A Physician’s New Reality: Patients Ask Me to Break the Law
I can hear the complaints from you guys already — I become the bad guy. “Why don’t you just take care of the problem, and not bill out any different code? You’re a rich doctor, and we are entitled to free stuff.”
It doesn’t work that way. First, doctors are not rich and, like most of you, actually work terribly hard for a living. Second, Obamacare is the law — and as I said earlier, we are audited all the time now.
Also — I don’t ask for free gas when I go to the gas station, or ask for free food from the supermarket. Additionally, Obamacare has a 23% cut in Medicare reimbursement to doctors and hospitals.
These lower payments won’t cover the cost of staying in practice to take care of the patient.
Private doctors are becoming a thing of the past. By 2014, less than 25% of physicians will be in private medicine. Obama was right in stating you can keep your doctor if you want to — the problem is he or she will rarely be available.
On top of all of that, doctors will be obligated — that’s right, obligated — to talk to you about things you may have no interest or need to talk about.
You may just want to have a pap smear or check your cholesterol. However, I am now mandated by the government to talk to you about your weight, exercise, family life, smoking, sexual abuse(!), and even to ask if you wear seat belts. And I am mandated to record your answers.
I am a physician. But I need to tell you to wear a seat belt and then record your answer.
I have received interesting responses from my patients since I put up the notice. Almost all are supportive and totally understand. The very few who complain? The same patients who always ask for free samples, who always complain that we do not validate parking. These are also the same patients who call my office and ask for free samples even when they are not even being seen.
Obamacare and its 2,000-plus pages are here to stay. I will still give my patients 100% of my time, energy, and knowledge. I still love being a doctor — my patients’ doctor. I will, however, abide by the law and follow it to the letter. I will have to learn this new dance. “Free” has its price.
Also read: You Break It, You Buy It
“Obamacare and its 2,000-plus pages are here to stay.”
Plurimum interragationem.
Needs to be a question first.
Just because you say it doesn’t mean it’s true.
well…he is a Dr and by law…needs to know what Obamacare is about….I could also say “just because the President said it, it does not mean its true”
When President Obama said it, you can bet your last dollar that the opposite is true.
Bash lol stupid!
LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLLOLOLOL DID YOU VOTE FOR OBOZO JACK? IF YOU DID YOU GET EXACTLY WHAT YOU DESERVE. ONE THING THOUGH. IF YOU WERE STANDING IN FRONT OF ME I WOULD MASH YOUR FACE IN DUE TO THE FACT THAT YOU FORCED MY CHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN TO USE OBOZOCARE TO…….SO BE CAREFUL WHO YOU SAY WHAT TO OK……I MAY BE STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU……TAKE CARE.
Hahaha what redneck hole in the ground did you crawl out of?
Wow, did you not READ the article? It’s about what ObamaCare ‘will’ and ‘will not’ cover. If you have any ‘actual’ questions. I suggest you ‘actually’ read the article … then go to Congress.gov and ‘read’ the Obama Care Law (which is now well over 2000 pages long).
Oh boy it’s starting already ,the folks that voted for Obama-care and those that didn’t will have to eat from the same plate.Unfortunately it’s too late to complain,but it’s not too late to fight back, fight democratically remains to be seen. I’ll put my money on the American ingenuity as the best last resort before we sink into those empty pages of history as the only country that imploded by a president that had no idea what he was doing,or did he? God saves us all from good intentions by stupid people.
MOLLY, REDNECK ,I THINK NOT SHE KNOES WHATS COMING .DO YOU / IF YOUR O.K. WITH IT YOUR PERHAPS A TAKER
MOLLY: Ha, Ha, Ha! You will be getting what you want and then what you so richly deserve and standing behind you in the line to see a doctor a redneck will be laughing his ass off at your realization of what you have done.
before this is over Molly Ha, Ha, Ha you will be reduced to tears and great regret.
—–
My doctor was already operating this way when I went in for a check up I reported I had a sore toe from being stepped on by a horse, he couldn’t discuss this and I had to make another appointment just to have him treat my toe.
All fine and good but what if it was something serious?
Well, I would then have been advised on end of life options of course.
“God saves us all from good intentions by stupid people.”
And in this case, it should occur on Yom Teruya in one of the next 10 years. Frankly, sooner would suit me fine so we don’t have to put up with that Satanic abomination for very long. It’s not pursuing more plentiful and more affordable medical care. It’s pursuing the Satanic agenda of domination, control, and enslavement of humanity. Yahweh’s global housecleaning date approaches in 2033. But we can tell the liberals/Progressives/Marxists (and whatever other synonyms there are for the politics of hate) that they can go ahead and zero out the entire defense budget starting in 2034. (Never mind that few if any of them will still be around then.)
What a complete moron.
Please STOP SHOUTING, Mona. It makes you look stupid.
LOL Mark, get over the caps being shouting and you will be surprised to maybe feeling a little smarter, yourself. (if you are a junior high student then it is okay, I supposed peer pressure dictates it)
Jack, I’m a health care provider and what the doc said is exactly true. Learn to live with it and we all hope you don’t “die” with it. Sorry Jack, you are going to get what you didn’t pay for.
Sorry Jack, you are going to get what you didn’t pay for.
Good and hard
That’s right Jack, just continue to believe the “progressive” bs they keep shoveling at us. Your god Obama can do no wrong in your eyes. Well, as these horror stories become more and more prevalent, how will your willful blindness carry you through? (Hey, maybe “willful blindness” is covered; you had better hope so.)
What willful blindness? Everyone knows it’s Bush fault, the Republican House’s fault, the fault of the greedy doctors who cut off your legs to claim insurance, the fault of the Catholic Church who doesn’t want to pay for Sandra Fluke’s free condoms.
It can never be our dearest Dear Leader’s fault. He wasn’t even involved in the writing of the law. The racist right wing nuts call it Obamacare to besmirch the dearest Dear Leader.
Good one. Maybe we can get people to listen to the obamacare issues if we blame them on Bush.
The sad thing is for a second there I thought you were serious! Haha
You’ll find out soon enough.
and just because you refuse to believe it to be true does not mean that it is not.
I’m sure you have a point somewhere, but not here. I’m reasonably certain you are a fool.
I’m a doctor. . .
Its true.
I’m a doctor. It’s not true.
Doc,
Back it up. Tell us WHY it is not true?
But be specific, I have my well read copy of the law right here, and if you lie(and as a democrat, I realize that it is nigh near IMPOSSIBLE for you to do otherwise) I’ll call you out on it.
And congrats on graduating the Guadalajara Upstairs Night Medical school……..
Jack,
Here is something that I say and you can check out the web to see that it is true.
The 15 man panel know as the Independent Panel Advisory Board (IPAB) will put their thinking caps on and come up with ways to save money on the Obummer Care plan. If that means that you will NOT receive the medical care you need because you are a certain age (OLD) and the value of your life expectancy is not equal to or greater then the procedure you need to insure that you will live in good health for a few or many more years – IT WILL NOT BE GIVEN TO YOU! You will be given the necessary medicine to keep you as comfortable as possible until you die – which may be sooner that you would like.
This decision will become LAW. As the Constitution stands now the power to create laws is the sole business of Congress. Congress will not have this power in the case where the IPAB decides that for the preservation of the Obama Care Fund it is necessary to cut the quality of care. THAT BECOMES LAW! There will be a window of 7 months in 2017 that Congress can decide if the IPAB is to continue to have this power. If Congress either does not act on it or decides that the power is to be retained by the IPAB then from there on they will be the law makers as far as health care is concerned and from that point on neither the president nor the Congress can revoke that power.
Are you of an age where you could be denied treatment because you life is not worth the cost iof the procedure that you need? Do you have some loved one that is of an age that will be left to die – comfortably?
If so, then you have put the right one in the position of the president of the U.S.
If not – too bad Jack, you made your decision and now you and your loved ones have to live – or die – by it!
Nice going Jack. I am sure that you put a lot of thought in to your choice. But, then again, maybe not because you didn’t have all the facts before you were made to make a decision. AND Surprise, Jack, there are a lot of really neat ideas that weren’t revealed to you before the election yet to come from the same man
that you, in your ignorance, elected! ENJOY.
Oh, one other thing. You will only be able to deduct medical expenses above 10% this year because your man raised it to that level from the 7-1/2%.
Sure hope you parents don’t have farm that they were thinking about leaving you.
The “Death Penalty” used to be that you had to pay 35% on anything above 5 million that you parent(s) left you but now- Guess What – your man raised that to 50% ion anything aabove 1 million.
You see, he has to find ways to collect money to pay off that debt of 16 TRILLION and still climbing that he is creating with all his give away programs.
Gee, Jack, the way things are going your children and maybe even you -if you are young enough- will be able to qualify for those freebies. Lucky You, Jack!
And remember that congress and senate and President and families all opt OUT! What does that tell you.
“You will be given the necessary medicine to keep you as comfortable as possible until you die…”
Except, of course, that the DEA and the TSA consider this to be drug trafficking, and they will break down your door at 2 AM and shoot your dog.
“Obamacare and its 2,000-plus pages are here to stay”. Reminds me of: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” nothing on earth is “here to stay” this to will pass.
That’s what they said about Prohibition…….medical speakeasies anyone?
“Obamacare and its 2,000-plus pages are here to stay.”
Plurimum interragationem.
As a wise person once said, be careful what you wish for, you might get it although in the case of obamacare, I seriously doubt anyone will be getting what they actually need. I wouldn’t blame the medical profession if they quit “en masse.” Any physician/nurse worth his/her salt didn’t go to medical school to participate in this bureaucratic boondoggle.
I will forever remember pelosi’s idiotic statement, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” Well, now we know why congress isn’t covered under obamacare, they have their own health care system funded by US! Same for the divider in chief and all his czar’s, cronies, and henchmen.
Even while the ObamaCare bill was being debated, a number of surveys showed that a majority of physicians would at least *seriously consider* leaving the practice of medicine if the bill was passed. In other words, another aspect of ObamaCare is that while you’ll have all these great ‘rights’ and ‘benefits’ you’ll also have trouble actually finding a physician to treat you.
Color me unflabbergasted.
You and me both!
That’s racist!
Please stop with the “racist” thing. It’s not funny anymore.
I find it interesting that the doctor said this: “I still love being a doctor — my patients’ doctor. I will, however, abide by the law and follow it to the letter. I will have to learn this new dance.”
Sounds similar to what the doctors said in Nazi Germany…just before they turned their heads away as the old, the weak, and the infirm were sent to the gas chambers.
Who will stand up and do the right thing?
Lou, I’m sure Bowser was being sarcastic. You do have a good point in that the more that people just put their heads down and go about their business without noticing what’s happening around them, the more room government has to engage in abuses.
Correction…there was no “debate” about the Bill prior to it becoming a Law. The Dems went to a private “Dems-Only” meeting with ObamaLamaDingDong and left the Republican lawmakers to discuss it among themselves…that ain’t debate. The Dems never wanted to hear the truth, so they left the building. Shameful!
Another NWO goal accomplished….population control. What a diabolical scheme this mandate (not tax, btw) is. And it took SCOTUS to even create a new bill all on its own that, in that form, didn’t go through congress. It’s an alternate universe we are forced to live in today. Hard to believe it’s even happening in this great country. Sad, sad condition people have bought into en masse.
Ya, but you have to admit, it was a great ride while it lasted.
I have always wondered what life is like in North Korea or Cuba as far as how your health is handled and now I get the chance to find out,Yea.
Hey, don’t knock Cuba, Rich, unless you’ve watched MSNBC live I’ve been. Apparently, the people there are very happy with their way of life and their wonderful health care system. In fact, there have been Cubans willing to cross 95 nautical miles of ocean on an inner tube just to spread the good word.
Well they must have a very good meidcal system if they are in good enough shape to cross the Straights of Florida.
“Well they must have a very good meidcal system if they are in good enough shape to cross the Straights of Florida.”
Indeed, Greg, were I to cross the Florida Straits in an inner tube, I don’t know if I could even see straight afterward. It’s nothing a few of those Cuban “funny cigars” couldn’t handle though.
No, as a matter of fact, I am not an English teacher. Why do you ask?
“Apparently, the people there are very happy with their way of life and their wonderful health care system. In fact, there have been Cubans willing to cross 95 nautical miles of ocean on an inner tube just to spread the good word.”
Ha! Good one.
We were told that our premiums would not go up one thin dime. I have seen our premiums go up three times in three years. Dreading another increase. In the meantime, the group with the doctor I was seeing was shut down by the state. They owed everyone, including our insurance carrier.
In the meantime, we have tried to switch from one carrier to one we had previously. VERY difficult, if not outright impossible.
Katie,
You are absolutely correct.
My husband loses our health insurance Jan 1 2013.. I just can’t believe all of this is happening.. Wow are grandkids are in some bad shape when they are our age..
Buy a gun. Learn to shoot well.
Not a problem. We’ll just do what Britain did when faced with the same problem. Import doctors from the third world and strip their medical system bare of professionals.
….and we get ultimately substandard care.
The point of Obey-Me “Care” is to empower our communist government to legally deny, withhold, and prevent “care.” How else did the liberal goofballs think they were going to “reduce costs?”
Those few who actually understand how economics works knew that there would be no free health care lunch forthcoming, anymore than there would be rainbow lollipops and chocolate unicorns flying out our ass, either.
I am not going to say I think Obamacare is a great law, but to compare care in England or Canada to what we have in the US is not a good idea. They have better health outcomes based on almost every measure used, and spend far less per capita then we do.
“@scott – … but to compare care in England or Canada … They have better health outcomes based on almost every measure used,”
Totally wrong! The only measure by which Canada and England fare better on a medical basis is (raw) life expectancy, and that’s only by a fractional percentage. When corrected for anomalous situations like homicide and auto fatalities (not much a doc can do if you’re dead before you get to him), even the life expectancy is lower in Canada and England.
If you want a true measure of the quality of the actual medical care, compare five-year cancer survival.
How will you know it’s substandard care? You won’t be able to understand the doctor.
This is true,especially up in Canada. My friend lives in BC and the wait for a simple visit is 90 days minimum,no exceptions. And all or most of the docs are Indies. And the best part is most speak sh_t English so getting understood is even a problem. Start practicing your Hindi folks.
A woman from Vancouver on one of those house selling shoes on hgtv said, “I don’t want to leave this neighborhood because I’ve waited three years to get a primary physician, and I don’t want to start over in a new city.”
She had to wait 3 years to be assigned a doctor!! Yeah, government health care is great.
Rent the DVD “Barbarian Invasions” if you want to see what a lefty Canadian thinks of their stinking system.
And then there’s this…..
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/crisis+Quebec+women/7537213/story.html
I’m willing to wager your friend is a gigantic liar who lives in Surrey. As a Vancouverite, the longest I have ever had to wait for a doctor’s appointment in the height of flu season was 8 days and 9 times out of 10 I can get in same day or next day. And the only place all the doctors speak Hindi is in Surrey where all of everyone already speaks Hindi anyways.
It varies regionally. Since I’m in the east, I can’t speak for BC, but there’s no problem getting a primary care doc here. There are also several walk-in clinics for those who don’t bother getting a family doc. Wait times are measured in minutes, not hours or days. Might be worse in other parts of the country, can’t say – but you’re only going to see the horror stories published, the same as that’s all we get to see of the American medical system. Just because you saw it on the news, doesn’t mean it’s true for all cases – or even the majority. Thanks, but I’m happy with the system we (Canada) have in place – and I’ve spent 20 years running all around the world, so I’ve seen some of what’s offered in other countries. That said, the US couldn’t afford to implement a Canadian style system now – your bureaucracy would bankrupt you in the process of trying to figure out how to do it.
Jenny S. says: “…the longest I have ever had to wait for a doctor’s appointment in the height of flu season was 8 days…”
So you are saying you have had to wait longer to see a doctor than it takes for flu to run its course. Yeah, we can see why you’d be happy.
Meanwhile, here in the States, I can always see my doctor by the next day. Of course if it’s urgent, then he will see me that same day if I call early enough.
They almost killed my aunt, a nurse, with waiting time for cancer surgery. Until a doctor friend intervened and got her bumped to the head of the line, she was pretty much looking at a death sentence.
And yet she STILL sings the praises of socialized medicine!
Unreal.
The Brits actually did something with some backbone though. Private care is not exactly legal in the UK but it still exists. It exists because some Doctors just disobeyed the law and refused to keep working for the government care system.
The government caved and took the more subtle course of going after private citizens who use it (revoking all their public care if they do anything private).. but still, real progress (towards freedom) is/was due to civil disobedience. Its probably going to have to be one of our means also.
It’s even better than that. Though I can’t lay hands on the link, the Daily Mail had a story about a couple who went abroad for treatment when the NHS decided his cancer was “untreatable.” It turned out they meant “economically untreatable” because he was cured (in the US, if I remember correctly). When they returned, the NHS began trying to recover all the money the government had spent on the diagnosis and (palliative) treatment he had received before leaving the country!
That’s not true.I work in the NHS for over twenty years.
Private healthcare run’s parallel,and even within the NHS.The confusion seems to be about this,if somebody pays privately for an operation that has complication’s who corrects it and pays for it?
Patients are transferred from say private hospital to NHS ITU as a taxpayer they are entitled to this and the NHS ends up with the bill.
The debate is that the NHS should recoup the costs
The NHS also pays for patients to be operated on if the waiting list is to long in private hospital’s so to say it’s illegal makes no sense.
The NHS is widely supported here and medical staff work in both.If a doctor sees a patient privately and makes a diagnosis they also refer them to the NHS and see them there so they can get better care
I am an internist, which qualifies me (albeit only a little) to help advise here.
Here’s what I suggest: look for physicians who are operating Direct Pay practices. It’s basically a fee for service deal, with regard to the physician fees. Many of these physicians negotiate with local providers for imaging studies, so that a direct pay patient receives the service at marginal cost (e.g., an MRI for $250 instead of $1600).
Think about it: if you have to pay multiple copays to see your internist in order to talk about several issues or problems, then why not pay the $100 upfront and get everything taken care of in one visit.
Speaking for many physicians, I can tell you that we love our jobs–and we’re dedicated. But, in the end, we have to keep our lights on and make enough to make 14 years of additional training make sense. Many of us are still paying back our school loans, and we’re in our late 40′s. Because we want to keep doing this job, we will find ways to do it–but there will be many moving to unconventional medicine. If you want to see the good physicians, keep an eye out in your community for physicians who will be branching out into unconventional delivery of care.
Here’s a youtube video of a physician describing her cash-based practice in Texas. It’s a great illustration of the traditional doctor-patient relationship, which can still be maintained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je1xr4nK3zM
You are absolutely right~!
My family doctor is forming a “Private Health Care Club” for his practice. It costs a few thousand to join the club but at least we will be seen by a competent doctor on a schedule that we like.
Obama is in the process of getting rid of a lot of doctors, the older ones are simply going to retire, the ones in the middle are going to find a way to survive, and those who were planning to go to med school will probably rethink their education plans.
This is called “concierge medicine.” It’s a fairly common entity now. You pay a certain monthly fee for unlimited access to the physician along with yearly exams. These services aren’t billed to 3rd party payers (insurance or medicare), so the physician and patient can discuss whatever they want–because the transaction is between physician and patient only. These physicians do utilize the 3rd party payers for sick visits or hospital stays, however. So, there is still some relationship with insurance or medicare.
As I mentioned in commment above, many physicians are finding alternatives to the traditional health care system. Concierge medicine is one such alternative. Also, consider direct pay practices…
Fascism… you dopes who got the “free” phone voted for it, happy now?
You really actually believe your own bullSh!t. You know how hard your conservative media enterprise tries to find that .00001% percent of the population that’s supports there garbage to keep you listening an watching to sell there advertisement time. I bought my phone, my house(s),cars an have never collected any benefit in my life. I have been working full time since I was 20. Trust me its not the benefit crowd who voted for the president.. You loons always talk about gifts an entitlements. Do any of you have any data that says people who get entitlements vote? actually the people who get the most entitlements voted for Romney(seniors). Listen pal 53% of the population voted for the President. Go compare that to past elections in the last 100 years. Get over it an get a clue…
I support the Affordable Care Act an have a great career an private insurance.
Hide and watch you moron! There is no healthcare in Obama care. If you have any doubt about that go talk to any health professional.
I have discussed it. An they overwhelmingly support it. Maybe its the ones who will make slightly less money. Even though we will still have the highest paid physicians in the world.
Food stamps are an entitlement. Section 8 housing is an entitlement. medicaid is an entitlement. Social Security and medicare are insurance schemes that those of us who have worked all of our lives have payed into. Cutting medicare by 23% in order to fund Medicaid which is just one of the egregious things that the ACA aka Obamacare does is to default on a obligation, to rescind a promise.
The goodies were mostly front loaded in Obamacare. The costs and cuts come later. The Democrat Party is prancing about in triumphalism right now thinking they have locked in a permanent political majority of takers but they are going to be in for a surprise when the details of the ACA really kick in. There are major winners and losers in this “reform” and despite the hit to medicare the real losers are mostly under 35.
I am a Pharmaceutical sales rep and If you are saying the majority of Physicians that you speak with support Obamacare, then you are a straight up, abject, bold faced LIAR!!!
You’re “great”Obamacare will create an unbelievable hardship for me. I am on a disability income and cannot afford the penalty OR the insurance. I make slightly too much to qualify for Medicaid so I will be one of those who falls through the cracks. I’ll have to come up with $750 for the “penalty” and end up with nothing, but fewer dollars to pay my bills and eat. Thanks, Libs!
I have been talking with people about how in physic every actio has a reaction and yjen another reaction and more reactions. I point out that lots of people only look at things at the first level and fail to follow the path of the reactions. I have presented the ompact of tax increases, obamacare and how i think obama is going to use the epa to push his green agenda. After walking them through this thet eere like.holy sh. T.
I dont know what doctors you have talked to nut i have 7 that are family or friends. Not one of them have anything positive to say about obamacare. In fact they all say it is going to hinder their ability to treat patients with all of the new regulations.
You’re a liar…
I work in healthcare and I have yet to speak to one provider who sees “ObamaCare” as a positive thing. You are clearly an Obama shill and bootlicker.
If, as you say, the doctors you refer to are in favor of this garbage legislation, please tell me specifically what they like about it. There must be specific provisions that they see as an improvement, though I can’t image what they are.
Do you really believe that physicians are going to complain to an insurance agent or insurance representative? Of course not! Complaining only give them more grounds for denying payment for the claims! Whenever people talk about financial matters with those who are supposed to pay, no one in their right mind EVER brings up controversial matters. That’s just asking for more trouble to be added to the sea of troubles they are already stuck with.
None of my doctors are supportive of Obamacare, not one. Several are looking to leave practice (a real problem for me with having to find other specialists that will accept me as a patient.)
Obamacare has already cost me more because my insurance premiums have risen. Next year, my health savings plan has been cut by $2500 and the new Obamacare tax on medical devices will add to those “negative savings”.
Add my name to the list calling you a liar, no A DAMN LIAR! I too have talked to physicians, medical supplier, and pharm reps. Every damn one has the same story after talking to doctors. The MAJORITY of the doctors they talk to, at least 90% ARE NOT supportive of Obamacare. The few who are are the ones set for life, extremely wealthy and are major recipients of the Obamacare goodies for the doctors, drug companies, and minority storefront businesses who will become even wealthier under Obamacare. The OTHER 1% not talked about, liberal Democrats, will be the beneficiaries, not the 99%.
Everybody- he is not lying. He is merely NOT talking to doctors but to LPN’s, Nurses Aids, and lowly tech, single mom (or dad) types who are looking to replace the no good husband (or wife) they threw out of their lives. Health care is ancillary to that concern.
Having the highest paid physicians in the world is GOOD. Having access to the skill and knowledge that makes them able to charge high fees and have their patients seek them out so as to voluntarily pay them means you are getting the best care available on the planet . After a few years of Obamacare the best will go private (see England or Canada). I doubt you will be able to afford them, but if you can I fervently hope they throw you out unseen for assisting in the destruction of free market medicine, free markets and free men. You are a disgrace.
“your kidding yourself” is another lying leftest troll. Who’s to believe, the troll or actual physicians?
Leave it to a liberal chowderhead to miss the CONNECTION between “the hightest paid doctors in the world,” and the best doctors in the world. Only a psychotic communist who believed with all his stupid heart that there is no such thing as “economics” could make that sort of mistake.
Can’t wait til you find out you’re not bullet-proof.
Joe Hill “Social Security and medicare are insurance schemes that those of us who have worked all of our lives have payed into. ”
Wrong!!! Wrong on so many levels.
Joe Hill
Social Security and medicare are insurance schemes that those of us who have worked all of our lives have payed into.
It’s “paid.” But you are dead wrong. You have been scammed.
Pay no mind to folks like Y.K.Y.
There’s a reason that leftist fools like him/her identify with the islamists.
Google the urban dictionary for the secular definition of “taqiyya” and you’ll begin to understand a lot more about leftists and islamists.
(hint for the google-challenged: they both believe that “anything goes” in service of their cause.
“I have discussed it. An they overwhelmingly support it.”
Two lies.
Okay, wait, hold on here. As a physician, I can tell you all that there are some physicians who support Obamacare. This post is correct. There are two camps of physicians. The answer you get depends on the camp that your physician is in.
Overwhelmingly in the U.S., patients are cared for by private practice physicians. Also overwhelmingly, these physicians are AGAINST Obamacare because the regs are antagonistic to business–which is, ultimately, what patient care is. It’s a business. These physicians employ people, occupy leases and pay rent, and yes, take a profit. The business of medicine is not philanthropy. It is a career.
Next, we have the academic physicians–and those who work for governments, such as those who work at academic medical centers that fund indigent care (large schools and the VAs) and in community health centers (e.g., health centers that are branches of the medical schools, Indian reservations, etc.). These physicians largely SUPPORT Obamacare because of two reasons: 1) They are “progressives” in their mindset, and 2) They do not run their own businesses (usually never have) and their salaries are paid by the STATE or the FEDS. Ere go, their salaries are NOT dependent upon implementation of Obamacare. They have no skin in the game.
I suspect the person who posted this has spoken with physicians of the 2nd variety.
Your cohort seems to be getting great care hes refusing..
19. twolaneflash
I went to my new doctor this week, my last one having quit medicine a month ago along with his practice partner. My new doc spent an absurd amount of time with me, all of it trying to input answers to questions in the Obama database. I lied. Repeatedly. Yesterday I went to my eye doctor. Same thing. Lots of personal questions, lots of lies. I have determined to overload this lying bunch of traitors with lies. I’ll never tell the government the truth again, ever.
November 24, 2012 – 7:58 am
You’re the one “kidding” yourself. My insurance premiums have already gone up to reflect this new law. And, I have this sneaky hunch that the author of this article (this physician) may know more of what he speaks than do you. As to all of those other physicians you claim to have spoken to who support this monstrosity … I call bullshit on that. How can it be that most of the doctors I’ve spoken to do not support it? Just different doctors, I guess? Actually, in my experience I’ve never met a two-time Obama voter who would not (who did not) willingly lie to move the cause forward – not one.
This country needed healthcare reform; it did not need this rectal exam called Obamacare.
By the way, it’s “you’re” not “your,” “and”, not “an.” We all can excuse the occasional typo, missed in the excitement of replying, and I would have overlooked one or two in yours, but your reply is so riddled with them I will assume that “sloppy work suggests a sloppy mind.” When someone is so mentally sloppy that they can’t even get their (not “there”) own name correct, do you really think anyone is going to take seriously anything they attempt to offer?
My premiums have increased along with a doubling of my co-pays. Affordable healthcare is a lie, plain and simple. The only ones it will be affordable to are the entitlement parasites who have probably never paid a dime of income tax in the first place. No preexisting medical conditions can be refused? You’re right but you will pay a premium, or rather I will pay a premium for you. Grow up, get out of your mother’s basement and find a job.
I did the exact same thing. Bravo to us!
The questions are all part of “HiTech”, the “Meaningful Use” portion of Obamacare where we citizens get to pay, via taxes, for healthcare providers to get equipped with EHR/EMR software. The supplement is $18k/yr. for three years per provider in a practice. I implemented and supported EHR software and was knee-deep in Meaningful Use while practices were trying to implement it. They hated it. Period.
Trust me; this isn’t to improve healthcare, it’s so it will all be computerized when the government makes it’s final move to take over the healthcare industry. After all, they don’t want to have to deal with boxes of paper records.
Similar to provisions in Dodd Frank. I didn’t make a credit card payment one month because the bank was switching over to another system, so I called when I got a penalty, which they took off. Then the dude asked me questions like, “Do you need financial counseling? Are you having trouble with making payments,” etc., etc. I said what the hell business is it of yours? Your company made a mistake! Then he said he had to ask.
Thanks, Dems!
your kidding yourself!
I assume you meant “YOU’RE” meaning “you are”, as opposed to the possessive “YOUR” as in “Your brain must be on permanent vacation to have made such an egregious grammaticaly error”.
I assume he was making fun of the ungrammatical title of the original poster.
Settled down, Sharyn. It’s a pretty common typographical/grammatical error on the Internet. Save your steam for a more useful point.
You retarded, uneducated mouth-breathing Obama-voting mutant! Not only did you misspell “grammatically” (2 L’s, genius) but you used the adverb when correct form would have been merely “grammatical”.
And you did all that, while bitching about one poster’s typo. You are some pathetic piece of work.
Oh, you so funny! “grammaticaly” – you just twyin to twick eveybody into think you is just a stupidity idy-it! Nawty-nawty.
Then you…are a moron!
YKY is correct.
Obama was elected because he convinced enough people that Romney was some weird creep that was going to fire you, kill your wife with cancer and force your daughter to have a rapists baby.
The whole parasites elected Obama is self serving BS by the republican establishment to
a) deflect blame from them sticking us with Romney, who no one outside the establishment wanted in the first place and
b) set up the establishment republican sell out to big government.
You hear this a lot but the truth is that the others were damaged.
Romney was cleaner than many other people who get nominated by both sides.
Yep; its why they had to run all that nonsense about him (vs anything real)…
I’m replying to some below on the election was stolen meme. Just going to point out there are no republicans in some of those philly districts that O got 100%. None. So; it could and probably did happen that Romney got 0 votes in them. Don’t blow your credibility on those stories. One day you’ll need it.
Romney lost because the election was stolen.
Any other explanation is false narrative. It is critically important to recognize the truth because the elections will continue to be stolen by Democrats unless the last one is remedied.
Romney did NOT get fewer votes than McCain as is now claimed. If Romney received the same number of votes as McCain received, this election is a veritable tie. But more Republicans voted for Romney than voted for McCain, meaning Romeny would have won from those votes by themselves..
But wait…there is more. Obama received 8 to 10 million fewer votes than he did last time. All 8 to 10 million did not stay home and not vote. No, millions of them voted for Romney.
IOW, Romney won by several million votes. But the lifetime fraudster committed yet another fraud. What else would you expect from a man whose favorite crime is fraud (Selective Service fraud, Social Security number fraud, birth certificate fraud.)
Thank you, this is correct. Thank you for keeping your eye on the truth. The election was stolen. Romney actually was elected. I don’t know why someone isn’t challenging it legally.
In an inner city area of Cleveland, we would not be surprised if most of the black voters voted for Obama. However, one such area was reported as 1337-0 for Obama. How LEET! Especially because there is a youtube of a black woman from that area saying she would vote for Romney because we need business in this country. Where’s her Romney vote!?
I live in an almost entirely white polling area, and in our state all you need is to sign the voter roll when you vote, not show ID. There were several dark skinned people I’ve never seen before coming to the poll just while my wife and I were there, never seen that happen in earlier elections. And our popular Republican Congresswoman was somehow defeated by an openly gay liberal from elsewhere.
So the voting was fraudulent and the counting was fraudulent.
Now then as to Obamacare, it was passed against House rules, in a rump session on a Sunday where Jesse Jackson Jr. was Parliamentarian, who rejected perfectly cogent procedural objections. Then the SCOTUS left this thing in place, with John Roberts doing a double-cross.
It’s not the people’s fault that this happened. It was foisted on us. Someone did this TO us.
Yes. Let us not divert our steely gaze from the real problem…VOTER FRAUD!
If you can look at the shameless conduct of so many in power as regards voting BS and think it’s just a coincidence, then you have no critical thinking skills at all. Even the UN Inspector had a good question, “You mean there is NO ID required to vote? And they can register the same day? How do you know who they are?”
Yet from Boehner, et al, “No problem here. What can we do?”
Answer: No CRs until a special prosecutor or 400 are appointed to find out what REALLY happened this Novemeber.
Oh. And Boehner, you idiot, don’t appoint Eric Holder or Janet Reno or any other shill and hack to this group. We had enough of that stupidity with the 9/11 commission, where half the members were investigating themselves, and the rest were just retarded!
Even I was shocked at the shenanigans going on at my usually dull and boring polling place. I saw things there I never saw before.
Here’s a novel idea: Everyone votes the same day, in person with proof. Make “get out the cheaters” illegal. Every registrar with an incorrect registration on their books goes directly to jail.
Republicans would win by ten percent, every time.
I’d take your word on that particular claim, but I have a basic rule in internet forums. I never believe a word that comes from someone who doesn’t bother to proofread his/her own name.
Proof read? Cripes he doesn’t know how to spell.
I love the transparent kool-aid drinkers who come in and hyperventilate about how every single little criticism of their black messiah and his magic goody bag of free socialism. These are the same imbeciles that the good Doctor is talking about. The mindless union-commies thugs who want to force everyone to dance to their tune, then force you to pay the piper as well. They want their socialized-medicine cake, and they want to eat the gold-plated care too. Obamacare is a lie. Socialism is a lie. It has never worked in 3000 years in any place, at any time, under any circumstances. We will never be rid of these freeloading moochers and their bought and paid for scumbag politicians and their President Santa Claus promising Christmas every day. There is no free lunch, only makers and takers, Well, the takers have won. It won’t be long until the capital f others they so willingly appropriate disappears. What then President Santa Clause?
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
– - – - – - – Margaret Thatcher
.
Hey – you made a deal with the devil when you voted for 0bama. Don’t want to hear you whine when the bill comes due.
You and your ilk are in for some seriously unpleasant surprises. But it is, after all, what you’ve asked for.
And your writing is full of typos dude.
Wow, Just Wow, you are truly ignorant and offensive. Saying that seniors are the biggest receivers of entitlements as if they are getting something for nothing! You say you work for a living, are you so ignorant as to not know that you are paying into Social Security and Medicare? Every time I see Morons like you compare Seniors receiving what they were promised for a lifetime of work and taxation to the illegals who suck out of the system I get really angry! Social Security and Medicare for those who worked their whole life are not receiving entitlements, they are receiving the dividends of their lives blood. So get educated, stop blaming seniors and try using spell check so you don’t come off more ignorant than you truly are!
“Every time I see Morons like you compare Seniors receiving what they were promised for a lifetime of work and taxation to the illegals who suck out of the system I get really angry!”
So you support letting Seniors know when they’ve drawn the last of the money they put into the system, and then when they are on welfare? You support letting them know when they’ve been receiving borrowed money and money taken from their children.
Do you think they can handle the truth?
From what I have heard, all of us would have had a greater return on investment if we had been able to manage our own retirement savings. An added bonus would be that remaining funds would be inherited by our loved ones.
Those children are getting ripped off anyway by Obama’s “tax anything saved via years of hard work and sacrifice” by their parents which said parents were counting on passing on to said spoiled brats.
Sure, as long as when they don’t draw out all the value they paid in (with interest of course) their estate gets the difference.
Good point. But don’t be too hard on the seniors, they can’t help the situation they’re in. Social Security and Medicare now date back generations; the program was unwanted by most working people originally. The current seniors had no choice but to participate while working. It was mandated by the gov’t. Therefore, any old age planning or saving was figured as a “supplement” to future expected Social Security, and in general, most people skipped planning altogether and just worked towards a company or union pension to go along with Social Security.
In other words, just getting their money back would not be fair. They did pay-in, and there would be significant interest earned on the contributions, particularly the earlier contributions of ages 20-40 or so. Give a dollar 7% interest, an amount that was easily earned back then, and the contributions double every 10 years via compounded interest. So, a $1 contribution left to compound over 40 years could have grown to $16 … etc, etc, &tc. Since the gov’t didn’t put those contributions in a safe place to earn interest, we now have a big mess, and it isn’t the fault of the seniors.
You damn right we do want that. While your at it lets also figure in the usury and the interest that accrued on that money being paid in by us “grey haired brigade”, and don’t forget to compound that interest that our illustrious government collected while forcing us to pay into a Ponzi scheme through mandatory participation, all the while giving themselves a far different far more lucrative health care and retirement system which our tax dollars also pay for! Figure in all of the money we have paid for 50, 60, or even more years with just a small amount of interest and you may be surprised how much we have paid in verses gotten out of Social Security. And oh by the way what about spouses of those who survived that paid in for 40 plus years and did not live long enough to collect 1 lousy dime like my deceased spouse. You better get all the facts straight before you go talking about how much we have paid in verses how much we have gotten out of this stinking Ponzi scheme called Social Security and Medicare! Entitlement my butt! I have paid and paid and paid with no hope of ever getting one dime of return like so many others!
It is true that seniors have paid in to the system, but the system wasn’t set up to accommodate the longevity we see today, thanks, in part, to the very expensive medical advances which have led to that longevity. Because the original equation doesn’t fit the current day scenario, seniors are receiving, on average, three times what they’ve paid in, adjusted for inflation and accounting for interest they could have earned in a low-risk private investment. And that doesn’t even include their medicare disbursements, which are staggering. I don’t begrudge seniors, I will be one myself in ten years, but this problem will only get worse as baby-boomers continue to retire, and with fewer younger workers (if they can find jobs)to support us. It is not callous to realize we must find ways to deal with this imbalance.
Also, if the government had not raided Social Security to put money into the General Fund, no telling how many times since its inception, SS would be in a lot better shape. We have no choice but to pay into SS. It’s the law.
“It is true that seniors have paid in to the system, but the system wasn’t set up to accommodate the longevity we see today, thanks, in part, to the very expensive medical advances which have led to that longevity.”
Good news! Obamacare will take care of that little “longevity” problem we’re having. Soon, there won’t be any seniors to collect Social Security now that we have Death Panels.
sure but it is a ponzi scam.. and they didn’t have enough kids to support it… and they elected leaders who raided it and spent the money in ‘the lock box’… so; they money aint there and there was no there there (see ponzi scam).
Seniors in fact should be entitled to free healthcare. If there was a president out their that could do that then I would vote for them! You bust your butt all your life for what? Measly SS benefits, really crappy healthcare and a substantial amount of out of pocket costs. When you are living on a limited imcome and forced to retire you really have no choice. Instead of O-stupid care, I would gladly pay an extra tax that allows Senior Citizens FREE healthcare. All the rest of the lazy, baby producing, illegals need to become citizens, be sterilized, and get a job. There should be no repeat benefits for a women who becomes pregnanat and remains on welfare. One baby rule just like China. If you work, have all you want.
Please forgive typos…lol
Balderdash. Only the government-cheese eating failures voted for Precious Token aka Obama.
So many words with so little content…. The gravy train you’ve been enjoying is about to get derailed…. Hope the flavor of idiotic decision making made by you and your fellow ObamaHuggers will taste like the crap it is….
Sorry pal, obamacare is probably the worst thing congress has done since confirm eric holder as attorney general. First let me address the entitlement issue – the meaning most folks have placed on this word is something free that one thinks he is entitled to – well, i worked for over forty years and paid into SS and medicare every single week. So, you better believe i am entitled to it – SS isn’t giving me taxpayer money, it is giving me back the money i paid in every week (with no interest, either). As for obamacare, my medicare now covers less and costs more. Don’t think I am the only one either, you won’t hear too much this year, because the worst of it doesn’t kick in until 2014, but you’re going to hear some squalling then! And as for doctors supporting it, i know a lot of doctors (i worked in an ER for years) and not one of them supports it. Most won’t get paid enough to support themselves, let alone staff, office overhead, and mal-practice insurance. So you’re going to end up with healthcare (of a sort), but good luck trying to get an appointment to see your doctor. “Oh, you’re sick now, well we can see you a year from next Tuesday.” It will almost be worth the pain the rest of us have to go through, just to see the look on your face when you realize your hero and his party sold you down the river!
And, as an extra added attraction, your Social Security benefits are taxed … 20 percent in my husband’s case. And we are solidly middle class.
Donna says: “First let me address the entitlement issue – the meaning most folks have placed on this word is something free that one thinks he is entitled to – well, i worked for over forty years and paid into SS and medicare every single week. So, you better believe i am entitled to it – SS isn’t giving me taxpayer money, it is giving me back the money i paid in every week (with no interest, either).”
You seem not to understand how social security works Donna. Social security is set up as a pyramid scheme. The SS system collects money from people working now. The government then uses that money to pay out benefits to those that are eligible at that time. It doesn’t put any kind of money away for you. That is a lie. Even worse, while SS – by design – collected far more than it paid out in the beginning, storing up a sizable cash reserve, it now runs in the deep red. That deficit today is because the ratio of payees to beneficiaries dropped from the original 32 to 1, down to somewhere under 5 to 1, and is going to drop even further as the baby boomers retire en masse, while the pay out amount keeps going up.
Even worse that big chunk of change that I mentioned the SS system had supposedly put away, was spent by those in our government that wanted to buy more votes without paying for the freebees. What they have left in the SS system are a bunch of IOUs. These IOUs can only be repaid if our federal government hikes everyone’s taxes considerably, borrows even more money, or prints a ton of cash (in the process devaluating the money and causing inflation), to get new income to pay back the SS IOUs. They will also have to change the retirement age as well as drastically lower the payouts.
Social Security is basically busted, and the people in charge keep pretending it isn’t broke and if not fixed soon, will leave everyone depending on it to live in dire straits. BTW, if any private company ran their pension or retirement system like SS is run, they would all end up in court because pyramid schemes are illegal.
No, they would not end up in court — they would end up in prison.
You paid in for 40 years, and allowed your elected officials to steal it for 40 years, you deserve nothing! Seniors are the ones who allowed this to happen, they should not be allowed to reap any rewards from it.
You mean like we “allowed” obamacare? Yeah that is what happened. I had a choice about paying into SS and medicare for the last 40 years. Glad it was there for my grandmother, but seriously, if I had any say whatsoever there would be no Obamacare.
What part of “forced, no opt out provision” of Ponzi Scheme did you not understand? Do you have no basic understanding of how taxes; ie medicare, social security, federal, state, local, and a multitude are extracted from your pay check without you having any say as to whether they are acceptable to you personally? Do you not understand that we are not allowed to tell our employer to not take out SS or medicare? I have paid in for over 40 years into this “mandatory participation” Ponzi Scheme! what makes you think this is something we chose to buy into, and the freaking obamacare aka AHA is still robbing us as we speak. Hell no I am not insured, and I will not buy insurance either. The Federal Government can KMA and try to extract a penalty from me for “non participation”!
Excuse me, I did not “allow this to happen”. I did not vote for the “expletive deleted” politicians that raided Social Security into it’s current insolvent position. You must be just another liberal “painter” with an all too easy to use instead of thinking, wide “paintbrush”.
David Axelrod is that you taking time out of your busy day to communicate with the backward types who want a separation of medicine from state?
Your the one that need to get a clue. You claim that 53% of the population voted for Obama, that is incorrect, the truth is least than 30% voted. Do the math, 53% is of those who voted but the turn out was 57.5% which is lower than 2008 and 2004 and not much higher than the 54.2% turnout in 2000. Since you lack basic understanding of the election and what it means I would have to question your whole statement.
OK.. voting electorate..Trust and believe. If we had 100% turnout you Federalist or Confederates. Whichever you prefer. Would never win elected office again. You folks are deranged.. I make plenty of money.. I’m quite sure more than most posters here.. An I wasn’t knocking seniors. Just making a point.. Which of course folks here rather be a bunch of “Diane Chambers” instead of rebutting the point. As a previous poster is correct. We needed healthcare reform. So instead of being obstructionist. Try actually solving Americas problems. We got a watered down LAW. Because of your types. We needed the public option.. An yeah I am sure you never met anyone who voted Obama twice. You won’t find them in Glen Becks audience.. I bet you thought Romney was gonna win because that’s what Hannity told you.. HAHAAHAHA!
I call bull$hit.
I have met quite a few very wealthy people in my lifetime, including a few (multi)millionaires, and all of them displayed decent grammatical skills as clear communication was vital to amassing their wealth.
You, sir, do not display that fundamental trait.
Please learn the difference between commas and periods before posting again.
I wouldn’t call SS and medicare an ‘entitlement’ since we have paid for it since youth. And I know it’s welfare……..just paid in advance ( and by current workers )
Social Security is NOT an entitlement. It is not “given” equally. That is, the amount you receive is based on what you paid into it and for how long. And my 75 year old husband who has to work full-time just to make ends meet is still paying into it! Only those who receive benefits without paying into it are the “entitled”, so are you saying we shouldn’t help the disabled?
No ma’am i’m not saying that at all.. I support our seniors whole hardheartedly. I hope you an your husband get all you deserve. My point is all so called conservatives are claiming “gifts an welfare” won the election for Obama. Some “welfare boogeyman”. I am simply stating that these people don’t vote at all. Definitely not in any significant numbers to swing a election.. If they do where is the data to support this? People who voted for Obama are hard working educated people.. That’s just a fact.
Just to let you know how & why black voters actually di vote this year. Al Sharpton came to major cities and picked people up at home to take them to register. Detroit had what was probably their biggest voter turnout ever because of that, and of course they were ALL Obama supporters…..probably because he has done such a great job as president. hahahahahaha Or maybe some other reason?
AzMom, SS is a scam. You old people put people into office that promised you’d get back what you put in but the money has been spent. BTW, the Supremes have ruled you have NO right to it. PERIOD.
Seniors need to get their grubby hands off my kids future.
Actually, this time around the share voting for Obama dropped to about 51%.
I so doubt everything that you’ve written. On the net anyone can ‘be’ anything. You sound on top of the world in spite of the fact that there no longer is such a thing. Argue facts with a Doctor? You would benefit greatly by shutting off the voices inside yourself and actually hearing some truth from real people.
Then you are a leftist moron, and you will have absolutely no one to blame but yourself when you cannot find a doctor when you need one. Supporting Obamacare shows you have no concern about lying to people, have no understanding of economics, much less how medical care works. Show me how Obamacare produces a single extra doctor for the millions of people who now are supposed to be given this “free” health care. And tell me please, where the money is to be obtained to pay for the existing physicians to see government insured patients? Tell me, who gets to decide what procedures are to be paid for by the government and which ones are to be denied? Can you explain the ethics of making every taxpayer in America pay for birth control for people too irresponsible to buy their own? Can you explain what rules will be used to choose between paying for incarcerated criminals wanting sex change operations versus a 55 year old grandfather needing renal dialysis? Surely you won’t complain when overworked physicians, having their salaries cut, (as happens under EVERY socialist health care system) being going on strike?
How long before the political pressure to FORCE physicians to work in areas they have no interest in working because some bureaucrat decides there are too many doctors of a certain specialty in a particular city and not enough in another?
Obamacare is nothing but a despicable power grab by unscrupulous politicians taking advantage of people too stupid to realize just how severely they are being screwed over.
If Obamacare was such a magnificent accomplishment instead of a poisonous, half-polished turd, then explain why Pelosi, Reid, Obama and all the rest of the marxist overlords made sure to exempt themselves, their families and their political staffers from having to participate in Obamacare?
Too bad that you can’t write proper English. I sure as hell wouldn’t want you anywhere near my insurance. Good luck with muslimcare. It will last only long enough to cause total chaos in healthcare, at which time the muslim will realize his goal and nationalize all healthcare. Game. Set. Match. And all of this because of illiterate fools like you. My grandchildren curse you.
I know it’s tough to decipher through all of his misspellings and grammatical mis-usage but…..didn’t any of you notice that he works for an insurance company? OF COURSE HE’S PRO ACA!!!! They are really the only winners in this monstrosity.
No, he was relected by 51%, with fruad and suppersion on his side. MATH IS HARD!
Hoover won with 58% of the vote in 1928. Nixon won with 60% of the vote in 1972. In contrast Lincoln only won with 39% of the vote in 1860… Lets look at the outcomes of those particular administrations. So what is the point of your percentage again?
your, you’re one illiterate bonehead. AA graduate of a leading University or just merely a victim of our unionized public school system?
I hope that wasn’t directed at me.
The insurance companies are in the exact same spot as doctors were in the 1960s when medicare was passed. It looks like a good deal for insurers unless you lift your snout from the trough and notice the exit gate being closed. Now doctors often regret medicare after living through decades of bad pricing signals and ever increasing bureaucracy hollowing out medical care. Insurance will go through the same process.
Suckers.
You have those for now. Give it time. Rome didn’t fall in a day either.
LOL Sir 53% voted for Obama are you totally Insane Sir yes 53% of the voting public for him but Pless post the true number’s Sir out of registered Voter’s Sir how many actually went to the poll’s Sir care to answer then out of that number how many voted for Obama Sir and then subtract that number from the total population Sir then post the true percentage SIR If you have the STONES SIR
Google “How to use punctuation.”
Congratulations to the Democrats and Young People! You now own it.
The next terrorist attack, you own it.
Can’t get a job after graduation, you own it.
Sky rocketing energy prices due to Obama’s EPA shutting down the energy producing states, you own it.
A nuclear Iran, you own it.
Bowing to the Soviet Union, you own it.
Another severe recession, you own it.
A volatile border with Mexico, you own it.
Trouble getting good health care, you own it.
Higher heath insurance costs and health care costs, you own it.
No budget, you own it.
Our allies mistrust, you own it.
Another trillion of debt, you own it.
More Benghazi situations, you own it.
No one willing to join the military, you own it.
Trouble getting to loan to buy a home, you own it.
More dependency on food stamps, you own it.
Your reutement and savings accounts no longer have the value they did a few years ago due to endless Quantitative Easing, you own it.
Trouble finding good employment, you own it.
Several part time jobs instead of a good job, you own it.
A World Government, you own it.
The UN governing the United States instead of ourselves, you own it.
A Senate that will not bring any legislation to the table rather it is “Dead on Arrival”, you own it.
China controlling our world trade trampling all over us, you own it.
Loss of our freedoms as we have known it in the past, you own it.
A dictatorship instead of a democracy that follows the Constituion, you own it.
Less take home pay and higher living costs, you own it.
Driving a car that looks like a toy, you own it.
More government corruption and lies, you own it.
More toleration of extreme and fanatical Islamists, you own it.
Terrorist attacks called work place incidents, you own it.
Your revenge instead of love of country, you own it.
President George Bush is out of it now (can’t blame him anymore now) , and there is not another good man for you to villify and lie about.
In a way I’m relieved that another good man will not be blamed when it becomes impossible to clean up this mess you voted for.
Have a good day. God bless the United States.
Those “Seniors” so called “entitlements” that you mentioned are from the SOCIAL SECURITY system that your grandparents worked HARD their whole lives for and PAID into in order to be able to enjoy their well earned RETIREMENT!! What did the government do with all that money??
Where was this article, and thousands more like it, week after week, from a legion of doctors, BEFORE THE ELECTION — before the dingbat, multicultural voters and petulant, non-voting conservative voters locked the country into another 4 years of insanity? And where is the common sense in the legislative branch, that can repeal Obamacare any time it can get its head out of its rear end and act like thinking human beings? Everyone who finds Obamacare a burden instead of a help, should write angry letters to their congressional representatives and senators, from now on; make it an ongoing, growing campaign. Anyone with sense knew that Obamacare would just exacerbate (no, GREATLY exacerbate) the problems already existing in healthcare in this country. Those who felt put upon before now WILL be put upon, and those who felt stigmatized, now WILL be stigmatized. So complain, en masse, or just stop seeking medical help for the duration. Forward — into the fire. (And yes, I voted for Romney, and tried to get conservatives to vote for him too. They, along with the blacks, latinos and youth, were too self-righteous to listen.)
My guess is nobody read it until they had to enforce it. Except Rush Limbaugh, who dug up plenty of valid complaints about it.
Or we’re these rules he mentioned written by the Secretary of HHS? If my memory serves, a lot was left for her to determine. On the face of it, the rule sounds stupid, I wonder what the rationale for it was. Anybody know?
D
Like those exchanges… whatever an “exchange” is, exactly, because that one word (exchange) is all that’s used to define ‘em in the legislation. Anything they then come up with (however jacked-up, unpleasant, etc.) to be an “exchange” will go because it’s the “law” then… sorta like writing a blank check.
Neat! DHD responded to HDH.
Articles like this were out there…your leftist Obama-toe-sucking media won’t cover anything that might put their Chosen Messiah in a poor light! Can’t let all you little sheep know what he’s going to do to you and a once proud country. Check your history books for what life is like in ‘socialist’ countries. The grocery stores will display the food they ‘want’ you to eat….not the food you want to eat. Choices you have become accustomed to, will be gone like a feather on the wind! You elected the ‘chosen’ one…enjoy! In the words of the ‘illustrious pres–ent’…”Elections have consequences!”
ENJOY!
It is the petulant non-voting conservatives that lost this election. Obama got less votes than McCain did in 2008; this election was comopletely winnable by Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, Christians and right thinkers of all stripes. For what ever reason they choose to stay at home and pout because they didn’t get their Reagan, well, we can all see what is coming and it isn’t going to be good. We were electing a president, dammit, not a preacher, and instead we get four more yeasr of the Manchurian presidency. Four more years of the hope and change transformation. Four more years of this thin skinned ignorantly arrogantly fascist tinpot potentate.
Yep.
Also there were plenty of doctors warning of what was coming. If people choose to bury their heads in the sand or sit at home and pout instead of voting, what can you do? Have a nice big dose of reality, people
And what, pray tell, Romney has done to win this libertarian’s vote? Passed Romneycare? Or maybe assault weapons ban? Or maybe he promised – loud and clear – to abolish EVERY executive order of the last 4 years? Nah, not a dime worth of difference between the two.
What grown-up needs to receive jelly beans from a presidential candidate before he’ll get up off his butt and vote to defeat dude destroying his country?
Your thinking is selfish, arrogant, immature and irrational. A pox on you and all the other self-righteous primadonas who refused to lift a finger to defeat Obama — because, oh noes, Romney didn’t make them feweel all warm-n-fuzzi and, oh, snap, someone in the GOP forgot to get them “fired up” enough to SAVE THEIR FREAKING COUNTRY.
Again, what grown-up needs someone else to motivate them to do what little they can do to save their country from this debacle — and then what losers, who call themselves conservatives, sit around BLAMING SOMEONE ELSE for how they failed, utterly, to use their vote in a responsible way. At least take personal responsibility for the fact that YOU and YOU ALONE decided to be a jerk and quit on the country instead of trying to help. No one else is responsible for your irresponsibility toward your country or your malfeasance toward the people who were trying, desperately, to win this thing for our children’s sake, if nothing else.
Sorry, even AMERICAN IDOL voters understand that if they don’t want “A” to win, they MUST vote for “B.” Anyone who failed to use what was available to them to do to try to defeat Obama — that is, vote for Romney — is morally culpable by omission for every single thing this administration does. Period.
And don’t give me some crap about a third party candidate. At the presidential level, the play-offs are over. That’s as ludicrous as going to a Super Bowl between the Giants and the Patriots and cheering for and betting on the Lions. You’re a total waste and people who refused to help defeat Obama deserve to be as loathed and despised as the parasites on the other side.
Oh, lemme get it straight. I exercised my right to vote, and you call me selfish and what not? Tell me, what makes you think that YOUR wing of the Glorious United Demopublcan Party is entitled to my vote? What makes you think that I wanted a candidate A vs. a candidate B? How about neither of the two? How about GOPnics nominate a candidate dedicated to fiscal discipline and individual liberty, for a change? No? Then they won’t get my vote. How do I know? Try Matthew 7:16.
At least, I voted my conscience. Have you?
And just FYI, “voting to defeat the other dude” is what got you (yes – YOU. I always voted my principles) into this mess in the first place.
The comment above is a wake-up call. It’s time for those who like to “vote their principles” to start wielding this fact as a weapon. The famous abolitionist Lydia Marie Child realized that abolitionists were much more effective working this way, a a voting bloc to be courted by *both* parties, rather than as their own party. When the divide is as even as it is in many swing states, such a third-side voting bloc can wield a remarkable amount of influence.
The point is simple: the friends of liberty should flatly inform the GOP *and* the Democrats* that if they want their votes, pay for them — by addressing their issues. The comment above has confessed for all to see that libertarian votes matter — if they didn’t, there’s nothing to motivate that diatribe!
Then I suppose you are happy with what you got?
Great job they did, making people feel superior for sitting home and not voting. Way to play their game!
Sure, a little scarey when you think about what we have to look forward to, but I guess you feel really good about yourself. So superior to the rest of us. Yep. They knew what strings to pull, didn’t they?
Pretty much as unhappy as I would have been if Romney were elected – ain’t not a dime worth of difference between the two.
I voted for Johnson, in case you wonder. But, at least I voted my conscience, did you? Or did you vote for the lesser evil AGAIN?
I am not sure the conservatives stayed home. Plenty of them voted where I was.
Here in the Peoples Republic of California there were only a smattering of Obama stickers on the freeways when I went to work that Tuesday. And thats not typical of the overbearing pricks as ‘your kidding yourself’ amply demonstrates.
I am not sure at all about what happened. And that doubt does not feel good.
Nah, even Peikoff from Ayn Rand Institute was advocating voting for Romney -just because that’s more checks to the excess of power now held by the Dems. So, I don’t think “conservatives” didn’t vote and just stayed at home.
Stop blaming each other and open your eyes and see the real reason, IMO, which is fraud.
I merely respond to what people on this very site have said about why they did not vote. They seem to have some feeling of superiority because they stayed home and did not tarnish themselves by voting for someone who didn’t meet every expectation. Somehow, it never occurs to them that they took the bait. If you can’t persuade voters to vote for your guy, persuade them that the principled response is to stay at home.
What is now being built is not what my ancestors sacrificed their lives to defend. I am angry. I am furious that everything the generations have worked so hard to build is being swept away by smartly packaged selfishness and envy. I am angry because I know where this path takes us. Worse, I suspect that democracy is already dead. We are now smelling the stench of decomposition.
Fraud? Certainly, but few care about that in a post-democratic society. I have a sickening feeling that few realize how far along this path of decay we have already come. And that is how decline happens. No explosions and societal upheavals. The carcass rots. The vultures feed. People adjust and learn to view this way of life as normal. After all, history is easily rewritten to prove this is progress.
Obamacare or the ACA has already been repealed in the House of Representatives as soon as they took office the problem is with a bicameral Congress the bill was never introduced by Harry Reid (a Democrat) in the senate and the thing is still dead, we need to throw out the democrats in the senate to get rid of Obamacare or the ACA!
Steve:
Good news. Who’s to say a future President can’t deem a full time worker(for purposes of ObamaCare) as someone who works 168 hours a week? After all, 168 hours is full time according to the clock. That way, only some big law firms would have full time workers. The Democrats will not control the White House forever.
You know I just had to hold back some serious vulgarities directed at you. You know what pal. You are exactly the reason conservatives will not win again. Why do you think people of color don’t vote their interest. Just as you do. Stop being such a self righteous jerk! Maybe actually listen an learn why people vote for democrats. I don’t get my 150,000.00 from the Govt every year either.
People vote for democrats because they do not understand economics, nor history, nor personal responsibility. People vote for democrats because they are overwhelmed by envy of others who have worked hard for years to earn what they have, and the democrat is jealous that someone else has more than they do. Democrat voters are so addle-brained that they think life is like an episode of “Friends” once you graduate from high-school…where no one actually works but always magically has plenty of money to do whatever they want in life. People vote for democrats because they do not have the personal integrity to stand up and say, “The Emperor has no clothes!” People vote for democrats because they are too stupid to see they are forging their own chains of slavery on the leftist political plantation. Leftist women vote for democrats because they think everyone else should be required to pay for their birth control and abortions because such women are too irresponsible to handle the consequences of their own decisions in life. Union thugs vote for democrats because their corrupt union bosses tell them to do so…so the union bosses can get larger kickbacks from democrat politicians. Gramscian academics vote for democrats because these pseudointellectuals believe they are, as the self-annointed elite, the only ones smart enough to help humanity by designing the ‘proper’ collectivist utopia.
The leftists have ruined everything they have touched. The fact that they can’t allow anyone else to choose freely how to live, instead of forcing us to live by their absurd rules, is all the testament you need as to the glaring ultimate inferiority of the left. That is what moral bankruptcy gets you everytime.
I could not have said it better myself.
What amazes me still is the complete lack of knowledge coupled with arrogance and an easy self assurance. I think it is because they all talk to one another and read the same newspapers and reinforce their mistaken beliefs. No self doubt. No integrity.
And, about those minority voters. Yea, they cut their throats but, like who really cares anymore. They are beyond help.
Here’s a clue. Stop depending on major media.
Statism. See the other nations with national health. Most doctors are employed directly by the government or are under a contract with the government. After Obamacare really gets going, nearly all doctors in the US will be just like doctors in the UK – merely State Employees. The path may be a bit different. What’s happening here are the largest of the medical establishments, the Regional treatment centers, are just buying all the private groups and converting the private group doctors to staff paid MDs.
Then we’ll get another huge wave of “South Asians” – aka Muslim doctors from Pakistan although you might get lucky and see one from India. I’d prefer the Indians given the aid and support Muslims away from home provide to their friendly jihadist and related groups. Actually, a perfect outcome for Obama – provide even more foreign aid by paying their doctors.
Soo… if I don’t wear my seatbelt, do I get reported to the Staasi? Oops… I meant DHS…or did I get it right the first time?
Well, when I get my FOG (Free Obama Giblets), I won’t need medical doctors.
Just wait until doctors are prevented from prescribing expensive medicines for diseases like cancer because they cost too much and the government doesn’t want to pay for them. Think it can’t happen? It’s already happening in England, where men die at a higher rate of prostate cancer than here in the United States. Why? Because doctors here in the United States treat prostate cancer much more aggressively than in England. But in England, they don’t have the money or the resources to deal with this, so they basically let people die. THAT is what is coming our way here in the United States under socialized medicine. It will all come down to dollars and cents. With the goverment now paying the bill, IT will determine what treatment you get, how much of it you get, when you get it, and at what age you won’t be qualified for it anymore because you’re just not worth the risk.
I just hope all you people out there who voted for Obama one day are on the receiving end of all this. Like the doctor in this story said, the same people who always ask for free samples are going to be really upset when they find out that they can’t be treated for breast cancer because the treatment is just too expensive. Try telling that to your family. You were allowed to die because you weren’t worth the “investment” in government funds. Meanwhile, that same government will pay for a road it doesn’t need or a bridge it doesn’t want, simply because it is in the district of a powerful Democratic Congressman. Really stinks to be you at that point, right? You should have thought about that before you voted for Obama and his minions. Shame on all of you for destroying the best health care system in the world.
The best healthcare system in the world will now spring up along the border in Mexico for cash paying US citizens, at a fraction of the cost of what the “free” US health care system costs.
Or the Caymen Isle, or maybe Cuba, or maybe Medical Cruise ships…. gonna’ be a lot of Naval vessels to be had for scrap prices soon. Or perhaps , like I noted on another thread, Indian land… right next to their Casinos.
No reason it should be a cash only business either. BCBS of Cayman … Aetna Cruise and Health Ins, Seven Tribes Health…. Point being it could work quite well with cheaper insurance costs even with transportation included as such insurance would not have the costs shifting of mediscam, perverts getting free sex changes or turd worlders using the emergency rooms. Everybody would be paying their own freight.
I’d vote for putting them on Indian land. Tribal lands are autonomous, not under the feds’ thumb (relatively), and entrepreneurial. And nearby. This may make them more money than the casinos.
I read the Daily Mail and the healthcare stories are a nightmare. Women refused simple (actually lowcost) cancer treatments are dying of breat cancer at an alarming rate. Children dying because doctors disbelieve mothers who bring them in alarmed at something they see (called hysterical by their doctors).
And the most nightmarish of them all? Pathway Care. Pathway Care is what they call thier deathpanels. When an elderly patients is determined to be put on Pathway Care, the families are not notified and they literally stave/dehydrate the patient to death. They absolutely refuse the patient food and water. Family members BEG for water to give to their loved one and the nurses refuse them the water. It is only after the patient dies that they find out they were put on “Pathway Care,”
The actual name is Liverpool Care Path. One doctor can decide you are terminal and effectively sign your death warrant whether your condition is actually terminal or not.
Well, something must be done about the the Greatest Generation that just won’t die! Of course, it’s a solution for the bloated Boomer Generation too, and they demanded it.
Excuse me, I am part of the boomer generation and I did NOT demand this horrible health care bill. I was totally against it. It was passed over the objections of the majority of Americans. After the bill with its death panels kills off the greatest generation and the “bloated boomer generation” – guess what? Then they are coming for you.
Robert you’re a lowlife. Have fun trying to vote in your messiah for a third time.
Apparently, standard treatment for appendicitis in the U.K. is to shoot you full of antibiotics and send you home. They’ll do surgery only if it ruptures.
No, the standard treatment for appendicitis in England is surgery.
After they let you die, they’ll take a good bite out of your estate with the death tax.
Yep, look up “complete lives system”, co-written by Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm’s brother and adviser to Obama on obamacare. One thing that stood out was that when funds are tight (and we’re basically broke), healthcare goes first to those between 14-45 — the younger being too far away from being productive (I guess that means taxpaying), and 45 being too close to the end of their productive years (I guess that means retirement). Lovely, isn’t it.
Wait until they have to ask if there are firearms in the home. I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what wonderful, new, fresh hell Obamacare will shower on our lives. On top of all the other fabulous Leftist plans they have in store for us.
Too late ! They already ask that on the questionaire that patients fill out at my hospital
Nobody says you have to tell the truth. Or even comply with the request for an answer. Yet.
They already do.
I replied that it is none of their business, and got the:
“We just have to ask this question”
…and I answer that I just have to respond that it’s none of their business and they are wasting both of our time by insisting on a yes or no answer.
If they keep asking, I ask them if they would like a malpractice suit, since I am at the doctor for a medical issue, not to be interrogated about my private property, and a jury would likely see things my way.
That usually shuts them up.
If a patient complains about the paperwork I usually tell them that I agree. The questions are idiotic. I tell them it’s Obamas fault and if they don’t like it they should take it up with him.
I cancelled my membership in the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000 because they were pushing the “ask your patients if there are guns in the home” nonsense. It is sad, but most of the national medical organizations are controlled by leftwing believers. I still have to give money to them periodicallyt to maintain my specialty board certification, but i refuse to become a full paying member because of their leftist positions and proselytizing.
Whoever made the comment above was aboslutely correct. It is going to get MUCH worse. Getting the right medications, authorization for certain procedures, all of it is going to get much harder. The people who will kvetch about it the most will be the idiots who voted to re-elect Obama. I have already decided I will tell patients each and every time Obamacare is responsible for anything in their care that is denied.
BRAVO
I am at the doctor for a medical issue, not to be interrogated about my private property
The technical term for it is “boundary violation”, and its a serious breach of medical ethics, no matter what the professional organizations pushing it say.
Although I’m pretty sure it’s not part of Obamacare; it was said that Harry Reid inserted language into the bill to prevent this sort of thing (not that that will be enforced), and it’s definitely not required by the “free” visit that the doctor who wrote this article is talking about.
I remember gettign that question long ago. I think they should ask it, and if you say “no”, counsel you on why you should get a firearm to protect your family.
How many people refuse to go to the dentist because they don’t want to be lectured? Now how many will refuse to go to the doctor? Although maybe that’s the idea.
Surely the director and founder of Beverly Hills most prestigious Rodeo Drive Women’s health center sees the potential opportunity.
So she is here for a physical but tells you she is having pelvic pain. “OK Ms. Kardashian we will go ahead and work up your pelvic pain today. Once we have that under control we can reschedule you for that free physical”. Now you can bill twice.
This game of billing and diagnosis codes is hardly new, nor is the move to physicians becoming employees. What is happening now is more like fascism than socialism. Government, big medical providers and insurance companies are becoming less distinguishable. As a result the rules of practice are more subject to political whim. The example of mandated subjects such as seat belt wearing as part of the physical is a great example.
I just learned of another one relating to Radiology. Let us say you need a CT scan of your chest, head, and spine on the same day. Someone in the government under the new rules has decided that for some reason it is better to have the same radiologist read all three exams. If one reads the chest and the other the spine they will reduce the payment by 25%.
So Dr. X. reads the chest and opens up the spine. He sees that the pathology there looks very complicated and wants to give the spine to his collegue Dr. Z who is more expert in Neuroradiology. Not going to happen, and if it does their employer, MegaCareGroup will show them the door. I dont know how this rule is supposed to improve patient care or save money but that is what happens when politics gets involved.
I think it’s fascism rather than socialism, too. I’ve been using the term “soft fascism” for a while to refer to the way the government, big corporations, and academia have conspired to make Constitutional government ineffective. And it is the breakdown of Constitutional government that has given us Obamacare.
Segmentation and codes may satisfy the bureaucrats’ tidy little wet dreams (I’m sure Hitler would have loved them), but have little to do with sane and reasonable care.
(speaking of Adolph, complete control over medicine/medical care was a big component of National Socialism)
What a complete mess, to let the micro-managers even farther into the art of medicine than they had been already.
Those non-medical questions a doctor is required to ask amount to…”Are you being good little boys and girls ? Good little wards of the state ? Behaving yourselves?”
The more Kathleen Sebelius and Michelle Obama yak about Obese America, the more fat people there are.
Funny, but I don’t see anywhere a way that they can compel you to answer invasive non medical questions truthfully. Of course I always use my seatbelt, that’s the law. Firearms? What are those? Never heard of them. I predict their massive database on patients will be so unreliable as to quickly become worthless.
As for those death panels, the Brits may have lost all sense of justice, but try that here and grieving relatives of the departed will find out where the members of those panels live and help them shuffle off their mortal coils quite efficiently.
Yes and No are not the only responses. “None of your business” would be a recordable response too.
“None of you business” would mark you as a subversive. Uncle Lar is correct – you must lie. It is a moral imperitive!
Pretty sure obama “The Retard” and his fascist kind already have me marked as a subversive.
Please don’t call Obama a retard. My sister has Down’s Syndrome, and, given her enormous loathing for our joke of a commander-in-chief, would be mortified to hear anyone compare him to her or anyone like her.
If a government is illegitimate [elected by fraud, refusing to follow the Constitution, etc.],the moral imperative is to lie to them at every opportunity. As is the duty to avoid paying any taxes that you can. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Subotai Bahadur
Break the law by lying and you open the door for time in prison. Look at the poor anti-Islamic filmmaker. There are enough laws to put everyone in jail who needs to be in jail.
So are doctors going to be reading us our Miranda rights? Are we going to be sworn in before we enter the exam room? Are our interviews with our doctors going to be recorded?
I would like to read the notice posted in your office, can you provide a link to read it?
I heard on the news last night that implementation of Obamacare is running into a boatload of organizational snags, setting up the required insurance exchanges and the like, all kinds of stuff that is supposed be up and running when 2013 kicks in.
That the bureaucrats have really created a mess for themselves since the proposed organizational changes weren’t considered much in the writing of the thing since that wasn’t the point of the legislation in the first place.
No one in Barack’s government needed to read the thing (as Nancy Pee-losi said, “We’ve gotta pass it to find out what’s in it”) as it wasn’t really about improving medical care or even delivering it to the 20, 30 or 40 million (depending on who was spouting the numbers) “uninsured”, but it was all about extending the long arm of government control.
Driven by ideas like QALY, quality adjusted life years, where your physician has to call up some bureaucrat to get approval for a procedure, approved or not as a function of your age.
Joe Blow, Washington DC, sitting on the “death panel” gets to imperialistically determine whether or not you’re “worth it”.
Our only hope of starving this beast is at the state level. Email and call your governor. In Ohio our governor has already rejected setting up the exchanges. In the 2010 elections , Ohio voters resoundingly rejected the implementation of Obamacare in our state by a 60% margin. Enough phone calls and emails convinced the governor that his job was to carry out the will of the people. If enough states follow suit then Obamacare will collapse upon itself. It is entirely unworkable and the final nail in our economic coffin.
Virginia has not decided on the matter yet; but apparently, the Governor can’t even get answers to his questions. I think the fact that if the state sets it up its basically a state exchange in name only is making the decision for many.
I know this is a conservative site. You guys gotta think all the southern states(except Florida) not expanding medicaid is a bad idea. These States are refusing to accept 95% of the cost implementing Health care. The law is happening in 44 states. The deficit/cost issue is irrelevant at this point. These states are simply playing politics with their citizens as the pawns. Bad politics. Just to be disagreeable with the President. Although it will save Americans money overall over the old system over the next 20 years and lives. The cost of healthcare had skyrocketed before the talk of reform even began. There are numerous articles ever since the 80′s. And there are dozens since 2000. When healthcare began to jump in cost most recently… “That is just really trivial an childish.”.. Seriously folks there are real issues we as humans could be solving or working on.. We need to come to a consensus on advancing our species period. I guess that’s a little new age but its simply true. An its all our faults when we get caught with our pants down.
What a load of hogwash. The “old” system you refer too is the one that people came too for treatment. Canadians anyone? Their government health system lacked the resources to treat, in a timely manner. Just like every “obamacare” government system.
And yes, it is wonderful that our Republican Governors are turning down a budget busting welfare trap. Instead, I hope we buy the parasites/illegals a bus ticket to your enlightened state.
Seems fair, we are taking your employers… you should get something from us.
More an more Americans have been going overseas for healthcare. Before Obamacare.
For lower costs, not better care. Part of that higher costs is the cost shifting of pre-obamacare(government care) medicare unto the private sector. Part is the higher compensation for a American Doctor over that of one in India. Seldom, if ever, was it better care.
All your “enlightened” statism will ensure, is equal care for all…. and it will be equally poor care, rationed and costly. Your “Utopia” of the “Good of Humankind” quickly becomes despotic under the rule of men.
No, all your vision has ever produced is a Dis-utopia of equal despair for all but the few who are “More Equal” than others. The bureaucrats and politicians set over our lives. Or the Dictatoriate as I refer to them. Those “equals” will see that they are first in line, first served, all the best… for the rest you marxist have only brought misery and death… death by the hundreds of millions this last century alone.
Complete and utter jibber jabber. The statement written above is less coherent than Lindsay Lohan on a binge.
Now that I have stated the obvious it is time to make people aware that in a good number of states in the U.S. it is possible and preferable to be a cash customer with your physician.
By all means acquire a catastrophic policy with a $5,000 deductible but leave the annual and quick and dirty stuff to cash on delivery.
The government may not allow cash medicine if the movement starts growing. In Massachusetts, there is already proposed legislation to require participation in the health plan as a condition of getting a license. The next step would be a black market.
Obamacare already mandates that you cannot just get a catastrophic policy. Everyone but members of Congress, exempted members of the Executive Branch, and favored political supporters of the Left [unions, contributors, etc.] are required [that's the mandate part] to have Obamacare. Cash purchases are not yet illegal. But when access to treatments and drugs are only available through government panels on a case by case basis, that will not last for long. And travel overseas for treatment is not available for most people and easily restricted.
Subotai Bahadur
All those exceptions to Obamacare provisions — some written into the law (Congress & etc.) and some written by Health and Human Services bureaucrats (unions & etc.) — sound to ma like MAJOR violations of the principle of equal protection of the law. If the court system hadn’t already been so debased, I’m sure that alone would already have gotten the so-called “Affordable Care Act” declared invalid.
It also bugs me to hear Obamacare referred to as a health care act. It’s not. It’s purely about administration, including insurance. It does nothing about actual medical care — as in doctors, nurses, clinics, hospitals, and the like.
Hard to tell what your point is.
“Just to be disagreeable with the President.”
Frankly, I think it’s a good idea to resist a dedicated socialist, an insecure tyrant like Obama. He lied about his mother’s lack of insurance, he assembled a bunch of lying sycophants in white coats to sell his crap, he advised a woman that her aging mother should perhaps take a pain pill for her arrhythmia.
And so on.
For the record, medical care has shot craps directly proportional to government interference, all the uses and abuses that have sprung up along the medical food chain in order to fulfill (or appear to fulfill) this or that government mandate or requirement.
You’re not familiar with the complaint of medical personnel that they’ve been forced to become all about paperwork, paper trails, ass covering ?
Medical insurance used to be thought of and accepted to be only for “catastrophic” purposes, not for your average ingrown toenail or wart.
So they opinions of Docs who support are “sycophants” an those who oppose are credible. ok then.
The white coats (provided by the white house) in the Rose Garden were, purportedly, members of the AMA, American Medical Assn.
Only about 17% of medical doctors even belong to the AMA anymore.
I’d call those particular individuals something worse than sycophants, individuals who had some kind of personal vested interest in promoting Obamacare.
I don’t think self-respecting medical personnel would have participated.
When you hear about AARP supporting Obamacare, it’s not because they’re nice guys but because they see themselves as positioned to hugely profit under it.
A number of those people in white coats in the White House ceremony were NOT doctors. I researched the doctors I could identify and they were young women just out of training who were employees of a hospital.
Medical students have been turning away from the Obamacare plan after being very pro-single payer five years ago. They are starting to see the future.
One reason why many of these provisions were not discussed before the election is that they are regulations not part of the legislation. Those regulations are still being written.
Mike K…
Kathleen Sebelius and her army of minions have been burning the midnight oil writing volumes of regulations for a couple of years now, “interpreting” the convoluted and near incomprehensible verbiage in the 2000+ page bill.
Criminals, one and all.
Hmmmmm…..your grammar and spelling pattern are suspiciously similar to “your kidding yourself”
Only a complete economic illiterate would believe you could cover a lot more people, provide a lot more services, add several layers of Federal bureaucracy, and have health care cost less.
“Only a complete economic illiterate….” i.e. only a democrat….
That would be my wife, my, dad, and my mom.
Proudly ignorant fools the lot of them.
To i’m just sayin – seriously? No way is obamacare going to cost less and save money and lives. My medicare already costs more and covers less, and the really bad stuff doesn’t even happen until 2014. My supplemental insurance plan has stopped covering medicare, so I have to find a new one, and it’s even more expensive than the old one. I don’t know what planet you live on, but if you are going to stay here, you need to open your eyes and face reality! The president you want us to support has no love for this country or any of us, so he does not get my support. Congress, who does not participate in this abomination of healthcare, also does not get my support, and anything I can do to hinder their efforts to collect non-medical information from me, I will!
Donna.. Do know the cost of private insurance? Medicare is far better than the HMO’s provided through most employers. And to purchase insurance if your self employed is simply unaffordable..
Why should the states pay for it when they have absolutely no say in it? That 90% carrot dwindles quickly leaving the taxpayers with a huge bill that they have no say in.
As a physician, I must tell you that your perceptions are completely wrong. Medical care costs began to skyrocket in the US as a function of government overregulation, the onset of Medicare/Medicaid and the “legal lottery” of malpractice. Wherever Medicare/Medicaid set artificial prices, with employment providing insurance so patients have no idea what medical care actually costs, THAT is what causes the skyrocketing cost of care. Single payer (socialist/government) insurance will do nothing but further destroy health care quality in this country. Look at the cost of lasik eye surgery over the course of the last 10-15 years. This procedure is NOT covered by health insurance, so people have to pay out of pocket. Guess what that leads to…innovation and competition…which LOWERS cost and IMPROVES quality. We need only do the same thing with the rest of medical care, and allow people to purchase catastrophic insurance for the things they personally CHOOSE to get covered, and get the government out of regulating health care, other than the actual licensing of doctors and nurses.
Like all new age leftist claptrap, socialist health care is a foul puddled frozen block of evil nastiness wrapped up in glossy paper…advertised as the best thing EVAH…so you buy it BEFORE it has a chance to melt so all the stinky, sticky liquid filth drips down and ruins your life.
You’re either a sock-puppet or leftist idiots are too stupid to know that the word they need to be using is “and” not “an”, you morons. 7 year olds know this.
Yes, indeed, you are just sayin. Spouting off without engaging your brain. thanks for your stiupid comments, reminding the rest of us what fools liberals are.
Just keep talking. Show us your foolishness. Not that it isn’t readily apparent already…
All roads to higher medical costs originate with government intervention. Medicare/Medicaid pay under market value for services, forcing healthcare providers to shift those costs to those with private insurance. Employers are forced into one-size-fits-all HMO plans. EMTALA forces hospitals to treat patients regardless of ability to pay, and shift costs to those who do. Private citizens are not allowed to buy insurance plans across state lines, limiting their options.
The medical industry needs free markets, not more regulation. I’m going out on a limb and seeing an explosion of the concierge model in private practice, where doctors charge a yearly fee for a higher level of service and allows them to spend more time with a smaller patient base.
Being in the military (but not a military doctor), I can pretty much tell you that this is how military healthcare works. We’re asked a horde of intrusive questions–I don’t recall the seat belt one coming up, but I’ll have to look for it next time–and my understanding is we only get one visit per ailment.
I’m astonished that in the debates over government healthcare, nobody has asked the military how it’s working out for them. Or maybe I shouldn’t be astonished–few military members will give you positive remarks on our system.
Agree 100%, 50 questions all basically asking “are you suicidal?”, before they even get to why you’re seeing the doctor. The military health care system works only because it’s a small population that it’s serving. Pretty much homogeneous too, and I don’t mean racially. The military culture, at least what I’ve seen, is mission before anything else. Yes, there are slackers and sick call commandos, but take a look at wounded warriors who shrug off their wounds and just want to get back into the fight.
There are people who, sadly, fall through the cracks. But to expand that to 300 million plus? It isn’t going to work, it will collapse under it’s own bureaucracy if the cost doesn’t kill it first.
Military Health Care:
Members of the Military are young, healthy, generally not obese and exercise regularly. No debilitating conditions. Very healthy population.
Of course their health care for peacetime will be less expensive than the “average” civilian.
My favorite improvement in military medicine over the past 25 years is that instead of having to hit “redial” repeatedly in order to get a “same day” appointment before they ran out of appointments for the day, is that you just have to call once and then you get put on hold for an hour while the one appointment-maker gets through the queue. Of course, you’re still just as likely to get the dreaded “I’m sorry, we’re all out of appointments for the day. Please try again beginning at 0700 tomorrow”.
Hope you b!+^&$ are in good shape, because your medical care is going away.
I went to my new doctor this week, my last one having quit medicine a month ago along with his practice partner. My new doc spent an absurd amount of time with me, all of it trying to input answers to questions in the Obama database. I lied. Repeatedly. Yesterday I went to my eye doctor. Same thing. Lots of personal questions, lots of lies. I have determined to overload this lying bunch of traitors with lies. I’ll never tell the government the truth again, ever.
One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs. — James Scott, quoted by the Instapundit this morning
Yeah thats how you fix them. lie about your medical history. So comical… To bad your serious.
All I know is somewhere in the obamacare database abyss exist a one Tutti Frutti at 157 Riverside Ave.
I know this as fact, because I created him when I went to urgent care with a sore throat. Next time I will create Cheshire Cat.
If you marxist/acorn nuts can create imaginary voters… well fair is fair.
Fantom, be careful with that. If you come for anything where you are looking for pain meds, be aware that it is a felony to lie about who you are in furtherance of acquiring narcotics. Of course, even at the times where you aren’t going to jail for lying, your long-term care is adversely affected if your healthcare provider can’t accurately track your previous treatments. That’s the price you have to pay for your privacy; it’s your call if it’s worth it, I reckon.
Are you even slightly aware of your elementary level of ineptitude with the English language? Do you wonder why other commenters are mocking you?
I’m sure the author is correct on the pernicious details of Obamacare.
But to me, the details are less important than the overview: Obama collectivized medical care just as thoroughly as Stalin collectivized Soviet agriculture, and for many of the same reasons. Stalin hated to see private owners of land producing goods for their own private use and profit. And Obama also hates private enterprise, private profit, and private doctors — especially rich white doctors.
Result, collectivization (i.e. nationalization). Collectivization fouled up Soviet food production, and Obamacare will foul up medical care in this country. Prepare for medical care FUBAR more than anything has been FUBAR before.
Obama is a malicious, pernicious little left-wing agitator and mediocrity. We have yet to see the full extent of the designs this tinhorn Mussolini for morons has on the country.
.
You don’t build anything without the government…”You didn’t build that”
Increased taxes on “the rich” have a history of negatively impacting revenues, any money taken in will make barely a dent in the federal deficit, but we have to do it anyway in the name of “fairness”.
Obama, an individual who has never accomplished anything on his own, has nothing but contempt for those who have.
And yes, national “healthcare” was conceived in the spirit of collectivization.
The really telling thing about his “you didn’t build that” rant was how it was squarely aimed at “Main Street”, e.g. every small business in America, which of course includes the private medical practice.
Which is becoming an endangered species. I’ve now gone though 3 doctors and/or practices that have switched to an salaried ER shift or gone out of business. One of my doctors shut down his private practice and is now “working for the man” and my new GP is also in that category. Which means they answer as much to their bosses as me.
There is always free cheese in a mouse trap!!
It might seem to be free but that cheese in a mouse trap is fake with a scent of cheese and kinda looks like cheese but is really plastic to catch more mice, kinda like Obamacare caught many of those that voted to put him back in not knowing they were the next mouse to get trapped in Obamacare…Ha ha ha I will laugh at them for the next four years, this country got along very well without a black president and will continue to do so, at least he will now be an example of a bad experiment in our history, never again elect a black Marxist and expect good for your country!
You can lie when you are asked stupid questions such as “do you wear seat belts” but for how long will this last before they make it a crime to answer them untruthfully? Read the statement on your income tax forms above where you sign it. Its often illegal to lie when it comes to filling out government forms. I suspect they’ll get around to extending that to the required medical questions as well. Its just a matter of time.
See “Stewart, Martha”
I second the recommendation that you not lie to the government.
My least favorite question (being Catholic with a wagonload of kids) is when the military doc says “I’m supposed to ask you about birth control now”. I usually scrunch up my nose, waggle my hand and say “Meh, there’s the stuff that doesn’t work, and there’s the stuff that’s bad for you”. Then the doc gets embarrassed because he knows very well I’m right. I suggest similar non-answers. When he asks you about seat belts, admit to doing 57 in a 55. Admit that you tore the tag off your mattress, you turned right on red after stopping. Or, just start talking about your symptoms, because all that nosy bureaucrat stuff eats into valuable doctor time. Or plead the Fifth.
You mean the things that work %99.7 of the time and are perfectly harmless? Yeah, that stuff.
That’s Natural Family Planning, and you know right well that that isn’t what the government means by “birth control.”
You think the Pill is “perfectly harmless”? The IUD? Tubal ligation? I looked into the side effects of all the effective stuff when I didn’t like my body’s reaction to the Pill. I don’t think the increased risk of stroke and breast cancer qualify as “perfectly harmless”, nor the other side effects, so we decided to use stuff that doesn’t work. (BTW, one of the BIG reasons NFP “doesn’t work” is that couples tend to stop thinking of children as diseases to avoid, rather, they’re a natural, wonderful result of us expressing our love. Also, we’re too young to be able to expect Social Security so they’re a part of our retirement plan lol).
You could also say, “I don’t believe in using birth control. God said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ and I’m not going to contradict Him.”
I believe that Obamacare was intentionally designed to fail.
They believed that after it failed the populace would rise
up and demand a “single payer” system. They may be right.
Yes, and everything will already be in place to make that transition smoother. Of course this is just one more step toward single payer. At that point the government will have near-unlimited control over every aspect of your life from prenatal to time to go quietly into t he good night.
Absolutely. It would have been quicker (done in one step) if the fascist Democrats had been able to keep the “government option” in the original bill, but that was a little too obvious for even the great unwashed to swallow.
I have noticed recently that the US Task Force on Preventive Care (its name is something like that) is now advocating that HIV testing should be routine for everyone between the ages of 18 and 64. CDC recommends 13 to 64. Their recommendations (under the ACA) have the effect of law; they must be followed. My immediate thought was “Do they think no over 64 has unprotected sex or uses IV drugs or sleeps with hookers? Or are they OK with the over-64′s dying from AIDS earlier since they are, after all, over 64 and have just become parasites on the rest of society?” So far as I know, I don’t think HIV screening is a benefit under Medicare but maybe it is. Average life expectancy for a 64 year old is 19.9 years in this country but it’s a lot shorter if you have untreated AIDS. Average life expectancy for a 75 year old woman is 13 years, but Medicare no longer pays for screening mammograms although breast cancer is the second leading cause of death for women over age 75. Is there a pattern here? Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel (Rahm’s brother) advocates that healthcare resources should be targeted toward productive members of society which pretty much means minimal (palliative) care for those over 70 and under the age of 15. The older or younger you are the more wasteful it is to treat you, because you don’t contribute much to society. He has published these thoughts and it certainly does appear to be the underlying philosophy of the NHS, though the amounts of money they are willing to spend may be more than Dr. Emmanuel would recommend. I think this will become more apparent as we move in to “care paths” and “best practices,” which is medicine based on averaged responses to treatment by thousands of patients (herd medicine.) The problem is, as those of us in healthcare know, there is no such thing as an “average” patient. This scheme will work badly for most of us.
I predict:
Countless TV programs and movies will portray as heroic those that abort babies with genetic disorders or that have a likelihood of becoming a “burden on society.” Also heroic, families that encourage Grandma to accept that her time has come.
If this election cycle has taught me anything it is that a majority of people in our society can be conditioned to accept any message from the media/Government, so long as they can be made to feel smart/superior by making that decision.
Government control will come in the warmest, fuzziest packaging imaginable.
“Government control will come in the warmest, fuzziest packaging imaginable.”
On little cats’ paws.
“The Obama years have pushed the accelerator on what had been a long, inching slide into the progressive abyss. For three-quarters of a century, statism was a Fabian project. It was reminiscent of what Jefferson, explaining his fear of the federal judiciary’s gradual imperialism, described as “working like gravity by night and day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all consolidated into one.”
~Andrew McCarthy, October 2011
Nice summation, especially of Dr. Zeke’s little scheme.
Mama Emanuel gave birth to some real pieces of work.
Pieces of something.
I have been kind of wondering what will happen to AIDS medicines. They’re pretty expensive, and AIDS has been extremely preventable for the past twenty, thirty years (avoid anal and needles and sex with people who don’t avoid anal and needles). I guess we’ll find out whether Obama really is Muslim after all…
obamacare a scam? Who could have seen that coming?
and from the most transparent government ever, to boot.
Shocking.
I wonder what percentage of people their focus groups predicted would stop going to the doctor because of those invasive and RECORDED questions. Now, why on earth would they be keeping reoords about that kind of thing? Fortunately, we can all be oonfident that the information will never be used against people to deny care later in life or anything like that.
I’m not going to defend the Obama-voting morons but it’s infantile to think that had Romney won we wouldn’t be in the same mess. If you recall, we had the Grandfather of ObamaCare running against the Father of ObamaCare in the last election. Sure, Romney yammered about repealing ObamaCare… in the primary, but he said precious little about it in the general election when it could have done some good. The GOP never had any intention of repealing ObamaCare (there’s a lot of good stuff in there!), just like they have no intention of either cutting the deficit or reducing spending. We don’t have two parties, we have the Government Party.
The old punchline used to be “your money or your life”, now it’s “your money and your life”. Congress will never, I type again never, repeal ObamaCare because it’s the single greatest acquisition of power in the history of the country. Look forward to the day when your physical requires an actual Act of Congress. And send those donations in or you won’t get the votes…
As so many of us kept saying with all the success of speaking to a brick wall, we needed the Senate too. We needed numbers that looked like a mandate. But no-o-o-o-! If I can’t have everything my way, I’M staying home.
The situation for quite some time has been this; the Democrats turn the socialist screw down three turns and if we’re lucky, we get to untwist it one or leave it alone.
So the malcontented Libertarians and Uber-Conservatives who claim they did what their conscience bade are just full of cow turds as far as I’m concerned. Was I ecstatic over Romney – no. But he picked Paul Ryan, (a fairly serious reformer), and despite what several people said he DID mention repealing Obamacare after he got the nod.
The Democrats are relentless; they’re always trying to push towards socialism so anything, ANYTHING that can be done to stave that off is preferable to the turn of the screw. Romney would have been better than Obama by just that simple virtue; if you think he would be an Obama carbon copy you are deluding yourself. He was a businessman – hell, in that area alone he was head and shoulders above Teh One.
But the pure libertarians yammered about the military industrial complex and Romneycare (which at least was a STATE effort), and stood on their little soapboxes in their Napoleon uniforms and bragged how they had moral authority, and extolled the godhood of Ron Paul (while ignoring his pork tendencies and Troofer leanings). While the extreme so-cons and libertarians warmed themselves with the Blanket of Moral Authority, we got a bona fide freaking socialist elected to a second term and any HOPE of Obamacare being repealed legislatively went down the tube. Nicely done guys, but hey it’s everyone else’s fault. Let your conscience be your salve when your doctor is out of it.
As for the GOP’s attempts in the House to repeal it, I’m not impressed. Boehner doesn’t even TRY to tack that repeal on to anything and then force the Senate to deal with it. Tack it onto the debt extension, the budget, EVERY BLOODY BILL. It’s just going through the motions otherwise.
I loathe well visits. Everytime we go to the doctors office when we are well we end up sick after being forced to wait an hour in the waiting room. Nothing like a curious toddler making his way around a flu infested room for an hour. For me, I tend not to bother at all with annuals. For the kids, I have no choice, unless I want social services knocking on the door. Other than weight and vaccinations ( which could be accomplished with a quick nurse visit), I would prefer just going to the germ infested hellhole only when the kids are ill and in need of care.
just charge onoze with treson
This is just the beginning. The system will break down as it is unworkable. My family doctor has retired. The doctor shortage and ridiculous paperwork will bring the system down.
As always, government is the problem, not the solution. But moochers are always hoping that someone else will pay for their needs. Look around Europe, where this idea has been in place for decades. The EU is broke and fighting over funds that are not sufficient to “take care” of all the dependents created by years of oppressive govt programs. The EU would have gone broke years ago if the USA didn’t take care of much of their defense needs.
Young people will pay extra under this system to ensure that older peoples’ bills are lower. I’m old, but I don’t want young people paying part of my share. I would take care of myself, but that’s not allowed any more.
The more government fails, the more the dependent class will demand. Watch Europe to see your future, America.
Doctors are bailing out at an alarming rate. Most waiting until after the election to make plans for the post – doctor phase of their lives. Maybe all of us medical people can get a healthy black market health care system going. The next thing that will happen is sub optimal medical providers from the third world will flood our shores to provide the medical care that Americans won’t . Bank on it. The only chance we have is that the Obamacare beast can be starved at the state level
If you thought healthcare was expensive before Obamacare, wait till you see how much it costs now that it’s free!
Re: the question about seat belts. I particularly enjoy lying to my children’s pediatrician each and every time I go, because they always ask whether there are any guns in the house, and my wife and I always tell them no. It’ll be interesting to explain to our kids, once they get old enough, that they shouldn’t tell their doctor that Daddy hunts and Mama packs a .38 in her purse. It’ll be even more interesting when the mandatory survey expands to include all sorts of other bitter-clinger behavior that our lords and masters would prefer we not indulge in.
So they are already asking about that? Interesting but not surprising. I rather suspect there will be vast amounts of lying and non-compliance in this nation’s future. Anyone dumb enough to answer a lot of these questions honestly will be sorry.
They have asked that question at every office visit with each of my children since the oldest was born in 2007.
That explains it then. I don’t have kids have no intention of having any.
I do not think it unreasonable for a pediatrician to ask questions about safety in the house. Accidents are a big cause of mortality in children. The doctor might help draw attention to something where the parents need to take more precaution. Sometimes people overlook something like cleaning fluids.
Guns would be one of those things. If you have a new baby, even now would be the time to secure them more than you needed to when it was just the two of you. Car safety or smoking habits should not be out of bounds. Talking about difficult subjects is part of the job.
Where it gets sticky is when government gets involved. Now a personal relationship gets legal and regulatory.
I hear your concern, but I think my answer on all non-medical questions must be “That is not a medical question.” That can be abbreviated on a form as NAMQ.
If I’m seeing a doctor, it’s for a medical reason. Period.
Excellent reply. I think “not a medical question” is even better than “none of your business.”
If you want to get his dander up (or better yet, as the prelude to firing him), point out that the question is a boundary violation (which is a serious breach of medical ethics). He’ll disagree, of course, but that doesn’t make it so.
I’d be careful about lying, in the long term, if not already or as soon as those regulations are all written, that will be a crime.
Pediatrics is different because you are not the patient. Accidents are the leading cause of death in children over the age of one. How is trauma prevention less medical than measles prevention?
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/4/e958.short
Perfection trumps rights every time.
Once again a lib tries to sell us the,”it’s all about the children” line.
you are absolutely correct. All doctors take a semester in firearms accident prevention. Moreover your doctor will know all about your knowledge of firearms as well as how your firearms are stored by a single glance.
Be sure to ask your doctor about how you should vote too, them being experts and all .
any moron who equates Health Insurance to actual Health Care needs a CAT scan of the brain…(which they will have to wait 6 months or longer to get under Obamacare).
How much will an abortion cost under free ObamaCare? Will there be any kind of a limit on number of abortions performed per bimbo?
Will ObamaCare cover procedures such as breast implants, duck lips, and butt lifts? How about skin bleaching?
Not to mention those addadictomies you can get in San Francisco…
0bamacare is neither about health nor care. It is ultimately about control and the devaluation of human life. The ideas informing the construction of this monstrosity have a history and a pedigree.
Here is the Vulcan mind-meld translation of the core premise of the Left: you have no right to live. By their lights, you are no more than a thing, an animal, or a machine. Therefore, you have no right to the fruits of your labors. You are a ‘resource’ at best, a fungible, and ultimately disposable asset of the State. Or you are in their way and must be eliminated. There’s the last 200 years of leftist philosophy and its practical consequences in a nutshell.
The progressive refusal to acknowledge the value of individual human life over an evanescent conflation of group rights and collectivist ideology is one of the principal reasons why no peace, no accommodation, no compromise can ever be made with them. Theirs is a reckless, willful and fundamentally evil disregard for the most fundamental of all of our rights: and that is the individual’s right to live.
This premise is, has been, and continues to be central to the justification for the wholesale slaughter of millions of human beings – and the enslavement and impoverishment of hundreds of millions more. I have written a modest essay concerning the idea of killers without conscience and the pedigree of their ideas. These ideas are on display in the details of 0bamacare, for example. 0bamacare represents the deliberate and willful devaluation of human life – the reduction of people to mere objects. That is the next step on the way to physician-assisted suicide and, if it is not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.
And worse. Far, far worse. But that’s precisely the intent of the so-called “Obamacare” legislation.
Why else would modernity’s Left seek to ‘move the goalposts’ that define life? And further, to define the value of individual life by its utility? “Utility” – to whom or for what? We have moved from questioning whether any sane human being should be allowed to make such decisions to dithering over who will get to decide. How can such things be done right in front of our very eyes? Slowly. Slowly. Then it simply becomes part of the discussion and before you know it – that discussion has turned into the reality. This is monstrous. And if any of you feel that this is hyperbole or tinfoil hattery, consider the source of such ideas.
Listen to Dr. Peter Singer speaking blithely of extending that ‘right to choose’ to children as old as 28 months! Why? Because Singer argues that at that age, well… they’re not fully conscious and capable of reason! Is this some crackpot who no one takes seriously? Hardly. Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He is lionized and his ideas are almost universally applauded within academia.
Why else would we hear of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel – Rahm Emanuel’s brother – also an ‘advisor’ to 0bama, advocating the assessment of the relative ‘quality of life’ under the aegis of his innocuous-sounding “Complete Lives” program? Emanuel’s guidelines are strictly utilitarian, and are based in part upon the notion of an individual’s ‘value to society’.
Emmanuel cites this entry from the Jan. 31, 2009 edition of the British medical journal Lancet:
Again, this is an argument for the value of human life based upon its social utility and it is not difficult to trace this view of human life back to its origin in late 19th- early-20th century eugenics. Dr. Emanuel claims further that this system will not be subject to corruption – at best, this fantasy assumes that all men are angels and the millennium has arrived. Systems such as this one, once entrenched, are easily co-opted by fiat and placed in the service of those who wish to arrogate the power of life and death to themselves. Dr. Emanuel offers the following as commentary to the Lancet article:
So very humanitarian of them, eh? Some persist in crediting Dr. Emanuel with an unblinking and fearless rationality. It will be smug self-congratulation and high fives all around for high-minded progressives until they face the real and practical application of the utilitarian praxis of what Dr. Emanuel and his ilk advocate. Say, for example, when an unelected and unaccountable government panel – not them or their doctor – decides that their premature newborn infant will receive only painkillers because ‘society’ has nothing ‘invested’ in the baby and the calculus of the cost-benefit trade-off indicates that the care required will cost too much and have too uncertain an outcome. Or, when they discover that the treatment for their particular malady is now ‘off the menu’ because it hasn’t met one of the many new Federally-mandated prerequisites for its use and application. A paperwork detail, to be sure. But too late for them. Imagine the dismay when they find out that the cancer that their Mom or Dad survived in their sixties is no longer being treated because, after all, it doesn’t serve the ‘common good’ to spend limited resources on the elderly – excuse me, elderly units as 0bamacare now deems them – in the last few months of their life, does it? But they’ll doubtless take comfort in the knowledge that those resources will go to “people of worth,” as genocide enthusiast and Obama advisor Audrey Thomason defines them. Won’t they?
So the question now becomes: what sort of society, what sort of existence will we have when –
1. Those goalposts defining the beginning and the end of life at last converge?
2. The decision as to who lives and who dies eventually passes from individuals and to the state – as it most surely will if progressives are allowed to have their way?
The answer is the stuff of your worst nightmares. If that seems a tad, well, extreme to some of you, consider this: there are those who believe that Dr. Emanuel deserves a medal for his fearless and enlightened rationality. Dr. Singer’s prescription for infanticide without guilt are warmly applauded in the halls of academe. Far from being an exercise in ivory-tower utopian fantasy, the ideas advocated by the likes of Peter Singer, the ‘progressive’ concepts of how we should regard human life have been given currency in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a peer reviewed journal for health professionals and researchers in medical ethics. There, a recently published article by two Australian philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesa Minerva, poses the question: “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” Why, indeed? Again, ask yourselves this: how did we get from whether those decisions should be made to who will be making those decisions?
These ideas have consequences: they pave the road to a nightmare world of slaughter and atrocity – and if you don’t think so, then you simply haven’t been paying attention to the history of the last 200 years. Progressives, and more importantly those whom they serve are on the verge of achieving their sick utopian dreams. The nudge, the gradual squeeze – and then the shove into submission, slavery and oblivion. This is the foundation and the prerequisite for the sort of world that Orwell envisioned in his 1984, a world in which neither love, nor mercy, nor hope survive. It is a world where all of your hopes, aspirations and dreams, all of your love of country and family count for naught, for those hopes and aspirations – and you – will be extinguished as if you never had existed. Because you surely must be eliminated if these will-to-power driven monsters are to rule without fear of opposition. One of the chief instruments to achieving their ambitions has and continues to be the substitution of a culture of death for the culture of life that lies at the heart of the values that uphold Western civilization.
Pope John Paul II in his 1995 work, The Gospel of Life made this observation regarding the rise of the culture of death in modern times:
Yuo surely don’t have to be Catholic to understand the truth of what JP II has said. There is only one way that the monsters who seek to impose such a hellish existence on this world can be stopped. Only one way.
Great quote. Unfortunately that is precisely where we are and it is only going to get worse.
This makes me feel sick in the heart. I think I am going to start homeschooling myself to learn medicine so I can treat my family if the day ever comes that the doctor refuses to care for them. I could see this idea being twisted to fit social agendas too. For example, refusing care for a third child or stacked preferences based on race. It would be no surprise who would go to the end of the line. We all know how everybody feels about old white men and considering many people actually believe there was an institutional conspiracy that put white men first, they will cheer a system that intentionally puts them last. Can you hear those hateful whispers in the wind? I hear them everywhere these days. A cold wind is blowing and as far as I can tell there is nowhere to escape from its icy grip.
God, soften their hearts, even if it must be by making them live under the tyranny they would impose on others.
Masterful comment, Ward. Deserves a front-page article of it’s own. I read Killers Without Conscience back when you first posted it on Free Republic in 2010. It made a large impact on me. I highly recommend all PJM readers follow that link and read it. Great to see that you come over here as well.
Wow , that was a great comment , so sad but so true .I have tried to tell people about Ezekial Emanuel’s own writings and I get called a nutjob. Close minded idiots are how we got here and they won’t “get it ” till it’s too late ! Obama and his ilk are enough to make you want to flee the country , but there’s no where to run.Obamacare is one of the tenements of Agenda 21 and it will be global.
I’m just wondering how long it will be before there is criminal type enforcement of these questions and doctor orders? For example: suppose a body can’t tolerate certain medicines the doctor says must be taken. The patient is actually ending up sicker and harmed by the medicine and doesn’t take it. Blood tests show this. Will they be arrested and forcibly medicated or simply denied all access to care until they submit?
all of the “doomsday” scenarios are in play with this obamabringin’da’painpill bill
tyrants of all shapes and sizes are frothing with the possibilities legislation likes this presents
as madame pelosi should have said- “you need to imagine your worst nightmare to fathom what’s in this bill”
More like to work like this: if the patient refuses treatment, for any reason, the government can/will deny further treatment. So, for example, my doc wants me to take osteoporosis drugs. I have tried all the major drugs over the years and they all made me feel TERRIBLE. Then I read that, at best, they decrease risk of a fracture by 1-2%. Not worth it for ME, in my opinion, considering my entire health situation.
However, what if my government said “take the drug or you don’t get treated”? What freedom would I have to make my own health decisions? What if they said this about your child and you felt forced to give the child medication you disagreed with — but you were unwilling to cut the child off from future care?
You see, one of the huge differences with the imposition of Socialism in the US compared to the rest of the world is that here the haters and losers and their corruptocrat pols will be in charge.
I would love to get that list of what obama care does and does not cover; dr weiss would you please post it
That is as yet unknown. The Secretary of HHS gets to decide (in consultation, I believe with a panel of others appointed by the President; it’s been a couple of years since I read the bill) exactly what will be covered and what will not. I believe that there is language that certain recommendations of the US Preventive Services Taskforce have the force of law under Obamacare, but that applies to very specific recommendations. What may happen is a lot of things will be “covered” but the IPAB will make payment so low that they effectively will NOT be available. That way they can show how “concerned” they are for your health, while actually making those modalities unavailable. And very quickly, you will no longer be allowed to buy them with your own money because that wouldn’t be “fair” to people with fewer resources. It like the double speak they used fro raiding Medicare; no benefits were reduced, which is technically true, it’s just there will be no money to pay for them.
with all this talk about who it will effect not one of you said anything about who don’t have to be under obamacare. If you guess them you are right,the President,and all those in office don’t have to because they git all their care free on our dime,no waitting any kind all the time. If it is so good for you why is it they don’t want it for them and their family?
One of my nieces is in remission from cancer. She has to get checkups every three months. Her co-pay used to be around 250 dollars a year for this. Her doctor told her two weeks ago during her last check up that it will now be 1,000 dollars a year. That is how it is helping middle income citizens. I also know a chiropractor who told me he is going out of business and try to find him a job overseas, because he cannot afford to pay for the health insurance for his three employees and himself. They are going to be out of jobs, his patients will have to find someone to replace him with, and who knows where he is going to end up. That is how “GREAT” Obamacare really is!
THE OBAMANATION & OBAMACARE: Don’t trust CHURLiO. Repent & get Rapture Ready!!
ISAIAH 32: (READ THE WHOLE CHAPTER & CHAPTER 33 TO SEE WHAT COMES NEXT)
5 The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
6 For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
7 The instruments also of THE CHURL are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
8 But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.
Screw that. There is always armed resistance.
I despise Obamacare but, I don’t pity you yet;
“First, doctors are not rich”
Most are, except the ones paying off their student loans!
As #5. Harry Dale Huffman said: Where were you before the election?
I know where most of you were during the election….. voting democrat.
Thanks for showing us your envy. I can assure you I am NOT rich. I served in the military for the first 15 years of my medical practice. So take your obnoxious “most doctors are rich unless paying off their students loans” and shove it. I studied hard for 16 years to learn what I do now as a physician, and then worked as a military doctor for 15 more years after that. Military doctors do not get paid like civilian doctors. Now that I am a civilian doctor I am having 40% of my salary taken from me by the federal government, not counting the additional SS taxes and FICA taxes being taken out.
So spare me your class envy. The plumber that comes to my house makes a higher hourly wage than I do. He is a great guy. I don’t begrudge him driving a Lexus while I drive a Toyota.
Define rich.
I have three doctors in the family (two internal medicine doctors and one general surgeon).
While they aren’t at any risk of worrying about where their next meal or house payment will come from, they also aren’t really rich. I don’t think any of them make enough money to even qualify for Obama’s definition of rich.
Several specialists probably are rich-cardiology, neurology etc, but most doctors work long hours for good but not exorbitant pay. They also have to pay employees, rent, other fees and malpractice insurance (many doctor groups will also cover malpractice insurance for nursing staff in their offices).
Doctors are situated well financially, but for the hours they work, they aren’t living a life of leisure for the money they make.
Doctors, when it comes to medical costs, aren’t the enemy. They are often in a situation where their hands are tied when it comes to regulations and billing.
“Define rich.”
Anymore it apparently means “people hated by the pig-ignorant”.
Be sure to tell YOUR physician what a stinking rich pig he is on your next visit. After all if you don’t tell him the truth he will probably go around thinking he is helping people, never realizing that actually he is just exploiting them .
No, doctors are not at all “rich” when you consider the time and effort they have invested to earn their position. Even a surgeon making $400,000 per year is not really “rich”. He spent 20 or so years after college working 80+ hours a week acquiring the skills needed to perform his job. If he had instead gone into say, a profitable trade, or gotten an engineering degree, he could’ve easily been making $80k per year during those years. So before he earns his first paycheck, he’s starting a couple million behind someone with a decent 4 year degree when you include debt. Then factor in that more than half of that $400k disappears into taxes and exorbitant malpractice insurance, and he probably doesn’t even break even with the person who just attended college until he’s in his 50s. Now add in that the 80 hours a week he works takes an enormous toll on his family life, and I would not want to trade places with him. Reduce his incentives by reducing his pay and increasing his taxes, all while keeping the enormous personal costs the same, and you will not find a competent surgeon when you need one because there won’t be any.
When a healthcare law is written that opens with the first paragraph(s) clearly stipulating that:
No elected officials (or any official appointed by elected officials) on any level are exempt from any part of said program nor may any elected official bypass any citizen waiting on a waiting list for medical care nor may any elected official have access to medical personnel or medical equipment that is not available to every citizen of the USA.
That is when I will -consider- that allowing government to mandate the purchase of health insurance as something good for the people.
To make it clearer, a government mandate on the citizenry which includes an exemption for those same elected officials whom mandated it is clearly an act of tyranny. Tom M
If John Roberts had to live under Obamacare, we’d have had a different ruling from the Supreme Court for sure.
Traitor.
John Coward Roberts
Seppuku calls to you
hiding under the covers
What I find most amusing is the notion that Obamacare is a reform that is designed to stop the “free rider” problem. Please–don’t insult my intelligence. The modern day Democratic Party caters to “free riders.” They’ve never seen one they didn’t love. The same people who don’t pay for their health care now aren’t going to be paying for it after this all comes into effect either.
But it is going to do an interesting thing. Many self-employed people are going to find it cheaper to pay the penalty for not having health insurance than they are to have health insurance that covers all the trash and garbage that the minimum benefits mandated by Obamacare require. Whereas they might have opted to have catastrophic health insurance, which doesn’t meet up to Obamacare standards, they will just have to go without insurance because they have to pay the penalty.
It actually may provide quite a revenue source for the government, which governments hate tampering with. Touch not my revenue stream sayeth the government or you will find my fangs in your neck.
Power to the parasites.
That’s the true definition of “social justice.”
Indeed it is a tax in this sense.
And taxes never get repealed. Hardly ever? Never?
Professor at the “David Geffen School of Medicine” … wonder who Geffen voted for and supported with his megabucks? One thing’s for sure: Geffen and Hollywood buddies will be able to escape ObamaCare anytime they want.
You’re right. If they can’t have private clinics in the US for themselves anymore they will build or upgrade ones in Mexico, China, or elsewhere so they can take medivacations, as many rich do already. The rest of us will have to stay here in the pathetic system they demanded be created but will have no practical part of.
“..medivacations..”
Western Europeans are already flying to Eastern Europe to pay cash for care. We call them “medial holidays” and with the looming doctor shortage, it will be a growing business… as long the charter airlines stay in business.
Gay people, such as Geffen and many others in Hollywood, will support it. They’ll now be covered at everyone else’s expense for the real “preexisting condition” that nobody’s daring to mention: HIV.
I’m just learning about these rules.
So one annual check-up a year must be co-pay free? Is that correct?
So people will view this as one co-pay free visit per year to the doctor. They just will ,based on common sense.
Are they actually supposed to reschedule, leave and come back if they bring up some problem they are having?
The annual only covers a spot-check? No questions allowed? This is insane. Why not just tell the patient that they will be billed for a co-pay if they want to pursue a specific problem and go ahead and treat them in the same visit?
Or better yet, have the nurse who schedules the appt clarify the rule before the appt is made, that this one is just for check-up, and if you require additional time from the doctor, a co-pay will be needed?
actually that is whats offered. However, this is no longer billed as an annual exam and is coded differently. The patient will have to pay a co-pay and may be responsible for additional charges such as ultrasound or blood work. Many patients are adamant that they are entitled to a free annual exam regardless of whats discussed or treated.These patients are given a choice.While that is true about free annual exams, this exam pays a lot less, since it is a simple basic exam than what would be involved with say a complaint of severe headaches.Claire,very good observation but does not work so easy with the new rules and regulations.Free has its price.
Try this. If I am refused, rationed or otherwise denied care by Medicare, I plan to tell my child who voted for Obama that she is now responsible for my treatment. She will have to pay for me to go anywhere in the world to get what I need. Otherwise, she is responsible for my death.
Another option is to pay for it myself and deduct the cost from her inheritance.
All Obama voters threw you under the bus even if it is your own child. Act accordingly.
I agree Retro. I have purged all liberals from my life. They are as repugnant to me as the slave owners of old must have been to the Abolitionist. I am fortunate in that all of my family members are all conservative. Sometimes begetting a bad kid (liberal) is just the luck of the draw.
Be glad you are not under a FEHBP under the purview of Obama’s Office of Personnel Management. OPM has been busy writing stupid regulations ever since Obamacare passed, one of which MANDATES parents keep their adult children on their policies until the kid reaches age 26 — even if the kid has his own insurance! Yes, what was sold politically as an OPTION, is now a MANDATE if you are under the thumb of OPM.
Not only that, OPM blithely advises parents that they’ll just have to “work it out with the provider” if their adult child tries to stick them with their copays. So your adult child could have cosmetic surgery, or check herself in to a rehab facility, all without your knowledge or consent, and then try to send you the bill. Think you can’t be responsible for a contract you are not a party to? In Obamaworld, anything can happen.
http://www.lawqa.com/qa/am-i-responsible-for-my-daughter-medical-bills-if-she-on-my-insurance
And if OPM can MANDATE me to insure my adult child against my will, what is stopping them next year from writing a regulation that mandates that I also have to insure his spouse or his child or keep him on my policy until he’s 36? Nothing.
Oh, and just P.S. OPM regulations also caused the copay on one of my drugs to go from $50/month to $660/month with no annual cap. Not a typo. This is a drug I MUST take for life and there is NO substitute. WHO can pay that? Well, that’s the point. As my insurance company implied to me, the point of the reg is to force people out of comprehensive plans and into lower-tier plans that cover less across-the-board. In a lower plan, my copay is now $1200/mo, but there’s a 3-month cap. Wow. And EVERYTHING else in the plan costs more. Oh, and my present plan has had premium increases of more than $2000/year so far. Thanks, Obama and the santimonious white liberals who outsource their “compassion for the poor” to the government to do for them all the while they are RUTHLESS and BRUTAL against those they are demanding pay for their little ego trip.
The regulations to implement this nightmare are yet to be written. All those suggestions concerning travel to far-away lands for treatment… forget that. I am sure some bureaucrat will find a way to tax that out of the realm of possibilities.
What I worry about now is the implementation of regulations (I am sure those will be written by the radicals) based on what is politically correct to treat. After all, the Radical Vagina Voters got their birth control and abortion agenda in place now. Treat prostate/breast cancer? Can’t do that… HIV treatments, not a problem. We do THAT for other countries, giving billions away.
87000 pages of IRS code… it didn’t start that way. 2500 pages of ocraponamerica care? It is a good start for the marxists. In ten years there will be 25000 pages of regulations. Which will only be a start for the marxists.
I know a doctor that recently quit her job working at a major hospital. She moved to NM to learn how to treat people using natural/holistic/nutrition methods. (I guess she will teach people how to best cook sage grass for its nutritional benefits.) She quit because of ocraponamerica care. She has yet to see the regulations written… I seriously doubt her new chosen profession will escape the tightening grip of the new marxists. I asked her why she voted for president disaster. Her simple answer was: Because it is time America had a black man for a president. I suppose she saw some logic to that reasoning, after all she herself is black. Damned thing of it was… she knew president disaster was wrecking the economy. You see, she also dabbled in houses/properties/rentals on the side and really had nothing much good to say about the last 4 years from an economic perspective.
The IRS code evolved to cover/influence/control groups of people. If you make ‘X’ amount you owe ‘Y’ amount. If you have a certain kind of business you can deduct ‘Z’ amount or get a tax credit of ‘Z-prime.’ If you have ‘A’ you can depreciate by amount ‘B’. And so on. Anybody care to guess what the regulations will look like for ocraponamerica care? Personally, I see it evolving to cover individuals and not groups. Groups are covered by the IRS code… big brother is just refining the control matrix with ocraponamerica care.
Uhhh… wait, who do those extra 15k agents work for? You know, the ones that will be hired to implement ocraponamerica care? Imagine that, the entire health care system being administered by the IRS. Yeah, that’s gonna work out real good. Maybe we should hire a few brits as consultants to help us get off on the right track…
We are screwed.
All the EU countries, England and Canada have private hospitals . Some are excellent . Good doctors, those who are not bureaucrats at heart will certainly create such private hospitals here in the USA too . So save your bucks. The big cost will one that cannot be seen . Medical innovation of all kinds, devices (3% tax on GROSS), drugs and procedures will almost cease . What could have been, longer and more productive lives, will not be .
Time for good conservative websites and honest liberal ones (yes I know honest liberal is an oxymoron) to start comparing the healthcare plans Congress voted for itself and what the unions that got waivers have to what we have. Time to let people know what they have compared to what the more equal than others have.
The good thing is that energy medicine, like naet, is now growing fast and eliminates 80% of what doctors do and probably 90% of drugs. Learn it and you will have few uses for the regular medical establishment. As a bonus this saves medicare because of mnay fewer patients. I know a person who, when her grandchildren get sick, the parent called her and says the child is sick. In five minutes she determines what is wrong with the child, fixes it in one minute and the child is better in 20 minutes in most cases. No drugs, no trip to the doctor, no side effects etc. The grandmother can be a mile away or a thousand miles away. It is all about frequency and electrical systems. You just can’t beat it. Anyone can learn to do this but few know it can be done by proxy but those with an electronic background will understand how it all works.
As a bonus it is fun to do.
Great….as was expected, we will now see increasing “witch doctor” type nonsense crop back up again as desperate people who cannot get real scientific medicine turn to charlatans and magical cures. As if there wasn’t enough reason to lament the coming of the Second Dark Ages….
If we’re lucky, the slide will stop at the Dark Ages.
That is great news!
I have a pain in the neck on my electronic comments thread.
Can you please take care of it so I never have to suffer from it again!
Thanks a bunch.
I am a Hematologist/Oncologist with 27 years combined training (10 yrs after college) and practice (17 yrs). I am in a large group of oncologists and we do chemotherapy in our offices, have several imaging centers and radiotherapy in two locations. Currently we employ 130 people, and pay 100% of their health care insurance premiums, as well as a matching 401k. Each physician sees approx 15 to 25 patients daily in office and 5-10 hospital patients daily. We are a busy and, at the moment, financially secure business.
Here’s the preliminary numbers when we are paid at Medicaid reimbursement, oops I mean Obamacare rates: Half our offices will close, forcing patients to travel to a restricted number of locations. We will not be able to give chemochemotherapy in our offices, as the drug costs and nursing costs will be higher than what we will get paid, so the patients will have to get their chemo in what hospitals will still be giving chemo in an outpatient suite. In our community, just to cover the number of patients that receive chemo services in our offices, the hospitals will need to set aside 60-80 clinic slots each day. Right now there are approx 15 slots between the 7 hospitals we cover and no plans to add more, so where these patients will receive their cancer treatments, outside of a 2 hr drive to the Texas Medical Center, I don’t know.
Our staff will either be halved or go part time (29.5 hrs). How I will run a medical practice with this kind of staffing, I have no idea.
The physicians will need to see 45 cancer patients daily, yup, 45 patients with a life threatening and devastating disease like cancer, to cover overhead costs, whilst the physicians taking a 50%, likely more, pay cut.
Oh, and then there is the whole caboose of regulations that my practice will have to pay $400/hr lawyers to figure out how to keep us in compliance, since the fines are upwards of $100K per occurrence.
I don’t think the picture is any better for other specialties, but I will tell that for cancer care it is a catastrophe for the patients and the providers. In 5 years, the will be NO community based oncology. Patients will be in some kind of public system, and GOD help you, or they will have to travel to a major city for care. I predict that cancer related deaths will surge as the barriers to care will be just too steep.
I will be long gone, sorry, I am spending my remaining years in total economic survival mode, not spending one nickel more than I have to, other than making my preparations for the economic disaster I believe is before us.
Ohh, forgot about the millions of people in the health care insurance industry, the drug companies, the Medical product vendors, all that is going bye bye as well.
Perhaps the real end game is to have the fed.gov just take over the entire biomedical industry, after all, that is the fate of all businesses that are “too big to fail”.
After all, the Obama regimen has such a great record of taking care of our own, just ask the 4 guys left to die in Benghazi.
So let me understand. The best way to survive under Obamacare will be to live in a big (Domcratic) city. If you live out in the (Republican) sticks, your life expectency will be lower.
Sounds like win-win for Obama.
Yes, it’s very obvious what they’re doing with the regulations. It goes beyond proper regulatory discretion, but I guess we are powerless to stop them.
Reimbursing more than twice as much for the same work done in a big hospital as in a small clinic. There can be no other purpose to that.
Socialism doesn’t work . Going to the hospital in the USSR seldom meant you got a whole lot better. Obamacare will be incompetence, crazy rules and regulations, office politics, bribes and periodic purges of the competent . I doubt that Obamacare will do much for the longevity of the unfortunates it “helps” .
“However, I am now mandated by the government to talk to you about your weight, exercise, family life, smoking, sexual abuse(!), and even to ask if you wear seat belts. And I am mandated to record your answers.”
I recently went to the doctor and was give a questionnaire like the above. It also asked if I had a smoke detector and if I had a gun in the house.
My doctor said I didn’t have to answer them. And I didn’t.
However, the fact that you declined to answer the questions will STILL BE REPORTED TO THE GOVERNMENT.
Very few yet have a clue how Obamacare is going to affect free speech, the supposed darling of the very people who voted for this monstrousity. Do people really think they will feel free to protest the same government that they then have to turn to to get their chemotherapy approved or a surgery scheduled?
If you have a sick child and live in fear that the government won’t approve the care you think your child needs, are you really going to chance it by standing up against Big Brother on other issues?
How long before these corruptocrats know how you voted and “put you in line” accordingly for Obamacare “services”? Or what if they just peruse your tax return and triage you according to your income and assets?
People have NO IDEA of what they have given up to the Little Dictators on a silver platter here.
That’s okay; they weren’t going to get treated anyway on account of there being no hospitals to take them. The Catholic Church is getting out of the hospital business unless Obama is stopped, so there won’t be any hospitals left to treat people for long-term diseases like cancer. Instead, there will only be enough to treat acute injuries and illnesses.
I had to fill out one of those forms at my chiropractor (where I pay cash). I put down that I was a native speaker of Tagalog.
I do believe I shall be saying to my doctor very soon, when asked any of those personal questions, the one’s whose answers need to be recorded, “In accordance with my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, I refuse to answer your question.”
Well, then go to s straight single-payer system like we have in the UK (the NHS).
The twisty conditions highlighted are obviously just to satisfy the insurance companies: with a National Health System you discuss whatever is appropriate, all free at the point of delivery. And it is far far more economical.
Where you are penalized for going outside the system? We are afraid this IS the plan.
I live in a country, Israel, with socialized medicine. While I’m not too fond of it, it is better that the Canadian/British model that Obama seems so enamored of. Not only is the US going to socialized medicine, it is going to the worst form of it.
There are two reasons our system sort of works:
(1) You can go outside the system, and the cost of non-socialized care is rasonable; you can actually afford to pay for an operation privately.
(2) Worse comes to worst, you go to the US and beg (literally) at the local Jewish communities until you have enough to pay for care from what used to be the world’s best system.
Gregg conveniently forgets UK private insurance plans that run parallel to NHS enforced mandate (but do not absolve one of the obligation to cough up for government-mismanaged health care). Has Gregg an agenda to push?
‘NHS forced mandate’,is called general taxation taken at source according to means.
It’s obviously up to your goodselves what health model you have,it’s harder to mock other countries and claim to be the greatest when twice Obama has been elected on a mandate showing the inadequacies of the U.S model,and the need for change.
the only inadequacies that Obamas’ election wins reveal are in the public educational system, the virtue of the citizenry and the honesty of Big Media.
Before you talk of general taxation, get out your copy of British Life & Institutions manual and look up “NI contributions”; it will be under HMRC (look that up, too, once you are at it).
Makes one wonder what country you live in.
The “inadequacies” of the US health system are much like the accomplishments of Obama — evasions, misstatements, and outright lies.
“Well, then go to s straight single-payer system like we have in the UK (the NHS).”
Do we have to leave patients to die of dehydration in the halls like your benighted NHS?
I live in a small community and before the election a very well respected doctor took out a full page ad in the local newspaper explaining the pitfalls of Obamacare and how this “new law” will affect the doctor patient relationship, forcing our system of medicine into one of substandard medicine. This letter had the signatures of over 50 local doctors. For their efforts to try and educate the public on just what they can in reality expect from Obamacare these doctors recieved death threats. My point is that those who bought into the fairytale will believe, because they choose to be willfully ingnorant of the facts. I imagine though that by 2014 when everything comes together they will be screaming “this is unfair” the loudest and of course will be blaming everyone from their doctors and nurses to their insurance providers for the law that they themselves endorsed.
Again, we did not reelect Obama. The election was stolen by fraudulent voting and fraudulent counting.
Don’t blame each other for something that was engineered by some governmental power.
amen.
obamacare is not the law of the land. people should continue to fight it.
it is unconstitutional no matter what the treasonous Roberts claims.
First, Obama fought voter ID in all the swing states. Why? to have some precincts reporting over 100% voter participation….for Obama. I love the spin on that.
HE did not win one state with voter ID enforced. GOP watchers were kicked out of PA voting stations…. why? So they wouldn’t see the fraud committed.
Obamacare is about control of Americans, not about health care. Birth control pills are not about a woman’s health since they have bad side effects. Just listen to all the law suit ads on tv involving birth control bills.
This bill did not reduce the cost of health care one penny, just added more government workers to the system.
Stop paying for illegals,make it mandatory to have e verify,and jail anyone who knowingly hires and illegal. We would save a bundle in cost for health care. Stop paying for capping baby teeth for welfare kids, make welfare women with two kids get a tubal ligation or get off welfare.Make congress and the President get care under the same rules as we have to live by, and make them live on social security, not a pension. No 20 years and pension for anyone. Why should we have to pay someone who only worked 20 years when we have to work till 67? Teachers and other union professionals need to pay into their own benefits. Stop stupid lawsuits like a class action suit by minorities who sued Wells Fargo because their credit wasn’t good enough for mortgages.
Obamacare – making every doctor in the United States a criminal.
For those who are grammatically challenged:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32p8d6OudgU&sns=em
obamacare does not define coverage for all plans-it defines what plans must cover to be compliant. plans may and often do go over that coverage. so everything depends on the individual patient’s plan just like always.
also its hard to argue that it is insurance fraud for you the doctor to add free services to the diagnostic you are performing. if the patient asks you for things outside the physical and you answer and don’t bill extra for it-its you who gets jipped not the insurance company. not insurance fraud.
how do you know who of these patients did or did not support obamacare?
After 40 years as a physician I have watched as one program after another – some initiated by the government, some by private insurers – have turned us all into liars.
We are forced to fudge this complaint or shade that physical finding to “justify” a hospital admission to a clerk who knows about as much about medicine as the girl in the checkout line at the grocery.
As for patients or their families requesting, even insisting that we commit fraud on their behalf is nothing new. Forty years ago I cannot tell you how many patients I lost because most insurance would pay for a private room IF the patient’s condition required it. Sometimes unbelievable pressure was brought by the patient or, more often their families when no “necessity” existed but, in fact, they only wanted it as a matter of comfort and privacy and but did not want to pay for it. The desired “freebie” has changed over the years but the pressure is the same. Refuse and there is hell to pay
Watch the advertisements on television which suggest you can get a medical device ” . . for free. It will cost you nothing.” Want to know how that works? If you go to your doctor and request, say, an powered chair he must fill out and sign a paper that you have a valid medical need. If he says “No” to your request the motorized chair company will inform the patient that they would have given you the scooter which you clearly so desperately need but “Your doctor didn’t fill out the papers right.” One of two more trips to the physician and, if he holds to his principals he has either lost a patient or is disciplined by the health care institution who employs him because his patient satisfaction ratings are too low. Then, to top it off, the wheelchair company maintains a list of more compliant doctors who “Well if you go see him he’s almost certain to fill it out right.” and Medicare is out another one or two thousand dollars buying a less-than-necessary toy for someone who may want it but does not need it and in quite a few cases would benefit from just getting up off their obese behind and walking. Still the wheel-chair company and the “compliant doctor” benefits while we pay the bill.
Not far from retirement, I am saddened and dismayed with what the last four decades have done to the practice of medicine. I entered it a honorable profession and am leaving it a trade and a slightly shoddy one at that.
I know this will sound cruel, but the doctors (if they don’t want obamacare) should remove themselves from any part of the program or go on strike. once a day every two weeks.
Shorter column:
Hey, you know that “free” annual exam under Obamacare? It isn’t for you, it’s for the government and insurance company records. They have a script doctors have to stick to; you want an exam for yourself, you’ll have to schedule that separately.
The President argued: 1. More people will be covered under the ACA, 2. Patients will not lose their doctors, 3. The ‘cost-curve’ will be bent down, and I do not recall anything about quality of health care.
1. Fewer people will be covered under the ACA as companies will reschedule the hours of their employees from full-time to part-time to avoid providing costly insurance plans.
2. Patients will lose their doctors as many companies will pay the fine rather than for the actual health insurance-as designed by the ACA. Additionally, private practice doctors are terrified of the massive fines from HHS for making coding errors in their computer medical records along wit the massive cuts in Medicare reimbursements. Third, despite the Obama Administration trying to allow medical professionals to do what doctors used to, who is going to want to be a doctor with the years of rigorous study, the massive debt, and the loss in prestige from the loss in income.
3. Magically, the $900 billion dollar program is now $1.6-1.7 trillion, and will only skyrocket higher as the ACA requires one-size fits all insurance plans that cover procedures that are expensive and above what individuals may need or want.
4. How will all of the above impact the quality of health care-meaning medical innovation, personal care to patients and the number of doctors?
Notice that every profession that Big Government regulates makes the people who work in them miserable. Public education with No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top, the financial services industry, and now medicine. Good job liberals-compassion through coercion.
This all makes me very glad I didn’t go into primary care, and even more glad that I retired early. I suspect many more docs are going to do the same.
The big question: Do you feel that your doctor has your best interest at heart with the implementation of obamacare, or has he/she been co-opted as one of obamas stooges?
I predict cash for care/black market medicine will THRIVE!
It was fraud that won the election for Obama. Even where I have voted for the last 28 years there was an irregular “problem”. My husband and I were in line by 6.45 am to vote and we were numbers 89 and 90 on the role. We had to present our photo ID and sign in as usual. I went to vote on the paper ballot that requires you to complete the arrow. It took awhile because we had several very important proposals to vote on. When I went to send the ballot through the machine that would read it, the machine was “out of order”! I was told to place the ballot in a large plastic bin that the “person in charge” told me would be covered to keep the ballots “safe”. I was told that the ballots would be run through when the machine was repaired!!
NEVER, in all the years that I have voted there has this happened. How come that machine was down? It was down from the VERY beginning as we were among the very first to vote that morning.
The following day, I checked the vote numbers from my area with the local radio station’s web site. I found that where I voted, Obama received over 70% of the vote and that the total votes cast were UP over 29% from 2008!
This just can not BE! In 2008, the line was out the door and it took us over an hour to reach the sign in and I was # 408 on the roll by 8.20 am.
The smell is beyond description.
So what is the difference? That is the case now. I went to my doctor for a physical and we talked about my migraine issue, I was charged for both separately. So now I have to come back instead? Healthcare has been going down the tubes. I blame the doctors, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals for allowing it. Take out all the greed and we just might get some answers.
There’s that word “greed” again. Why don’t you go to medical school, etc., and treat yourself? Oh, you don’t have the time or money? Exactly.
Use your brain, idiot.
“I blame the doctors, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals for allowing it.”
Of course you do. Absolutely no blame can be assigned to the consumers or regulators.
Doctor; can you get out of your ACO or are they hitting you at the insurance end? If it is insurance; can you take foreign insurance?
While Canada may not have the greatest healthcare system in the world (indeed it is rather dreadful), one of the key issues is the shortage of doctors and health care professionals in Canada.
If dissatisfied American doctors and health care professionals were to start coming to Canada, they could be assured of a warm welcome and the opportunity to practice medicine in a relatively affluent First World Nation, without the burden of Obamacare. Of course, having an influx of health care professionals would also help raise the healthcare debate in Canada, which could lead to positive changes for us (hint, we are already slowly moving away from collectivism, real life experience will certainly help us).
A big glaring error in your statements. You CAN do both a preventive exam and address an acute problem in the same visit by adding a -25 modifier and correctly associating the billing diagnosis codes for your CPT codes.
Now you may decide, as a provider, that you don’t want to do this, but there is nothing in Obamacare that prevents you from doing this. In fact, it is entirely possible that the JackBooted Obamacare Troopers may eventually decide that if you systematically refuse to do so you may eventually be set up for a fraud charge by unbundling you charges for care.
I don’t have anything to quibble with about the rest of your statement, but when you make such a large point that is patently false, you lose your credibility.
Epador,
You point is well taken, however, the new preventative/wellness visits are zero deductible/zero copay. The point of the article was that many patients still expect that there will be no copay or fees owed if a modifier is added. It changes the wellness visit to something other than a wellness visit. Patients do not understand and still expect to pay zero.Insurance companies audit those charts and fight the payments way to many times. We spend more and more time on trying to get insurance companies to pay.It does not always matter how well you code and document, it becomes a fight. Patients are given several choices. Of course if there is an urgent issue, it will be handled.However, if , say a patient needs an ultrasound, he or she will be given a choice.In the old days we would be able to provide it that day.We still try to offer that, however we now will more likely than not have to schedule it for a different day. This was never even a choice with an HMO or large clinic situation. Those were always scheduled for another visit. People need to realize that there is a price for everything we do…its not free. Bottom line, what was written is true, it just depends on what the patient chooses…pay for service or not
“I will, however, abide by the law and follow it to the letter.”
You should not, and it is a fault in you that you do.
Compliance indicates agreement. Nonviolent noncompliance with unjust law is a well-established principle and proven successful.
If you feel that the risks of jail, fines, etc are too high for noncompliance, you should find a different line of work. At least that way you would not be supporting evil.
The claims in the article are outright false. The instructions from CMS for billing of the new preventative services specifically state that an E&M (evaluation and management) code can be billed along with the code for the preventative services when there is evaluation of medical problems beyond the preventative services.
The addition of coverage for preventative services under the Affordable Care Act has provided additional benefits to patients, and in the long run should save money. There is no need to break the law as this post claims. I have frequently billed for (and received payment for) claims containing billings for both preventative services and additional charges for problems the patient might be having.
The new preventive services promoted by Obamacare are at best, of unproven benefit, at worst going to increase healthcare expenditures as patients who in the past just had regular follow-up appointments to manage their chronic conditions (and had a few preventive measures already covered such as pap smears and mammograms), now get to have an additional visit, largely at taxpayer’s expense. I fail to see how it is going to be cost-effective for me to document that a patient says he follows a low-cholesterol diet or wears seatbelts! AND, Dr. Weiss is correct that this is often not what patients want.
You may be highly successful in documenting the preventive and acute-care services you provide at a single encounter, presumably you are pleasing the medical-record coding reviewers when you do this! In addition, some patients don’t like this–if they have Medicare and no additional insurance, then they will have to pay for the acute-care visit; I assume you are explaining this to patients.
Ron, document your claims. Citations of the laws, regulations, and judgements pertaining to it are necessary.
Dear “your kidding yourself”,
Please use the proper “you’re kidding yourself”.
You look stupid using incorrect spelling.
Tx
I am a general internist in practice in WA state and greatly appreciate Dr. Weiss’ article–and feel he is “spot on” in everything he says.
Epador is right that a doctor can do both a preventive visit as well as address new/acute problems at the same visit, but it is alot more difficult than just adding a modifier to the code for the preventive visit–you have to document BOTH services completely and accurately, and if you aren’t careful you’ll get audited. Moreover, coding professionals (the people who look at doctor’s notes to see if they have documented everything that justifies a particular payment) don’t always AGREE on how doctors should document services (other than the more the better!).
I do not agree with Rollory’s assertion that Dr. Weiss should break the law–this will do no good, least of all for his patients–if Dr. Weiss goes to jail his patients will be left without care, and the Leviathan that is Obamacare will be unchanged. Rather, I use the same approach Dr. Weiss does–acquaint patients with the facts, have them make a choice (preventive visit or acute visit/follow-up of multiple conditions), and make sure they understand why we have to do this. Many elderly patients choose the latter, because they often come to see me with a list of items they wish to discuss, and that is certainly NOT going to be paid for by the preventive visit invented by Obamacare.
jane,
As you are a practicing Doctor and trying to abide by the ACA laws I’d like to hear the amount of time that you anticipate to spend on administrative work instead of actual medical practice and how you bill that time. Is it lost time, does ACA compensate you or is this a cost passed on to the patient?
Wait until ICD-10 is implemented in a couple of years, things will get even more fun.
So let me ask the obvious question here:
What happens if, during the annual visit, a “new ailment” is discovered? Do you tell the patient, “I have discovered a new ailment. See the front desk for another appointment 3 months from now?” And if that new ailment is, say, cancer, and needs to be seen immediately can you say to the person, “Hey, so you have cancer and you need to see an oncologist immediately?” Or do you have to wait till the rescheduled appointment?
And the obvious follow up question is–if you can’t diagnose a new ailment at an annual physical, what is the point of the physical in the first place?
Currently, though I can’t promise how long this will stay the same(ACA is changing everything), our physicians hold open a certain number of “work in” appointments. A new ailment discovered in the “wellness visit” (which is not a head to toe physical – I have that discussion with Medicare patients more often than anyone wants to hear) would be put into one of those slots. A commercially covered patient, gets a head-to-toe physical and the new ailment (or any old one for that matter) can be separately billed under another code for now. I am not sure how long that will last under the ACA because commercial payers ALWAYS follow Medicare’s lead in coverage and that won’t change. Sorry, folks, those 2000 pages are going to dramatically change our lives. And I fear not for the better
And as bureaucrats in Washington begin making even more professional decisions for doctors and personal decisions for patients, it will get much, much worse. Welcome to nationalized healthcare.
Why follow unconstitutional law and not demand government to follow our Constitution? Specifically the part where it does not state that government shall regulate the business of preventing people from illness.
It sounds like the simple solution, friends, is to change our lifestyles and our eating habits so that we won’t ever get sick! Because healthcare is not going to help us get healthy! Even in germ-infested public school, my children have hardly picked up a cold in the last 15 months. Organic, whole foods, free range meats from animals treated well and the fats from those animals, and reduced stress have given my family a strong ability to fight off illnesses. Eating well makes you feel great and makes your body and mind happy, meaning you won’t have a need to go to the doctor anymore and you will not need prescription drugs! If you are truly upset about Obamacare, then take better care of yourself so you won’t have to use it. Simple. Your health is in your own hands. “A headache is not caused by a lack of aspirin,” my chiropractor used to tell me. Find the root cause of your ailments, and eliminate them yourself. (You might want to take some time to learn about the many harmful chemicals, pesticides and GMO’s which are in our food supply and are making Americans very ill to begin with.)
kwalt-
That is a terribly overly simplistic view of medical care/issues. ‘Just eat better and exercise! Don’t use bad smelly stuff!’
Many people have pre-existing conditions, genetic predispositions or historic injuries/illnesses that may require them to visit a doctor. I can’t change the fact that I was born with flat feet and that in the leg I broke and had a plate put in over a decade ago I now have plantar faciatis which has required treatment.
Your ‘plan’ also doesn’t change the fact that I am now required by law to purchase a product or receive a fine up to including jail time, or that we have created yet another magnet for illegal aliens to come here, or that the system is more complicated and ergo more expensive, OR that the government now has a major foothold in our lives and is just a step away from being able to mandate behaviour based on its involvement with the medical system.
So your advice to ‘just eat more kale’ kind of ignores a lot of things, I’m afraid.
Ow! I broke my arm and leg in a car accident!
Better get started eating a whole bunch of organic stuff.
Ah, yes. I read through that whole whine and then got to the end, where things were made clear: the writer was part of the McCain campaign. Republican, just as I suspected — the party of “Do Nothing.” Of course he will find fault with anything that has the word “Obama” anywhere near it. I wish you had put that little tidbit at the start, so I wouldn’t have wasted my time reading the drivel.
Yet you took even more time to write a comment.
Ah, the canned liberal response from the esteemed Shannon. What a tremendous contribution she has made to the discussion! Let’s nominate her for a Nobel (she has already done as much as Obama did for his).
– “Republican, just as I suspected — the party of “Do Nothing.””
The first and most important rule of medicine is “do no harm”. Obamacare objectively does not meet that simple criterion. The Democrats are like someone who in their ignorance and misguided compassion to help someone with an ailment kills or maims the patient by performing a wholly unnecessary and harmful procedure. Obamacare is like ordering a lobotomy for someone with migraines. I think the Republican approach of doing nothing would’ve been infinitely better here. At least it would’ve done no harm.
So if during the annual exam, the physician discovers a problem the patient was unaware of, what happens then?
1. make another Appointment to discuss it.
2. find out you cannot afford the medications or what ever to make you well again.
3. Be approached by a nurse who will assist you in your living will and end of life scenario.
Many people are and will be contracting doctors out on a per year basis. I’ve heard that this is happening now. For one annual fee, you will be able to see your doctor any time. This may be the route to go. I do not want the government deciding for me the kind of treatment I should be receiving.
For a physician, you have an extremely poor understanding of the law. I’m sorry about that, because I think you could do better by your patients if you stopped complaining and started acting like you cared. You also don’t seem to understand insurance very well. Part of the reason Obamacare will work – which don’t forget, was Romneycare, first! – is because insurance companies will be able to pool lifetime risks. That’s why young people are included.
They told us Mandatory auto insurance would make our insurance get cheaper.
It did not get cheaper.
If you owned a car and did not have insurance you lost your tag, and drivers license even if you could not afford insurance.
The type and even color of your car makes the difference in what you are charged.
If you have a gun in the house you will be denied treatment until you turn them in.
If you go para sailing, surfing, motocross you will be asked to stop because it’s un healthy and will cost Uncle Obama money.
There will even be a urine/blood test for tobacco products and you will be told to stop smoking or else you lose your coverage.
Just wait, this will get more and more crappy until even the supporters will be cursing Obama.
Costs went through the roof in Massachussets after the law was passed as did waiting times. Acording to the Boston Globe premiums increased 22-46% above national average.
One thing I always find interesting is how Liberals seem to assume simple linear models to predict long term historic outcomes of complex dynamic systems like medical economics. The idea that consequences will not be as predicted never occurs to them.
Few decades back HMO’s were going to fix everything through primary care “gatekeepers” and medical schools were instructed to start gearing up everyone to go into primary care because specialties were going to be very limited and pediatricians were going to see big boosts in income. None of that happened but it all made sense on paper.
I have been talking about Obamacide’s similarity to Prohibition for some time. And just like with Prohibition an underground medical system will develop, run by gangs and/or the Mafia. I refer to these underground clinics as “medical speakeasies.” People have no idea how intrusive this law is but if you think the Patriot Act and TSA screeners violate privacy, you are in for a huge shock.
Some races will get fast tracked into good health while other races will get the big Deny, Delay until you die treatment.
If you went to a Veterans Hospital in the 70′s you will see what Obamacare will be like.
DENY, DELAY in the hopes you DIE before the government spends any money on you.
Treatment? hell I have been wheeled out of a VA hospital surgery, told to put on my clothes and discharged WITH A FLOGGIN’ IV NEEDLE STILL STUCK IN MY ARM!
Americans will not like this crap and if the Gov doesn’t discard it then……..
Not to worry. I just heard one of the talking heads on tv tell me that while nothing much will happen in the immediate future after 2014 “you better believe things will be put straight”.
Ah, but you fail to see the beauty of the seat-belt/firearms/smoke-detector questions. If you don’t provide a truthful answer, then you have deliberately committed medical fraud and sabotaged your healthcare. And so, if and when you need health care: “Hey, the woman has an active concealed-carry license. No coverage for her!”
Everything you write, I am sure it is true. I believe you. All except ONE thing. You write “doctors are not rich”. In September 2012 the median income in the US was $50,054. The median income for doctors JUST STARTING OUT ranges from $142,000 to $465,000. For doctors with 6 yrs practice the median range is $187,600 to $465,000. I would say doctors “err on the right side of the average median income”. My current income is about 35k and I would be VERY happy to earn the bottom of the just starting out range. So, I do take exception to that assertion of yours, that doctors are not rich.
Most of those doctors spend a decade or more after college working 80+ hour weeks to get the training they need to earn that salary. When you include lost earning potential from those years (if they had gone into a different profession) and medical school debt they start of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, behind the person who just got a 4 year college degree. Then consider that the higher income puts them in a higher tax bracket, while they must pay for exorbitant malpractice insurance (can run well over $100k/year for some surgeons), and they probably don’t break even with a person who just got a decent 4 year degree until they’re in their 50s. Then consider the extreme hours many work and the toll it takes on their family lives and you’d better believe that they earn that money. Take away the money from the profession and the best and brightest will go do something easier and more profitable than medical school.
I considered medicine when I was back in high school, but decided against it even then (2006 or so) because I knew that the liberals had been drooling to take over the healthcare system for decades and eventually they would get it. I correctly predicted then that a healthcare power grab would be priority number one as soon as the Democrats had the presidency and majorities in congress, and that was virtually guaranteed to happen over the next 40 years or so. I didn’t know it would come so soon, but I knew it would happen sometime in my career.
I got a 4 year engineering degree instead, and now I can easily get an $80k/year job, once I finish my PhD in another couple years it’ll be more like $120k/year or so starting. That’s years before my friends in medical school will be receiving anything close to that, all while working twice the hours I do and racking up debt. I got objectively a much better deal, higher return on investment. Anybody smart enough to make a decent doctor is smart enough to do what I do. After Obama was elected in 2008 and the writing was on the wall I saw a lot of the best pre-meds in my chemistry classes change majors. The upcoming generation of doctors will be smaller and less competent.
Life expectancy is not really used as a measure of healthcare ,it’s about society .
You seem proud that the U.S has a high homicide and road traffic accident deaths.
Cherrypicking data on U.S survival rates from cancer,there is a difference between insured and non insured American’s outcomes
The U.S has a high maternal mortality rate,i work in the NHS in this area and American medical staff come here -UK- to see what they can learn
That comment was for ,
Junk Science Skeptic
November 25, 2012 – 3:34 pm
My father was a doctor – but he came from an era when doctors actually felt a calling to practice medicine, for the humanity. I miss that — now we have doctors like Peter Weiss – we are the lessor for it. Screw you Peter Weiss
Please explain what you’d like the good doctor to do differently. Maybe you’d prefer it if he broke the law to help his patients? As noble as that would be, in the long term they’d all be worse off when he went to jail. Perhaps you think he should refrain from informing them of the root cause of the changes they don’t like? Maybe you think he should just obey the party line and blame Bush or capitalism instead of pointing out the glaring flaws in Obamacare? Maybe you think he shouldn’t inform them ahead of time that if they discuss a new problem during their “free” exam the law states that they will be billed a copay, just let them find out after the fact when they get the bill? Lying to one’s patients doesn’t seem particularly ethical to me. If they have cancer, you tell them it’s cancer and not just a muscle ache. Right now the nation has a cancer, and it’s called Obamacare.
My father was a doctor before computers and before doctors found that they could charge by the syllable. He also charged people as he felt they could afford, I know because he brought the billing home for me and my sister to do. He did house calls he was a doctor to be a doctor. We were comfortable and never wanted for anything but we were not rich. I have a patent on a device to remove cataracts with high pressure water. Got to present to the president of US Surgical. We were proposing consumables of about 50.oo we were put in our place when he told us that if the consumables weren’t able to be 500.oo per procedure he wasn’t interested. I have issues with most of the medical industry. I’m still looking for a good GP.
That didn’t exactly answer my questions. The doctor who wrote this piece is doing the best he can under bad conditions. The world you describe, that of your father’s time, no longer exists in large part due to government intrusions and meddling in healthcare and other sectors of society. For example I doubt your father had to spend a large portion of his day filling out paperwork for the federal bureaucracy like today’s doctors do. I doubt he had to contend with hoardes of illegals demanding care without bringing anything to the table either. As far as charging people what they could afford, people back then hadn’t fully drunk the entitlement koolaid and had more of a sense of honor. They actually paid what they could afford for the procedures they needed instead of spending their paycheck on iphones and a big screen TV, then complaining that they “can’t afford” health insurance. Partially the technology of care is also different, a doctor traveling door to door can’t give an MRI or other advanced therapies people today demand.
The doctor in question works with people who will always have private insurance. He is simply a whiner and obstructionist. I dare you to way the medical industry does not need to be reformed. Who exactly will do that? Doctors Appliance manufactures, Insurance, Phama. Right and they say the left believes in fairy tales.
And what kind of doctor are you? If you aren’t a doctor, why not?
Somehow I doubt Dr. Weiss’ patients at The Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center, where his official bio on this website says he works will really be impacted by any changes in the law.
So he is just whining — gotta love these guys.
“Children covered on their parents’ plan until 26 years of age? A scam, making young adults — excuse me, children — pay for complete, comprehensive health insurance when all they need and should pay for is major catastrophe insurance.”
And right off the bat you show you aren’t intelligent enough to distinguish between a law compelling the *insurance company* to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ plan, and a law compelling the *young adults* to be on their parents’ plan. Young adults are under absolutely no compulsion to be on their parents’ plan and the parents are under absolutely no compulsion to keep their kids on the plan. It simply forces the insurance companies to provide them that option.
No offense, but if you aren’t smart enough to understand that simple concept, there’s no reason to read the rest of your post.
“…I am now mandated by the government to talk to you about your weight, exercise, family life, smoking, sexual abuse(!), and even to ask if you wear seat belts. And I am mandated to record your answers.”
Apparently Obamacare never heard of the old addage “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” – Where is it written that the patient is required to answer? I will refuse to answer the question, just as I already refuse to get on the scales. It falls under the “it’s none of your business” or “self-incrimination” categories.
Just lol’ing at the misinformed people (including the author) still talking about “obamacare” like it’s a stand-alone health plan. You obviously still don’t understand (or do understand it, but want to keep feeding the misinformed) ?
Obamacare is a Set of regulations on the private insurance industry. It does require all plans to offer a free annual preventative visit (at a minimu… Which should encourage preventative care and reduce overall costs) but there’s is NOT some new mysterious “obamacare” plan that is going to “cover” or “not cover” certain things.
Y’all should really take 8. Minutes to understand obamacare so you don’t look so silly complaining about things that don’t exist.
Google “obamacareExplained simply” and watch the video that was up on reddit.
No really there are a lot of major changes to a lot of aspects of healthcare. You don’t get something for nothing, somebody does eventually have to pay for all the “free” stuff in the bill. Not to mention that unelected bureaucrats have been given the power to write endless regulations with the power of law. They can literally change the system in drastic ways whenever they see fit. Or how about the mandates and fines on businesses that make it far more attractive to hire someone for 29.5 hours a week than full time, and stay under 50 employees? Or all the measures to drive small medical groups out of business and into larger collectives?
The biggest impact on me personally is all the crap Obamacare requires *any* approved insurance plan to cover. I Don’t want or need it. The only plan I want is a totally catastrophic one with say a $20,000 deductible that pays nothing until the deductible limit is reached. I don’t want the “free” preventative care, I can’t use the “free” birth control, I don’t need my plan to cover substance abuse treatment or counseling or sex change operations. I just want something that keeps me from going bankrupt if I face a major accident or illness. As a healthy male in my 20s making a decent salary I’ll be expected to bankroll the system for everyone else by being forced to buy a bunch of stuff I don’t want or need. My brother’s plan through his college doubled last year because of all the extra stuff they were required to cover by Obamacare. They had a list of items, none of which were the least bit useful to him, none of which we’d buy given the choice.
I just signed up a high deductible plan + HSA (health savings account) which costs me $35 a month plus whatever I want to deposit into the HSA. It’s fully compatible with the Obamacare regulations.
One part of what the doctor said is unclear to me. He said the annual exam covers “the exam and ‘discussion about the status of previously diagnosed stable conditions.’” Would an exam not include discussing an ailment? What if the doctor discovered a medical issue. Would he then be able to talk about the issue in the exam or would he have to schedule a separate visit?
No, you cannot be treated for a new ailment at that time since that would be a new ICD-10 code, which is not covered under an annual exam and cannot be added to that visit. You must make another appointment for the “new” ailment.
This obamacare rule is incredibly stupid. I have quarterly visits to my doctor now. Most of it is discussion of existing issues, but the vital end of it is I have the chance to ask about some new thing that is bothering me, and he can examine me more, or schedule a new visit, if he thinks my new complaint is important enough. Now my doctor is actually required by law from discussing any new complaint I may have, and cant talk about it unless I schedule a new visit, which with my doctors backed up schedule would take several months. I a private insurer had made a rule this 8ncredibly stupid, they woulod have been flooded with compolaints from doct9rs, patients, and purchasers, and would promptly changed it. But now, with Obamacare,it will take a national lobbying campaign to get this unaccountable board in DC to change the rule.
But the american people voted for this idiocy when they voted to reelect Obama, I hope they get sick of it. But unf9ortunately, I will also be stuck with the consequences of the american paoples poor choice.
Thank you thank you THANK YUO for exposing the terrible truth of the COMMUNIST IN CHEIF and his lies about free health care. Obama care is nothing but a communist CON to fool the 47 per centers into voting for FREE MONEY. Responsibli people would get a joba nd proper medical insurance for themselves that way not MOOCH off of the tax paying AMERICNS
Dr. Weiss, if the abysmal quality and lack of factual content in this op-ed is at all indicative of your medical practice, I sincerely hope their are no patients depending your expertise.
Daphne, the point made by the good doctor was that Obamacare can not and does not deliver what is was promised to deliver.Pelosi was right when she said we have to pass it before we find out what is in it. Making snide and insulting comments does not strengthen your argument, it only weakens it and makes you look foolish. By the way, as another private practice physician, the good doctor is right. We must code exactly what we do and insurance pays according to the code, one negating another even with modifiers. In fact there are thousands of new codes which must be used starting next year. There may even be codes for different types of water skiing accidents to getting bitten by a bird while fishing! dont shoot the messenger
Does anybody know if it would be legal to create a strict liability insurance for medical expenses?
Here’s my train of thought. As a healthy young male who will be ineligible for subsidies, Obamacare will cost me a fortune by requiring me to pay for a ton of stuff I don’t want or need as opposed to a strictly catastrophic plan. My total healthcare expenses in a given year are <$100, so spending tens of thousands on insurance is ridiculous. I would much rather just not buy Obamacare and pay the mandate fine, it would be a lot cheaper. The problem is that I don't want to go totally bankrupt if I do get into an accident. Would it be legally possible to structure a policy with a specialty insurer (like say lloyds of London) that simply reimbursed me directly for healthcare expenses above the deductible, while I paid cash to the hospital? It would not be a health insurance plan in the traditional sense because there would be no direct interaction between insurer and provider, so I could structure it to pay out only for expenses over say $50,000, enough so that it keeps me from going bankrupt but the odds of it paying out are so low that the premium would also be extremely low. The total cost of such a plan + the mandate fine would probably still be less than the cost of Obamacare, and you'd have the satisfaction of giving it the finger.
Failing this the next best thing may be to just fill out all the forms to get insurance and leave them with your lawyer. Upon getting a serious illness or in a major accident you or your family members call the lawyer and he submits the paperwork. Since you can't be denied for "preexisting conditions" the insurance would start paying out instantly. Whatever costs were incurred in the hours your lawyer was enrolling you would likely be manageable. I see no problem with exploiting a corrupt system that you were forced into as hard as possible.
I have spared with insurance companies for years I regards to particular patients needs, and honestly had little problems in getting their cooperation on disagreements. When presented with patient specifics and data, they have been reasonable, much more reasonable than Obummer Care will be. I refuse to have the government that has yet to be able to run ANY program efficiently, tell me how to treat my patients. I refuse to tell an elderly patient, that I think would benefit from a treatment, that the government run healthcare denies the treatment. Denies treatment on the basis of the patients age, other medical problems, and that a panel requires me to discuss end of life alternatives. Palliative care, AKA – keep them comfortable till they die. The government has screwed up Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Welfare, and something as simple as delivering the mail. Medical care run by the government, no thank you. I sold my practice and took early retirement. The greatest healthcare services in the world, affirmed by the fact that almost every other country has sent their top ranking officials to the US for any serious medical care or procedures, has just bit the dust. Obama’s personal feeling that the US has too long been a Great Nation that needs to be taken down from its powerful world force, also wants to take its Superior Medical Care down with it. Anyone wanting to infer that I am “A Racist” can bite my A&&!! If you haven’t noticed, he is genetically just as WHITE as he is black, so which half would you say the racism lies?? Be careful in you analysis……you have NO idea my genetics and or color. I may also be Mulatto, a term that ruffles feathers by those ignorant of its true meaning. The meaning is someone of mixed races, white-black, white-native American, white-mexican, or any other mixed genetics. Basically referring to EVERY AMERICAN in this country today. “Racism” is a word this country should FORGET; the only “PURE BREEDS” in this country are our dogs! They have better social skills than we do!
Ok… so let me get this straight. Free health care is a bad thing? I understand the poor and lazy taking advantage, but please stop with the non-sense as there are an equal number of rich and greedy taking advantage.
Also, you seem to be complaining about insurance rules, regulations, and accounting codes… all of which have been the normal for decades or more now. Nothing’s changed… yet all of a sudden it’s problem because you can relate it in some obscure way to make killing Obamacare your agenda.
Helping people that need it most may not be a hot topic among the rich, but it’s a humane topic and it’s damn time we see it here in America rather than overseas in our dollars spent to help other nations. With anything there will be some wrinkles… tell me now how you can stop a patient from complaining about pain to get pain killers to just then sell them on the street for $20 a pill? That’s a bigger problem than your little rant… but wait, that’s something you don’t have to worry about, you get paid for it either way. Or, what about all these fake medicare scams costing us hundreds of billions each year. Little shops popping up all over, writing off fake medical equipment and supplies, pocketing cash. Huge problem.
“Also, you seem to be complaining about insurance rules, regulations, and accounting codes… all of which have been the normal for decades or more now. Nothing’s changed”
One major change, which your comment ignores. Before Obamacare rules came from private insurers, and pressure from doctors, patients, and insurance purchasers could change those rules, if they were not popular with those constituents. And since insurers were subject to competition, they had a reason to change those rules if they caused loss of business, and could attract customers from compeditors by having better rules, that attracted more patients and doctors.
But now all the rules are dictated from burocrats in DC, and as the doctor in this article stated the doctors and insurers are just enforcers, and no longer have any role in policy. And this DC board, not being subject to competition or market discipline, has no reason to be responsive to anybody, except politicians, and even with them probably only if they have pull with the current president. Every single decision is dictated from DC, no matter how trivial or stupid it is, like the seat belt example, or the rule that discussion of new health issues cant be billed to the yearly exam.
“Free health care is a bad thing?”
Oh god, how many times do we have to explain this to you liberals. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE. Everything must be paid for at some point by someone. Try spending some time in Europe where they give out all this “free” stuff. Everything is way more expensive than here in the us. Even lower income people pay tremendous portions of their income in taxes, then have to contend with a 20% VAT on anything they buy. People there tend to live in apartments or much smaller houses, people who in America would be driving their own car instead are forced to take public transportation, those who can afford to buy a car drive tiny little eco-boxes because the gas is twice as expensive thanks to taxation, high unemployment is the norm, etc. I’m sorry but I don’t want to live like that. I want a big house and a nice car and all the rest of it. If I’m just going to be taxed back down into mediocrity to support everyone else, then I wouldn’t even bother trying to do anything productive. There’s nothing immoral about saying that the daughter of a successful middle class family should receive better care than a wino. There will never be enough for every person to receive the best care, and I’d much rather have rationing based on the ability to pay than decided by some government bureaucrat. “Universal” healthcare gives you the privilege of paying for all the free-loaders, then standing in line behind them when you need care.
It is because of those views that the civilized world looks with disbelief at America.
I’m in the U.K and work in the NHS.Here the Benefit system-welfare-and healthcare are judged separately.
We all agree that our taxes shouldn’t be going to people who should work more,but to claim that my life is superior to a ‘wino’ is alien in our culture.
Americans may feel like that but our belief is that health shouldn’t be based on ability to pay.
So everybody has access to healthcare.We don’t say it’s free,the saying is free at point of delivery.We feel it’s about our actions to our own citizens.
I don’t know what’s happened in America to have such hatred for eachother
Yet another spokesman who had better consult his British Life and Institutions manual before assuming the Royal Prerogative. Or is it you, Your Majesty, mistaking subjects for citizens, and addressing the American savages in first plural?
So you agree that,
‘the daughter of a successful middle class family should receive better care than a wino’
I am the Queen of ‘England’ and here is my message,
http://www.avolites.org.uk/jokes/queen.htm
Confused rambling nonsense, Fowler.
Let me repeat one of my main points from above: There will never be enough resources to assure that everyone receives that absolute best possible care. That means that:
1. Who receives the best care can be decided by a panel of government bureaucrats.
2. Who receives the best care can be decided by ability to pay.
Under option 1 the extremely wealthy, the ruling elite political class and their families, will just go overseas for treatment (hint, they come to America). Anybody not at the absolute top is stuck in the system being “equalized”. A person who has never worked, or who spent their money irresponsibly, receives far better care than they otherwise would, and a person or family that has worked hard all their lives and carefully saved their money receives far worse care than they’d otherwise be able to afford. I do not consider that a moral system. I’d rather take out a second mortgage on my house than watch my child die because the collective resources weren’t there to offer everyone the treatment needed to save her. The money I could’ve spent saving her was instead skimmed from my paycheck to satisfy your vision of ‘social justice’.
The way I, and many other Americans, look at it is that there is no such thing as a “positive right”. The government only exists to protect negative rights. For example: The second amendment guarantees me the right to keep and bear arms, but the government doesn’t spend tax dollars to provide me with a gun. I simply have the right to acquire one on my own without interference. This is similar to how I see the “right” to healthcare, and opposite to the way Europeans see it. A “right to healthcare” does not mean that I can demand it from the government, it means that I am free to pursue it with my own resources without interference. Thus taxing away massive percentages of my income against my will to support a system giving it to someone else actually interferes with my negative right to healthcare by denying me the earned resources to pursue it in the manner I see fit.
On a positive note, if they ever get something like the NHS here I’ll be able to move out to the country and go part time, spend my days enjoying nature and pursuing my hobbies. It wouldn’t be so bad. If everyone’s going to get an enforced equality of outcome then I’d rather enjoy myself than bash my head against a wall earning money that’ll just be taken to pay for what I could get for “free”.
JUST FACTS… I KNOW SOME PEOPLE REFUSE TO BELIEVE FACTS. STRANGE.
Romney: ” ‘Obamacare’ puts the federal government between you and your doctor.”
Primary care doctors seem most inclined to support the law, as do a large number of physician professional associations.
Support for the law is weaker among specialists, who are more likely to question what it means for their compensation and more likely to face scrutiny for using high-cost tests and procedures. But that doesn’t mean the government is placing itself between doctors and patients. The law is complex, but it leaves intact the private sector delivery of health care.
Romney’s statement overstates the level of government control in the law and ignores state flexibility in setting insurance standards.
PolitiFact rated it False.
Obama’s health care law seeks health coverage for every American by requiring most Americans to obtain coverage or face a fine. To help people meet that requirement, it expands Medicaid for the poor, provides subsidies for people of modest means to buy insurance and requires businesses to provide employee insurance. It also creates exchanges where individuals and businesses can purchase private policies.
Only about 30 million to 32.9 million people would lose coverage by 2022 if Obamacare was simply repealed, research shows. An additional 18 million people might lose coverage if Romney achieves his plan of converting Medicaid to a block grant, according to some studies. The estimate, however, includes people who don’t have insurance now.
Under Romney’s proposed plan, people would be protected from denial only if they have been continuously insured.
The health care law, though, offers protections whether people have current coverage or not, so it offers more robust protection. The law also includes a requirement that everyone have insurance or pay a tax penalty. Romney’s plan doesn’t have that requirement.
Romney did not mention the qualifier that people have to stay insured to get the protection. That’s a significant omission.