Obamacare and My Daughter
In May, we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. Three of her fingers were fused together. We understand that it will become an issue later as she grows if untreated, but there is no pain or concern in the short term. She has full control of both hands, and is able to manipulate objects and feed herself, just as any six month old would do.
There will certainly be appointments before and after treatment that include the specialist and the primary care physician. Both offices are reporting that access to doctors is becoming more difficult. Both offices are reporting decreased options for medical services and for drug therapies. There is now a two-week wait for the doctor, because most patients require two appointment slots — one for discussing existing problems and one for discussing new problems. There is a six-month wait for non-urgent visits at the specialist. Since laws do not become simpler with time, it is a certainty that wait time for medical staff will increase as new regulations are rolled out.
We have met with various medical professionals to discuss treatment options. There were several possibilities discussed, and we were able to weigh these options for the best fit: Zoe’s surgery is scheduled for the day after Christmas.
We knew that surgery was likely in the near future and chose to select a top-notch full coverage insurance plan this year.
The hospital informed us that this is a fairly new operation perfected over just the last five years. However: this surgery will “cease to be available in two years for insurance patients due to ObamaCare.” This is a quote from the flustered nurse at the hospital.
This plan pays all costs incurred after the deductible, provided the services are provided in-network. The plan goes away in 2014 as a result of the health law. The best new plans to replace this will pay for 90% after deductible, and will cost more. If our daughter was born just two years later we would pay more for insurance, have inferior treatment options, and be triaged (meaning delayed) for treatment. That, in my mind, is regressive. It is not progressive as many would have us believe.
I thank you for your story. Decades ago I have a prematurely born child. Only “modern” medicine saved the child, though I was at one point told to arrange for burial. What has become of that baby, now a man, makes me proud. I live in Germany now. The current German system is superior to Obamacare. I have never received delayed or refused care. Though, expenses here are starting to reduce services for “older” people such as I am. German medicine during the Nazi period had an ultimate moral principle, namely “unwertes Leben”, i.e., humans not worthy of life. And they were eliminated! Germans have, thank God, reacted to this value with humanity. But, every time a precious child like yours is or can be denied treatment, that person has become “unwertes Leben”. And that disturbs me greatly. You are undertaking a marvelous task for which I admire you.
An Nazi masquerading as a President found a Doctor’s white lab coat which had been left out in the sun to dry. He put it on and spoke to his countrymen. All bowed, both men and women, and he was a proud Nazi that day. In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed “Unwertes Leben!” and then every one knew him for what he really was.
Seems to me that they are importing the worst European healthcare system over there, the British one, National Health, which is the most criticized in Europe. The British who want to avoid waiting times fly somewhere abroad, India i.e.
It is good to read your post, Leonard. Ditto for Mr. Binik-Thomas.
I have done a lot of studying about the German medical system during the H–lerzeit. Blogged it up during 2009.
What gets me is that these politicians in Washington are putting themselves and their own families in the same death panel system. Eventually, some Democrat party senator is going to have a child who is refused treatment, as Mr. Binik-Thomas described. Why would they put themselves in that kind of jeopardy?
Or think of it this way: why would they countenance a system in which, potentially, Newt Gingrich or someone like him could become the HHS secretary, with all that power over life, suffering and death? Because surely, the GOP will be back in power at some point. But that is not important to them.
The only answer I come up with is that they are more interested in government control of everything than they are interested in their own family. To me that makes it like a civil religion — sacrifice even your family to the government control system, if necessary.
The politicians in Washington are NOT subject to Obamacare. They are exempt, as is any religious group who can prove that they don’t believe in insurance and have hospitals that only serve their own. Guess who.
“What gets me is that these politicians in Washington are putting themselves and their own families in the same death panel system. Eventually, some Democrat party senator is going to have a child who is refused treatment, as Mr. Binik-Thomas described. Why would they put themselves in that kind of jeopardy?
Or think of it this way: why would they countenance a system in which, potentially, Newt Gingrich or someone like him could become the HHS secretary, with all that power over life, suffering and death? Because surely, the GOP will be back in power at some point. But that is not important to them.”
A democratic senator’s kid will never be denied care. Never. It’s not even a blip on their radar.
They plan on maintaining a permanent majority and they can. Dozens of precincts in swing states with no republican election monitors voting 100% democrat ring a bell?
Even if the impossible happens and the government goes over to the republicans for a little while, you think a republican will deny coverage to a democratic senator? What goes around comes around. They all stratch each other’s back and we pay for it.
“those polititians in Washington have taken themselves out of Obamacare. Can you imagine why??
Obama voted against providing medical care to infants who survived an attempted abortion procedure. Mooch wrote a fundraising letter promoting partial-birth abortion, which is nothing more than infanticide under another name.
If they can’t even respect the lives of babies that are about to be born, we should not be surprised that they don’t respect our lives either.
One-size-fits-all healthcare… fits no one, although equally (which is all left/liberals care about).
Equality is on the way never fear.
Trouble is you may have to wait a while.
Just a scant 8 years form now here is what we may see.
Newly reelected President Hillary Rodham’s VP Valerie Jarrett just announced that Obamacare III has solved all problems related to the the doctor shortage due to Obamcare I and II.
Under I and II 90% of all doctors and 75% of all qualified nurses either left the country or quit to go on welfare.
The shortages were stemmed recently by Obamacare III Tszar Chris Christie who issued a decree that from now on all those needing medical services other than an operation of some sort are required to use the services of their dentist,veternarian or in most cases local auto mechanic.That is as long as they are in the medical workers union.
All those who need an operation have it much easier.They just take a pill.
Except that lefties who can afford to exempt themselves from it will do so. Obama will never be subject to ObamaCare, nor will any of the Clintons, Pelosi, etc. “They did it for us.” But it’s not good enough for them or their kids.
There is “equality” for the people but only the best for the rulers. It is an amazing thing to see this happen in the US. Democrats are fools who want to pull down everyone but, of course, exempt themselves.
Some people are more equal than others?
Life is Good, so says his Majesty, and thus it was so. We solved the Medicare and Medicaid budget crisis says his Majesty, we ruled that a Doctor Visit is only worth $25, but the data for our databank is worth $40. But we do not understand why those Rich doctors moved to Mexico. Anyway we have a new online App that will tell you what to do while you wait for your appointment with the Physician you kept. We promise we will get him back to the office within the next few months.
Meanwhile, we are thrilled to announce that heart attack patients than survived the 6 month wait list are generally recovering.
It won’t be equal though, it’ll be liberals and liberal interests first. The San Francisco sodomite who winds up with a case of HIV after a few too many visits to the bathhouse will get full first class treatment directly from the government while care for pre-mature babies, or those suffering from congenital disorders like the one described in this article, will be severely limited because in the eyes of the people who wrote this bill they should’ve just been aborted anyway. I easily see a day where if you have a prenatal test that shows anything wrong with the fetus the only covered procedure will be abortion. It’ll be either get a free abortion, or be totally on your own when the baby is born. Any disease disproportionately affecting one of the liberal’s “protected groups” (gays, nonwhites, urban centers, muslims, etc.) will be fully covered, anything disproportionately affecting a non-protected group (whites, babies, rural communities, etc.) will be severely rationed or ignored. Count on it.
No, The true purpose of this ‘heathcare program’ is population control and eventually the results of it will trickle up to the politicians and their families. Considering the payments for medical care that Drs will receive, at whatever levels of care, will be considerably reduced, which will result in Dr.shortages, fewer hospitals, fewer medical employees, fewer innovative medical techniques, and less of everything medical, including any and all prescription drugs.
These shortages may not hit the political arenas right away but eventually it will. Aids patients will most likely be one of the last to receive medical care, the elderly and the newly born, and all other long term treatments will also be a thing of the past. Don’t fool yourselves into believing otherwise.
There are few sustaining jobs being created today, fewer people with buying power, large tracts of agricultural land is in the hands of limited controllers like George Soros, and other necessities of life will dwindle. So will “We the People.” And politicians will become a thing of the past, with only a ruling class.
Present day politicians should think beyond today, and that all their entitlements will be a thing of the past for them and their families. News outlets will not be needed either and as so many other people in this great country!
Fema camps or death camps? History repeats itself.
Your article will be read by those of us who already know the consequences of this election. Those who voted for Zero do not read articles longer than a “tweet”. They will remain ignorant of the truth until they get to experience reality. Then they will scream for the millionaires money. I am discouraged to the point of exhaustion that we will never educate the “low Information” voter.
You think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you? And those who disagree with you, well, we must all be idiots who can’t read? Right? Wrong! We read. We think. We act. We elect, too. Go ahead. Sit back and wish you could watch more “worthless” poor people die because they aren’t rich like you, and they can’t afford health care. After all, you’ve earned everything you have, right? You earned the parents that you were born to? You earned the fact that they were educated and had contacts? No. You didn’t. You lucked out. So, stop feeling superior and realize that you’re not all that special.
Talk about knee-jerk reactionaries!
Notice that the Common American Libtard makes absolutely no actual counter-argument. And nobody on the planet is surprised…
Yes, you are all idiots.
Are you so simple as to not understand that the poor people will be triaged to death? As will the old, the infirm and anyone else whose cost of treatment outweighs their connections.
We have moved to the deadliest of economies–the Economy of Favors.
With capital, posession of enough cash bought one status. In the economy of Favors power is the only cash. It is the economy of caste, of class, of group against group.
It is what we fought for thousands of years to get beyond.
We step back, towards feudalism.
And you idiots voted for it. We don’t think you’re idiots, we know it.
One of the points made in this article is that Government control and regulation vastly increases the costs to medical service providers, and therefore the prices paid by both patients and society at large.
The very high prices paid for insurance policies are a direct result of the very long list of government requirements for coverage therein.
The very high, and rising, prices for medical procedures such as the one this author’s child requires, are inflated by the governmental regulations imposed.
While the high prices influence low-information consumers to press for yet more government regulation, the truth is that less government interference would lower prices by at least 30%, and in some cases more than that up to 60%.
My sentiments exactly,and I have experience to back it up. I tried educating a liberal cousin only to have her resort to a personal low blow. You see, I have a severely handicapped son and we have to rely on medicaid for his expensive treatment. You would assume I would out of self interest support Obamacare, but I know firsthand socialized medicine doesn’t work. Rather than try to gain understanding she told me to quit accepting medicaid for my son. Real intelligence there, huh? You can’t reach them. They don’t care about truth and they are heartless.
Just try getting treatment in NH if you think that wait was a long one!
I have CLL type cancer and with this paticular flavor of it my immune system is serverly comprimised. When I caught a really bad chest cold & fever last month I was told my doctor would see me right away…..in 3 weeks!
Meanwhile, during the 2nd week of my short wait my cough got so bad that I was on the floor weezing in tiny gulps of air after coughing myself into yet another puking fit I could not take it anymore and went to an emergency room at a local hospital.
I had to wait about 2 hours, but I got my meds.
Now I have a $4,000 emergency room visit that medicare REFUSES to pay for because I did not wait for my schedualed visit with my primary care doctor.
The people at medicare do NOT give a cold turd about the suffering I was forced to endure or the chance I may have died waiting for a overworked & underpaid doctor to scrible on a little piece of paper what I needed to get rid of the pnumonia that it had turned into because of non-treatment and forced waiting periods.
EVERYONE I talked to about this says it is only going to get worse and HOSPITALS will soon have the same waiting time as primary care doc’s have right now, with emergency room paitents being sent home until it is “their” turn, so you don’t drop dead on the hospital’s grounds and have a reason to sue.
It’s a little late to be offering this suggestion now, but had I been in your situation I think I would have tried to find a source for those meds (sounds like you knew what they were) on the internet, maybe some place in India.
spymyeyes
I’m truly sorry that you were given the 3 week time frame for a doctor visit. I’m an oncology nurse and I don’t understand why you didn’t get a chance to see your primary MD’s partners (if he/she has them)? Or why didn’t you go to see your oncology MD? With your type of underlying condition; you should never wait that long to be treated.
It always amazes me when folks talk about the long wait to see their MD when they should be able to see a partner of their MD. And the folks that complain always stop too soon in their quest for an appointment. I would continue to hammer away at the appointment folks until I got a better appointment. Course thats just me; I’m not satisfied until I say that I’m satisfied.
Steve
Steve, if you lived in a place like NH, you would see that is not possible. Things are different up there. To see just how different, read this column by Mark Steyn. http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/health-380755-medical-new.html
Try some of these, people:
1. Concierge doctors. You pay extra for it, so you need to budget for it. That generally eliminates that “waiting period” solving lots of issues mentioned in this article.
2. Utilize medical/dental tourism. True you need money. Have you not prepared? You can get this for much less money, safely, and securely, even with the cost of the tourism part. WE HAVE PREPARED. Have you?
3. Fly or drive to Canada or Mexico, you can find a doctor who will make that prescription. You can go to a reputable clinic or pharmacy, get your prescription filled, see a doctor, get treatment, and just pay for it. Do you need a set-aside fund? Well, certainly. Don’t have one? Too bad. Get one. Make it big. Yes, it is going to take extra money and lots of it. How badly do you want to stay alive?
4.Got a close family member in the medical field? Like I have (brothers and cousins). Talk to them about this. They can get you taken care of; I know this to be true.
Time to get creative. Time to stop with the handwringing. Is this for everybody? Of course not. And many simply cannot prepare; they lack the resources. But you do not have to lie down and die without a fight.
For those of us who have suffered through the indignity of the VA health care system not only sympathize, but could have told any and all citizens that healthcare was about to become the equivalent of compassion, efficiency, and effectiveness displayed at your local post office or DMV. Calling it krappy is an insult to less than mediocre systems/institutions everywhere.
You might be better off simply moving here.
It’s still gaming the system — i.e., buying the most expensive plan in anticipation of getting the largest payout. The underlying points are (1) folks will do their best for their themselves and (2) universal coverage is not a free check.
One can debate whether gaming the system is OK to avoid a family having to go through a bankruptcy (presumably) or just live with condition regardless (think Somalia). What is far more likely as Obamacare engages will be these operations will not only not be developed but the ones that are will not even be offered. Think about going to a doctor that hasn’t done this operation in 10 years.
Thank you for the story- I am afraid that it really may be too late to avoid the catastrophes of socialized medicine in this country, at least for our children. My daughter was also saved by modern medicine two decades ago after I was also advised to let her die after a premature birth. She is an extraordinary young woman recently graduated from college. She managed to pass all the state exams to be a teacher while severely visually impaired with no help whatsoever from the government. Her work ethic is incredible and her enthusiasm to help learning impaired children is inspirational. Her doctors told us a few years ago that helpful surgeries were less than a decade away. Now,that research has lost funding, indefinately. The entire system, the best healthcare system in the world has just been turned on its head and we cannot even imagine the losses our children will endure- but it’s beginning.
It’s not just the losses we will endure–it’s the losses the world will endure. America leads the world in medical care and it drives most of the research. That will go away with Obamacare–especially with the rarer diseases. Who will want to spend money researching cures for those?
Sigh. My experience trying to explain the realities of what is coming to the uninformed ‘blue pill’ people has been utterly futile. I ask about their expectations and I get platitudes like ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. I describe the realities of the British and Canadian systems and all I get is hostility.
I dunno. It seems like all the pro-Obamacare people are living in some sort of dream world.
it’s that way with every issue with this president. low information voters, who can recite bumper sticker slogans but have never taken the time to actually read in any depth about the issues. but hey, he protected big bird and ended the war on women, whatever that was.
“Magical thinking.” It’s the hallmark of the Obama voter and of lefties in general. Their constant struggle is to overturn reality. They’re always astonished when, at long last and despite their most valiant efforts, reality wins. And then they blame the rich and other villains. This pattern repeats itself over and over, and it seems that the higher the IQ, the more susceptible to magical thinking. Thus the huge majorities for Obama in academe. We are on the Titanic, and they’re in control. Get near a lifeboat if you can, because they won’t be denied the vindication of hitting that berg.
The hardest part for me to understand is the support of ANY physician for ObamaCare. My sister is a case in point. She is a retired psychiatrist who is also a liberal Democrat who supported Obama, hated Paul Ryan’s guts for his proposed Medicare program and extolled the virtues of ObamaCare. She was adamant at not wanting single payer, and agreed that the Canadian medical system is ‘broken’…and yet said how good ObamaCare will be. She even agreed with the HHS mandate for religious organizations, saying we all have to pay for things we don’t like! By her support of both the man and the health program, she has now consigned my daughter, a pediatrician, to a poorer career prognosis. Go figure.
It is hard for me to even speak with her without anger at what she has done.
Carol, welcome to the club.
Unfortunately, you are not the only one with an idiot for a sister.
I also have relatives who claim to be staunch Catholics, yet they are stubbornly Democrat. And farmers. How they rectify this at the end of the day is beyond me.
But now I guess they’ll be busy trying to figure out how to pay all those taxes that will fall upon the family when they die… and the family farm will only be passed on to the heirs after the 55% Death Tax has been paid.
Farmland in Iowa ain’t cheap you know.
Here is what will wake the lefties, dullards, and LOBs (lovers of Obamacare):
Perhaps you have heard of it: Pain. Pain in the form of medical care denial, combined with pain in the form of financial costs. (injury, sickness, death, bankruptcy have a way of providing that inevitable wakeup call, eh?
Things like that wake up even the dimmest bulbs amongst us.
Having lived in Europe for extended periods over the last 40 years, in countries with “universal health care”, there is a growing “concierge” medical service industry. Doctors, who have to work in local hospitals for the Government, offer their services “after hours” for cash. They take appointments for their little clinics and provide all the services one normally needs, immediately, no wait, and with excellent results. And, if you do need more complex tests, they seem to be able to provide “next day” access to hospital labs. In the capital of at least one Baltic country there is one “lab” which is owned by a consortium of doctors which is as well equipped as most in the U.S. – but it’s services are not covered by your local health insurance policy. An MRI on a twisted knee cost me $72. The same thing here in Fairfax, VA, cost my insurance company $573. Go figure. Oh, and several of the Baltic countries are now advertising in Europe for medical tourism including dental care.
I too have heard of this arrangement. I think those government bureaucrats have looked the other way because they know government can not sustain decent healthcare for the people.
But the dopey *sses in the American government do not realize this & will penalize those doctors who dare to go private after hours.
Paper work is what makes the difference in price. Most folks have never even seen what a hospital bill looks like or what it takes to generate one. A bill to the insurance company is not a simple form that states “MRI of the knee, please pay $XX.xx” A bill is mostly a bunch of numbers that represent not only the service you received but also numbers that represent the reason why you needed the service. The codes are very specific as to the service and diagnosis and can be very complicated and most of the time requires expensive software to determine what codes to use and to generate the bill in the accepted universal format. Also, there is paperwork before you even receive the service to get prior approval from the insurance. Some one, several different someones, have to to get the approval, convert the service and diagnosis into the billing codes,put it into the required form, send the bill and then, more often then not, follow up with the insurance company to find out why it was not paid in the time allowed mandated by law. Many insurance companies only except claims submitted electronically which means you have to pay a third party to convert your bill into one that can be accepted electronically by the insurance.
When you pay cash upfront, there is none of the additional expense of billing the insurance.Back in the day when few people had health insurance and patients had to file the claim themselves, health services were much cheaper. These days much of getting a claim paid is a long process of dealing with the insurance company’s lame excuses such as that prior approval was not obtained or that the coding was wrong. But the number one excuse in my experience is that they say they never received the claim. I can have all kinds proof that the claim was sent and received but they will still insist that they don’t have it and thus stretch out the amount of time they have to pay the claim. As we all know, time is money. These delay tactics were common prior to Obamacare’s passage but have increased since and will get even worse with full implementation.Obamacare has piled on even more regulations that will be used by insurance to deny claims, discourage people from obtaining services or be used to delay payment in hopes that we’ll just give up on ever getting a perfectly allowable service paid.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking myself out of a job but it hardly matters now since Obamacare has resulted in my job as a biller being out sourced in 2014 anyway.
After hours “off the books” clinics were anticipated. They will be illegal due to the electronic record keeping provisions of Obamacare.
Having a chronically ill family member who ends up in the ER at least four times a year, I anticipate a complete drawdown of our family savings over the next two years. And this under the watching eye of a so called premium corporate health plan.
Elections do indeed have consequences.
The public doesn’t really know how the rationing will take place. It will be done by both a board, the IPAB, that will be unaccountable to anyone, and by a mechanism called the Quality and Resource Use Report. Each doctor will be ranked according to how much that doctor costs the system, i.e. his “resource use”. Those doctors who rank high in cost will have their fees docked the next year. A patient will never know about the better pacemaker, the better knee implant, the better drug for their cancer, etc. Doctors will be pressured to do less. This is a hidden back-door rationing scheme.
Also, hospitals will get one check for an episode of illness. Each year that check will get smaller. Another way to ration care.
Welcome to the new world of American medicine.
The mechanism which ties this together is the Electronic Health Record. That’s why the government and hospitals now, are pushing for it. Your information will be available to the government to review, and within 10 years it will be illegal for you to get any health care service unless it is ordered through the EHR. That will be done under the guise of preventing “waste, fraud and abuse”. The government is also doing its best to help hospitals drive doctors into employment.
Once your doctors work for the government or hospital, they cease to work for you. The physician patient relationship is severed, because the doctor’s livelihood and career are now subject to meeting cost targets and following protocols dictated in the EHR. If your doctor orders tests that the protocols loaded into the computers by the “care panel” aren’t indicated, you won’t get the test. If the doctor has a run of really sick people with unusual problems…which happens…and the EHR determines he costs too much…he will be threatened with dismissal. It is already happening to doctors whose patients a bureaucratic formula determines are staying too long in a hospital.
Simple as that.
Doctors will try to avoid seeing the sickest patients, because those will skew their statistics. We are already seeing this happen in hospitals, which also try to game the system by transferring patients to other hospitals to avoid “taking the hit”.
Hospitals are buying up practices and doctors, and on average the statistic is they lose 250k per doctor the first three years. Why do they put up with it? Because the hospital uses doctors to capture patients, then game the coding system for maximum reimbursement on patients admitted to hospitals. Second…the competition is eliminated…private practice doctors…and so, as in any monopoly the sole provider has nobody to keep them honest. Outpatient costs skyrocket with added on facility fees, etc.
This is the best concise summary of the current destruction of American medical care by Obamacare I have seen. To the uninformed who supported this (and everybody else), this is exactly what you are going to get. Unless, of course, you are very wealthy or a member of the ruling class.
Behind the iron curtain, it was common for people to receive care packages from their relatives in the West. It was also common for them never to consume any of the goods in those care packages, but rather to use them to bribe doctors and nurses to work overtime to treat them.
Bring in the lawyers. They were not restricted in any way under the OCare circus.
In regard to rationing medical care…that is already happening and not because of Obamacare…but because of profit oriented hospitals. There is a case with which I am familiar where the parents of a ten year old boy who had cancer, whose entire medical treatment was flawed with mistakes, incorrect lab work, one time the report says he has a non-cancerous tumor on the right side of his brain, the next time the lab report says he had a cancerous tumor on the left side of his brain…and the operating surgeon cuts thru his ear and calls it an accident, and the nurses give him 3 times the amount of oxygen, and the list goes on. Anyway, a panel of doctors sat with the parents and suggested to them that they should agree to give the boy the medicine that would end his life…so they could offer the hospital bed to the next patient! This recommendation was made daily over a two week period! These parents did not know this was wrong…they just knew they did not want to give their son medicine to make him die. This is a well known hospital in the USA…a highly recommended hospital. These parents met other parents who were told the same thing about their sick children…let us give them medicine to let them die. Now, this is purely greed and profit making on the part of a private hospital system. Nothing to do with Obamacare. And, it is happening in hospitals and in convalescent hospitals for the elderly who are bed ridden.
This sounds very unfortunate but does not sound like rationing, it sounds like a lawsuit. Institutionalized rationing will be a lot worse for everyone, together, as one.
I think the best we can hope for is a two-tiered system where the Obamanation gets its “equality” and the rest of us can buy medical care when we have to. But that is not a given: in Great Britain they forced everybody into the same system in the name of “equality” and people who could afford to pay out of pocket nevertheless died awaiting treatment. Their only recourse during that time was to go abroad. Eventually the absurdity of the situation led to reforms but it took a while to get there.
The German system is not all that rosy either. I lived there five years and heard constant complaints from employees and friends that costs were going up and services down. If you are “private,” as I was, you can see a doctor easily, but if you come in at state cost, you’ll often wait for ever. I’ve walked through the crowds as I went into the doctor’s office for my private (costly) appointment. Although all of our employees were fully insured to the requirements of the law, many of the lower grade staff had not been to the doctor in years because it was so expensive.
When was that? By now private patients wait as long as other patients. There are doctors who are well organized and have their patients wait no longer than half an hour. The problem is that most doctors are utterly unorganized and give too many appointments in too short a time span. So, part of the problem is on the side of the doctor. The staff is mostly (exceptions allowed) a bit stupid and uninterested. When doctors in Germany have to deal with an emergency, the others wait for ever. But one thing is guaranteed, mostly, and that’s important: An emergency is dealt with immediately, diagnozed right afterwards and operated on right away.
I think ObamaCare will fuel the growth of medical tourism as well as DIY medicine (supplements, home-lab based gene/stem cell therapies??). I have already decided that if either my wife or I get cancer, that we will seek treatment outside the U.S. Part of this is due to ObamaCare. More significantly, advanced medical therapies such as stem-cell regeneration, SENS, and whatnot will become available internationally long before they are available in the U.S. This is not so much due to ObamaCare itself as due to excessive FDA regulation. It is true that one must save up some money to pay for such treatment. However, one must also save money for the high-deductable plans that many of us have here in the U.S. Also, many medical treatments are far cheaper internationally than in the U.S.
The medical establishment itself is part of the problem. Not only do supplements work (Resveratrol, CoQ-10, etc.) even though they deny it, the aging process itself is the cause of 95% of all medical problems experienced by Americans. The existing medical establishment does not recognize aging as a treatable condition and refuses to support the development of effective anti-aging therapies such as SENS. This was, of course, true long before ObamaCare. ObamaCare simply makes matters worse. Hence, the necessity of pursuing medical treatment internationally.
The medical establisment’s refusal to support the development of effective anti-aging medicine means that millions of Americans will suffer and die needlessly over the next few decades that such therapies development is delayed. This represents a gencide that is fully comparable to those of Stalin and Mao, and this taking place in the so-call land of freedom itself. A genocide that is perpetrated by nothing more than bureaucractic inertia.
I will be thinking of your daughter on Boxing Day and hoping everyone in the OR has an excellent day. Wishing her (and her worried parents) the very best.
I work in health care and believe that ObamaNOTcare is the worst idea to come along, perhaps ever. Think we will end up with a two-tier system, though it will be painful getting there. Still hopeful that one of the challenges will take enough air out of the balloon that the implementation of it will be far less intrusive and narrower in scope. Am encouraged by the number of states that passed on setting up exchanges.
What Leigh said. Your daughter and your family are in my prayers.
I also work in healthcare and my department was told on Friday that after the first of the year, we will be working under the watchful eyes of video cameras and our scheduled work hours will be programmed into time clocks with no deviation allowed. My first thought was “SBig Brother”; the second was “this is how they are going to decide whom to layoff when the Obamacare cuts come.”
Doctors hate Obamacare. Patients hate Obamacare (and if they don’t yet, they will). Who, exactly, does this abomination help other than government bureaucrats and the IRS?
What makes you think it was intended to help anyone besides government bureaucrats and the IRS?
Our younger boy was induced three weeks early for failure to (continue to) grow in the womb, and following his birth spent eight days in the NICU, where he received excellent care. He was four pounds six ounces, and couldn’t maintain his temperature or hold milk in his stomach. A nasal tube and another in his foot. An incubator for his temperature. He’s upstairs in the playroom now, focused on fire engines.
I thank God for giving us the ability to pursue science and technology, but I thank the free market for motivating people to develop the techniques that kept my boy alive.
We’re dealing with the slashing of the FSA allowance for next year. My son is a type-1 diabetic, we have three boys with medical, dental, and therapeutic expenses, and the Democrats seem to feel that they need to tax more of our money so setting enough aside to cover those expenses has to go. Thanks, Barry, you miserable twerp.
I only hope that my Obama-lovin’ low info family members have a good plan to deal with their daughter’s medical issues. She has Down Syndrome, and if there is a medical complication found more commonly in people with that condition, she unfortunately has it.
I can only pray that all her major issues have been “fixed” by the time it really kicks in.
Lily, it’s too late to pray. You’ve been shtupped.
Yeah, I know. We all have gotten shtupped, and didn’t even get dinner and a movie first.
It is time to take responsibility for our own health as much as we can. Stop smoking, eat well, exercise a bit, teach our kids about nutrition. Reduce stress levels. Stay away from Drs and antibiotics as much as possible. And yes, know that drugs from India are often cheap and easy to get online.
Let the stupid effing libs be the ones to die in their new utopia.
Every time I hear some liberal/lefty in our federal legislature/government administration “bray” about how good obamacare will be, my over riding question is, “Why don’t you and your colleagues make yourselves subject to it?” Strange but I never seem to get an answer that makes any sense if they even deem it worthy to answer a question from the “serf/peon” class.
Your story is very moving, but it points up the problem with how we discuss the health care issue in the United States. We use individual stories like yours to touch people’s hearts and we ignore the aggregate numbers. For 2009 the annual per capita health care expense in the US was about $8000. That means if we simply divided the national health care bill and gave each person his or her share, you would be handed a bill for $8000. For a family of four, their bill would be $32,000. That means if everyone in the US was on the same insurance plan and we simply divided the premium costs among all policy holders, your premium would be $8000. Your family premium would be $32,000.
Today, much of that bill is paid for by the Federal Government and State Government through Medicare and Medicaid. That means much of your $8000 portion of the health care bill is paid for by rich people and their taxes. Another portion is picked up by private health insurance paid for by people’s corporate employers. The idea that private health insurance pays a fair share is a myth, however, corporations hire healthy people and healthy people have less health care expense. Thus today the bulk of the nation’s real health care costs are borne by our progressive tax system.
The Obamacare plan is actually the old GOP Heritage Foundation plan as enacted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. The idea is to shift health care costs from affluent taxpayers onto the middle class by making everyone pay for their own health insurance. The expectation is that with Obamacare, corporations will dump their health plans. Families will pay their own insurance. Medicare will follow the Paul Ryan model and stop paying bills, and instead give seniors a voucher to buy private insurance. The end game is to make you pay $8000 yourself every year for your share of the health care bill.
The end game of any private health insurance scheme, such as Obamacare, is to put more money in the hands of the 2%. Obamacare is not socialism (as mislabelled by its foes), it is the GOP scheme to make the rich even richer. That is why the GOP will never undo Obamacare. That is also why the Democrats were duped if they think Obamacare is something Ted Kennedy would have liked. Obamacare could never have passed while Ted was in the Senate. He would have seen through the charade. The antidote to Obamacare is a true single payer system modeled on Medicare. Put everyone in the system. Pay doctor bills as fee for service as decided by doctors and patients. Pay for the system with income taxes.
If Obamacare was a GOP scheme, then why did not 1 Republican other than the one from New Orleans vote for it?
Short answer: because Obama proposed it and politics dictated that Republicans oppose Obama’s legislative agenda. Never mind the fact that Obama embraced the old Heritage Foundation Plan for health care. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans in DC are really motivated by ideology. Both are motivated by their obeisance to a donor base. Big business wants health care off their books. They got what they wanted. Double plus bonus for the 2% is that are now moving the rest of health care off their backs as well. Get ready to pay your fair share.
My God, Harry. You sound like some academic with emotions for brains. You are damn dangerous because you are a totalitarian (for everyone else) to boot.
So many distortions in your missive I don’t know where to begin other than it sounds like a typical Ed Schultz rant. The stridency of your commentary doesn’t deserve a response beyond derision.
HaHa. I get it now. Hillary will run on Obamacare being Bush’s fault!
It’s so crazy it just might work.
Think about it… Obama’s primary (only?) campaign point was “I’m not Bush”, but he continued Bush’s TARP program, his military operations, Fed policy, Guantanamo policy…
Perhaps, when Hillary runs, she will also run on the “I’m not Bush” platform, this time painting Obama as a continuation of Bush!
Democrats will be running against Bush far into the future…
Even if what you say is true Harry that the whole Obama administration is a pawn in the hands of the GOP (meaning that Benghazi, Fast and Furious were done for the Repubs) I still don’t see how handing things over to the ideas of left wing white trash like yourself will solve anything. Sorry if the other continents besides Europe are rising and the Jews have a state of their own and you don’t feel you have the status of old. Taking over people’s privacy and giving it to washed out looking academics of the world like Liz Warren solves nothing.
Medical care has continually advanced and it is the fact that it can so successfully treat so many diseases that its cost have skyrocketed. That it has advanced so well means we should have been trying to save what was excellent about the older system. Instead the Left came in to upend it using Euro-Trashist Marxo-Fascist theories. Using medical industry to steer cash towards pet political causes and individuals is not a solution but a crime.
Actually you have stumbled on one of the delightful little conundrums of the entire Obamacare/Romneycare mess. We do not strive actually to cure diseases, we treat the symptoms with long term (expensive) maintenance medications. This is not the place to discuss the crisis in antibiotics and the emergence of treatment resistant forms of gonorrhea, MSRI etc. But it is fair to point at disease like “heart disease” or “high cholesterol” and observe that the pharmaceutical industry loves to put folks on a thirty year maintenance medication plan to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Big pharma does not like actually to cure anything. Your heart and blood pressure drugs are paid for by Obamacare. You mental health (maintenance) drugs too. There is currently no financial incentive for big pharma to cure any disease. CURE is a dirty word. Who speaks of CURING high blood pressure? Who speaks of CURING mental illness? Who speaks of CURING heart disease. Profit lies in thirty year maintenance medication regimes. Compare the state of antibiotic research to that of maintenance medications. Health care is a “for profit” industry like any other. Obamacare is an economic coup for health care. You are now required by law to purchase it. Every industry should be so lucky. What is health care required to do in return? ZERO. What is the financial incentive here to develop real cures? ZERO.
Congratulations on not biting on my left wing baiting. At least you want to discuss the issues and not call conservatives idiots like so many trolls who come here do.
I still am confused how you think your own plan creates an incentive for cures. Anything statist will need yearly revenues and will continually look for problems to address not problems to solve. At least under a capitalistic system someone will see an investment opportunity in a cure.
As for chronic diseases or diseases of old age they do not lend themselves to outright cures. Somehow you seem to demand an impossible regenerative capacity that humans simply don’t have. Vaccinations have wiped out many diseases and there has been tremendous advances in AIDS treatments. There have been inroads in cancer treatment. I just am not comfortable in seeing scientific advancements being judged against economic conspiracy theories. I have had excellent care from doctors not all with equal outcomes but up to the expectations that were set before me. Even those issues that I wish were handled better have been improved with the passage of time but not in time for me to benefit. That is the conundrum of living. There is no objective level of good fortune. Good fortune is relative to time and place. Now we are handing it all over to the bureaucrats and we will be told that we have success. In today’s America science doesn’t find a cure, the cure finds science.
We do not speak of curing things that are not curable.
Illnesses are curable. Clean out the little pests, viruses, bacteria, or what have you, and the patient is cured.
Conditions are not curable. Our bodies decay, and die, and the best we can do is manage the rate of decline.
It’s a real shame we have to learn this the hard way. After the untold number of needless deaths and horror stories and when the system has collapsed under its own weight we will finally change back. What a price we must pay to learn a lesson we already know the outcome of!!
We currently have a high-premium full-coverage insurance plan through my husband’s employer, which covers ourselves and our 4 children. We can barely afford it now, but I have an autoimmune disorder and occasionally need specialist care. Thanks to Obama, the amount we’re assumed to be able to pay will jump next year to an amount higher than our mortgage and 3x what we’re currently paying. This would literally bankrupt our family, though his employer will save millions of dollars by paying the fees and dropping insurance coverage for employees. We’ll be dumped out on the exchanges (if they’re fully established by then) and will lose access to all of our current doctors. The current wait with quality insurance to see a neurologist in our area is 4 months, and that wait time is creeping up already. But I don’t need to worry about it, because we will never be able to afford for me to see a neurologist again once we’re off this plan.
Your child might have had to live with fused fingers, but let’s be serious here. At least Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law Graduate and confirmed One Percenter, will have free contraceptives and abortions. Isn’t that the real saving grace of Obamacare?
Let me be perfectly clear: any doctor, especially a Catholic doctor, who even remotely suggests abortion, is guilty of the mortal sins of scandal (for willfully tempting his patients to sin) and blasphemy (for breaking the Hippocratic Oath he swore to Almighty God).
UTTER EVIL: “This surgery will “cease to be available in two years for insurance patients due to ObamaCare.”
I pray little angel Zoe will have a completely successful surgery after Christmas.
Obama, Clinton and the rest of his ruthless administration HATE CHILDREN and HATE people. Obamacare is designed to HURT people, deny patients the medical care they urgently require and at the same time be much more expensive.
Where are your sources for this besides a “flustered nurse”? Please point out where it says this in the bill.
Please, do your research instead of fear-mongering. Everyone. Ignorance is no excuse for fear-mongering.
Just so everyone doesn’t called me an Obama supporter, I voted for Gary Johnson.
a vote for Johnson WAS a vote for Barry
No, you voted for Obama. You are driven by self-righteous emotion.
Please point out where it says this in the bill
Are you f++king kidding? The “bill” is simply 2000 pages of legalese that says DHS can write whatever regulations it sees fit in implementing health care “reform.” The “reform” I’m seeing in my Fortune 500 employer’s empty shell of a plan will likely bankrupt me within 3 years.
Yes, and you bring up an excellent fact. It’s not all written yet and can be revised at any time at the whim of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and of course, the president. That is not the description of a constitutional law, and the reason for that is that we no longer have a functional constitution or a functional democratic republic.
Read the bill. I did. All 2000+ pages of the monstrosity. You would be surprised by what it includes – a private, fully funded military for the president, fees automatically subtracted from our bank accounts without notice, death panels like the Liverpool panels of England…this is not a health care bill. Not really. It is an enabling act. And that’s not fear mongering. That’s fact.
Obamacare is creating massive job losses. A HUGE victory for the America-hating Obama-Clinton administration.
NATURAL NEWS: It is the ultimate example of how you reap what you sow: Huge numbers of American workers who voted for Obama are now seeing their own jobs slashed below 30 hours a week as employers desperately try to avoid “Obamacare bankruptcy.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/038319_Obamacare_unemployment_work_hours.html
A friend of mine’s kid was just recently found to have developed a brain tumor. He he first reported symptoms he was seen by a doctor the next day. Because of what the doctor saw, he got xrays and scans that afternoon. Two days later he had surgery to get it removed. Now he’s getting followup treatment. All of us know that under a European style socialist healthcare system he’d have been lucky to get the first tests within weeks and it might have been months to get the surgery.
Also Obamcare has been running up insurance costs, particularly for the self-employed. Mine has already almost doubled. Now there are rumblings that policies could go up 20% to 100% this year alone. So much for Obama’s promise that if you like your insurance you can keep it, and it will be cheaper, too. (Of course, this was a lie from the start but enough people bought it to vote him in office, twice).
How else is a good Marxist going to destroy the Middle Class?
Lenin said ” crash the middle class between taxation and inflation” – now there is a third way – Obamacare!
I think a vast majority of Americans are going to be in for a rude awakening once Obamacare is in full effect, if not sooner. I’m still trying to figure out what I can cut out of my budget starting in January to pay for my increased medical bills from the combined effects of the flex spending account cap being lowered to $2,500 AND the medical expense deductible floor being raised to 10%.
My wife has multiple sclerosis, and although I have really good health insurance through work, our medical bills are very high. Each year the cost of the insurance goes up, I have to pay for the better plan, and the amount for deductibles goes up. I remember several times Obama stating for the news camera that it’s a shame that middle class families have to go bankrupt because of a catastrophic illness, and that Obamacare will fix that. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since my wife was diagnosed several years ago, and she had to quit her job, we have not led an extravagant life style, but most of our disposable income goes to medical bills. We have not been able to save for our son’s college, but when I use one of the tuition/financial aid calculators, they say we should be able to afford $1,000 per month towards our son’s tuition. We even looked into our house and moving into an apartment, but that won’t save us any, because the average cost of a two bedroom apartment in our area (middle and lower middle class area) is more than our house payment is.
I also know that the day will come when the medical cost review boards will say, sorry, that MS preventive treatment is too expensive, but we’ll pay for the wheelchair. Than you Obamacare for probably pushing my family into bankruptcy in a couple of years.
Look up low-dose Naltrexone for a cheap treatment for MS and other autoimmune disorders.
The medical (and fiscal) disasters in Massachusetts caused by Mitt Romney’s Medical Plan will be duplicated by Obamacare, which is modelled on it.
Note that the various government health plans contain no incentives for anyone to become a doctor. Doctors do not grow on trees. It costs a great deal to become a doctor, and the training is arduous.
I’ve been sick a lot in my life, I am a cancer survivor. Some advice:
1. Get over getting your feelings hurt. The system isn’t set up to spare your feelings. Legalized abortion is the law of the land. If you walk around outraged about this, you’ll distract people from caring for your child.
2. You have long waits for Doctors because we don’t have enough Doctors in this country. The current system, where you have to make two appointments instead of one, obviously wastes time.
3. “Top of the line” insurance still contracts with medical groups for the delivery of medical care. We all find that, once we factor in geography, choice of specialists within the providing medical groups is very limited. I found that switching to Kaiser, a large HMO, paradoxically increased my access to specialists.
4. Letting sick people have a blank check in deciding what treatments are appropriate for them is a nutty way to run a medical delivery system. If you think your daughter needs one operation and her doctors think she needs another operation, maybe you can convince them you are right. Start lobbying now. Find a sympathetic doctor to help you advocate. On the other hand, consider the possibility that they are right and you are wrong. New treatments are often not much better than old treatments.
5. Very little of any of this has to do with Barack Obama.
6. Your daughter is blessed to have loving parents who are so dedicated to her care.
And if we are not outraged by legalized abortion, we will have to answer to God for remaining silent in the face of a holocaust.
And what if the sick person is someone with a condition like mine – chronic migraine? The condition is highly individual with both triggers and effective treatments varying quite a lot from individual to individual. Any specialist worth his or her salt knows that and takes a lot of what the individual patient has to say into account. What do you want to bet that the HHS and IPAB either don’t know or don’t care and will look only at what is the cheapest and seems to work best for the most migraneurs?
That will leave a lot of us out in the cold with substandard or completely ineffective treatment options.
Migraine formula:
200mg Riboflavin (vitamin B2) am and pm
250-500mg Co-enzyme Q 10 am
up to 1,000mg Magnesium (titrate as tolerated) pm
I worked with a neurologist that prescribed the above for all of his migraine patients. I do not suffer migraines; however, the secretary on our unit does. She has been using this regimen for over 2 years now with good results. She reports far fewer migraines, which are significantly less painful. Best of luck to you.
ps – I am a critical care RN considering getting in on the medical tourism action, as I am vehemently opposed to becoming a government employee delivering sub-par care!
Wrong. George Soros and his associates wrote the bill, under the direction of Barack Obama. Do you know who Robert Creamer is? He is married to Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a political buddy of Obama’s from his days in Chicago. George Creamer was indicted for bank fraud and tax evasion back in 2006 and while serving time in prison wrote a book called “Stand Up Straight! How Progressives can win.” In the acknowledgements section of the book he gushed about how much he owed to Saul Alinsky, the legendary community organizer. He also heaped effusive praise upon Barak Obama, a brand new and virtually unknown senator at that point in time. He had accomplished nothing. Why praise him?
Among the many creepy suggestions Creamer made in his book was this one: to reshape 1/6 of the national budget by creating a national health care bill which turns people into the subjects of an ever-expanding government and of the party which works to grow government. He also wrote a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change” in which he proposed that health care become a right guaranteed by the government and not a commodity. He suggested that a frenzy should be stirred up among the citizens that healthcare was broken and in crisis. He wanted to discredit private insurance companies and forge new government-industry relationships with large sectors of the business/employer sector (thus introducing state economic fascism). He also wanted to convince politicians that they owed their political life and reelection to the existence of state-run healthcare and organize a massive field program in which unions and faith communities are used to pressure people into embracing this new way of life.
Creamer was released from prison with the help of over 200 letters of recommendation from people such as Chuck Shumer, David Axelrod, Al Sharpton, Richard Durbin and Carol Browner.Despite being an ex-con, he attended a White House state dinner on November 24, 2009, along with Obama advisors Daniel Stern and David Axelrod. Soon after that he began work as a consultant for George Soro’s Open Society Institute, otherwise known as the committee to elect Obama. Creamer now works in his own consultancy and counts ACORN and SEIU among his clients. Now if THAT is all coincidence, I will eat my hat.
“The best new plans to replace this will pay for 90% after deductible, and will cost more. If our daughter was born just two years later we would pay more for insurance, have inferior treatment options, and be triaged (meaning delayed) for treatment.”
And it will really only get A LOT worse within the next four years. The dirty little secret under Obamacare is that doctors are leaving the medical profession in droves, or are simply just accepting cash. It is not economically viable for them anymore to accept Medicare patients, and lets not even talk about Medicaid patients. Under Obamacare, soon you will probably be forced to see a minimally-trained nurse practitioner (if that) before you even get to SEE a doctor. And if she mis-diagnoses your illness, well then too bad for you, chum. You will probably get worse before you actually see a real doctor and then you’ll be harder to treat because you are so ill.
And for patients with really serious illnesses, like cancer, prepare to see a lot more people left to die, just like is happening now in Great Britain with the very young and the very old. They are now instituting this “Pathway to Death” protocol for people THEY think don’t need to live any longer. The Nazis specialized in this sort of treatment, espcially in their attempt to create a “Master Race.” Although we probably won’t be trying to create a “Master Race,” we will probably let the very old and the very young die simply because they are financially inconvenient to keep alive. And buddy, when you start doing this to Americans, civil wars tend to follow. All that needs to happen is to have a few thousand of these types of cases to be made public and you will have one really upset group of Americans out there.
Or what we’ll end up with is a poor to mediocre health care system like in England as well as a parallel cash-based health care system where you’ll be forced to pay cash for a better doctor and better treatment. Private doctors are literally all over Europe and are doing a great business, becasue many people would rather be cured than remain ill in public single-payer socialized medicine. And you will end up with some health care for the poor and better health care for the rich. Hmmm, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, that’s what we have now and it’s only going to get a lot worse before Obama leaves office.
#32: “And buddy, when you start doing this to Americans, civil wars tend to follow. All that needs to happen is to have a few thousand of these types of cases to be made public and you will have one really upset group of Americans out there.”
Of course that assumes that thousands of cases will be made public. I wouldn’t count on it, especially as government and media forces find ways to crowd out free expression. Enjoy it while we can, I suppose.
First of all, Nurse Practitioners rock! Secondly, I believe we will be seeing fewer of them in the future. At least in the short term. Here’s why – Some asshole has decided that as of 2012 all NP programs must be PhD programs. Current NP’s will be grandfathered in, for now. Anyone pursuing this career from here on in, must get a doctorate. Without commensurate pay. That’s right, an ad’l 1-2 years of school and tens of thousands of dollars for absolutely no increase in salary. It’s ridiculous! If one were to spend that much more time in school, why not just become a physician? As it is the salary for an NP is pathetic when the liability issues are considered. In some areas they don’t make as much as hospital staff rn’s; although, they work far more hours.
I know this to be true from personal experience. Last year I applied to a masters program and was informed of the above. I rescinded my application. I have also worked on units with NP’s working as RN’s to supplement their clinic income. The “Powers that Be” are shooting themselves in the foot in all directions!
Only SUPER-geniuses like Barry O and the Congressional Democrats (catchy band name, that) could come up with the idea of making health care cheaper and more available by making it more expensive and less available.
They weren’t trying to make it cheaper. They were trying to make us subjects who could not fight back. I think people credit Obama with FAR more humanity than he actually possesses. Ask anyone who knows him – he’s a cold fish.
When my son’s wife was expecting their first child there were lots of scans as you describe. They were sent for genetic counseling and advised to abort. The mother is a Roman Catholic who finally told the doctors that she would be having the child no matter what. She refused any subsequent testing on this very “small” baby. Today their perfect little girl is nearly 19 years old. She is bright, beautiful and a lovely dancer. She just completed her first semester of college. She is 5’2″ tall and has always been, apparantly from conception, small for her age. I shudder to think what the future looks like with this horrible bill coming whether we like it or not.
Holy Innocents, pray for this little child to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, whom you died to protect.
The government is forcing individuals to pay for a system. Will that system that knows there will always be income by force of law (force of a gun…) have an incentive to become more efficient or less available/desirable? THAT is a no-brainer.
To hell with it. I will not comply, nor will I, if ever on a jury, find anybody guilty of violating this ‘law.’
This used to be a nation where a person’s conscience was respected. You could avoid the draft, you could avoid combat, you could avoid carrying a rifle if your conscience forbade such activity. My conscience forbids me to become part of a system that will make abortions, the killing of the innocent, more likely. This isn’t about money, isn’t about loss of freedom. This is about the cheapening of life. It is about the government deciding the worth of an individuals life. It is about what is evil.
Conscientious objectors were not exempted from the draft, though they were exempted from combat roles, instead assigned such jobs as combat medic and explosive ordinance disposal.
Guadalajara and Monterrey have sparkling hospitals that do most proeedures for a fraction of the price.
I realize this does not help everybody, but it helps me.
pathetic lies by Right to life morons
Why, nick! Such a concise refutation of the article and comments. What remarkable clarity, factual citation, and insight you bring to the discussion. You are the finest example of liberal debate I have ever seen.
Because clearly anyone holding the opinion that an individual has a right to life is a moron.
Read the PPAC and then come back when you have something of substance to say. Believing that the sky is pink and everyone is out to help you does not make it so.
The irony of this troglodyte’s mother not aborting him is too rich for words.
As a Canadian pastor, I’ve seen, buried, and heard the first-hand horror stories of what Canadians have had to endure as the dream of socialized medicine turned into a nightmare. I recall talking to one long-time nurse friend who told me that she had actively discouraged her own daughter from even considering taking up nursing, because of the long hours, impossible demands & stress, patient frustration, and the fact that time and not enough nurses per shift meant a nurse was a pill-distributor, and had not time for actually comforting, helping, or talking to lonely, scared, or dying patients in need. Several fine young doctors I know also got out of family practice to become fill-in or ER doctors, because of the punishing 12-14 hour days, impossible demands & huge patient-loads expected in Canada. Until recent improvements, 25 000 people locally were without a family doctor here– which overloads the ER department, which must do prescription replacements, regular check-ups as well as cold & flu care for such people. The wealthy or connected? Until recently, they depended on being able to fly South to Boston or New York for quick, effective treatment.
Yes, but don’t you see? More people will get coverage. Of course, the coverage will be inferior, the providers will get far less compensation, fewer providers will be willing to participate, and it will cost the consumer a great deal more. And you don’t see this a progress?
I live in Florida. The Canadian snowbirds show up here for the weather AND our medical infrastructure. Pretty soon, when American is less exceptional, they’ll just come for the weather.
Obamacare horrifies me, and I don’t know why it didn’t enough Americans to vote him the he!! outta office. There certainly WILL be “death panels”; unelected ppl appointed by the Pres. who’ll decide “who gets what”. Here’s a for instance. My mom at 83 was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer in early Nov. 2009. (this was the 3rd time in her life she’d had cancer; successfully fighting it off at 40 & 67, breast cancer both times). She decided to fight again, and made it to early May 2010. Believe it or not, she stayed in otherwise relatively good health, and at home, until the last 5 days. Yes, she had chemo & radition, but few other drugs (even her normal pain pills for back surgery kept it at bay until the very, very end). Would it have been better to plop her in a hospital or hospice bed, or the way things went? Full-time care in ANY facility is super expensive. Keeping her at home wasn’t, but there was a trade-off in treatment $$. I still believe it was much better — and CHEAPER — for her and our family in this end-of-life saga to have her at home. She lasted 3 mos. longer than the 1st Dr. predicted (he told her to go home & die, in just about that many words). We all had the time to make peace with what was, & each other (not that it was necessary; all our family is very tight & close knit). That was worth it’s weight in gold, as anyone who’s been there knows.
Maybe we did vote him out of office. There was so much voter fraud that it’s hard to tell.
This is a direct consequence of not enough people being taught how to think critically and use their imaginations. They can’t conceive of these things happening here. Well, now they’ll get to experience it all, close up and personal. I just wish I wouldn’t have to suffer for their short-sightedness.
Perhaps my husband will get transferred abroad and we’ll escape.
Sarah Palin warned about “death panles” in Obamacare, and se was rediculed mercilessly by Demos amd many other liberals. But My wife was hospitalized for three days, and months later we were informed that Medicare would not pay. The reason for denial? “She should have known that she would get better” without medical care!! Also, I received two rejections for treatments by my surgeon, and now a third rejection for me hsa come in! You know that Obama is taking 500 million dollars away from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. He is also taking 500 millions dollars away from Defense. How far down is Obaama going to take us? Down to the level of a third world nation, or lower. He has made great strides in his first four years, and you can expect a lot more downward as far as he casn take us!Obama’s father despised America’s wealth and exceptionalism and Barrack is carrying on that spite. But if he is a socialist, how will there be enough workers to pay for all those who will not have a job and will receive goverment dole? We are looking at that possibility now. Some of you may not like what i say now, but Obama is not a true Christian believer. He put on a show, but if you watch what he DOES, rather than listening to what he says, you will disover that his allegiance is with Islam. He said during his first campaign that “when all the dust has settled and over, I will come down on the side of Islam!” BEfore youi reject that statement, watch what he does.
“It is not progressive as many would have us believe.”
Oh, but it is vastly more “fair,” as you, an obviously educated and financially solvent citizen, would get to experience the same frustration and hardships as those less well-off.
Death Panels – Change your getting…
Can we hope for a veto-proof congress in 2014 and rid ourselves of obamacare?
Currently there are 26 Senate Democrats up for election in 2014. The Republicans would need to win 22 of those seats for a veto-proof majority.
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