Dr. Orwell Will See You Now
George Orwell may have invented “Newspeak” for his novel, 1984. But in their discussions of health care, the Obama administration and their political allies have elevated the deceptive use of language to new heights.
Consider the very title of the ObamaCare law, “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that ObamaCare will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years, nearly double the earlier estimated $940 billion. Rather than being “affordable,” ObamaCare will worsen our massive budget deficit.
Nor does ObamaCare provide much “protection” for patients, especially senior citizens. Rather, one of the biggest dangers to seniors’ health care will be the new Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The IPAB would consist of 15 unelected members appointed by the president empowered to determine what medical procedures Medicare would cover and how much it would pay providers. IPAB decisions would not be subject to judicial review and could not be overturned unless overridden by a nearly-impossible two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress.
Although the law states that IPAB will not be used for rationing, its authority to set prices will give it de facto rationing power. If the IPAB sets the reimbursement rates for services below the costs of providing them, doctors would no longer offer them and patients would no longer be able to receive them.
ObamaCare supporters are also selling a version of Orwell’s slogan, “Slavery is freedom,” by claiming that greater government controls over doctors will enhance their freedom to practice.
In the Journal of the American Medical Association, former White House health policy advisor Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel advocates replacing standard fee-for-service payments with “bundled payments” where hospitals and physicians receive a fixed fee to take care of Medicare patients’ conditions (e.g., a stroke or a heart attack) regardless of how much the care actually costs.
Emanuel argues that bundled payments will give doctors more “autonomy” because it will allow “physicians to develop and deliver new approaches to care without being concerned about whether Medicare will pay for a specific service.” But in reality, bundled payments will pressure doctors and hospitals to skimp on care, just as patients experienced with “managed care” and HMOs in the 1980s.
Suppose the government outlawed restaurants from charging for each separate menu item. Instead, it only allowed restaurants to charge a single “bundled payment” of $10 for meals that had to include an entree, vegetable, dessert, and drink. Would the quality and quantity of food go up or down as the government set ever-stricter limits on what restaurants could charge?
In a recent New York Times interview, Stanford health economist Victor Fuchs similarly compared government-imposed bundled payments to “the emancipation of slaves.” This is the ObamaCare version of “Slavery is freedom.”
The New England Journal of Medicine adopted a similar Orwellian tactic, when it argued that policymakers avoid the word “rationing” when discussing government-driven restrictions of medical care to cut costs. Instead, they should couch such restrictions in terms of “frugality.” But this terminology obscures a critical distinction. “Frugality” is when people are prudent about spending their own resources for themselves. If you decide steak is too expensive and you instead purchase chicken, that’s being frugal. But if the government limits how much meat you can purchase each week, that’s rationing.
Similarly, Medicare officials are considering rebranding the government-run insurance “exchanges” under ObamaCare as “marketplaces.” Medicare communications director Julie Bataille explained, “Words like ‘marketplace’ resonate much more with the consumer.”
However, a true marketplace is when consumers can freely purchase goods and services (or not) from sellers without compulsion
In contrast, ObamaCare will push many employers to stop offering private health insurance. Instead, employers will dump their employees onto the government-run exchanges where they must purchase insurance on government terms at government prices. Calling these mandatory purchases a “marketplace” is like calling it a “negotiation” when the Godfather makes you “an offer you can’t refuse.”
A final example of deceptive language is politicians’ constant talk of providing “coverage” for all Americans. But there’s an enormous difference between theoretical “coverage” and actual medical care. Patients in Canada and the UK all have “coverage,” but they must often wait weeks or months for services such as MRI scans or chemotherapy that Americans can receive within days.
One of the methods ObamaCare attempts to guarantee “universal coverage” is by expanding Medicaid. But as the New York Times reported, Medicaid patients often have a difficult time receiving care because Medicaid pays doctors and hospitals so poorly (typically well below the cost of the service provided). As one patient said about her Medicaid card, “It’s a useless piece of plastic. I can’t find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.”
Under ObamaCare, “coverage” does not equal care. It’s like having a cellphone plan, which promises “coverage” for your area, but never gives you a decent signal.
The Obama administration can’t fix the actual substance of their health plan. Hence, their strategy is to obfuscate its problems with deceptive language and hope that voters don’t catch on. If you value your lives, don’t be fooled by their health care Newspeak. Otherwise, you may soon be getting your medical care from Dr. Orwell.
My electric car needs its own insurance too. Where do I go?
It’s all the Ministry of Care, or Mincare, which by following Orwellian rules for newspeak means it actually provides a minimum of care, so mincare is technically accurate.
You aren’t seeing the real point of Orwell — right now O’bwana’s junta is siccing the IRS, SEC, EPA, MSM, and NLRB on Romney donors (all that’s missing from the picture is O’bwana’s top-hat and the nasal chicken bone). But just consider how things will be working in a couple of years: “Oh, I see you’ve contributed to Republican candidates. Well, I regret to inform you that the death-panel has refused to approve the cancer treatment that your doctor says you need. Sorry, Charlie.”
Frankly, I find this kind of attack much more Orwellian than anything the administration has said. Everyone, including the administration, realizes the bill isn’t perfect. But I personally know people for whom it has been a life saver, and who otherwise would have been left high and dry by their insurance companies.
Praise Him! Saving lives!
Except that it’s not, er, umm, available yet.
What Obamacare does is “cost shift”. It does absolutely “ZERO” to reduce health care costs. It does “nothing” to solve the existing shortage of primary care providers. As a matter of fact, it makes it much worse instead of better. Like long waiting lists to see a doctor? You’ll love Obamacare. It will flood hospital ER’s with people who can’t get an appointment to see a doctor and can’t wait any longer. Or you can die waiting… Libertarians however have a solution to this problem. It’s called “the free market health care system”. I think you’ll like it. No prescription laws. Certification instead of licensing. No drug laws. The legal right to import medicine for your own use from wherever you wish. The only “medical insurance” you’ll need is “major med”. You’ll have a health savings account using pre-tax income with the freedom to pick any provider you feel you need. Total US health care costs will drop (a lot). You’ll be able to pick the hospital you want, with the technology level you actually need. Isn’t this better?
No system that gives patients an end-run around doctors, politicians and bureaucrats stands stands a ghost of a chance. The MSM alone will demonize it for its ‘lack of controls for patient safety.’
Applause for Jerome. In addition to cost shifting, this is nothing but a huge tax plan–it aims to do away with employer plans altogether, as well as the TAX SHELTER of pre-tax employer plans, forcing a lot of us into a higher tax bracket.
One brilliant-NOT idea in this article (http://business.time.com/2012/05/22/how-cash-keeps-poor-people-poor/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true) is to deduct the cost of Obamacare policies through payroll deductions. There would be nothing to stop the “tax hikes” in this except Congress, and you know it wouldn’t happen. How many times did they raise Medicare payroll taxes and premiums before hitting a political brick wall? Now all they can do is ration.
The saddest part of all this is for vets, there is no escape–they aren’t eligible for HSAs of they use only the VA for medical services. The rest of us can open HSA accounts and preserve some of our tax shelter…but not for long. Congress will be trying to find ways to do us out of THAT one too.
VAT, anyone? I hope I’m dead before all this becomes part of daily life.
The overall goal here is to model us after Europe: heavily taxed, little choice, little freedom, and LOTS of surveillance. Some of us will, of course, remain more equal than others…Bilderberg membership, anyone? They want to make us all poor, take our money away, and then do away with our reasons for living–Social Security shortfall solved! Medicare shortfall solved! National deficit solved! We’ll be left with short, but very expensive lives.
Typical lefty dreamer, like most of them.
Frankly, I find this kind of attack much more Orwellian than anything the administration has said.
Your knowledge of Orwell is sadly lacking.
This 2700 page monstrosity of a bill? Perfect? It’s not even good, and is a violation of the Constitution as well.
But I personally know people for whom it has been a life saver, and who otherwise would have been left high and dry by their insurance companies.
Well, good for your friend. Do you know people who have been forced out of their health care coverage because of this bill? Yeah, screw them, I suppose, as long as your friend gets health insurance.
I was nearly forced on to a state run high risk pool. When my husband was laid off and we lost company coverage, we had to look for private insurance. Due to a history of kidney stones and being overweight (I had JUST had a baby and not lost any of the weight when we lost coverage) we were turned down by several companies. Rather, I was turned down. They would have still covered the rest of the family. My supposed one option was the state high risk pool.
Guess what, costs for just me on the high risk pool were equal to the costs of covering the rest of my family on a private plan. Fortunately, there is still some competition left out here in my state and there was one company who was willing to craft a policy, while not perfect, that would still cover us all. It also costs $200 less than what it would have been if we’d gone public/private together.
Oh yeah, and if I’d chosen the federal/state partnership instead of just the state high risk pool, my costs would have been even higher. And this is all before Obamacare really hits. It will only get worse afterwards.
The first thing we need to do is shake this idea that you need health insurance to get health care. A friend of mine whined that the only health insurance he could get had $6000 a month premiums because of his wife’s meds, his meds, and their health history. The total cost for their combined meds per month? About $500. He makes north of $100k a year. My solution to his problem: Sell your second car, cut out the second Disney cruise each year, and pay your meds out of pocket. I was accused of being an elitist.
Duggie, my friend –
“I personally know people for whom it [PACA] has been a life saver”
Glad you “personally know people who are receiving treatment under Mr. Obama’s Patient Affordable Care Act.
None of the coverage provisions take effect for another year or two.
But, keep telling us Fairy Tales.
Go back to where you came from. In America, we live by Patrick Henry’s words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God!” And, for a completely factual objection, please refer to the article on today’s (5/22/12) WSJ Op-Ed page — “The Megrahi Prognosis”, which explains the findings of the Scottish court, that Megrahi could expect to survive his cancer for three months, if treated by the UK’s National Health Service, with its rationed care, but could reasonably expect to survive for years if treated in Libya, with up-to-date meds. Britain’s NHS long ago passed from a health service to a run-down, dime-store hospice, where no-longer-fully-humans are eased into their dirt-beds.
Dugan, no one believes that all of “obamacare” is Orweillian – although, I do acknowledge in this particular article the author made no mention of some of the good things the law addresses (such as stopping insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions).
But to impose a huge governmental body onto such a large segment of our society – healthcare comprising almost 18% of our economy – to address a few issues that could have been dealt with in a much more targeted fashion, one HAS to ask (if one is honest) WHY the politicians found it necessary to create a law so complex and so vast in the scope of its power to address such basic inequalities as the inability of some to get insurance if already diagnosed with a problem ?
And if you take the attitude “I don’t care, as long as it gives me what I need”, then you are as much a part of the problem as the private companies and trial lawyers that have made the cost of healthcare so outrageous.
I hope that opposition to O’bwana’s socialist government will get serious soon. If it doesn’t, then there is exactly zero percent chance of stopping it. Oh, as always in recorded human history, ‘serious’ refers to the destruction of your enemy. Not electoral defeat — FDR, LBJ, Jimmah Carter, and BJ Clinton were all replaced by purported opponents of their politics; and how well did that work? No, time to destroy Leftism and Leftists in America. Expulsion is fine; death is better. But the one unacceptible option is throwing them temporarily out of power (but leaving them to plot subversion in Hollywood, the MSM, government, or academia). You see a poisonous snake in your kids’ bedroom, you don’t scare it away with a broom.
Dugan,
“Everyone,including the administration, realizes the bill isn’t perfect”. Then why the rush to pass it? Why the “we need to pass it to see what’s in it”. Why the need for all the “Cornhusker Kickback” style deals? Why let any of your supporters that want out to opt out? Why the trouble getting this monstrosity passed with all 3 branchs of government in the same party? Wht the aversion to comparing Obama Care to the UK system? Deep in your gut you know why; it’s bad.
Yes, you do. You sweep it into a bucket and put a lid on it and take it over to your local progressive’s house and drop it through the open window. But before you drop it in make sure you shake the everlovin’ p*#s out of it to make it really mad.
The biggest denier of health care is not private insurance. It’s Medicare. I feel sorry for you, that you actually believe this.
Please read this. They say those that don’t know history, tend to repeat it.
http://www.libertyunderfire.org/2011/07/“i-lived-under-hitler-and-stalin-they-promised-socialism-…-but-gave-us-tyranny”/
Dugan, would these be straw men? Not to worry, the gub’mint is spending $20M of our money to sell this bill to us, even though it might be struck down! They might sneak in a little campaigning, too!
“But I personally know people for whom it has been a life saver, and who otherwise would have been left high and dry by their insurance companies”
Care to provide specific examples of those lives “saved” — merely by forcing someone else to pay for treatment — contrasted with illegals who go to an emergency room and get treated without insurance.
I hope you can pull your head out someday…
“But I personally know people for whom it has been a life saver, and who otherwise would have been left high and dry by their insurance companies.” How can this possibly be a true story as “Obamacare” hasn’t been enacted yet? You libtards need to get your facts together before you spout off.
On the serious, I’m self-employed and have noticed that my monthly HMO payments have been creeping higher and higher. Every four months, I’m on the phone, fighting with a rep to lower my rate… They blame “changes” coming to the medical system, which I call “Obamacare.”
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Yes, but in a different way. We have RomneyCare in MA and the costs have been escalating since its inception. This year our employer had a meeting in which they explained the reason for wage freezes was, in part, a reflection of the absorption of that escalating cost, which is approx a 15% increase over the previous year. They cannot afford to provide simultaneous wage increases while absorbing the added costs of Health Insurance. I cannot state with 100% certainty that this is truly the case for us, but that is what we were told and quite frankly I believe it.
Not quite getting the big picture. Managed-care HMOs definitely ran a tight ship, cost-cutting-wise. But they operated in a competitive market, competing with more expensive and more generous plans. O’bwana-Care will be like the local DMV or the USPS than a cheapo health plan. When the O’bwana death-panels tell you that you don’t get treatment, that will be it. No meaningful appeal. Well, maybe the local public-employee union or your Democratic Party chairman might get you treated, but no non-political relief. That, my friends, is what Leftists mean when they say that the personal is political. In a nutshell, totalitarian government.
Unless ObamaCare is totally invalidated by the Supreme Court, we’re in for a nightmare whose outlines are only now coming into view. What, for example, would bar Congress from mandating particular treatments for all Americans? A public-health rationale could easily be stretched to justify the implantation of any imaginable sort of drug or device in the bodies of everyone within the territorial United States — and ObamaCare, with its assertion of power over treatment schedules and fees, could effectively compel physicians to act as the enforcement arm.
If you’re not terrified yet, you need more coffee.
Well, I for one…am not the least bit concerned.
After all, it’s not like there’s an omen lurking about how the small c communists would gauge who needs care and who can…um…just go ahead and die already.
The NLRB has acted with complete objectivity and has protected the freedoms of private companies, just like the death panels would be objective in handling patient/doctor decisions.
The DOJ has been open and forthright and transparent.
More importantly, the DOJ has been race neutral in applying their decisions on who to protect and who to ignore on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Obama himself has been the model unifier, not involving himself in racial warfare, class warfare or ethnic warfare, or even gender warfare.
NO…we have not a thing to worry about. It’s not as if Obama is friends with Bill Ayers who wanted to get rid of 25 million elderly, Republicans through some means, how about attrition…or depriving them of healthcare decisions that keep them alive and keep them voting against the small c communists?
It’s not as if Jeremiah Wright didn’t thunder from the pulpit against garlic noses and Jews…hoping that God would damn them and the rest of white America in general.
We have nothing to worry about. This is an administration that did not try to circumvent the Constitution, this is a Senate that was responsible and read and understood the legislation they were passing in reconciliation and thoroughly explained it to those they mean to rule…er represent…while scoring it meticulously each year in the budgets they put forward to the We, the People.
Not a thing to concern ourselves about. You see, there are rules. And, we all must follow the rules.
If you think they are changing in front of your eyes, don’t worry about the dogs. Eventually someone might just eat them.
Beautifully written. Nice. Complete. Forthright. Delicious satire. Realistic.
……and literally, terrifyingly, Orwellian.
Again, again, and again, I say, “How did we voters permit ourselves to be so snookered, and to so willfully cast aside common sense and legally elect this chameleon as our President?”
We ought to be ashamed of our collective (no pun intended) naivete.
The answer should be obvious: Many of those who are not as fully engaged in politics as the rest of us rely heavily on the MSM to vet potential candidates. The MSM was so enamored by Barack Obama, they failed to properly inform the public of his record, and continue to do so today.
Also 60 years of relative peace and prosperity have produced an incredibly immature electorate; one that cannot tell the difference between a vote for President and a vote for American Idol.
With Ol’ Rubberlegs, this all passed from the realm of politics and elections and entered the realm of George III and the King-in-Parliament. Patrick Henry correctly divided the house between those traitors/cowards who cried “Peace; peace” when there was no peace, and those who had their muskets and rifles ready to start killing red-coats and Tories. Leftists have long been Americans’ enemies; not their opponents or competitors.
Insidious. I often find it hard to remember to twist and bend mentally so that I can understand the new speak. I have to remember that whatever the label words say you must remember that they mean the opposite of their normal meaning. I abhor that corrupt and deceitful manipulation.
The entire crowd orchestrating the imposition of Obamacare, wrapped in all of its newspeak, its phony soothing words, is despicable.
Obama, Sebelius, Dr. Zeke Emanuel (QALY,quality adjusted life years scale, he determines your care level as a function of your age, your physician will need to call up the panel to find out what he/she can do for you) despicable.
Barack’s white coated physicians on the white house lawn, reportedly AMA (only something like 17% of doctors even belong anymore) but, in truth, shills with some personal vested interest in the thing passing (like AARP) despicable.
A United States President yakking about doctors yanking tonsils for profit, lying about his own mother’s healthcare coverage, despicable. The same guy telling a woman her aged mom should take a pain pill for arrhythmia, ignorant, insane, and despicable.
Affordable Healthcare BS has nothing to do with health and everything to do with an ongoing federal government power grab, which is why no one in Congress needed to either read or understand its intentionally obscure language and purposeful obfuscation.
This crowd has to go.
Thank you Dr. Hsieh for being one of the few physicians to tell it like it is.
Remember, it’s not a Death Panel, it’s a “happy” panel that helps make other people’s money last longer.
Exactly…the “resources” are few and finite, and can’t allow them to be wasted on old people, disabled people, men, married women who already have two children, people who voted for McCain…
In debt?
Kill the people you owe (the old), by rapid attrition;
import new beneficiaries loyal to the Party, not the country.
You can also starve your ‘enemies’, for good measure!
If Obamacare ever becomes a reality in the United States, quality healthcare will probably flee to Carribean States like the Cayman Islands, and it would prosper there. Politbureaucrats such as Senator Schumer will try to stop the flow of patients and their money that way. It should be hoped and strived for that Obama and his Care, and the Senator Schumer types, will be rightly dumped.
This continues in the long tradition of socialists redefining terms and sneakily selling their agenda to people who don’t want it. Hayek, in “The Road to Serfdom” pointed out how socialists redefined “freedom”, “equality”, and “justice” then used these words to sway public opinion without telling people that the words didn’t mean what people thought. In this administration, “leadership” is defined as “snake oil salesman”.
The big lie got bent around the edges so many times that it might as well be the pretzel plan. It was never about health care in any sense or definition of the phrase. The PPAHCA was about taking over the insurance industries. It was about creating a more monsterous federal bureaucracy which could control the cash flow and not inadvertently bottle neck real health care. It was about assigning some bureaucrat to stand between the physician and the patient. It is about gathering citizen health profiles. It is about class warfare against the educated. Obamacare is a cancer to both health and the economy. Minitruth that!
Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk 5/21/12: On Indefinite Detention: The Tyranny Continues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eiCFda-UMug
“Newspeak” or the deceptive use of language is a mainstay for politicians. A good way to measure a politicians worth is to judge their comments for obvious understandability and truthfulness. Dr. Paul Hsieh speaks the truth. Obamacare muddies the waters. Nice work Paul.
Rand Fan
There is more despicable, all the backroom deals and carrots offered to, and taken by, individual Congresscritters in order to get them to cast a “yea” vote. Bart Stupak signed on after receiving assurances that Obamacare would never use public funds to pay for abortions.
There couldn’t be a bigger abortion advocate on the planet than Kathleen Sebelius, currently the chief bureaucrat in charge of writing volumes interpreting and implementing the arcane language of the Affordable Healthcare Act.
(Taxpayer money is already paying for abortions through monies given to Planned Parenthood. That the cash isn’t being used in the abortion (and most lucrative) aspect of the organization’s “services” is only true on paper, the phony reports ginned up to keep the federal money flowing.)
A move against Kathleen and her boss’ attempt to force Catholic institutions to cover services opposed by Catholic teachings was, after extensive efforts to fix it behind closed doors, brought forward yesterday with some 41 or so separate entities suing the federal government on charges of breaching religious freedom.
HHS has granted over 500 dispensations and exemptions to Obamacare compliance to individual companies favored by the administration. Kind of reminds you of all the special consideration and taxpayer monies that have been given to administration friendly bundlers and their boondoggles, like Solyndra and its executives.
In his former life as a self-designated “constitutional scholar”, this president said in 2007 that using a budgetary process like reconciliation (only 50% approval required for a bill to pass, not the constitutionally mandated 2/3 majority) would be completely inappropriate for “massive social legislation” (his description) like healthcare.
Kathleen S. should be the poster girl for Big Sister is Watching. That is the face for the merciless mindless authoratarian bureaucrat who would hurt you for the party and make you pay for your own leg irons. Rule Book fascist comes to mind.
Sebelius was recently rendered speechless when asked in Congressional inquiry (relative to requirements she wants to impose on Catholic institutions) whether or not she understood restrictions placed on government authority in the first amendment.
She literally had no answer.
Since this crowd considers restrictions on their power as major (not to mention primitive and antiquated) nuisances, of course she’d be surprised to be told that her powers were in some way restricted.
Kathleen, Big Sis Napolitano, Valerie (“dumber than a box of rocks but relentless flatterer of Barack, so he keeps me close”) Jarrett, Anita (“I heart Mao”) Dunn, Samantha (“I heart globalism, maybe Mao, too”) Power, Nancy (what can you say?) Pelosi, Carol (“I heart communism”) Browner, DNC chair Debbie (“dumb beyond words but glib as hell”) Wasseerman-Schultz, Maxine Waters, Babs Boxer, even Hillary, all past and present Barack sycophants…
Give me the heebie jeebies.
Will HHS be hiring Republicans?
“Although the law states that IPAB will not be used for rationing, its authority to set prices will give it de facto rationing power. If the IPAB sets the reimbursement rates for services below the costs of providing them, doctors would no longer offer them and patients would no longer be able to receive them.”
Um, isn’t that the very essence of the death panels Sarah Palin was talking about? Face it, if ObamaCare is not struck down by the Supreme Court, then you will only have to look at England to see what type of medical care you’re going to get. If you have a very minor illness, then it should be OK. But if you’re really sick, say with something along the lines of breast cancer or colon cancer, you will be out of luck and will probably die.
The very rich won’t have to worry about any of this because you’ll probably end up with private clinics like they have in Europe, where rich people who can afford it will get much better medical care. But to all you other people out there who can’t afford it, well then you’re just out of luck and should start looking into cemetary plots. Come to think of it, I’m surprised ObamaCare doesn’t subsidize cemetary plots. After all, a cemetary plot is a lot cheaper than having to treat someone with cancer. Hey, now THAT may be a new leftist idea. Cemetary plots for all!
The nation will be destroyed if ObamaCare remains the law of the land. More people will be dying at a younger age, all thanks to the socialist who is now in the White House. And that we cannot accept. This issue only makes November that much more important to all of us. This madness needs to be stopped this year.
“In the Journal of the American Medical Association, former White House health policy advisor Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel advocates replacing standard fee-for-service payments with “bundled payments” where hospitals and physicians receive a fixed fee to take care of Medicare patients’ conditions (e.g., a stroke or a heart attack) regardless of how much the care actually costs”
That already happens in the case of hospitals. They are paid a fixed fee depending on the diagnosis (DRG). Bundling, as I understand it tries to bring in other providers ie doctors or aftercare into the same package fee.
The logic is that it can reduce cost shifting. For example as it is the hospital has an incentive to discharge as early as possible whioh might mean a skilled nursing facility, if you bring them and the doctor in you could save money.
This is not good for several reasons. Let us say you are admitted for pneumonia. The hospital wants you out as cheaply as possible. The internest taking care of you decides you need another chest x-ray. He gains nothing from that and is paid as fee for service for seeing you in the hospital that day. The x-ray is done which costs the hospital money. So presumably the x ray you needed got done because the ordering physician has no reason not to order it.
What is happening at an increasing rate is that hospitals are turning physicians into employees. This way they can control what the physician orders. If you work for Geisinger, Cleveland Clinic, or any major system the hospital conditions employment and your income on how many tests or procedures you do. If you order too many lab tests (which costs the hospital money) you get dinged. If you are an orthopedic surgeon and treat too many people conservatively rather than with surgery (which the hospital makes money on) you get dinged. If you do not comply they find another doctor.
So the original balance of interests is now lost as everyone works for the hospital which also has the nursing home etc.
What is really happening is that whatever the government is up to is one part of massive changes already happenning as mega corporations are swallowing up the entire system at an alarmimng rate. In this environment it is not hard to understand why medicare wants to keep up with a payment system that might bring more control over the shell game going on now.
I think this is the primary agenda for the whole thing. The medical business is (or was) made up of a zillion small businesses. They want a few megacorps that can be more easily regulated, unionized, monopolized, and harvested for money. Eventually, it just becomes an arm of the government (like GM or the big banks). The politically connected get and stay rich and the rest of us pay the price and are left begging for the crumbs that fall from the table (crumbs we already paid for).
What the hell is wrong with competition and individual empowerment?
It is very complicated and it is driven by market forces with the government as leader even without Obamacare.
I think people have tried to keep government as just another market force but that is giving way to a corporate government collusion. Just simple street economics. The bigger slice paid by government, the more clout it has.
It seems that people posting here have a pretty good idea of what is going on. I would add that this administration is moving against the will of the people in a way that Levin would consider “soft tyranny”. Levin went on (in “Ameritopia”) to make the point that “leadership” is a progressive concept. The conservative statesman represented the people and administered the government on their behalf. The progressive leader tries to impose his agenda on the country.
The so called progressive view is a total reversal of the citizen’s relationship to government as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
In our founding documents, the government is organized and exists as servant of the people, as an extension of and an expression of the will of the people. All power rests with the citizenry.
In the progressive view (the one being implemented brick by brick by the current cabal in DC), the citizen exists to serve the government.
It really is no more complicated than that.
Good point, but I think Levin would put it a little differently. The progressive state is run by people who have a utopian view that they impose on the people. In pursuit of this state, they take freedom from the people. So, yes people end up serving the state, but it is for their own good
Mark Levin and I might agree that the “utopian” vision is little more than power mongering, waxing eloquent about utopia on a par with the big lie, i.e., deception.
Essayist Jean-Francois Revel wrote in Last Exit to Utopia…
“Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.”
“The foundation of Medicare, and of the Second Bill of Rights that was the goal of New Deal socialism, is that citizens, as a matter of right, have a claim on the property of other citizens, which government is obliged to enforce by confiscation. Once you cede that premise, the game is lost, no matter how many fleeting victories you manage to win along the way…And, because enough is never enough for those who see themselves as entitled to take, government officials are incentivized to ply beneficiaries with more and more goodies, further punishing thrift and personal responsibility.”
~Andrew McCarthy
Excellent points, and I agree entirely. The notion that utopia is a sham, an excuse to criticize what exists, is reinforced by a concept John Fonte wrote of in “Sovereignty or Submission”. He talked of “serial absolutism”, meaning that progressives will create a set of standards and they are absolute – until the progressives decide to change them. Thus, “utopia” is not a goal, it is a strategy.
Obamacare represents political cowardice more than statism.
Medicare and Medicaid cost too much, and the only way to cut costs is to ration the health care provided to beneficiaries by reducing reimbursements to health care providers. Rather than do this openly and honestly, Obamacare gives us the IPAB, and Congress gets to escape responsibility for the rationing.
The Democrats really want a state-run, single payer health care system. Instead of imposing this on us openly and honestly, Obamacare executes a bait-and-switch with the low employer penalty and health care exchanges. In the meantime, HHS gets to scupper the health insurance business by imposing ruinous mandatory coverages and expenditure regulations. Once they’ve killed off the health insurance business and we’re all in the exchanges or on Medicare or Medicate, they change the name of everything to “NHS” – National Health Service. And just as Bob’s you’re uncle, were all in a state-run, single payer health care system. But most of us won’t know how we got there, and every Democrat worth his (D) will lie about it to cover his own butt.
Friends, we are ruled by cowards, liars, grifters and criminals. But we deserve the government we elect.
Heed the wisdom of Thos Jefferson. it’s not the government that’s elected that we deserve; it’s the governmenbt we tolerate. Please show me any statement by a Founder to the effect that we must accept any slavery imposed upon us by duly-elected officials. No, the Tree of Liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots. The Founders were men. They knew that freedom had to be kept alive by serious men. Men who were ready, willing, and able to kill in the cause of liberty. Not one of them, as far as I’m aware, ever made the cowardly and dishonorable suggestion that theirs was “the revolution to end all revolutions.” Instead, I recall numerous calls to defend freedom with constant vigilance and the believable threat of violence.
But we deserve the government we elect.
I don’t know that I (as a part of “we”) deserve the crapola being expounded by the criminals currently running Washington DC.
My only sin is being asleep like Rip Van Winkle, not realizing the depth and degree of the brainwashing going on for decades in American public school classrooms, laying the ground for the emergence of The One™
But I’m awake now, and resisting these crooks to the best of my ability.
I really like your writing Lavaux.
Doctors always skimp on care for patients they don’t think are worth it. Worth being perceived not earned. If you look like you are White Trash to those Elites, Liberal or Conservative, you will receive poor care. It doesn’t matter how hard you have worked, it doesn’t matter how good your health insurance is, it doesn’t matter. And I thank many conservative writers for doing a good campaign to teach the american public that many people just plain don’t deserve healthcare. Heaven help you if one of your loved ones is mistaken for poor white trash.
Very well done. Since Obama and the Congress exempt themselves from this wonderful plan; maybe, I could barrow from another Orwell work and suggest that not only do Congress and Obama know where this is leading the average citizen, but they seem to have moved into the farmers house. Back to 1984, when Pelosi said we would have to pass it, to see, what is in it… “ignorance is strength.” The symbol of a sheep in wolves clothing, seems to go very nicely with Obama’s slogan… Forward _______, fill in the blank, comrades, fellow travelers. The list is as endless as the number of people who have fell victims of state socialism throughout history.
Obama’s plan neither “protects” patients nor is it “affordable”. As a matter of fact, it is much worse than what Hillary offered us back in 1993. Libertarians such as myself do suggest a much better “alternative” called “free market health care”. No prescription laws, certification instead of licensing, an individual right to purchase medicine from any supplier and repeal of drug laws. The savings would be large enough to knock hundreds of billions of dollars off US health care. Plus would “solve” the so-called “shortage of primary care physicians” created by government regulation. You know, the free market works. Has worked for centuries. Whereas government health care either leads to constantly rising health care costs or some sort of medical “rationing”. Which sort of health care would you prefer to use?
George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair) keenly observed the methods of tyrannical governments throughout history. The key to maintaining power was the manipulation of their subjects’ minds by deception, emotion and the suppression of critical thinking.
During the French Revolution, the inner circle of autocrats that ruled during the Reign of Terror innocuously labeled themselves the “Committee for Public Safety”. If Robespierre could be overthrown, so can Obama. Let’s liberate America on Nov. 6.
Oddly there would be a long term advantage to an Obama re-election. True, our economy will go down the tubes in ways we cannot imagine, the US will have a fraction of the international clout of Andorra and any and every Islamist whack job will hunt down and murder Americans, but at least some of the morons who elected this guy and continue to support him may eventually learn the difference between competent and cool.
On the other hand I am probably being way too optimistic.
Yeah, way too optimistic. It’s a pretty broad assumption that morons will ever catch on to anything.
I liked Penn Jillette’s rant today, that our way cool prezzydent, the guy who bragged about doing weed and blow & blowing off his last 2 years of high school, might have been arrested for breaking the laws he is now charged with enforcing.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. can’t follow in the family political footsteps ’cause he has a cocaine conviction from 1983.
Heh, heh, heh,……..I love this,
……”Bobby Kennedy Jr. can’t follow in the family political footsteps ’cause he has a cocaine conviction from 1983.”
Oh, Oh, Oh,……..this is fist pumpin’ gooooood news.
Talk about an “entitlement attitude”………..but, there always seems to be one more of those multitudinous Kennedy’s lurking, just off there to the left, in those shadows.
“Patients in Canada and the UK all have “coverage,” but they must often wait weeks or months for services such as MRI scans or chemotherapy that Americans can receive within days”
Or in fact, never receive it at all due to death or the disease so far progressed that it is in fact to late to do anything about it.
For example, I have a genetic disorder (dupuytren’s contracture) that is slowly turning my hands into claws. In my city and province there is no qualified surgeon available yet if I went to Minnesota I could receive treatment almost immediately. The rub of course is that I would have to pay for the entire procedure including travel, lodgings and 3 months of intensive therapy. This would not be entirely out of reach but not the issue.
The issue would be the fact that my marginal tax rate is close to 48% of my income and I am taxed to death so I can’t possibly save enough or borrow enough to do so. ‘Private’ health plans would cover it but only if the surgery would be done within the province or the country and generally will disallow any claim from an American surgeon or medical centre. The reason is that these services are offered and covered in our socialized healthcare system, the fact that there are no actual surgeons available within 1200 miles of my city is conveniently glossed over.
In our socialist paradise we have ‘free’ healthcare but it has fallen into such a shambles that our system can’t persuade a qualified surgeon to move and practice here. And why would they, not only do you have to deal with multiple layers of bureaucracy but an entire system that tells you what to do and when to do it. Freedom, that’s an American tradition in Canada only government drones need apply and the government will tell the doctor what tests they can run, what tests are available and ration those services according to what the bureaucrats think is an adequate level of care. MRI, well that patient can wait 6 months, a CAT scan, well a year isn’t so bad. Pathetic.
In the last year alone 3 people were turned away from the ER of our largest hospitals by being misdiagnosed as the testing needed was not available and there was NO DOCTOR on duty. All 3 returned home and died of complications that upon autopsy were found to be totally preventable if the necessary equipment was available and a an actual fully trained and experienced doctor was on duty. In fact in 2008 a disabled wheelchair bound amputee (diabetes) died in the same ER while awaiting treatment despite being triaged over 34 hours earlier. His catheter was blocked and he died an agonizing death that went unnoticed by hospital staff.
These people are just a small sample of the absolute disgrace our healthcare system has become and what do we get from our socialist masters, fatuous PR releases about how they’re going to try and do better.
I believe the bureaucrat who pens these missives from on high is named Alfred E. Neuman and believe me the mandarins that run the Canadian Healthcare system are well versed in Orwellian Newspeak.
Thank you for sharing that Gordon. I’m sure, like us, you additionally have hundreds of thousands of immigrants being brought in by said socialist masters in order to solidify their power, who barely contribute anything to the system, but drink deeply from the bowl, thus making it harder for people like you. You might even be able to afford that surgery, if the multiple layers of bureaucracy in this country haven’t caused everything related to health care skyrocket. Hospitals, who are probably the biggest offenders of dipping into the cookie jar, get the least amount of negative reporting. Many of them have driven up the cost of insurance by claiming procedures they didn’t perform in order to fleece the insurance companies. After all, it’s not your money, it’s the greedy insurance company’s money. Obama has vilified the wrong entity.
I wish you the best with finding an outlet for the surgery and recovery. Your insight into socialized medicine is invaluable, though I don’t think anyone who doesn’t already understand how bad it is, is going to listen.
The contradictory naming of the Obamacare legislation is nothing new. We have a long history of legislation submitted and passed where the title is the opposite to the net result.
Also, since the costs of health care today have been hugely influenced by lack of tort reform and by ever increasing government legislation, if government REALLY wants to reduce costs, it would explore corrections in those areas, not the addition of truly immeasurable new regulations and innumerable new bureaus.
Look; we all know when you have reached 50 and you’re overweight, have diabetes, high blood pressure that you are no longer a valid, productive citizen, so in that sense Obamacare will effectively reduce those of this type out of the insurance pool. No insulin, no meds, go ahead and die already. If you are 50, 55, 65, etc, and you have any mality that be considered cost prohibitive to provide medical insurance you should just give up and do what is right for your country and consider suicide. “Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I can see that $20 million in ads saying just this. Hope and change….
“WAR IS PEACE; IGNORACE IS STRENGTH; SLAVERY IS FREEDOM!” He’s hit just about every tennant of Oceana’s slogan in the past 3 years, and his news agencies are churning out the propaganda with vigor. Big Brother is alive and well in the U.S.A.