Diagnosing ObamaCare
I admire the Tea Party greatly. Health care should not be a political line-item agenda — just as I can not tell a patient of mine what he or she must do. I can only give advice and recommendations. I can not force my patients to stop smoking or drinking, or to lose weight. Nor can President Obama mandate health.
To be fair, First Do No Harm does state that ObamaCare promises some nice things, such as no denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, coverage for “children” up to age 26, and no lifetime limit on benefits. These all sound great, and on paper they are.
I would also like the government to buy me a home, give me a car (nothing less than 6 cylinder), and put food on my table. In a Utopian world, we all live forever and will have world peace. One critical aspect of a good physician is being honest even when the news is bad. Dr. Wolf is a good physician. He gives a very strong argument against ObamaCare in a concise, easy-to-follow manner. He offers some solutions, but still a lot more are needed to address the current situation. Those he does offer are well worth entertaining and are well thought out. I, of course, like many other physicians, have solutions, too, some of which I have expressed in these pages before.
I equate Dr. Wolf with a good doctor who is able to explain to a patient and his or her family what is wrong. He then takes the time to listen and gives his opinion as to what you should do. This is a doctor you feel you can trust. Under the Obama system, that doctor will be a thing of the past. Your new physician will be spending half of his or her time doing data entry at point of service, checking off boxes on the state-mandated questionnaire before inputting the data to determine what medication the system will allow. Never mind you only want to talk about your headaches.
Most physicians take either the oath of Hippocrates or the oath of Maimonides. With these two time-honored oaths, we promise to be our individual patients’ champion and, above all, to do no harm. Under ObamaCare, the physician’s oath will be “to the health of the state” — and to the individual patient no longer.
Not only will it NOT work, but Obamacare will bankrupt the nation. You just have to look at Canada and Great Britain to see how poorly the system works and how expensive it is. You will have the bulk of the government doing nothing but working on insurance or healthcare issues, creating a giant bureaucracy with even more federal workers. It will explode the size of the Federal government and it will put even more financial burdens on the state governments. Our only hope is to kill this plan in 2012, with the election of a Republican president. If we don’t do this, the country really is finished. If you don’t believe me, just look at Great Britain to see what our future will look like.
Dr. Wolf does a great job explaining how and why ObamaCare will destroy what’s currently good about American medicine.
In particular, doctors will no longer being able to practice according to their best judgment for their patients’ best interests — because the government will impose strict controls over what tests and procedures they can perform, all in the name of being “cost effective” or “reducing unnecessary variations in practice”. Bureaucrats who haven’t seen the patient will decide what’s best for his care — not the doctor who actually has performed the physical exam and knows his history, symptoms, drug allergies, etc.
This “central-planner” mindset failed back for economies of the Eastern bloc countries back during in the Cold War, it’s failing in the health systems of Europe and Canada, and it will fail here in the US.
Dr. Wolf is a modern-day medical Paul Revere warning us of the dangers ahead unless we repeal ObamaCare. Let’s hope enough Americans listen to him!
The best care costs money. As far as I’ve seen the best doctors don’t even accept insurance. You pay them. Nothing will change for individuals that have ample financial resources. For these hard working or lucky individuals, the medical system is indeed as limitless and wonderful as you say.
However the overwhelming reality for many is much different. Instead of your faceless bureaucrat you dial an insurance company representative who I assure you is quite equally faceless and uninformed about your condition who tells you what is covered. This is decided by a corporation that has a fiduciary duty to maximize corporate profits.
For people like myself, medical insurance coverage is decided by my employer. My choice of doctors, procedures, hospitalization times etc. are all rigorously controlled by my plan. Hardly the physician-patient kumbaya by the campfire you describe.
That’s why conservatives support giving individuals the same tax breaks for purchasing healthcare on their own that are given to companies that provide healthcare. If we did that, insurance would be decoupled from employment, allowing people to shop around for the coverage that best fits them, and they could keep it if they lost their job for whatever reason.
Funny, but lefties seem to oppose that simple, effective reform. Would you like to explain why it’s okay for people to shop for whatever car insurance they want regardless of employer, but not health insurance?
You know, I really kinda like the idea on the surface. Portability is something that I think is desirable. Likewise, the idea of having a wide array of options as a consumer and the promise of competition lowering costs is tempting.
The worst case scenario from my standpoint is that you make things better for low risk individuals but financially out of reach for those who really need coverage. Insurers want to insure healthy people.
I don’t believe in government waste but neither do I believe that we should simply throw up our hands and declare that government is unable to provide a solution. The free market has not provided one either.
In the case of automobile insurance the states mandate coverage and regulate guidelines for minimum coverage which creates in my opinion at least a better framework for consumers to make choices and a guaranteed market for insurers to compete.
You can live without a car, healthcare not so much.
How’s that Hope and Change working out for me? Well, I got better insurance coverage. I had to pay for it and it might increase but I am better off than I was last year.
Well, you see, the health insurance industry hasn’t been a free market in decades… probably since the newly-formed Blue Cross plan got tax exemptions (1929), and certainly since the start of Medicare. You did realize that many insurers refuse to pay more than Medicare does, right?
In short, the pre-ObamaCare health insurance market was at best semi-free, and perhaps not even that much. So you really have no idea what a free health insurance market would be like, unless you were born in, say, 1901, meaning you’d have been 18 in 1929, so you’d have had the chance to see the pre- and post-government-intervention markets personally and with enough maturity to understand what you were seeing.
Somehow, I doubt you’re 110 years old, so you don’t have any experience with a true health insurance free market.
Okay, I’ll take your word that Healthcare has never been a free market. So where are you going with this. How free are we talking? Do we get rid of insurance altogether because it encourages overuse of resources? Give drug patents the ole heave ho? Stop the AMA from regulating the number of doctors? What country would be a good example of free market healthcare that you’re advocating?
It seems to me that while most people here hate socialised medicine I’m curious as to how well this kind of change would be accepted by John Q Public. In its own way it would be as revolutionary a change as implementing single payer. Moreover I’m curious as to how the medical community feels when what you’re effectively doing in a free market is forcing doctors to compete. Is it a good thing to get your heart bypass done on sale?
As I said before, decouple health insurance from employment. But decouple it from federal interference as well. Paul Ryan’s plan is a good first step, give the elderly, disabled (of which I am–technically–one, though I voluntarily forgo most of the benefits), and legitimately poor–as opposed to the able-bodies who simply choose not to work–vouchers to purchase whatever coverage they wish.
As part of that, get Fedzilla out of the game of telling companies what health insurance must cover. You’re absolutely correct that states do require certain things to be covered in car insurance… but did you realize that states already do that with health insurance, as well, and did long before ObamaCare was developed? They’re called “mandates,” and while some of them are quite silly (Utah mandates $5,000 coverage for adoption… for the adoptive family–the birth family is covered under existing maternity benefits–for example), people can “vote with their feet” and migrate to a state with mandates that are acceptable to them.
However, most lefties–you can decide for yourself if you belong in this category–don’t want people to have the freedom to choose their own health insurance, nor the freedom to choose a state with acceptable mandates, so they want everything dictated (and I use the word deliberately) by Fedzilla. That’s why ObamaCare was so important to the lefties, to forbid people from choosing care that doesn’t meet a standard dictated from the halls of the self-anointed elites in DC.
Oops… meant health insurance instead of healthcare in the first paragraph above.
That’s what I get for trying to write while eating ice cream.
The current employer-based insurance is a perverse system, caused by government policies that began in WW2. The result is “lock-in” when people can’t keep their insurance when they change jobs. I certainly do not approve of that aspect of our current system.
However, the answer is not to turn the government into a giant monopoly insurance company. That would make matters worse. A genuine free market for health insurance and health services would move us in a much healthier direction.
Apologize in advance if my reply seems difficult. Storms have knocked out service so replying by iPhone.
I appreciate comments made thus far. Lefty in particular as to what he needs to deal with in getting approval for some diagnostic or therapy recommended
This is not new for us.
Medical demand is as far as we can push for the best care we can provide. We know that there is only so much resource available. That is our work.
So corporate medicine, government, insurance, individual pay, none can meet demand. How many times are you asked to amend the diagnosis because we can’t get this through on what you wrote?
Playing coding games with insurance is an industry itself.
I have not yet seen major changes from obama care. I
Hardly know what those are. The admins take care of most of that.
Government is not a good way to run health care. Obama care seems like a catastrophe not well thought out and passed for political reasons.
Still tomorrow gonna get up and work. Screw politics.
The biggest gain from Obamacare was the removal of caps on plans and pre-existing conditions and mental health parity. My company took about a 100K hit and our rates went up, no bonuses this year – but it’s a huge difference to me and my wife who is a cancer survivor.
As a patient, I know walking into your office (if you’re on my plan etc. etc.) that you and the hospital are getting paid for your services, not given a sob story and a plea for financial assistance because my employer tried to cut corners on his healthcare costs.
“At the very core of ObamaCare is a flawed belief that government can spend your money more effectively than you can yourself.”
this is all we need to be debating
every issue involves this
the socialists bemoan capitalism every day on all outlets but the free-markerters are unwilling to calmly, concisely, and confidently demonstrate the fallacies of socialism
the very first counter to capitalism is—-> well, what are the alternatives?
what is the quality of medical care in communist countries? in dictatorships? in socialized “republics?”
what is the quality of medical care in free-enterprise systems?
with government involved the cost goes up at least twice (common sense) and the quality turns to inefficient, subpar and unethical
Obamacare = the HMO from hell.
Healthcare/insurance is only a small part of what “Obamacare” is all about.
Obama, himself, knows little of what it really IS about. And he couldn’t care less.
This ‘legislation’ has been coalescing for decades in the vaults of the Democrat Party for the sole purpose of commandeering a significant portion of the U.S. economy.
But, don’t take my word for it; Read the bill to see for yourself.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:2:./temp/~c111MjeRc8::
Obama and His Daddy
Obama’s dreams from his father have suddenly taken on a nightmarish quality.
Barack Hussein Obama, Senior’s father, Hussein Onyango Obama, took the name “Hussein,” which his grandson claims is African, after he converted to Islam, begat the president’s father in 1936, and Barack Hussein Obama, Senior converted to atheism in his youth yet his son says he is a Christian.
Go figure, if you can.
Quite the man, BHO, Sr., like Hussein Onyango, traveled quite a bit and worked and studied in various locales, like his son, and has been described as a Doctor of Economics having earned his PhD at Harvard. That was the same school from which his son would later receive his LLD in 1988 after Obama, Jr. had gotten his street cred organizing Chicago communities and after he was elected the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review in his first year and then its first black president in his second year.
All in all, it was a phenomenal achievement, a true American success story, a black Horatio Alger makes good story, except that part of it has now been proven a lie.
Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, which this administration may soon move to repeal since it often results in information Obama would rather not be free, we now know that Obama, Sr. never did get his PhD from Harvard and rumors that he had to the contrary were fabrications, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4263)
And what, specifically, does this have to do with ObamaCare?
This is the second time I’ve seen you posting wildly off-topic stuff apparently as a plug for your own little blog. I could do that too, but I have far higher standards, and only give occasional references to my own blog posts, and never post long excerpts from them.
I’d suggest you stop… you’re not impressing anyone. And next time, I might just report it to the editors. I have email addresses for at least two of them.