Posts Tagged ‘Healthcare’
Cartoon: OPERATION BRAINWASH
September 10, 2009Healthcare: OPERATION BRAINWASH
IBD: 10 Sept. 2009 | http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/cartoons/toon091009.gif
Healthcare: Another Snowe Job
September 8, 2009Another Snowe Job
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 8 September 2009
The leftist supporters of radical health care reform are so crazed about its growing unpopularity that last week one of them bit the pinky off of a senior citizen for disagreeing with him at a MoveOn.org rally in Southern California.
Republicans can rightly rejoice at seeing Americans practice assertive, effective citizenship. Angry crowds at this summer’s town halls recognized the government-run “public option” that Democrats push is a grave threat to the best health care system in the world.
Republican Snowe of Maine seems to realize just how dangerous the public option is — even as she puts forward a plan that endorses it.
From taxes to moral issues, Snowe has long been a thorn in the GOP’s side.
It’s actually highly insulting to try to scare Americans into a socialistic health revolution they have resoundingly rejected.
One in four want some version of Congress’ government-centered health care proposals to become law. It’s that unpopular.
Cartoon: Obamacare REBOOT
September 8, 2009
IBD: 8 September 2009
http://www.creators.com/editorial_cartoons/24/10310_thumb.jpg
Woe, Canada!
August 25, 2009Woe, Canada!
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 24 Aug 09
Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver’s health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.
IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada’s, that holding that country’s system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada’s system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada’s national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act.
But based on a report leaked to the Vancouver Sun, this is a distinction without a difference. Even if you break it up into smaller pieces, it’s still state-run medical insurance with decisions on who gets care, based on cost and funding, not need. That is called rationing.
According to the leaked document, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting next month and to cut 6,250 surgeries. They include 24% of cases scheduled from September to March and 10% of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.
The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery and 11 other specialized areas. Brian Brodie, a Canadian doctor and president of the British Columbia Medical Association, has called the proposed surgical cuts a “nightmare.”
“Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery?” he asks. “I can’t think of a worse place.”
Dr. Anne Doig, the new president of the Canadian Medical Association, says it’s clear Canadians are getting less than optimal care. “We all agree that the system is imploding. We all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” she told the Canadian Press.
As we have noted, roughly 900,000 patients of all ages are waiting for beds in Canada, according to the Fraser Institute. More than four times as many MRI units per capita are in the U.S. as in Canada, and we have twice as many CT scanners.
Canada’s perfectly planned and cost-effective system had no room at the inn for Ava Isabella Stinson, born in Hamilton, Ontario. Of necessity she had to be sent across the border to a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital to receive critically needed neonatal care. She had no time to be put on a Canadian waiting list.
At the American hospital, Stinson got the care she needed under a system President Obama has labeled “unsustainable.”
A similar situation exists in Britain under the National Health Service. There, local health care “trusts” supervise medical delivery. Under the NHS system, about 1,000 victims of rare forms of cancer were denied drug treatment the past three years, according to an analysis by the Rare Cancers Forum printed in the London Telegraph.
Stella Pendleton, executive director of the charity, said: “The NHS is forcing desperate patients into the cruel situation where the chances of their being given the treatment they need depend on where they live. No patient should be denied a treatment recommended by a doctor simply because the cancer it treats is too rare for the medicine to be licensed.”
Yet this is what inevitably happens under all forms of socialized medicine. This is why Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament from Britain, has called the NHS a “60-year mistake” and encouraged Americans to “ponder our example and tremble.”
When asked about ObamaCare on Fox News, Hannan said: “I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system.”
So do we.
Some still say that what has happened in Britain and Canada can’t happen here, that ObamaCare is too different.
Frankly, we’d like a second opinion.
Healthcare Plan Detail
August 14, 2009Stephen Fraser is an Anesthesiologist in Indianapolis.
See what you think of his letter.
Here is a letter I sent to Senator Bayh. Feel free to copy it and send it around to our other representatives.\
Stephen Fraser
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.
Senator, 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,
Stephen E Fraser MD
Health Reform: A Tough Sell Without Magic
July 28, 2009Health Reform: A Tough Sell Without Magic
By THOMAS SOWELL IBD 24 July 2009
Distracting the audience’s attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Obama’s televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics.
The big trick for the president is to convince the public he can add tens of millions of people to his government medical insurance plan without raising the costs.
But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office showed that ObamaCare would in fact raise the costs and increase the deficit by billions of dollars.
With common sense and economic analysis saying Obama cannot expand government medical care without expanding the already runaway federal deficit, it’s quite a trick to get the public to believe otherwise — a big challenge requiring big distractions.
One of those distractions has been to blame current high costs on scapegoats whom the president can rein in. Talking about the high pay of the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies is one of those distractions.
In an industry where developing just one new pharmaceutical drug can cost a billion dollars, what the CEO makes doesn’t matter. The head of a megabillion-dollar pharmaceutical company can be paid a million dollars a year, 20 million dollars or work free of charge; that won’t raise or lower the cost of the medicine you buy by one dollar.
If making the CEO’s pay an issue can distract your attention from the impossible math used by Obama and his supporters, that’s a trick worthy of Houdini.
Insurance companies are another distraction and a scapegoat because they do not insure “pre-existing conditions.” Stop and think about it: If you could wait until you got sick to take out health insurance, why would you buy that insurance while you are well?
You could avoid paying all those premiums and then — after you got sick — take out health insurance and let the premiums paid by other people pay for your medical treatment.
That is not “bringing down the cost of health care.” It is sticking somebody else with paying those costs. So is taxing “the rich.” So is passing on those costs to your children and grandchildren through government deficit spending.
When Obama makes the insurance companies the villains for not insuring pre-existing conditions, that gives him another distraction and enables him to be another escape artist, like Houdini.
What is the point of government-controlled medical care if it is not going to lower costs but just shuffle them around, like a shell game?
The government does not have some magic wand that can “bring down the cost of health care.” It can buy a smaller quantity or lower quality of medical care, as other countries with government-run medical care do.
It can decide not to spend as much money on the elderly as is being spent now. That can save a lot of money — if you think having a parent die earlier is a bargain.
The idea of a “duty to die” has been making some headway in recent years around the fringes of the left. It is perfectly consistent with the fundamental notion of the left, that decisions should be transferred from ordinary citizens to government elites.
Liberals don’t have to advocate it. But once you have bureaucrats empowered to decide what treatments you can get, they may well decide that money spent keeping some 75-year-old grandmother alive for a few more years could be better spent politically by enabling 10 younger people to have acupuncture or visit a shrink.
Even if her children or grandchildren are willing to spend their own money to keep grandma alive, when bureaucrats control the necessary technology or medication they may decide that it’s not for sale.
Those pushing for government-controlled medical care say you can keep your doctor. But bureaucrats in Washington will decide whether what your doctor prescribes will be allowed.
Talking about your doctor is another distraction from the crucial question of who will have the power to decide, which can be the power of life and death.
Healthcare: Specifics, Please
July 28, 2009Specifics, Please
IBD: 24 July 2009
Health Care: From the president we now know that cops are stupid, doctors are greedy, Republicans don’t play nice, people are dying and we’re all going broke if we don’t embrace socialized medicine in a week or so.
Everything, in other words, but what Wednesday’s press conference was supposed to be about: the health care reforms the president and his party want voted on by the time Congress breaks for another vacation.
Sure, we heard a lot of wonkish rhetoric — this president seems to think all he has to do is talk, and everyone will bend to his will — but there were few specifics.
And a few specifics would be nice before we place our health care system — 17% of the economy — under government control.
We didn’t even hear the president explain how he could demand immediate action on bills that he himself hasn’t read. (But then, to be fair, the somnambulant journalists in attendance didn’t bother to ask.)
This became obvious Monday, when he was asked about a point we brought up in an editorial last week on whether the House bill in effect outlaws new private individual health care insurance the year it becomes law.
“You know,” Obama told a group of hand-selected, sympathetic bloggers, “I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”
Obama isn’t the only one who isn’t familiar with the “reform” he wants so badly. Tens of millions of other Americans are also trying to make heads or tails out of it — because it’s something that will affect each and every one of them.
Fortunately, some people are sorting through the particulars. For example, the Lewin Group, a consulting firm respected for its nonpartisan analysis of health care issues, put out another report this week that found, among other things, that:
•More than 88 million Americans could lose their employer-based health coverage as businesses switch to the new taxpayer-subsidized public option that will compete with private insurers for enrollment. Doesn’t this refute the claim that we can keep our current coverage?
•Yearly premiums for Americans with private coverage could rise as much as $460 per person as a result of the cost-shifting that would result from the public option. How does this jibe with the claim that costs will be lower?
•Physicians’ net income would fall by 6.3%, or an average of $18,900 per doctor, as a result of lower reimbursements under the public option and higher practice expenses associated with providing services to the newly insured.
If this results in fewer doctors, what does it mean for the promise of better care, especially when 47 million more people are gaining access to the system?
These questions and many others demand answers from the president — in or out of press conferences — as well as Congress before this legislation gets any further. Because all we’re being told now is that if we cede control to Washington, we’ll get better care for more people at lower costs, and these claims just don’t add up.
One, care will be poorer as fewer doctors become overworked by the rush of newly insured patients. Two, more than 103 million Americans, the Lewin Group says, will be herded against their wishes into the government-run public option. Third, costs will keep rising because incentives to self-ration will be further weakened by a system that encourages patients to overuse it.
Until we hear some specifics that refute our reading of the legislation, we remain unconvinced that government-run health care will live up to its promise.
Hold The Mayo
July 22, 2009Hold The Mayo
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 22 July 2009
Reform: The administration has touted the world-class Mayo Clinic as a model for Congress’ health care bills. Just one problem: Mayo itself says what’s on offer will make us all “losers.”
IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
It doesn’t say much for a “reform” plan when the example used to promote it explicitly warns against it. But that’s what happened when the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday refuted the Obama administration’s sales pitch for a 1,018-page health care reform bill, promising everyone a Mayo-like program.
The clinic warned the proposed reforms won’t create anything like the low-cost system for which Mayo is envied worldwide.
“The proposed legislation,” Mayo says on its policy blog, “misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite.
“In general, the proposals under discussion are not patient-focused or results-oriented. Lawmakers have failed to use a fundamental lever — a change in Medicare payment policy — to help drive . . . improvements in American health care.
“Unless legislators create payment systems that pay for good patient results at reasonable costs, the promise of transformation in . . . health care will wither. The real losers will be the citizens of the United States.”
Coming from a legendary, 120-year-old clinic, that’s a damning assessment the president and Congress would do well to heed.
Taking A Razor To President’s Health Reform
June 23, 2009Taking A Razor To President’s Health Reform
By GEORGE F. WILL | IBD 23 June 2009
To dissect today’s health care debate, the crux of which concerns a “public option,” use the mind’s equivalent of a surgeon’s scalpel, Occam’s razor, a principle of intellectual parsimony: In solving a puzzle, start with the simplest theory.
The puzzle is: Why does the president, who says that were America “starting from scratch” he would favor a “single payer,” government-run system, insist that health care reform include a government insurance plan that competes with private insurers? The simplest answer is that such a plan will lead to a single-payer system.
Conservatives say a government program will have the intended consequence of crowding private insurers out of the market, encouraging employers to stop providing coverage and luring employees from private insurance to the government option.
The Lewin Group estimates that 70% of the 172 million people privately covered might be drawn, or pushed, to the government plan. A significant portion of the children who have enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program since eligibility requirements were relaxed in February had private insurance.
Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible. Government is incapable of behaving like market-disciplined private insurers. Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers.
Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless: If the public option conforms to the imperatives that regulations and competition impose on private insurers, there is no reason for it.
The president characteristically denies that he is doing what he is doing — putting the nation on a path to an outcome he considers desirable — just as he denies any intention of running General Motors.
Nevertheless, the unifying constant of his domestic policies — their connecting thread — is they advance the Democrats’ dependency agenda. The party of government aims to make Americans more equal by making them equally dependent on government.
Arguments for the public option are too feeble to seem ingenuous. The president says competition from a government plan is necessary to keep private insurers “honest.” Presumably, being “honest” means not colluding to set prices. Evidently he thinks that, absent competition from government, there will not be a competitive market for insurance. This ignores two facts:
There are 1,300 competing providers of health insurance. And Roll Call’s Morton Kondracke notes that the 2003 Medicare prescription drug entitlement, relying on competition among private insurers, enjoys 87% approval partly because competition has made premiums less expensive than had been projected. The program’s estimated cost from 2007 to 2016 has been reduced 43%.
Some advocates of a public option say health coverage is so complex that consumers will be befuddled by choices.
But consumers of many complicated products, from auto insurance to computers, have navigated the competition among providers, who have increased quality while lowering prices.
Although 70% of insured Americans rate their health care arrangements good or excellent, radical reform of health care is supposedly necessary because there are 45.7 million uninsured. That number is, however, a snapshot of a nation in which more than 20 million working Americans change jobs every year.
Many of them are briefly uninsured between jobs. If all the uninsured were assembled for a group photograph, and six months later the then-uninsured were assembled for another photograph, about half the people in the photos would be different.
Almost 39% of the uninsured are in five states — Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, all of which are entry points for immigrants; 21% — 9.7 million — of the uninsured are not citizens.
Up to 14 million are eligible for existing government programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Schip, veterans’ benefits, etc. — but have not enrolled.
And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance. Those last two cohorts are more than half of the 45.7 million.
Insuring the perhaps 20 million people who are protractedly uninsured because they cannot afford insurance is conceptually simple: Give them money — (refundable) tax credits or debit cards (which have replaced food stamps) loaded with a particular value. This would produce people who are more empowered than dependent.
Unfortunately, advocates of a government option consider that a defect.
Which is why the simple idea of the dependency agenda cuts like a razor through the complexities of this debate.
Dead Wait
June 23, 2009Dead Wait
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 22 June 2009
Reform: As Americans debate who’s in control of their health care system, a lot of Britons aren’t concerned about how the argument turns out. They’re too busy trying to get a hospital room before it’s too late.
IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
In Great Britain, where the government’s in charge of health care, as many as 1 million people are waiting to get into hospitals at any given time, says the National Center for Policy Analysis.
In Canada, another country where the government metes out care, roughly 900,000 are waiting for hospital beds, the Fraser Institute reports. The New Zealand government says that 90,000 are on hospital waiting lists there.
“Those people constitute only 1% to 2% of the population in those countries,” says NCPA President John Goodman, “but keep in mind that only about 15% of the population actually enters a hospital each year. Many of the people waiting are waiting in pain. Many are risking their lives by waiting. And there is no market mechanism in these countries to get care to people who need it first.”
President Obama told the American Medical Association last week that “there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well,” then said that those who say that he’s “trying to bring about government-run health care” are “not telling the truth.”
Critics of Obama’s public-option plan, in which the federal government offers taxpayer-subsidized medical insurance, believe that such a system will eventually crush the private insurance market. That would leave the federal government as the only provider of coverage and in full control of the health care system.
It’ll be a while before we know who’s telling the truth. But by the time the issue is settled, millions in those countries “where a single-payer system works pretty well” will have died or needlessly suffered waiting to be admitted into a hospital.
Yet we are constantly told that it’s America’s health care system that is substandard. A recent Reuters story that said “the U.S. system consistently ranks worse than other developed countries on many key measures” is typical of the noncritical reporting that convinces the public that American medical care is in shambles.
This is why a national columnist such as Marie Cocco can write without challenge that we have “a system that pretty much everyone believes is crumbling to the point of collapse.”
The perception, though, is easily crushed by the asking of a single question: “If you needed the best health care in the world, where would you go to get it?”
The facts say:
• Survival rates in the U.S. for common cancers are higher, and in some cases much higher, than in Europe and Canada.
• Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed nations and spend less time waiting for care than Canadians and Britons.
• Americans have more access to new medical technologies than Canadians and United Kingdom residents, and are responsible for most health care innovations.
• Americans are more satisfied with their care than their counterparts in nations with socialized medicine.
The argument that American health care is lacking is usually based on rankings compiled by the World Health Organization, which places the U.S. 37th out of 191 nations in its “World Health Report.” It’s a mistake, though, to put much into the WHO’s grades.
“They are not,” says one expert, “an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems.”
That expert, Glen Whitman, an associate professor of economics at California State University, Northridge, has looked at the WHO rankings and found that they “depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions — some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.”
No one has a right to health care. Attempts to provide such a right have produced regimes that in reality are far uglier than the American system is perceived to be. Systems will continue to grow worse until policymakers acknowledge that health care is a personal responsibility and grant patients what they should already have: full authority over the decisions that affect their health.
On The Road To Controlled Health Care
June 19, 2009On The Road To Controlled Health Care
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS IBD 16 June 09
‘Live Free or Die” is the title of author and columnist Mark Steyn’s speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a Hillsdale publication that’s free for the asking.
Canadian-born, now living in New Hampshire, Steyn has had firsthand experience with socialist tyranny in his home country that is rapidly becoming a part of America.
Commenting on one of his run-ins with Canada’s human rights commissions, Steyn points how it might seem bizarre to find the left making common cause with radical Islam. Half of that alliance are pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats.
Steyn argues what they have in common overrides their differences — namely: “Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities and exploit his potential.”
I doubt whether many Americans think Congress has the right or competency to choose where they live, what clothes they wear or what cars they drive.
Yet many Americans stand ready to let Congress decide what doctors they go to and what treatments they receive.
We forget that once we have government-sponsored health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on liberty. That’s the justification behind helmet and seat-belt laws.
Britain is well along the road toward totally controlling health care. Steyn says, “Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of ‘lifestyle choices.’”
Steyn adds, “Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners and wonder why his ‘lifestyle choices’ get a pass while theirs don’t. But that’s the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.”
In most of the developed world, the government has gradually taken over responsibilities of adulthood from health care, child care, elderly care and other responsibilities formerly seen as individual or family.
Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman suggests that American conservatives preaching “family values” is hypocrisy while Europeans live it. On the Continent, Krugman says, “Government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable trade-off — to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family.”
Steyn insightfully observes, “As befits a distinguished economist, professor Krugman failed to notice that for a Continent of ‘family friendly’ policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America’s fertility rate is more or less at replacement level — 2.1 — 17 European nations are at what demographers call lowest-low fertility — 1.3 or less — a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks have upside-down family trees: Four grandparents have two children and one grandchild.”
Steyn asks, “How can an economist analyze ‘family friendly’ policies without noticing that the upshot of these policies is that nobody has any families?” My answer to Steyn’s questions is: the kind of economist that looks at the seen and ignores the unseen.
Mark Steyn provides us with a historical tidbit. “Live Free or Die,” which graces New Hampshire’s license plate, are the words of John Stark, New Hampshire’s Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words decades after the war when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being:
“Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” Steyn says these words should not be interpreted “as a battle cry: We’ll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it’s something far less dramatic: It’s a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.”
Congress’ Unhealthy Care Plan
June 19, 2009
Congress’ Unhealthy Care Plan
IBD – 18 June 09
Health Care: The CBO says a government-run health care system would cause 23 million Americans to lose private coverage, cost $1 trillion dollars and still leave 30 million uninsured.
The Congressional Budget Office, not your typical right-wing think tank, has looked at the Affordable Health Choices Act, as unveiled by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, and found the word “affordable” to be false advertising.
We have looked at it and found the word “choices” to be as meaningless as being told you can buy any car you want — as long as it’s a Ford.
The CBO director says on his official blog, “According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period.”
This figure doesn’t even include the cost of a proposed “public plan” option.
According to the CBO, “the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million.”
The CBO envisions 39 million would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges that would be set up.
That would mean a net reduction in the uninsured of just 16 million, still leaving 30 million without insurance.
“You don’t get the benefit, from CBO, of cost savings through prevention programs,” counters Sen. Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is pushing the bill as a memorial to his friend Kennedy.
On the other hand, Dodd doesn’t factor in the cost of rationed care, which is what inevitably happens with government-run health care in places like Britain or Canada.
The stimulus bill created an entity called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will decide which treatments you should get, whether you should get them, and whether they should even be available.
It’s modeled on a British board which helps run the notoriously inefficient and bureaucratic National Health Service.
As Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com puts it, we would be adding a trillion dollars to the debt to solve just one-third of the uninsured problem.
He calculates that at an annual cost of $5,000 for basic catastrophic and wellness coverage, we could just purchase 20 million plans for that trillion without destroying our health care system.
The bill, drafted by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (yes, that spells HELP) would break a key campaign promise by President Obama, that if you were happy with your current insurance, nothing would change.
This bill changes everything.
Title 1 of the bill specifies how Health and Human Services would assist the states in setting up a “gateway” or “health insurance exchange.”
In establishing a gateway, the states would be required to make “qualified health plans” available to state residents, and in making available that coverage, “a Gateway shall include a public insurance option.”
According to a Heritage Foundation report by Robert E. Moffit and Stuart M. Butler, “A public plan conflicts with the assurance that Americans satisfied with their current coverage will not be affected. A public health insurance plan would displace the private coverage of many Americans, regardless of their personal preferences.”
The CBO says its figures “do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation … only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage.”
The folks at cost management solutions provider Health Systems have factored such things in as subsidies, Medicaid expansion and reducing the number of uninsured by 99%.
The number they come up with is a staggering deficit increase of $4 trillion over 10 years with 79 million Americans shifted out of private insurance to government-run health care.
The cost estimates vary, but when one considers the paltry estimated initial cost of Medicare, even the high estimates may be too low.
The first rule of medical care is to do no harm. If this or similar legislation makes it to the president’s desk, it is the American economy that may soon be in intensive care.
Why Scrap Health Care….?
June 19, 2009Why Scrap A Health Care System That 250 Million Americans Like?
By LARRY ELDER | IBD 19 June 09
About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance. Or do they? A pro-”universal health care” television host recently cited this widely accepted “fact.” The number is bogus. Here’s the skinny.
Start with the math. We have 300 million Americans. Subtract the 45 million — 15% of us — with no health insurance. That leaves 255 million Americans, or 85%, with it.
And the insurance is lousy, right? Not according to a 2006 ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey. It found that 89% of Americans were satisfied with the quality of their own health care.
Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone.
With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation video (available at http://reason.tv/video/show/560.html) of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings.
These Gen Xers copped to dropping money on clothes, booze, nightlife, the latest tech gizmos and other things of interest to them.
With a change in priorities, these young folks — far more representative of those without insurance than the forlorn husband and wife sitting on a porch swing — could both afford and qualify for health insurance. They just consider it a low priority.
Millions more can access health care through SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), Medicaid or other government programs. But for whatever reason, 11 million people simply refuse to take advantage of them.
Several million other Americans who want insurance do, indeed, go without it — for a time.
Many are, however, between jobs, and most — at some point — will find employment that either offers health insurance or pays enough so that they can buy it.
Millions more work at companies that offer health insurance, and for a few dollars out of every paycheck, they could add family members. They choose not to.
What about criminals without insurance? More than 2 million Americans — with access to health care, by the way — use jail, prison or penitentiary mailing addresses. And for every one behind bars, how many live among us who survive by theft, drug dealing, prostitution or some similar career path? Taxpayer health insurance for them, too?
So now we’re down to the Americans without health insurance on a persistent, long-term basis. This is approximately 10 million to 15 million, a big number to be sure. But does this warrant a government takeover of the entire health care system?
Lacking health care insurance is not the same as lacking health care. By law, most emergency rooms must provide health care — to both legals and illegals. Yes, they stand in line, but no health insurance does not equal no health care.
Government (aka taxpayers) already pays half of our health care dollar, with programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and other federal and state plans. The stated goals are accessibility and affordability.
Congress passed Medicare in 1965. In the 20 years before the program’s inception, the cost of a day in a hospital increased threefold. In the 20 years after Medicare, a day in a hospital increased eightfold — substantially higher than inflation over that period. Because of cost controls on government plans, providers increased the cost on everybody else.
So here’s the question: Do we allow a complete government takeover of the section of health care it doesn’t already run, for 10 million to 15 million or so without health insurance on a permanent basis?
Again, 255 million Americans already have it. Many millions more could get it if they wanted to. And 89% of Americans are satisfied with the care they now receive.
What to do? Unleash the free market. Allow greater competition among health care providers. Decrease costly regulations that increase the price tag. Enable consumers to purchase insurance plans across state lines.
Allow non-government-licensed paraprofessionals and others — currently prevented by law from offering any medical services — to provide low-cost care.
What about poor care and negligence? We have laws against force and fraud, as well as a common-law duty of care. That’s why God created lawyers. (Just give us “loser pays.”)
What about those who cannot afford it? What about those with pre-existing illnesses whose insurance applications carriers turned down?
What’s wrong with charity — people helping people? America remains the most generous nation on the face of the earth. We donate more of our time and money than countries like England, Germany and Japan. During the Great Depression, before the New Deal, charitable giving skyrocketed. After the New Deal, charitable giving continued, but not at nearly the same rate.
People expected government to address the problem, and taxpayers felt they gave at the office.
We can provide such “universal” coverage at a “low cost” — through rationing. That means long lines, lower quality and less innovation for services that Americans currently take for granted.
Economists call it TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Socialized Healthcare Posters.
June 15, 2009
From reader John:
From reader Tootywink and her sister:
From reader Kevin:
From blogger Doug Ross:
From reader Pocono Joe:
From reader Dave:
From reader Rob:
source: MichelleMalkin
New Third Rail Is Rationing Of Health Care
April 24, 2009New Third Rail Is Rationing Of Health Care
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Unified theory of Obamaism, final installment:
In the service of his ultimate mission — the leveling of social inequalities — President Obama offers a tripartite social democratic agenda: nationalized health care, federalized education (ultimately guaranteed through college) and a cash-cow carbon tax (or its equivalent) to subsidize the other two.
Problem is, the math doesn’t add up. Not even a carbon tax would pay for Obama’s vastly expanded welfare state. Nor will Midwest Democrats stand for a tax that would devastate their already crumbling region.
What is obviously required is entitlement reform, meaning Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. That’s where the real money is — trillions saved that could not only fund hugely expensive health and education programs but also restore budgetary balance.
Except that Obama has offered no real entitlement reform. His universal health care proposal would increase costs by perhaps $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid reform is supposed to decrease costs.
Obama’s own budget projections show staggering budget deficits going out to 2019. If he knows his social agenda is going to drown us in debt, what’s he up to?
He has an idea. But he dare not speak of it yet. He has only hinted. When asked in his March 24 news conference about the huge debt he’s incurring, Obama spoke vaguely of “additional adjustments” that will be unfolding in future budgets.
Rarely have two more anodyne words carried such import. “Additional adjustments” equals major cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
Social Security is relatively easy. A bipartisan commission (like the 1983 Alan Greenspan commission) recommends some combination of means testing for richer people, increasing the retirement age and a technical change in the inflation measure (indexing benefits to prices instead of wages). The proposal is brought to Congress for a no-amendment up-or-down vote. Done.
The hard part is Medicare and Medicaid. In an aging population, how do you keep them from blowing up the budget? There is only one answer: rationing.
Why do you think the stimulus package pours $1.1 billion into medical “comparative effectiveness research”? It is the perfect setup for rationing. Once you establish what is “best practice” for expensive operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you’ve laid the premise for funding some and denying others.
It is estimated that a third to a half of one’s lifetime health costs are consumed in the last six months of life. Accordingly, Britain’s National Health Service can deny treatments it deems not cost-effective — and if you’re old and infirm, the cost-effectiveness of treating you plummets. In Canada, they ration by queuing. You can wait forever for so-called elective procedures like hip replacements.
Rationing is not quite as alien to America as we think. We already ration kidneys and hearts for transplant according to survivability criteria as well as by queuing. A nationalized health insurance system would ration everything from MRIs to intensive care by a myriad of similar criteria.
The more acute thinkers on the left can see rationing coming, provoking Slate blogger Mickey Kaus to warn of the political danger. “Isn’t it an epic mistake to try to sell Democratic health care reform on this basis? Possible sales pitch: ‘Our plan will deny you unnecessary treatments!’ . . . Is that really why the middle class will sign on to a revolutionary multitrillion-dollar shift in spending — so the government can decide their life or health ‘is not worth the price’?”
My own preference is for a highly competitive, privatized health insurance system with a government-subsidized transition to portability, breaking the absurd and ruinous link between health insurance and employment.
But if you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing.
Social Security used to be the third rail of American politics. Not anymore. Health care rationing is taking its place — which is why Obama, the consummate politician, knows to offer the candy (universality) today before serving the spinach (rationing) tomorrow.
Taken as a whole, Obama’s social democratic agenda is breathtaking. And the rollout has thus far been brilliant. It follows Kaus’ advice to “give pandering a chance” and adheres to the Democratic tradition of being the party that gives things away, while leaving the green-eyeshade stinginess to those heartless Republicans.
It will work for a while, but there is no escaping rationing. In the end, the spinach must be served.
