just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” And Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) dismissed the question, insisting that “nobody” questioned Congress’ authority to require individual mandate.
Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) said Congress authorization to impose an individual mandate could be found in the part of Constitution that authorizes the federal government to “provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” But, as CNSNews.com pointed out, “health” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who simply responded “Are you serious? Are you serious?” By which she seemed to be saying, “Do you seriously think we progressives would allow constitutionality to get in the way of our half-century old goal of government-run health care?!”
There are other constitutional problems with Obamacare. For instance, if the public option provides for abortion, many Americans will be compelled to subsidize other people’s abortions, which would infringe upon the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.
And constitutional concerns exist over exempting some states from Obamacare’s provisions. In Harry Reid’s fire sale for votes, he essentially agreed that some states would bear the brunt of the economic burden of the health care monstrosity but not others. Presently state legal experts are examining whether the constitution can force such a burden upon them.
Other constitutional issues are buried deep in the pages of the bill just now seeing the light of day. For example, in spite of recent Supreme Court decisions raising constitutional questions about racial set asides, Obamacare promises federal financial assistance to medical schools, but only if they have programs that serve “under-represented” groups based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation.
An unintended consequence of the health care debate may be that legislators on both sides of the isle are dusting off and reading their copies of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative members of Congress should resolve in the New Year to talk more often and more loudly about the constitutional arguments against Obamacare.
If it passes, conservatives should test its constitutionality in the courts. It may well be that the jobs saved or created by the Obama Administration’s health care plan go to lawyers, not doctors.
The elitist hauteur of liberal politicians, if left unchallenged, will translate into significant loss of many of our remaining rights and freedoms. Several prominent Democratic politicians including Obama have displayed arrogant and wanton disregard for the specifics of the Constitution, perverting its dictates in order to meet their ideological agenda.
One of these involves the current healthcare legislation based on their belief that healthcare is a right that they can fully control, regulate and issue mandates including forcing people to buy health insurance and forcing citizens to subsidize the care of others. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given such authority.
Health Care Not In Constitution
Investors Business Daily
Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right.
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
Mandates including the one to buy health insurance go over the line. "Even if the Supreme Court has expanded the commerce power, there has been one constant," noted Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Congress was always regulating activities in which people chose to engage." He added that "rather than regulate what people have chosen to do," the mandates "would require them to do something they have not chosen to do at all."
When asked the same question, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pointed to Article 1, Section 8, which gives the Congress the power to raise taxes in order to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Does that give Congress the authority to buy things like health insurance?
We and others have made the point that broccoli is good for our general welfare, but can Congress make us eat it and charge us if we don't? Losing a few pounds would help us all and reduce health care costs, but can Congress mandate health club memberships? Hoyer thinks so.
This clause says nothing about the citizens of the United States, only the United States as a whole. The Constitution provides for the raising of armies to defend the country, not for whether or when women should get mammograms and who should pay for them.
Hoyer is wrong, according to constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin: "The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly, because if that's true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything."
Does the "general welfare" allow for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make backroom deals that tax other states and other citizens to benefit a single state such as Nebraska and its citizens and to literally bribe senators like Ben Nelson for their vote?
Health care is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only time the word "care" appears is in Article II, Section 3, which says the president of the United States "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes our highest law, the U.S. Constitution.
The following article enumerates 10 immensely important issues related to the healthcare legislation in its present iteration. This is not what America needs or wants but instead, what Congressional Democrats and Obama insist on imposing on us. Meanwhile, Obama and Congress will still have their own gold plated healthcare plan with innumerable choices all subsidized at the taxpayers’ expense.
As we have iterated myriad times, this is not about healthcare. This is about increased government power, control and regulation of our lives and restrictions of our rights and freedoms. If we don’t become more vociferous, passionate and actively fight this legislation in a united fashion, the government will relentless continue to further diminish and suppress our rights, freedoms and choices.
We must do whatever it takes to reclaim our country!
10 Lumps Of Coal In The Health Care Bill
By Betsy McCaughey
For most Americans, the health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing to pass will be worse than coal in their stockings. Herewith, the Top 10 List of Things You Don't Want From Health Care Reform This Christmas — But Will Get Anyway From Congress.
1. Higher premiums: If you pay for your own insurance, your premiums will cost 10% to 13% more than if the bill didn't pass, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Insurance won't be more affordable. Sixty percent of the newly insured are being enrolled in Medicaid, the public program for the poor.
2. A cost you can't afford and can't avoid: Though moderate-income families will get subsidies, buying insurance is mandatory. A family earning $54,000 will be expected to pay $9,000 (17% of pre-tax income) for the premium, co-pays and deductibles, according to the CBO. If you don't enroll, the IRS will find you and penalize you (Senate bill, p. 345).
3. A one-size-fits-all health plan: Your benefit package will be prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whether you choose basic, silver or gold, and whether you pay for it yourself or qualify for a subsidy, your benefits are the same.
Gold plans simply collect more up front and give you a lower co-pay or deductible. It's unclear how possible it will be to buy supplemental insurance. The goal is to discourage health consumption and differences based on ability to pay.
4. A sin tax on your generous plan at work: This is another equalizer to discourage some people from getting more than others. The Senate bill puts a 40% tax on Cadillac plans (p. 1,980). About one-fifth of employer-provided plans fall into that "luxury" category. The CBO predicts that employers will downgrade your coverage to avoid the tax or reduce your take home pay.
5. Government controls on your doctors' decisions: The Senate bill bars doctors from participating in the private insurance system unless they implement whatever regulations the secretary of health and human services chooses to impose to "improve health care quality" (p. 149). That broad phrase encompasses everything in medicine.
This would be the first time in history that the federal government is given power over how doctors treat privately insured patients
6. Hospitals closed to seniors: The House and Senate bills slash payments to hospitals and other institutions that care for seniors. The chief actuary for Medicare, Richard Foster, warns that cuts in the House bill are so severe that some institutions may face severe losses or end their participation in Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 11/13/09 report). Some seniors won't know where to go.
7. Bare-bones hospital care: Patients of all ages (and all incomes) will suffer when hospitals are in financial distress. Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses, equipment and cleaning staff. The president's chief health advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, argues that hospitals in the U.S. offer more privacy and comfort than hospitals in Europe, and this "abundance of amenities" drives up costs (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
8. Future Medicare cuts: Look out baby boomers, the Senate bill establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission to make automatic spending reductions in future years while insulating Congress from the political fallout. You won't get as much care as people in Medicare currently get.
9. A new social agenda: Money is allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement (Senate bill, p.612). There are also giveaways to immigrants. The Senate bill hands low-income legal immigrants government subsidies as soon as they get here, instead of waiting the five years Medicaid requires (Senate bill, p. 274).
10. A tell-all relationship with every doctor you see: What happens in your doctor's office must be recorded in an electronic data base that can send the information to insurers and other medical offices (Senate bill, p. 62-66). Every doctor you see will have access to your medical history. See a psychiatrist? Your foot doctor will know about it.
These congressional tidings bring no comfort or joy. We must save ourselves from Congress' power now that it has gone astray.
• McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York state and founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
We have stated many times in previous posts that Obama and the Democrats in Congress want to impose a healthcare system on an unwilling American public that is the polar opposite of what these politicians speciously claim it to be. There will be severe restrictions on choices and availability of care with governmental rationing. Waiting times will be longer while the quality of care will plummet yet the total cost borne by each individual will significantly increase both through more expensive premiums and usurious taxation.
Congressional Democrats and Obama claim that their healthcare legislation establishes a great system for the American people. If it really is so fantastic then why are they refusing to agree to amendments that would force them to use the same healthcare system as they want to impose on us? The answer is because they know this system will be disastrous – limiting choice, rationing and restricting care, creating prolonged waiting times before receiving care and being far more costly for significantly inferior quality. Why should they have to give up their privileged premium care that is subsidized by the American taxpayer and provides them with myriad choices?
This whole healthcare reform is all about government control and nothing more. As Investors Business Daily put it:
“… health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.”
We need to continue fighting to stop this legislation as well as vigorously work at ousting these arrogant, imperious members of Congress who are ruling us rather than representing us!
Reform For You, But Not Congress
Investors Business Daily 12/04/2009
Hypocrisy: If the $2-trillion-plus government health care plan that Congress has come up with is so great, why do lawmakers refuse to live under it themselves? Their designs have been based on lies from the start.
The left thinks Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and David Vitter, R-La., have shot themselves in their feet. After unveiling last week their amendment that would force Senate and House members to cover themselves with any government health plan that passes into law, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a champion of the public option, proceeded to ask if he could sign on as a co-sponsor. Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he might want to, as well.
"Coburn and Vitter weren't counting on that kind of support," gloated Nation magazine Washington correspondent John Nichols. "If they're smart, the rest of the Democratic caucus will follow Brown's lead and sign on for the public option."
Well, when it comes to feathering their own nests, congressional Democrats are smart. And they're not about to subject themselves to anything less than the taxpayer-subsidized, gold-plated array of private coverage choices they've enjoyed for nearly a half century in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Coburn and Vitter's idea of politicians living under a government plan "was opposed unanimously by Democrats during interviews on Thursday," the Hill newspaper reports. The paper also noted opposition from senior Republican senators such as National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas and Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, who asked: "Why would I want to put my family in that, let alone anybody else's family?"
Senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle know how good they have it under the FEHBP, the world's largest group health program. The reason Congress' own health care works so well is that it's based on consumer choice and market competition — the opposite of what it's trying to impose on everybody else.
Members of Congress and millions of federal workers may choose from hundreds of private fee-for-service plans, HMOs or preferred provider organizations, with no federal worker living anywhere enjoying fewer than a dozen options.
FEHBP members can easily switch plans if they become dissatisfied; that puts competitive pressure on insurers to provide quality and value. Surveys show that members love their coverage, which is why almost all federal employees join the program.
The FEHBP is shielded from state regulation and Uncle Sam subsidizes premiums by more than 70%. Canadian physician and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Dr. David Gratzer, whose opposition to government-run health care comes from first-hand experience, observes that "the federal government's role in the FEHBP is to pay the bills," unlike the fiscally doomed Medicare program, of which "Washington is the designer of benefits."
Today, instead of the federal takeover Democrats are rushing to enact, lawmakers could give Americans the kind of high-quality health care choices they enjoy. A simple system of vouchers would allow recipients to choose any health plan on the market. The system could be means-tested, with Medicare giving "larger vouchers to poorer and sicker seniors and smaller vouchers to healthy and wealthy seniors, using current health-risk-adjustment mechanisms and Social Security data on lifetime earnings," says Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Vouchers "would contain Medicare spending, and are the only way to protect seniors from government rationing," according to Cannon.
"The FEHBP is an excellent model for designing a system based on broad personal choice," argues Robert Moffit, the Heritage Foundation's director of health policy studies. "There is no reason," he adds, "why a reform of Medicare could not establish a similar structure for national plan options," including integrating private retiree health insurance into the system.
But instead of such common-sense reform, Americans are staring at thousands of pages of new regulations on their personal medical treatment, including a government-run option that will devastate the private coverage most Americans have and like. The inevitable result, as independent studies warn, is thousands of dollars more to pay in health premiums.
In last year's presidential campaign, health reform's purposes were advertised as cost containment and near-universal coverage. But what Democrats are set to enact will spend trillions dramatically increasing insurance premiums, and leave millions still without insurance.
In other words, their push for health reform has been based on lies. The real purpose: to gain control of America's health system.
And on top of the lies is the hypocrisy the American people have come to expect from their politicians: continuation of the nearly 50-year-old loophole providing senators and House members with a wide choice of private health plans.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued new recommendations regarding obtaining mammograms that are irresponsible, shocking and not evidenced based but are concordant with requisite rationing for Obamanocare. The following editorial assesses this morally corrupt pronouncement.
Rationing's First Step
Investors Business Daily 11/18/2009
Health Care: A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life. Shouldn't that be between patient and physician? We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work.
We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing. New recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding breast cancer and the necessity for early and frequent mammograms do not convince us otherwise.
Just six months ago, the panel, which works under the Health and Human Services Department as a "best practices" study group, was shouting its concern about a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showing a 1% drop in the number of women regularly undergoing such screening and prevention.
The task force was saying that women older than 40 should get a mammogram every one to two years. It found that frequent screening lowered death rates from breast cancer mostly for women ages 50 to 69. But that was then, and this is now.
"We're not saying women shouldn't get screened. Screening does save lives," Diana Petiti, task force vice chairman, said of the recommendations published Tuesday in Annals of Internal Medicine. "But we are recommending against routine screening."
Now the panel recommends that women in their 40s stop having routine annual mammograms and that older women should cut back to every two years. The concern allegedly is that too frequent testing can result in increased anxiety, false positives, unneeded follow-up tests and possibly disfiguring biopsies. Preventing breast cancer and saving lives almost get lost in the new analysis.
"I have a particular concern in this case about who was involved in this task force," says Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., who was a heart surgeon in private life. "There are no surgeons or oncologists who deal directly with breast cancer or even radiologists. ... I've seen far too many young women develop late-stage breast cancer because they didn't have adequate screening."
Little, if anything, has happened medically in the last six months to cause such a shift. A lot, however, has happened politically as a health care overhaul has limped forward on life support. The Congressional Budget Office has been busy pricing these various bills, a process that includes screening and prevention.
As we have warned, the growing emphasis seems to be on cost containment rather than quality of care. About 39 million women undergo mammograms each year in America, costing the health care system more than $5 billion.
"The American Cancer Society continues to recommend annual screening using mammography and clinical breast examination for all women beginning at age 40," says Otis Brawley, its chief medical officer. "Our experts make this recommendation having reviewed virtually all the same data reviewed by the USPSTF, but also additional data that the USPSTF did not consider."
Daniel Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School, says: "Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and those idiots want to do away with it. It's crazy — unethical, really."
This, sadly, appears to be the future of medicine under government-run health care. Aside from taxes on insurers, providers and device manufacturers, we'll be up to our eyeballs in cost-effectiveness boards that will decide who gets what tests and treatments, when and if. These are only recommendations for now, but they are the shape of things to come.
We have mentioned numerous times that while the Democrats aver that the Obamanocare/Pelosicare legislation is just about healthcare reform, it unequivocally isn’t. This is an indisputable unconstitutional theft of Americans’ healthcare rights and choices as well as their hard earned income. It is a government confiscation of another 17% of our GDP as well as a payback for political support of the Democrats to labor unions and trial attorneys in particular.
Buried within an even more bloated 1900 page document is a proviso in Section 2531 which rewards trial attorneys by creating disincentives for states that are attempting or have already implemented laws aimed at reducing extortionist medical-legal settlements.
"A state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys' fees or imposes caps on damages."
Characterizing this, IBD note that “… states that have the “nerve” to rein in frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits — and that's 85% of them, according to a Harvard study — would be punished if they also established medical courts where health care experts, rather than untrained juries, settle injury disputes based on actual medical science.”
Once again, the Democrats are legislating what is in their best interest and not what is best for all Americans.
The House Republican Conference has compiled a list of all the new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs created in H.R. 3962 which is Pelosi's legislation for the government takeover of health care and the abrogation of the rights, freedoms and pillaging of the hard earned incomes of American citizens. Specifically identified in the article New Federal Bureaucracies Created in Pelosi Health Care Bill on the GOP.gov website, these include:
Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 111(d), p. 61)
Grant program for wellness programs to small employers (Section 112, p. 62)
Grant program for State health access programs (Section 114, p. 72)
Program of administrative simplification (Section 115, p. 76)
Health Benefits Advisory Committee (Section 223, p. 111)
Health Choices Administration (Section 241, p. 131)
Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman (Section 244, p. 138)
Health Insurance Exchange (Section 201, p. 155)
Program for technical assistance to employees of small businesses buying Exchange coverage (Section 305(h), p. 191)
Mechanism for insurance risk pooling to be established by Health Choices Commissioner (Section 306(b), p. 194)
Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund (Section 307, p. 195)
State-based Health Insurance Exchanges (Section 308, p. 197)
Grant program for health insurance cooperatives (Section 310, p. 206)
"Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321, p. 211)
Ombudsman for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 321(d), p. 213)
Account for receipts and disbursements for "Public Health Insurance Option" (Section 322(b), p. 215)
Telehealth Advisory Committee (Section 1191 (b), p. 589)
Demonstration program providing reimbursement for "culturally and linguistically appropriate services" (Section 1222, p. 617)
Demonstration program for shared decision making using patient decision aids (Section 1236, p. 648)
Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicare (Section 1301, p. 653)
Independent patient-centered medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302, p. 672)
Community-based medical home pilot program under Medicare (Section 1302(d), p. 681)
Independence at home demonstration program (Section 1312, p. 718)
Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research (Section 1401(a), p. 734)
Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission (Section 1401(a), p. 738)
Patient ombudsman for comparative effectiveness research (Section 1401(a), p. 753)
Quality assurance and performance improvement program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1412(b)(1), p. 784)
Quality assurance and performance improvement program for nursing facilities (Section 1412 (b)(2), p. 786)
Special focus facility program for skilled nursing facilities (Section 1413(a)(3), p. 796)
Special focus facility program for nursing facilities (Section 1413(b)(3), p. 804)
National independent monitor pilot program for skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities (Section 1422, p. 859)
Demonstration program for approved teaching health centers with respect to Medicare GME (Section 1502(d), p. 933)
Pilot program to develop anti-fraud compliance systems for Medicare providers (Section 1635, p. 978)
Special Inspector General for the Health Insurance Exchange (Section 1647, p. 1000)
Medical home pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1722, p. 1058)
Accountable Care Organization pilot program under Medicaid (Section 1730A, p. 1073)
Nursing facility supplemental payment program (Section 1745, p. 1106)
Demonstration program for Medicaid coverage to stabilize emergency medical conditions in institutions for mental diseases (Section 1787, p. 1149)
Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (Section 1802, p. 1162)
"Identifiable office or program" within CMS to "provide for improved coordination between Medicare and Medicaid in the case of dual eligibles" (Section 1905, p. 1191)
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Section 1907, p. 1198)
Public Health Investment Fund (Section 2002, p. 1214)
Scholarships for service in health professional needs areas (Section 2211, p. 1224)
Program for training medical residents in community-based settings (Section 2214, p. 1236)
Grant program for training in dentistry programs (Section 2215, p. 1240)
Public Health Workforce Corps (Section 2231, p. 1253)
Public health workforce scholarship program (Section 2231, p. 1254)
Public health workforce loan forgiveness program (Section 2231, p. 1258)
Grant program for innovations in interdisciplinary care (Section 2252, p. 1272)
Advisory Committee on Health Workforce Evaluation and Assessment (Section 2261, p. 1275)
Prevention and Wellness Trust (Section 2301, p. 1286)
Clinical Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1295)
Community Prevention Stakeholders Board (Section 2301, p. 1301)
Grant program for community prevention and wellness research (Section 2301, p. 1305)
Grant program for research and demonstration projects related to wellness incentives (Section 2301, p. 1305)
Grant program for community prevention and wellness services (Section 2301, p. 1308)
Grant program for public health infrastructure (Section 2301, p. 1313)
Center for Quality Improvement (Section 2401, p. 1322)
Assistant Secretary for Health Information (Section 2402, p. 1330)
Grant program to support the operation of school-based health clinics (Section 2511, p. 1352)
Grant program for nurse-managed health centers (Section 2512, p. 1361)
Grants for labor-management programs for nursing training (Section 2521, p. 1372)
Grant program for interdisciplinary mental and behavioral health training (Section 2522, p. 1382)
"No Child Left Unimmunized Against Influenza" demonstration grant program (Section 2524, p. 1391)
Healthy Teen Initiative grant program regarding teen pregnancy (Section 2526, p. 1398)
Grant program for interdisciplinary training, education, and services for individuals with autism (Section 2527(a), p. 1402)
University centers for excellence in developmental disabilities education (Section 2527(b), p. 1410)
Grant program to implement medication therapy management services (Section 2528, p. 1412)
Grant program to promote positive health behaviors in underserved communities (Section 2530, p. 1422)
Grant program for State alternative medical liability laws (Section 2531, p. 1431)
Grant program to develop infant mortality programs (Section 2532, p. 1433)
Grant program to prepare secondary school students for careers in health professions (Section 2533, p. 1437)
Grant program for community-based collaborative care (Section 2534, p. 1440)
Grant program for community-based overweight and obesity prevention (Section 2535, p. 1457)
Grant program for reducing the student-to-school nurse ratio in primary and secondary schools (Section 2536, p. 1462)
Demonstration project of grants to medical-legal partnerships (Section 2537, p. 1464)
Center for Emergency Care under the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (Section 2552, p. 1478)
Council for Emergency Care (Section 2552, p 1479)
Grant program to support demonstration programs that design and implement regionalized emergency care systems (Section 2553, p. 1480)
Grant program to assist veterans who wish to become emergency medical technicians upon discharge (Section 2554, p. 1487)
Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (Section 2562, p. 1494)
National Medical Device Registry (Section 2571, p. 1501)
CLASS Independence Fund (Section 2581, p. 1597)
CLASS Independence Fund Board of Trustees (Section 2581, p. 1598)
CLASS Independence Advisory Council (Section 2581, p. 1602)
Health and Human Services Coordinating Committee on Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1610)
National Women's Health Information Center (Section 2588, p. 1611)
Centers for Disease Control Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1614)
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Office of Women's Health and Gender-Based Research (Section 2588, p. 1617)
Health Resources and Services Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1618)
Food and Drug Administration Office of Women's Health (Section 2588, p. 1621)
Personal Care Attendant Workforce Advisory Panel (Section 2589(a)(2), p. 1624)
Grant program for national health workforce online training (Section 2591, p. 1629)
Grant program to disseminate best practices on implementing health workforce investment programs (Section 2591, p. 1632)
Demonstration program for chronic shortages of health professionals (Section 3101, p. 1717)
Demonstration program for substance abuse counselor educational curricula (Section 3101, p. 1719)
Program of Indian community education on mental illness (Section 3101, p. 1722)
Intergovernmental Task Force on Indian environmental and nuclear hazards (Section 3101, p. 1754)
Office of Indian Men's Health (Section 3101, p. 1765)
Indian Health facilities appropriation advisory board (Section 3101, p. 1774)
Indian Health facilities needs assessment workgroup (Section 3101, p. 1775)
Indian Health Service tribal facilities joint venture demonstration projects (Section 3101, p. 1809)
Urban youth treatment center demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1873)
Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for diabetes prevention (Section 3101, p. 1874)
Grants to Urban Indian Organizations for health IT adoption (Section 3101, p. 1877)
Mental health technician training program (Section 3101, p. 1898)
Indian youth telemental health demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1909)
Program for treatment of child sexual abuse victims and perpetrators (Section 3101, p. 1925)
Program for treatment of domestic violence and sexual abuse (Section 3101, p. 1927)
Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1966)
Committee for the Establishment of the Native American Health and Wellness Foundation (Section 3103, p. 1968)
Does anyone really think that this massive increase in the federal government bureaucracy will actually improve our healthcare, make it more efficient and less costly?
"The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section 3003(b) (p. 683) punishes doctors who land in the 90th percentile or above on what they provide for seniors on Medicare by withholding 5 percent of their compensation.
This withhold provision forces doctors to choose between treating their patients and avoiding government penalties. HMOs used the same cost-cutting device in the early '90s until it was deemed dangerous to patients and outlawed. Now, lawmakers want to use it against the most vulnerable patients, the elderly. This bill and four others under negotiation also would slash about $500 billion from future Medicare funding."
Do you really want the Government dictating your medical care?
The Democrats’ plans for healthcare reform would be disastrous for Americans medically and financially as we have noted many times here before. Realizing that a vast majority of Americans are vehemently against the plans and socialized medicine in general, Pelosi and the Democrats are intent on imposing their ideological misguided legislation on us no matter what. They see it as government knows best and the greater its power and control, the better. We see it as an arrogant and corrupt power grab and abrogation of our rights and freedoms that will be a fiscal and social calamity.
We vehemently oppose the Democrats’ actions on healthcare reform and even more egregiously, their contemptuous and dismissive responses to an angry American public strongly against the legislation. Obama and Congressional Democrats have stated in no uncertain terms that they will impose this healthcare reform on us no matter what.
We have dissected this reform in previous editorials. This bill is ostensibly about healthcare but in actuality IT IS NOT. It will not lower costs, increase quality, or provide universal coverage which is the Democrat’s mantra. Instead, it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs far in excess of what would occur if nothing were done at all as well as massive increases in taxes. It will also lead to rationing, long waits, poorer quality of care, loss of confidentiality or our healthcare records, withholding of care and therapeutic options, increased morbidity and mortality of Americans, etc. Shall we go on?
In its essence, this bill is a naked, corrupt power grab by the Federal government, comprising an additional 17% of our economy under its control for a sum total of 43%. Its covert intentions are to steal additional freedoms and rights from us and make us more subservient and under greater government control. If you have scrutinized what legislation is available for public examination, read fact supported commentary and parsed the Democrats’ ideology, you will realize unequivocally that these conclusions are not paranoid rants. THEY ARE FACT BASED REALITY.
WE MUST RELENTLESS FIGHT AGAINST PASSAGE OF THIS LEGISLATION!!
The following is an extremely important and trenchant editorial posted in the October 19th edition of Investors Business Daily that sums up the current dire situation:
Dems Go Nuclear
Health Care: Democrats seem set to use the "nuclear option" to ram their government health takeover into law. Bipartisanship already looked dead; now it looks extinct.
The health care revolution the Democratic Congress has planned — with its inevitable medical rationing, thousands of dollars in increased insurance premiums, and coverage of illegal aliens — may get placed on the familiar fast track used to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars this year.
Instead of the 60 votes needed in the Senate if proper parliamentary rules were followed, passing this reshaping of the medical system as a "budget reconciliation" measure would mean only a simple majority was needed.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., accused of cheating on his taxes, last week held a hearing to let the House version of the health reform bill be passed this way. As the Washington weekly Human Events reports, Democratic leaders "have apparently invoked the 'nuclear option' to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year."
So all those "town hells" during the summer, where senators and congressmen were given an earful about passing secretly written thousand-page bills without reading them, will be ignored.
In the age of the Internet, Congress refuses to post for computer access the most consequential legislation in history, as far as its effect on human lives (and deaths) is concerned, before voting on it.
The people will have to wait until it's all signed, sealed and delivered before finding out exactly how this government-imposed monster will devour health care as Americans have known it for all their lives.
And why? Because both congressional Democrats and the White House are afraid of the power of the people. Just as they are both afraid to give the opposing party a seat at the negotiating table.
Rangel didn't allow Republicans to offer amendments in committee. Why not? Fear that Democrats might be embarrassed by having to reject a Republican amendment to protect Medicare, for one thing. And fear in general that the people might catch wind of a few bipartisan ideas that sound more sensible than their big government solutions.
The magnitude of what Congress is about to do is staggering. The federal government is about to begin dictating Americans' behavior regarding the most intimate and vital area of life — health.
You play ball with Uncle Sam and pay thousands and thousands of dollars for far more expensive insurance than what you're now used to, or you get slapped with fines. And as yet we don't know how heavy those fines will be — or if noncooperation with the new system will mean more than fines.
Doesn't Congress owe it to us to provide time to mull this over before it takes force?
Shouldn't the exact wording of this radical transformation of our medical system be available on the Internet for weeks before a floor vote takes place?
And shouldn't medical experts, health care providers and legal analysts get the opportunity to read every word of such a bill carefully, then give their well-considered analysis to concerned Americans?
Apparently not, according to those now running Washington.
To them, this is a rare opportunity to take a giant step toward single-payer, European-style socialized medicine. And they have no intention of letting the people stop them.
The following op-ed was written by well respected physician, Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. In it, Dr. Vliet delineates her vehement opposition to the present healthcare reform.
In the 2008 campaign, we heard healthcare in this country is “broken” and must be “reformed.” We heard “healthcare reform” would be the signature piece of an Obama Presidency. We were promised no new taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 per year. We heard promises of transparency in government. We heard promises of a White House that would listen to all. Now that President Obama and a Democratic majority are in office, what have we gotten?
The healthcare proposals have become a massive power grab to control your money, your health options, your businesses, your liberty, and ultimately your life. It is not about insuring the poor.We already have Medicaid to cover the poor.
What the Democratic majority is doing to healthcare in this country is a crime. Punishment won’t fall on Congress and the President, who are excluded from the healthcare proposals. Punishment falls on the American people, especially the elderly.
Word of a new “stealth” strategy to ram healthcare “reform” through the Senate raises even more cause for alarm and adds to the crime of this massive power grab. The plan appears to be for Senator Majority Leader Reid to merge the two Senate bills that have passed out of committee, and attach them as an amendment to a House TARP bill, already passed by the House but curiously gathering dust in the Senate. Once the Senate votes on this “TARP” bill with the healthcare amendment tucked neatly inside, the healthcare punishment is a “done deal” without further debate. Such an abuse of power and due process would be an unforgiveable crime against the American people, perpetrated by the very people elected to represent us.
Instead of “health insurance for all,” the House and Senate healthcare bills have become punishment for all. Here is the list of Americans who face the healthcare “reform” punishment:
- Punishment for the sick. Those who have medical expenses each year will no longer beable to deduct those expenses on taxes until the expenses reach 10% of adjusted gross income (AGI). The current deduction is set at expenses above 7.5% of AGI, so the Senate plan now ADDS a 2.5% tax on those who are already paying out of pocket for medical expenses. Clearly, if someone is spending more than 7.5% on medical costs,that person is ill. The Senate bill makes the sick even sicker from the stress of having to pay more taxes!
- Punishment for the elderly. Medicare cuts of 404 BILLION is the latest figure released by the Senate; earlier the White House budget office said $500 Billion – more than a full year’s Medicare budget – would have to be cut from Medicare. How can anyone begin to think these cuts will not penalize the elderly by delaying, rationing, or denying treatment?
- Punishment for young people. Young healthy people who do not buy government mandated insurance will be punished with the form of a excise tax – reported amounts have been from $1900 to $3800 per person.
- Punishment for anyone not paying the excise tax. The IRS fine for non-payment of tax can be $25,000 and a year in jail. So those who are punished by the new tax risk being accused of a tax crime if they don’t buy government-mandated insurance and who don’t pay the penalty tax.
- Punishment for insurance companies. Companies providing “generous health insurance plans” will be hit with a 35% tax.
- Punishment for consumers who buy “generous” health insurance policies, as the tax on insurance companies is passed on to purchasers.
- Punishment for those who buy their own health insurance…a new 40% tax. Does it really make sense to punish the responsible people who take care of their own healthcare bills?
- Punishment for low income seniors, Hispanics, and Blacks who will lose their Medicare Advantage program under the new proposals.
- Punishment for those with Health Savings Accounts – HSAs will be extinct.
- Punishment for specialists who serve mainly elderly patients, such as cardiologists and oncologists. Such specialists are slated to have their reimbursements for services slashed by 44% under the Senate bill.
- Punishment for medical device makers in the form of new taxes (a tax that will be passed on to consumers).
- Punishment for all doctors, who are required to purchase expensive new computersystems and software to convert to Electronic Medical Records to meet the 2014 mandates in the Stimulus Bill.
- Punishment for those who value their medical privacy. The Stimulus Bill requires all physicians, beginning in 2014, to send patients’ medical records directly to the federal health czar without further permission from patients.
- Punishment for all 50 State governments. Already running at a deficit with the recession, State governments face catastrophic increases in costs with Medicaid costs being shifted to them by the Federal government under the new proposals.
- Punishment for everyone, due to Speaker Pelosi’s proposal for a National Sales Tax (also called a VAT) to pay for healthcare reform. This new tax would hit everyone hard in a recession, and would be on TOP of existing state and local sales taxes.
- Punishments for all. All, that is, except the exempted elite: members of Congress, the President and his family, trial lawyers, and Unions (SEIU, AFL-CIO, and others). The exempted elite retain their private care while becoming the very ones who force more taxes, penalties, higher costs as punishment on the rest of us.
This reminds me of the Soviet Union when I visited there in 1974 and 1975. The Soviet ruling elite were the only ones with cars, comfortable apartments…and access to the best healthcare.
I understand at a personal and professional level the perils of government-run healthcare. I have patients in my practice who have come many countries with government run healthcare that doesn’t address women’s unique health needs. I live in a state with a large Native American population, whose healthcare under the Indian Health Service, run by the federal government, has been abysmal. I have personally had an emergency hospitalization in England. I am walking today because I had the best spine surgery care in the world at Johns Hopkins. If I had lived in Britain, or Canada, or Europe and had to wait for MRIs and surgery, I would paralyzed from the neck down.
I will never agree that nationalized healthcare anywhere provides better quality of care than we have in the United States. I am not alone. Recent polls by different organizations have found that 80-90% of M.D.’s and D.O.’s oppose government-controlled healthcare.
Don’t be fooled by the American Medical Associations endorsement of Obamacare. Only 17% of practicing physicians actually belong to the AMA. Last week’s “white coat” photo op at the White House was a carefully selected group of 2008 campaign donors “Doctors for Obama.” They were NOT anymore representative of practicing physicians across this country than the AMA.
The American people should be even more alarmed by a recent Investors Business Daily poll: 45% of doctors who responded said they would retire or resign from medicine rather than practice medicine under government control. Who will take care of patients then?
The proposed healthcare plans are the most massive transfer of power to the executive branch of government that has ever occurred or has even been contemplated. This concentration of power in the executive branch violates the Constitutional requirement for balance of power, and for separation of powers among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government.
This crime against the American people is far worse than the Stamp Act levied by King George.
That was the final straw that set off the first American Revolution.
Arrogance, condescension and prevarication have become quintessential ingredients of the more powerful Democrats. Harry Reid evinced these key traits in his statements regarding healthcare and malpractice reform. The Democrats disingenuously toss about cost of healthcare reform as being around $800 billion to $1 trillion which we all know extremely underestimates the expense. In what was probably somewhat of an extemporaneous comment that inadvertently revealed more reality, Reid stated definitively the cost of healthcare reform to be more than double what other Democrats have been quoting, that is, $2 trillion dollars.
Two telling facts were exposed by his statement regarding savings with malpractice reform. One, that there is little inclination for the Democrats to address this issue despite its preeminent importance. Secondly, his deeming that the estimated saving of $54 billion per year is an “inconsequential” amount is inexcusably arrogant, disdainful and irresponsible. Since when is a billion dollars, never mind $54 billion trivial? That is our money – nearly $750 for a family of four per year!
This is the same attitude that is used when it comes to inserting pork into legislation such as the thousands of individual pork projects that were placed in the stimulus bill (aka American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or Porkulus Bill) in February. Five billion dollars here, ten billion dollars there, another fourteen billion dollars for another useless, unrelated project and pretty soon you have billions of REAL dollars REALLY wasted!
The following is the text of Harry Reid's comments as seen in the video:
"He talked about CBO saying that there would be $54 billion saved each year if we put caps on medical malpractice and put some restrictions — tort reform — $54 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it, Mr. President? The answer is yes. But remember, were talking about $2 trillion, $54 billion compared to $2 trillion. You can do the math. We can all do the math. It’s a very small percent."
Canadians are fed up with their government controlled healthcare system and are seeking a return to privately run one. They are fed up with interminable waits to be evaluated by a physician or receive treatment, restrictions on care received as well as inability to obtain the care, difficulty in extrication from waiting lists and illegality of obtaining private self-paid care. Despite this and worldwide evidence of abysmal failure of socialized on multiple levels, Obama and the Democrats in Congress are relentlessly seeking to impose such a system on the unwilling and outraged American people.
If Obamanocare is approved by Congress, you will be in for a startling discovery as paraphrased in the parlance of Congressional Democrats:
“'If you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, too f..king bad - you won’t necessarily see your doctor or maybe any doctor, for that matter, for a long time. And forget about your plan, we forced it into bankruptcy by our mandates and pricing policies."
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom. Read article
A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?
We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Read article
Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie. Read article
Most of the news media, ideological adherents of the more liberal Democrats and staunch supporters of healthcare reform, would have you believe that a majority of physicians are in favor of Obamanocare. They use meretricious arguments with deceptive presentations of information and facts which often are knowingly false just to try to convince the public that doctor support the proposals so you should too.
A common tactic is to cite the AMA’s support of the changes while also speciously informing the public that it is “the association that represents American doctors” or that it is the “primary lobbying association for physicians”. This further “confirms” the public’s misconception of the role and importance of the AMA and adds credence to the posture these presentations are taking.
For most American doctors, the AMA is irrelevant and inconsequential. Despite the high level of importance that the media accords the AMA for purposes of their rhetoric, only 18% of American physicians are members and most belong for purposes other than lobbying. The AMA does some lobbying but that is not its primary purpose and furthermore, there is little physician support behind its positions. Many of the small minority of physicians who were members have been so outraged by the AMA’s public position that they are defecting and cancelling their memberships.
A recent IBD/TIPP Poll of 1376 randomly selected physicians revealed that two thirds opposed the present proposals. Even more significant is that 45% of physicians would consider leaving medicine or retiring early if one of these plans is passed. This extremely high percentage illustrates the immense dissatisfaction that physicians have with the present legislation and the grave consequences that the proposals would have on healthcare in general.
Obama’s healthcare speech delivered before Congress and to millions of Americans watching failed at its attempt to increase public support for the healthcare reform bill. It was, in our opinion, an uninspired rehashing of previous deceptions, lies and impossibilities that are not supported by reality and which contradict the provisions of the bill.
As we have fervently stated before, this legislation just boils down to the liberal ideology that the government knows best and should have complete control of the healthcare sector including unfettered access to medical, tax and financial information. It is not about lowering the total cost of healthcare or making it more affordable.
Anyone with even the most elementary knowledge of economics can tell you that as the price of a service facing an individual decreases, the demand increases. Without getting into the complexities of the differences of the price from the real cost of the service, the bottom line is that overall expenditures will increase disproportionately. To this equation add millions of more patients now desiring to use/overuse healthcare services and you end up with massively increased costs, staggering budget deficits, oppressive taxes to help pay the skyrocketing costs, rationing and poor quality healthcare (just to name a few problems).
Unfortunately, there are countless more dangerous provisions contained within the Obamanocare bill. The article below parses Obama’s address and enumerates several areas where he overtly, irrefutably and intentionally lied.
…the charlatan-in-chief, Barack Obama, … speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.
To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world-class chutzpah and an insult to anyone's intelligence.
Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?
Single Payer: In Britain, where the public option is about all most patients get, a newborn has died because national guidelines recommend that the baby not be treated. Yet again, government care produces tragedy.
The mother, Sarah Capewell, reportedly begged doctors to save the baby, who was born 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy. But guidelines used by Britain's National Health Service say that babies born fewer than 22 weeks into a pregnancy should not be treated.
Although Obama claims he that he may “think about considering” some test programs regarding tort reform, his perfunctory attitude on this, ideology and the protection of his constituency do not support any serious commitment on his part. His habitual prevaricating justifies giving no credence to his comments until concrete and serious actions are taken.
Does Obama’s statement that "I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs" convey a strong conviction that litigation is a problem or that he would champion reform? Definitely not! The word “may” in “may contribute” belies his verbal “commitment” to consider tort reform.
There is abundant and irrefutable evidence that defensive medicine practiced by physicians in attempts to avert malpractice suits comprises around twenty to thirty percent of healthcare costs translating into of tens of billions of dollars wasted annually. Even with trillions dollar budgets and deficits, this is still real money.
The phone rings and the lady of the house answers, "Hello?"
"Mrs. Sanders, please."
"Speaking."
"Mrs. Sanders, this is Dr. Jones at St. Agnes Laboratory. When your
husband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from
another Mr. Sanders arrived as well. We are now uncertain which one
belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good."
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Sanders asks nervously.
"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the
other one tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which."
"That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?" questioned Mrs. Sanders.
"Normally we can, but the new health care system will only pay for
these expensive tests just one time."
"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"
"The folks at Obama health care recommend that you drop your husband
off somewhere in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't
sleep with him.
There are a rapidly dwindling number of Americans left (no pun intended) that actually believe Obama when he deceitfully states that the healthcare bill is solely about providing care for all Americans – and nothing else. In previous posts, we have enumerated countless examples of this egregious lie and the pernicious effects that the contained provisions will have on our privacy, rights, choices, finances, taxes, access to care and more. We have been resolutely emphatic that this bill is also about government intrusion and control of our lives and control of an additional seventeen percent of the nations GDP.
To make matters worse, CBS News has reported a previously unnoticed provision of the healthcare bill which will legally grant widespread access to our federal tax returns. It mandates that the Health Choices Commissioner and staff, state health programs and all their staff and the expansive Social Security Administration with its thousands of employees will have unfettered access to these returns which so far have been fairly well protected by the IRS. The government’s utter incompetence in protecting highly classified information is well known. Do you really think, then, that your personal information will remain secure with tens of thousands or more people having access to it?
Even more disconcerting, is that this bill will provide the government with complete access to your health records, tax returns and all financial information including bank accounts. Do you really want or trust the government to possess all that information on you? It surely leaves little that it won’t know about you. Even worse, we have seen this type of information used by the government and others for nefarious purposes that could leave you embarrassed, vulnerable and defenseless (see for example Joe the Plumber).
We reported on June 21st and June 24th ABC’s championing of Obama’s healthcare plan with an all day extravaganza in the White House replete with positive stories and angles and no opposing points of view. This included no commercials that contained content critical of the plan. Most of the media have been cheerleading sycophants of Obamanocare – but of course denying their partiality.
As further evidence (like we didn’t have enough already) of their unabashed monolithic support for Obamanocare, both NBC and ABC have refused to air a national ad that is critical of the legislation. The commercial is by the League of American Voters and features a neurosurgeon who warns that the proposed government controlled health care system will lead to the rationing of medical care.
The following video is of Congressman Mike Rogers (Rep – Michigan) testifying on healthcare reform in the House. Though the numbers may not be entirely accurate, he presents a very compelling argument against the legislation and some of the dangerous provisions that are contained within it but denied by Obama and the Democrats so as to deceive the American public yet again. He also comments on the severely flawed process by which this legislation is being considered.
This is a very informative, easily understandable assessment of this pernicious healthcare bill.
The following article, written by a practicing physician, provides his perspectives on dealing with the government now and how this can provide insight into how severely healthcare will deteriorate in the future with the more restrictive and global Obamanocare. He cites several personal examples from his practice and applies these experiences to the broader picture.
What we also see is that government mandates and control create “unintended consequences”. He cites an interesting example where the federal government seeks gender parity for individuals being accepted to medical schools (independent of whether or not there is parity in desiring in becoming a physician) so that there are relatively equal numbers of men and women training to become doctors. Because women work far fewer hours and retire years earlier than men, the result is a relative shortage of physician services for a given number of physicians trained.
We can extrapolate consequences like this using many of the mandates and provisos of the proposed healthcare legislation and realize that we are in deep trouble if this gets enacted.
Decisive and effective tort reform is desperately needed in this country. Our uncontrolled legal system lottery has wreaked havoc on Americans, American industries, innovations and on healthcare and healthcare costs. Physicians frequently order tests that would otherwise be unnecessary for patient care just to cover all bases in attempting to reduce the risk of a lawsuit. This is also called practicing defensive medicine and may cost our country at least $200 billion dollars annually. Then there are the direct costs of defending frivolous lawsuits which add billions of dollars more.
There are also the indirect costs such as discouraging otherwise capable individuals from pursuing a career in medicine. Those who decide to become physicians may avoid training and later practicing in very high risk specialties such as Neurosurgery, Cardiac Surgery and Obstetrics, areas where there are already a shortage of providers. Then there are the extremely dedicated, experienced and wise physicians who have been in medicine for many years who no longer want to contend with these stresses and issues and either limit their practices to lower risk procedures or retire from medicine altogether. This translates into losing some of the best and most experienced doctors from the healthcare system, an undesirable and patently avoidable situation.
With this only being part of the total story, consider the arrogance and chutzpah that Obama had when he addressed the AMA on June 15th. Despite being cognizant of the exorbitant and unnecessary costs that liability issues add to the overall price of healthcare, he stated in no uncertain terms that tort reform was not presently a negotiable issue. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone as attorneys are among his biggest supporters. With one of his stated goals being to reduce the cost of healthcare cost, it is imperative that he needs to seriously and effectively address tort reform.
We wonder how many of our Congressional Representatives and Senators have actually read the Healthcare Reform Bill personally rather than having their staff provide them with a synopsis. If consistent with their previous history of presumptuously not reading legislation that they have written and sponsored (Cap and Trade and Porkulus Spending bills, etc.), we surmise that a majority of Democrats have no clue what is contained in the Obamanocare legislation. Fortunately, many Americans have made the prodigious and heroic effort to scrutinize the bloated and arcane 1017 page bill and what they have uncovered has been shocking to say the least. What has been discovered are provisos that often have nothing to do with healthcare delivery or quality but instead with such inimical dictates as wealth redistribution, affirmative action, rationing, and unwarranted government intrusiveness and control. These are dangerous for America and Americans. We have dissected many of these issues here in previous articles.
The following is a letter to Senator Bayh written by Dr. Stephen Fraser, an Anesthesiologist practicing in Indianapolis, who pored through the entire document and enumerated several areas of concern. Many of these issues have been intentionally and dishonestly denied by Obama, Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats. You can check them out for yourself to vouch for their validity.
July 23, 2009
Senator Bayh,
As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the healthcare bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government's proposed involvement in the patient physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a healthcare system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we need to fix our healthcare system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.
I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.
Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self insure!!
Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.
Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!
Page 42 of HC Bill:The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits for you. You have no choice!
Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise
Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!
Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to you ur banks accounts for elective funds transfer.
Page 65 Sec 164: is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community organizations: (ACORN).
Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the Exchange.
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!
Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example - Translation: illegal aliens.
Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. AARP members - your Health care WILL be rationed.
Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.
Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt Monopoly.
Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association - The Govt will tell YOU what you can make! (salary)
Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE!
Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.
Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option pays 8% tax on all payroll.
Page 150 Lines 9-13: Business's with payroll btw 251k & 401k who doesn't provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll.
Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)
Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans finances /personal records.
Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax" Yes, it says that!
Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors, low income and poor are affected.
Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors, doesn't matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same!
Page 253 Line 10-18: Govt sets value of Doctor's time, proffession, judgment etc. Literally value of humans.
Page 265 Sec 1131: Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.
Page 268 Sec 1141: Federal Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.
Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!
Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever Govt deems preventable re-admissions.
Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -Govt will penalize you.
Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Doctors what/how much they can own!
Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.
Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. Can u say ACORN?!!
Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: Govt mandates establishment of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.
Page 341 Lines 3-9: Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.
Page 354 Sec 1177: Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people! Unbelievable!
Page 379 Sec 1191: Govt creates more bureaucracy - Tele-health Advisory Comittee. Can you say HC by phone?
Page 425 Lines 4-12: Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life patients.
Page 425 Lines 17-19: Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!
Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death. (assisted suicide)
Page 427 Lines 15-24: Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends.
Page 429 Lines 1-9: An "advanced care planning consultant" will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.
Page 429 Lines 10-12: "advanced care consultation" may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOVT!
Page 429 Lines 13-25: The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.
Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life!
Page 469: Community Based Home Medical Services = Non profit organizations. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?
Page 472 Lines 14-17: PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORIGINATION. 1 monthly payment 2 a community-based organization. Like ACORN?
Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage.
Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, rationing those services.
I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.
Furthermore, if you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor/patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.
Respectfully,
Despite the potentially grave consequences that Obamanocare will have on Americans, a little humor is always welcomed.
The following is an assessment of the healthcare legislation derived from polls taken of the members of various medical societies:
The Allergists voted to scratch it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves.
Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.
The Obstetricians felt they were all laboring under a misconception.
Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted
Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Pediatricians said, "Oh, grow up!"
The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it.
Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing. The Internists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the Plastic Surgeons said, "This puts a whole new face on the matter."
The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea..
Anesthesiologists thought the idea was a gas, and the Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.
In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the assholes in Congress.
Once again Obama is gratuitously attacking physicians asserting that greed motivates their decision-making. In his latest intentional deception, he claimed that family care physicians collect “$30,000, $40,000, $50,000” for amputations while the reimbursement for cognitive services such as assisting patients in weight loss, dieting and monitoring their medications is “a pittance”.
In actuality, Medicare reimburses a surgeon between $541 and $708 for a foot amputation. This intentional deception designed for political points is so egregious, irresponsible, and depraved that the President should be thoroughly rebuked for it. Aside from a few medical organizations that took offense and issued statements, the mainstream news media accepted it as dogma. The effect is that many of the public who are uninformed in such matters may be swayed by such baseless screed.
This is a President who will confabulate the most outrageous statements just for political points. This is despicably immoral and must be vigorous, loudly and inexorably challenged.
The overall healthcare system in the United States is probably the best in the world though it is not without areas that can be improved. If you just listened to the shrill demagogues of the far left wing of the Democratic Party, one would think that we have a "healthcare crisis" in America. However, closer great scrutiny reveals not only do we have the best healthcare delivery system in the world but we also have premier healthcare technologies, cutting edge surgical procedures, and pharmaceutical innovations. What we have in America is a "health insurance catastrophe" largely caused by Congressional mandates over the years, a malignant unfettered tort system wasting tens of billions of dollars of resources annually, and unreimbursed healthcare due to illegal immigration and related issues.
Approximately 1/6th of our population does not have any medical insurance coverage either because of a lifestyle choice, they are temporarily between jobs, have not applied for federal coverage for which they are eligible, or are not a legal citizen of the United States. All of these people, however, do have access to medical care. If they show up in an emergency room , they must be treated. That is a Federal law. They can not be turned away! The rest of us who have employer provided heath insurance plans or have purchased private insurance on our own are paying for these estimated 47 million uninsured.
Let's repeat this again: EVERYONE in America has access to the healthcare system even if they are unable or unwilling to pay for services rendered and even if they have no insurance.
So what is all the fuss about at Town Hall meetings set up to discuss President Obama's obsession with healthcare reform?
Obama and Congressional Democrats claim that this reform is all about increasing the quality of care, increasing affordability and making healthcare available to all Americans. Unfortunately, these reasons are all fallacious and are pretenses for the real goal: Government run and controlled healthcare with social engineering and wealth transfer. Everything else is an intentional LIE! What, for example, does affirmative action in medical school admissions have to do with quality of health care? There are many more affirmative action provisos like this one in the legislation.
All across the United States innumerable Americans - most of whom have never protested anything in their lives - are doing so also because they do not trust the Federal Government. Period. One only need to look at the abysmal track records of Social Security (going broke), Medicare and Medicaid (grossly underfunded and going broke) and the United States Postal Service (posted a $7 billion loss in 2007 and 2008) to see the typical inefficiencies, incompetence and wretched mismanagement characteristic of the Federal government.In the end, we the TAXPAYERS, will be paying the price and ending up with less and rationed care, higher taxes, fewer choices, inferior quality of care and fewer innovations.
Then we have privacy issues, bureaucratic interference in an individuals' medical care, rationing, etc...
It is unclear who the specific individuals were that wrote the ponderous Obamanocare legislation but you can be sure that it largely involved lawyers and government bureaucrats. Important as healthcare is in addition to the fact that it constitutes around seventeen percent of the economy, you would hope that in the creation of a prudent, effective and cost saving solution, physicians would have been intimately involved in the discussions as they are the most knowledgeable individuals with regard to healthcare, its delivery, intricacies, issues and nuances. But as we all know, Congress is not about finding truths or the best solutions – it is all about politics, favored constituencies, personal power and wealth.
One physician who has voiced considerable concern about the present healthcare legislation is Congressman Tom Price (R. – Ga.) and he speaks from a wealth of experience. His medical background includes over twenty years was in private practice as an orthopedic surgeon after which he became an Assistant Professor at Emory School of Medicine and then the Medical Director of the Orthopedic Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
In the following testimony during House hearings, Representative Tom Price launches a scathing attack on the present healthcare legislation and how this whole process has been one completely controlled by Pelosi and the far left. There has been essentially no input from Republicans.
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