ObamaCare and me – Doctor Zane F. Pollard, MD – For Anyone Who Still Doesn’t Believe in Rationing and Death Panels if ObamaCare Passes

I have been sitting quietly on the sidelines watching all of this national debate on healthcare. It is time for me to bring some clarity to the table by explaining many of the problems from the perspective of a doctor.

First off, the government has involved very few of us physicians in the healthcare debate. While the American Medical Association has come out in favor of the plan, it is vital to remember that the AMA only represents 17% of the American physician workforce.

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta, Georgia that accepts Medicaid. For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

Each time I was told to fax Medicaid for the approval forms, which I did. Within 48 hours the form came back to me which was sent in immediately via fax, and I was told that I would have my answer in 10 days. Of course by then each child would have been blind in the eye.

Each time the request came back denied. All three times I personally provided the antibiotic for each patient which was not on the Medicaid approved list. Get the point -- rationing of care.

Over the past 35 years I have cared for over 1000 children born with congenital cataracts. In older children and in adults the vision is rehabilitated with an intraocular lens. In newborns we use contact lenses which are very expensive. It takes Medicaid over one year to approve a contact lens post cataract surgery. By that time a successful anatomical operation is wasted as the child will be close to blind from a lack of focusing for so long a period of time.

Again, extreme rationing. Solution: I have a foundation here in Atlanta supported 100% by private funds which supplies all of these contact lenses for my Medicaid and illegal immigrants children for free. Again, waiting for the government would be disastrous.

Last week I had a lady bring her child to me. They are Americans but live in Sweden, as the father has a job with a big corporation. The child had the onset of double vision 3 months ago and has been unable to function normally because of this. They are people of means but are waiting 8 months to see the ophthalmologist in Sweden. Then if the child needed surgery they would be put on a 6 month waiting list. She called me and I saw her that day. It turned out that the child had accommodative esotropia (crossing of the eyes treated with glasses that correct for farsightedness) and responded to glasses within 4 days, so no surgery was needed. Again, rationing of care.

Last month I operated on a 70 year old lady with double vision present for 3 years. She responded quite nicely to her surgery and now is symptom free. I also operated on a 69 year old judge with vertical double vision. His surgery went very well and now he is happy as a lark. I have been told -- but of course there is no healthcare bill that has been passed yet -- that these 2 people because of their age would have been denied surgery and just told to wear a patch over one eye to alleviate the symptoms of double vision. Obviously cheaper than surgery.

I spent two years in the US Navy during the Viet Nam war and was well treated by the military. There was tremendous rationing of care and we were told specifically what things the military personnel and their dependents could have and which things they could not have. While I was in Viet Nam, my wife Nancy got sick and got essentially no care at the Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. She went home and went to her family's private internist in Beverly Hills. While it was expensive, she received an immediate work up. Again rationing of care.

For those of you who are over 65, this bill in its present form might be lethal for you. People in Britain face rationing of care in that there is an eight month wait for cataract surgery, 11 for hernia and the same for disc and total hip The government wants to mimic the British plan. For those of you younger, it will still mean restriction of the care that you and your children receive.

While 99% of physicians went into medicine because of the love of medicine and the challenge of helping our fellow man, economics are still important. My rent goes up 2% each year and the salaries of my employees go up 2% each year. Twenty years ago, ophthalmologists were paid $1800 for a cataract surgery and today $500. This is a 73% decrease in our fees. I do not know of many jobs in America that have seen this sort of lowering of fees.

But there is more to the story than just the lower fees. When I came to Atlanta, there was a well known ophthalmologist that charged $2500 for a cataract surgery as he felt the was the best. He had a terrific reputation and in fact I had my mother's bilateral cataracts operated on by him with a wonderful result. She is now 94 and has 20/20 vision in both eyes. People would pay his $2500 fee.

However, then the government came in and said that any doctor that does Medicare work cannot accept more than the going rate ( now $500) or he or she would be severely fined. This put an end to his charging $2500. The government said it was illegal to accept more than the government-allowed rate. What I am driving at is that those of you well off will not be able to go to the head of the line under this new healthcare plan, just because you have money, as no physician will be willing to go against the law to treat you.

I am a pediatric ophthalmologist and trained for 10 years post-college to become a pediatric ophthalmologist (add two years of my service in the Navy and that comes to 12 years). A neurosurgeon spends 14 years post-college, and if he or she has to do the military that would be 16 years. I am not entitled to make what a neurosurgeon makes, but the new plan calls for all physicians to make the same amount of payment. I assure you that medical students will not go into neurosurgery and we will have a tremendous shortage of neurosurgeons. Already, the top neurosurgeon at my hospital who is in good health and only 52 years old has just quit because he can't stand working with the government anymore. Forty-nine percent of children under the age of 16 in the state of Georgia are on Medicaid, so he felt he just could not stand working with the bureaucracy anymore.

We are being lied to about the uninsured. They are getting care. I operate at least 2 illegal immigrants each month who pay me nothing, and the children's hospital at which I operate charges them nothing also. This is true not only on Atlanta, but of every community in America.

The bottom line is that I urge all of you to contact your congresswomen and congressmen and senators to defeat this bill. I promise you that you will not like rationing of your own health.

Furthermore, how can you trust a physician that works under these conditions knowing that he is controlled by the state. I certainly could not trust any doctor that would work under these draconian conditions.

One last thing: with this new healthcare plan there will be a tremendous shortage of physicians. It has been estimated that approximately 5% of the current physician work force will quit under this new system. Also it is estimated that another 5% shortage will occur because of the decreased number of men and women wanting to go into medicine. At the present time the US government has mandated gender equity in admissions to medical schools .That means that for the past 15 years that somewhere between 49 and 51% of each entering class are females. This is true of private schools also, because all private schools receive federal funding.

The average career of a woman in medicine now is only 8-10 years and the average work week for a female in medicine is only 3-4 days. I have now trained 35 fellows in pediatric ophthalmology. Hands down the best was a female that I trained 4 years ago -- she was head and heels above all others I have trained. She now practices only 3 days a week.

(Now there will also be mandated racial equity in admissions… rather than admissions based on ability).

By Zane F Pollard, MD – American Thinker

Background: Dr. Zane F. Pollard
I did my undergraduate work at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. I graduated Tulane University medical School Alpha Omega Alpha ( medical school's top 10% of graduating class). Internship at the Univ. of Southern California in Los Angeles, one year of General surgery residency at the U. of California in San Francisco. Two years in the US Navy. Residency in Ophthalmology at the U.of S. California in Los Angeles, fellowship in pediatric Ophthalmology at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. In practice with Eye Consultants of Atlanta for the past 35 years. Published 90 papers in peer reviewed Scientific Ophthalmology Journals. Member of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Ophthalmological Society. Board certified in Ophthalmology.

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Barbara Wagner wanted to live, but Oregon Government-Run Healthcare would not pay for her cancer treatments. What they would do, was give her the meds for assisted suicide.

Video: Oregon says no to chemotherapy, offers assisted suicide instead

Read Full Story: Woman in Oregon Told Healthcare Would Not Pay for Cancer Treatment But Would Pay for Assisted Suicide… Welcome to Government Controlled Healthcare

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Over the weekend the Veteran’s Manual was exposed

Full Article: Outcry Over Vets’ ‘End of Life Care’

Click here to read the "Your Life, Your Choices" guide.

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IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.
Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:
* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.
* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care system-wide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.
* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.
Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Order a copy of Catastrophe

In Britain, there is a total dollar amount that government will pay for each person.

• Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly
• Unease in Britain Following Assisted Suicides

Canadian Healthcare is going Bust…

The new president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Anne Doig, has made comments that indicate that Canada's public run healthcare system is running on empty.

We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize...We know that there must be change...We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.

These comments come as the outgoing CMA President Dr. Robert Ouellet, is expected to report that Canada's government-run system needs to become more patient-centered.

Related Resources:

• Canadian Health Officials: Our Universal Health Care Is 'Sick,' Private Insurance Should Be Welcomed

• Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors
• Healthcare: Does Canada Do It Better?

• And the list goes on… The more time we have to study ObamaCare and other government run healthcare systems, the more negative and scary information keeps surfacing.

Source: TrueHealthIsTrueWealth

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Sign The: 'STOP OBAMACARE' PETITION

ObamaCare: Beware of the Rhetoric

Both syndicated columnist host Mark Steyn and author and former political advisor to Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, said today in separate interviews… “beware of the rhetoric on healthcare”!

“ObamaCare is not about healthcare reform, it is about a power grab and taking 40% of Medicare funds (from the elderly) and redirecting them to illegals. The key to this program is not the public option or end of life counseling, it is taking funding from the elderly, giving it to younger illegals and then rationing care. So the protestors’ victories in the past few days are not what they may seem” …Dick Morris

“Fraiser Care in British Columbia (their socialized medicine) just announced that they would again be cutting healthcare for seniors as well as 15 to 20% of elective surgeries for everyone. Obama and the Dems will do whatever they can to pass an embryonic healthcare program and then burn the bridge behind them, so that there is no going back, because their ultimate goal is to get to a single-payer government-run healthcare program as part of their re-making of America program. Their entire Healthcare Program (Obamacare) is a death system with them in charge. It is the nationalization of your body.” …Mark Steyn

They both say that the co-op plan that the Dems have now started talking about is the same thing as the public option plan… which will ultimately result in a single-payer plan and government running who is covered and who isn’t, price setting, and what procedures and drugs will be given to whom!! They will also cover abortions with government money, have full access to your medical records and your bank account, if this passes.

“One third of the uninsured are 18 to 25-year-olds categorized as ‘the invincibles’ who think they are just that and don’t have a lot of money, so choose not to purchase health insurance if not covered by their parents or their employer.

Another quarter of the uninsured are adults between the ages of 50 and 65, the pre-Medicare boomers, who have lost jobs or coverage through their employer and either can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions of themselves or someone in their family, or can’t afford the premiums, so they are waiting and praying they will be fine until Medicare kicks in.

And then there are another 12 to 19 million illegals depending on who is supplying the figures that are not covered but will be under Obamacare. Covering illegal aliens not specifically addressed because if something or someone is not specifically excluded… they are included, which is the goal of the left!

Medicaid (coverage for the poor) is broke, primarily because of fraud and waste caused largely by duplication and could be cleaned up.” …Ceci Connolly, Washington Post

The balance of people not insured is about 5 to 8 million people who could be covered and covered cheaper by:

• Trashing all 5-bills that are presently being considered in the house and Senate
• Clean up Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs and Reservation Benefits… by controlling fraud and waste.
• Invoke serious tort reform… stopping frivolous lawsuits and restricting the awards
• Do not cover abortions with public funds
• Do not cover people in the United State illegally
• Allow individuals and small businesses to for groups and co-ops to get better rates
• Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines
• Allow portable coverage (allowing you to take your insurance with you when you leave a job or move)
• Pay on results not on number of procedures
• No more exclusions because of pre-existing conditions by insurance companies
• Crack-down on insurance fraud
• Allow coverage of natural supplements, natural and holistic procedures like chiropractic care, acupuncture etc by insurance coverage
• Force Big Pharma to honor price reduction they offered Team Obama
• Allow generic medications to be covered by insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.
• Allow sharing of information and encourage the reduction of duplication of records… but not kept and managed by the government or in a central database by a company like GE, who is in bed with Team Obama. In today’s world if large companies and groups like Kaiser, Blue Cross, Medicaid, Cigna etc kept their own central databases, forwarding information electronically or giving a copy to the patient to hand carry to avoid the duplication of procedures or tests is and would be easy. Perhaps some the unspent stimulus money could go toward helping some of these companies updating their record systems, which would also create some permanent and temporary jobs. A central database of everyone’s information is just to tempting for future problems.

If the above measures were enacted, we could pay for the 5 to 8 million who are not insured and not are insurable, lower or at least maintain our costs without changing the quality of our medical care in the United States, keep additional government intrusion out of our lives and prevent rationing.

Add to this the ideas of dozens and dozens of present and ex-Governors, Senators and Congress people plus CEO’s of companies and experts in economics and medical care from the financial end, we could perhaps level the cost increase for a few years and improve our care for everyone.

Everyone agrees that we need some kind of reform. This kind of reform, not the ObamaCare versions (any of them)

HUGE PRO-OBAMA HEALTH CARE AD CAMPAIGN UNDER WAY

As you can see from the link below, the Obama people are launching a huge TV ad blitz to restore momentum behind their health care proposals. Funded by money from drug companies and other vendors who have been bought off to back the plan, it tries to refocus the campaign for his legislation on the supposed benefits of his plan for the average person.

Click here to watch the ad. We need to counter this offensive with all our resources.

The supposed benefits of the Obama package that are enumerated in the ad are all:
1. Easily available by federal or state regulatory legislation and need not be part of an overall change in the health care system; and

2. Have largely already been agreed to by the insurance companies at their White House meetings; and

3. Were, in many cases, solved by the Kennedy Kassenbaum bill, passed in 1996, that prohibited insurers from discriminating against patients whose pre-existing conditions were covered in their old jobs.

Yet, in a bid to drum up support for the bill and its inevitable rationing of care to the elderly, Obama is presenting these measures as integral to his legislation when, in fact, they are quite extraneous to it.

Strategically, he is trying to focus the debate on the needs of the younger population and avoid addressing the catastrophe that his plan would represent for the elderly. None of the people in the ad are old and the issues are those that concern the younger, working population.

The answer is to keep the debate focused on the elderly. If their opposition to these proposals grows and reaches a tipping point (as it is doing as we speak), the Democrats will not dare pass their legislation.

PLEASE...Go here and donate funds so we can run ads attacking Obama's plan and zeroing in on what it means for the elderly. We are now on the air in Montana, North Dakota, Arkansas, and Maine. We are about to go on in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Louisiana.

We need money to advertise in North Carolina, Wyoming, Indiana, and Connecticut.
Please give generously so we can reach these Senators!

Thanks,
Dick Morris

If you have the time and inclination to read the healthcare bill (HR-3200 - full report) yourself it would be great, most of the Congresspeople who are holding town halls have not.

If not, here are some breakdowns:

Breakdown Articles of HR-3200 - full report

• DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE 1000 PAGE HEALTH CARE PLAN BY AND ATTORNEY & DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF LAW
• *Letter to Your Congress Person on Health Care (Obamacare) HR3200
• *A Look at What is Really in the Health Care Bill (HR 3200): Chilling!

And a must read on this subject is Dick Morris’ Catastrophe

Click Here To Find A Town Hall Near You!

Related Resources:

• Senate Removes 'End of Life' Provision From Senate Bill - Victory in the 'Right' Direction for the American People and Fox News
• Obamacare for Illegal Aliens – While Granny Gets Duty to Die Lecture
• Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly
• No Turning Back From ObamaCare
• GovernmentCare’s Assault on Seniors
• ObamaCare For Seniors: Sorry, You’re Just Not Worth It
• Dick Morris Says Obamacare Will Replace Medicare – What to do to Save Health Care
• Kennedy: Let’s Ration Healthcare
• Kristol: Kill It, And Start Over
• Seniors Left Behind?
• HR 3200 Kills the Private Insurance Industry
• The Ultimate Resting Place of Socialized Medicine
• Co-Ops = Public Option = Single Payer
• Lamar Smith Spells Out Costs of Speaker Pelosi’s Insistence on Covering Illegal Aliens With Federal Health Plan
• Catastrophe

Contact your Senator and Congressperson, any Blue Dogs or moderates in pivotal states and attend a local healthcare Townhall, healthcare Tea Party on 9/12 or the Big One in Washington. Read the Bill or at least some Reviews, Read Catastrophe, educate yourself on this and related issues And then please speak out America!!!

Taxes go up, taxes go down. Laws are made and rescinded. But once a version of Government-Run Healthcare is passed and initiated there is no going back: Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly and No Turning Back From Obamacare

Call the switchboard for Congress in Washington today... your Senator, Congressperson and Nancy Pelosi and tell them “NO” on Government-Run Healthcare Takeover, "NO on Cap and Trade" & NO on the Carbon Tax… and to pay back the unspent stimulus money!!!

1-202-224-3121- Switchboard - House

1-202-225-3121- Switchboard - Senate

(202) 225-0100 - Speaker of the House Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact or http://www.speaker.gov/contact
If the web contact form doesn't work, use this email address:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov

Info on Senators from your State.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” --Ronald Reagan

Join the Tea Party Express

Free Our Health Care Now - Petition

Source: True Health Is True Wealth

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly

Daniel Hannan, a British 37-year-old member of the European Parliament, says socialized medicine is worse for the elderly; long waits for services, rationing and no option to pay for better services or procedures yourself. He cannot imagine that Americans would consider trading in what we have for European-style Socialized Medicine.

Is this what you guys want? He lives with this system and wonders why the heck we would want it: They have more bureaucrats than doctors and the British Healthcare System is the 3rd largest employer in the world! ...So once we have it, there are so many bureaucratic jobs involved that there is no going back. And it is exactly that fact that makes it so enticing to Team Obama and the Dems; giant government and huge control of funds and power.

In the Unites States if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer we have a 100% minimum 5 year recovery and survival rate. In Canada it is 95% and in Britain it is only 77%.

Daniel Hannan on ObamaCare: Are you people insane?

A desperate intervention from a man who’s already seen this car crash up close, wondering why any free people would tolerate it short of a major war forcing them to. The words of one of the world’s most eloquent conservatives need no elaboration from me, but as companion reading to Beck’s point about how lame the arguments are for this boondoggle, try Ramesh Ponnuru’s piece on the paradoxes of ObamaCare in Time.

Quote:

There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, “the status quo is untenable.” Our health-care system is rife with “skewed incentives.” It gives us “a whole bunch of care” that “may not be making us healthier.” It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is “bankrupting families,” “bankrupting businesses” and “bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change.”

Obama’s second major point is that–to quote from the same broadcast–”if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don’t want you to have to change … So what we’re saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it.”

So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?

Exit question: How do we get Hannan to run for office here? Seriously.

by ALLAHPUNDIT – Hot Air

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Healthcare: Does Canada Do It Better?

John Stossel: “Government-run health care may mean waiting in line for care!”

Link to Report (7.31.09): http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerindex?id=8227482

Go to this link and you can contact your representative directly; that way you can tell them to stop this MADNESS! Make sure they know YOU vote!

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/congress/

There will be a place to enter your zip code, then a place to click to write your representatives directly; it is all free...

On June 26th, John Stossel said: “Government Controlled Health Care Means Waiting in Lines, Serious Drawbacks (in his previous special):

Canadian Health Care: A Viable Model? - http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7903062

President Obama said that the government is going to "fix what is broken about health care in America." It sounds like a great idea, but often what sounds good has unintended consequences.

John Stossel discovers some dead-serious drawbacks to socialized medicine.

When the government takes over, many critics say that you may not get the care and breakthroughs you need to save your life.

"The only way they can get costs down under a government-run system is to control the amount of money that is spent on health care," says Sally Pipes of thePacific Research Institute, who was born in Canada, and is wary about government taking the reins of health care in the U.S.

"We are going to have denied care, lack of access to the latest technology, and long waiting lists, just like people do in Canada and Great Britain," she warns.

In those countries, the government pays for all health care, and bureaucrats put limits on spending in order to control costs. They determine how much doctors can be reimbursed and put caps on the amount of money that can be spent on treatments.

The result of all this cost-cutting? People wait for care.

In England, shortages of dentists have caused hundreds of people to wait in line just for an appointment. The queues can be so long that some people have resorted to pulling out their own rotting teeth, using vodka and pliers as tools. One British hospital even tried to save money by not changing bed sheets. Instead of washing them, a British newspaper reported that the staff was encouraged to simply turn the sheets over. At any given time in Great Britain, there are over half a million people waiting to get into a hospital for treatments.

But Obama has said he doesn't want a government takeover of health care.

"When you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care," he told the American Medical Association last week, "know this -- they're not telling the truth."

A national shortage of general practitioners means that 1.7 million Canadians don't have access to a regular doctor to go to for routine care. (ABC News Photo Illustration)

Public vs. Private Plans: Cost, Care, Competition

Canada and Great Britain have what's called a "single-payer" health care system: the government pays for everyone's health care using tax revenue. It's true that Obama says he doesn't want a health care system exactly like that.

Instead, he says he wants to set up a public insurance program run by the government that will compete alongside private insurance plans. However, critics warn that a plan like this won't allow private insurers to compete on a level playing field. They say the government will keep costs down for their public plan by setting payment rates for doctors below the market level, the same way that Medicare does now.

"What will happen in the long run is that private insurers will not be able to compete with the government on price," Pipes predicts, "so they will leave the market."

Critics like Pipes say that when the size and power of a government plan grow large enough, public insurers will crowd private insurers out of the health care market and American health care will become a de facto government-run system, like Canada or Great Britain.

"People line up for care. Some of them die. That's what happens," Dr. David Gratzer says of Canada's health care system.

Gratzer, a Canadian doctor, thought Canada's government health care system was great -- until he started treating patients.

"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy. Waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house," he explained.

"You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months," he continued. "You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air. You've just got to wait six months."

Many ER doctors in Canada agree that the system is broken. They say hospitals face a consistent shortage of bed space, and patients often have to wait.

While people in America also wait in emergency rooms, the wait is different in Canada. When patients go to the ER for treatment and are found to be sick enough to enter the hospital, they have to wait in the emergency room for an average of 19 hours before they can be given a hospital bed.

"We can't send these patients to other hospitals that have capacity because there is no other hospital in the area that has capacity," said Dr. Eric Letovsky, an ER doctor from Ontario. "Every other emergency department in the country is just as packed as we are."

Serious Drawbacks to Canadian Model

A national shortage of general practitioners in Canada means that 1.7 million Canadians don't have access to a regular doctor to go to for routine care.

The town of Norwood, Ontario, has only one family doctor available to serve the entire community. To ration the patient list, the town clerk holds a lottery once a month, drawing a few names out of a box that contains all of the people hoping to get on the doctor's patient list. She calls the lucky winners, but everyone else must continue to wait.

Serious Drawbacks to Canadian Model

A national shortage of general practitioners in Canada means that 1.7 million Canadians don't have access to a regular doctor to go to for routine care.

The town of Norwood, Ontario, has only one family doctor available to serve the entire community. To ration the patient list, the town clerk holds a lottery once a month, drawing a few names out of a box that contains all of the people hoping to get on the doctor's patient list. She calls the lucky winners, but everyone else must continue to wait.

It's true that America's partly-private, profit-driven system is expensive and sometimes wasteful, but that pursuit of profit has allowed our health care system to offer rapid delivery, great doctors, and incredible lifesaving discoveries.

"This is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment," said Gratzer.

Thousands come from countries with government-run health care to take advantage of the advanced care in the United States. The famous Spanish tenor Jose Carreras didn't get treated for cancer in Spain -- he went to Seattle. King Hussein of Jordan came to America for treatment. So did Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"Literally, we're surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years," said Gratzer. "You've got to pay a price for that type of advancement,"

The reality is that there are always trade-offs in life. Although government "universal coverage" promises great things like equal care and that no one need worry that an illness will bankrupt them, government control also means waiting in lines and sometimes going without care.

Innovations like birth control pills, cholesterol medication, robotic limbs, and many other things, would not have happened without the possibility of big profit, said Grace Marie Turner of the Galen Institute.

"I want companies to come up with cures for Parkinson's, cures for cancer, cures for Alzheimer's. Unless there is a reward for them to do that, we're not going to have those new medicines," she said.

Some of the best, most innovative treatments and most rapidly-delivered care happens through this pursuit of profit. Even in Canada, you'll find one area where they offer easy access to cutting edge technology.

CT scans and MRIs, hip and knee replacements: available 24 hours a day and without a wait.

"If I see a patient that's torn a cruciate ligament in that patient's knee, we can generally have the patient scheduled for within probably a week," said Canadian Dr. Terri Schiller.

But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Schiller is a veterinarian and her practice makes a profit treating cats and dogs.

Want a CT scan in Canada? Private veterinary clinics said they can get a dog in the next day. For people, the waiting list is a month.

"Many clients will come here with their pets and as they're leaving, it's, 'Next time, I get sick, I want to come here. I don't want to go to the regular hospitals,'" said Schiller.

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Glenn Beck: Healthcare or Freedom grab?

Call Congress Today and Tell Them “No” Healthcare Reform With A Public Option

Switchboard of the House of Representatives

• 1-202-224-3121
• 1-202-225-3121
• (202) 225-0100 - Speaker of the House Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact or http://www.speaker.gov/contact
If the web contact form doesn't work, use this email address:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov

And Start Now to Lobby your Senators

United States Capitol switch board at (202) 224-3121

Senators from your State.

The media's saying the plan's going to cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years. By the way, you didn't know this was happening? Maybe this is the first time you heard it because they did this while you were asleep! Using the Congressional Budget Office's numbers, which seem like a lot for something that's supposed to be free ‑‑ but maybe that's just me ‑‑ $1 trillion for this free healthcare. But the problem is it's not even close to true. When you hear $1 trillion over 10 years, what do you think? What do you think? Do you think $100 billion a year, right? No. No, you've got to think like a congressman or a senator or a slime ball. That's what the left is hoping that you're thinking. It's actually far higher than that, and the reason is just like when you have liver failure on universal healthcare, most of the programs in the bill are on a long waiting list. But we are the world! We are the children! And Michael Jackson's dead. Should we talk about that some more?
The long waiting list of the programs in this bill, typical government delay. They don't actually kick in for a few years. Only 17% of the spending comes in in the first five years. 83% comes in in the second five years. So only 17% of us can have the frickin' sniffles! But once everything has kicked in, we're going to make the world a better place, just you and me. Once everything kicks in, the plan actually costs $230 billion a year, yet another lie from Washington. The cost rises every year.

Also, this cost of $230 billion a year does not include administrative costs. It doesn't account for the cost of implementing the program. It doesn't count the effects on other spending, not to mention the aspirin or the Advil that the millionaire won't give you now! So how do you pay for something that is so unbelievably free and yet so expensive? By using the only two answers these clowns ‑‑ I could call them so much more than that ‑‑ the only two answers that they ever have: One, you make the rich pay for it; and two, you let the government fix everything. Number one is, and I kid you not, an additional 5.4% surtax on everyone who makes over $1 million a year. Well, that's fine, the rich millionaire. You know, the guy who started out poor, worked his frickin' ass off. Yeah, let's penalize him so we can pay for the guy who refuses to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, the job that Americans just won't do.

There are other taxes as well, you know, for those who make between $350,000 and up. The 5.4% tax is almost double the original number leaked to the press last week and, of course, this hits the small businesses the hardest. If you are not feeling bad for the evil rich people, which I understand because they're all so evil, I had the president of my company. I am a small business owner. I employ 23 people, something like that, 20 people, 23 people. I have a total staff of part‑time and full‑time of about 45 people that we are involved with, but 23 full‑time employees. They all have 100% medical care, 100%. The best money can buy. I have matching. You make a charitable donation, I match it dollar for dollar. Everybody pretty much has a nice, nice existence. I asked the president of my company, do some back‑of‑the‑envelope math. This tax, just this tax by itself, completely independent of all other tax hikes that are coming our way, will stop me from hiring five and ten people. One tax on one small business cost between five and ten jobs. Think about that against the entire scale of the economy. You'll begin to see what this p lan is going to cost in free healthcare. The higher the tax, the less people get hired. The more people need government to give them healthcare or housing! This is a freedom grab!

By the way, the tax hikes only cover about half the plan. Half the plan. Wait a minute. Really? So what covers the rest of it? I kid you not, the expected ‑‑ I'm quoting ‑‑ the expected windfall savings that the government will achieve with government healthcare. Because we all know the government has a history of achieving unbelievable savings. I mean, there's no way the free market system could send an envelope across the country cheaper! There's no way they could do that! Jeez. If that plan, if you happen to be a hate monger and that plan sounds a little unlikely, you'll be interested to hear what the plan is if those savings don't materialize. But we, of course, know the government will save all kinds of money. This is going to be ‑‑ you are never going to have to have a heart transplant because as soon as this happens, our heart will grow three sizes that day. We'll all be super healthy. We'll just be living in sunshine, lollipops, candy contains and Tamiflu will flow in every river.

This is from the Politico report. If those savings don't materialize, quote, those making more than $1 million would see a 5.4% surtax added to the tax bill. Some of the rates could climb if anticipated savings from elsewhere in the bill did not materialize. So as long as the government does a far better job on anything else they've ever done, it should only be about 5.4% tax. If they can't, at this point they are claiming that it could go as high as double, so those five to ten jobs have now become ten to twenty jobs.

I just want to point out that there's no history of our government ever doing this. When they passed the income tax in 1913, the progressive income tax, Woodrow Wilson, they promised us it would never go as high as 10%. It was only 7% for the evil millionaires. 7%. It will never go past 10. Yeah, yeah. They passed it. Never go past 10. Four years later it was 67%. Oh, and by the way, it will never ‑‑ that was an emergency! And there's no more emergencies left. Just like ‑‑ 67%, but it was an emergency. It will never go higher than 60. It's just during the emergency, until the last emergency came or the next one where, I kid you not, the income tax was 92%.
FDR wanted to make it 100% of anybody who made over $25,000, but congress would only go to 94. Now, their other option that they talked about in the past is to pay for some of it with money that they take from you, if they can just get cap and trade. Mark my words. They are going to go for cap and trade. While we are all debating healthcare, they're going to go for cap and trade. Isn't that what happened last time? They introduce healthcare and then they pass cap and trade. Now here comes the healthcare bill. You see, they have to have cap and trade to be able to pass this. Remember, all of this is based on the idea that the evil insurance companies are just so profit‑hungry. The government can beat them in efficiency because they don't have to care about profits or paying CEOs millions of dollars. They won't have all of that greed.

If you take nothing else from this monologue, remember this one thing: Health insurance profits account for .6% of healthcare costs. .6%. That's not me saying that. That's factcheck.org. CEO pay accounts for .005% of costs. This is not about healthcare. It never has been about healthcare. This is about, what does he call it, remaking America. This is government taking control of 1/6th of the economy. In one signature they will take 1/6th of the economy. They will take your arteries, your valves and your pancreas. Yes, you heard me. Your pancreas is at stake. But don't worry because the government can save it, because there's a choice we're making. We are the world. Can I get an amen!

July 15, 2009 - 13:06 ET

Glenn Beck's Common Sense - Now available in book stores nationwide...

Source: GlennBeck.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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• House Health-Care Proposal Adds $600 Billion in Taxes (Update-2)
• How To Stop Socialized Health Care
• Democrats Set to Rush Through Government-Run Healthcare
• Big Pharma and the FDC: Suppress the Science, Ban the Natural Substances, Sell Drugs
• Understanding the House Democrat’s Health care bill
• What a Week With Healthcare
• Kennedy Healthcare Plan Meets Resistance – Full of Pork
• Healthcare: You Think Michael Moore Will Contribute? Don’t Hold Your Breath
• Here Comes Rationing Healthcare
• Rights, Responsibilities and Healthcare
• British HealthCare - Don't Treat The Old!! - And Senator Coburn Warns Same For USA
• Universal Health and Old People
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• Conservatives for Patient's Rights
• Obama's Attack on Medical Civil Liberties
• Socialized Medicine in cartoon form.
• Voters Steer Europe to the Right – Why… Because Socialism Isn’t Working
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• Progressives Dream To Re-Make America
• American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper – Pravda

Alice in Medical Care

Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments.

Let's start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care? The most usual reason given is because its cost is high and rising.

That is certainly true. We were not spending nearly as much on high-tech medical procedures in the past because there were not nearly as many of them, and we were not spending anything at all on some of the new pharmaceutical drugs because they didn't exist.

This general pattern is not peculiar to medical care. Cars didn't cost nearly as much in the past, when they didn't have air-conditioning, power steering and high-tech safety features. Homes were cheaper when they were smaller, had fewer bathrooms and lacked such conveniences as built-in microwave ovens.

We would like to have all these things without the rising costs that come with them. But only with medical care is such wishful thinking taken seriously, with government regarded as a sort of fairy godmother who will give us the benefits without the costs.

A cynic is said to be someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If so, then it is political cynicism to point to other countries that spend less on medical care, including some countries where there is "universal health care" provided "free" by their governments.

Just as medical care, houses and cars were all cheaper when they lacked things that they have today, so medical care in other countries is cheaper when they lack many things that are more readily available in the United States.

There are more than four times as many Magnetic Resonance Imaging units (MRIs) per capita in the United States as in Britain or Canada, where there are government-run medical systems. There are more than twice as many CT scanners per capita in the United States as in Canada and more than four times as many per capita as in Britain.

Is it surprising that such things cost money?

The cost of developing a new pharmaceutical drug is now about a billion dollars. Neither political rhetoric nor government bureaucracies will make those costs go away.

We can, of course, refuse to pay these and other medical costs, just as we can refuse to buy air-conditioned homes with built-in microwave ovens. But that just means we pay attention only to prices and not to the value of what we get for those prices.

We can even refuse to pay for so many doctors. But that just means that we will have to wait longer to see a doctor-- as people do in countries with government-run medical systems.

In Canada, 27 percent of the people who have surgery wait four months or more. In Britain, 38 percent wait that long. But only 5 percent of Americans wait that long for surgery.

Surgery may well cost less in countries with government-run medical systems-- if you count only the money cost, and not the time the patients have to endure the ailments that require surgery, or the fact that some conditions become worse, or even fatal, while waiting.

A recent report from the Fraser Institute in Canada shows that patients there wait an average of ten weeks to get an MRI, just to find out what is wrong with them. A lot of bad things can happen in 10 weeks, ranging from suffering to death.

Politicians may talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care," but they seldom even attempt to bring down the costs. What they bring down is the price-- which is to say, they refuse to pay the costs.

Anybody can refuse to pay any cost. But don't be surprised if you get less when you pay less. None of this is rocket science. But it does require us to stop and think before jumping on a bandwagon.

The great haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that the politicians don't want us to stop and think. That makes sense, from their point of view, but not from ours.

By Thomas Sowell - Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Source: Real Clear Politics

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• ObamaCare Isn’t Inevitable
• Canadian Healthcare Coming Soon to the USA
• Get Both Sides of the National Healthcare Story
• Here Comes Health Care Rationing
• Catastrophe or Catastrophe CD
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense

Get Both Sides of the National Healthcare Story…

Thanks to the generous support of grassroots Republicans and Independents nationwide, the RNC exceeded Their goal of raising over $100,000 to help counter ABC's one-sided infomercial for government-run health care.

Fellow Americans

Though the television network (ABC and some NBC affiliates) have denied requests to air ads counter to President Obama's government-run health care "reform" plans, they can't keep us off the air. (Ask yourself… what kind of media refuses to run both sides??)

We are using the grassroots donations we received to spread our message against the one-sided, big government mantra being pushed by the Obama Democrats here in Washington --

watch it now!

We've made a good start, but we're still up against the biased mainstream media machine's effort to help President Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Democrats in Congress end individual health care choice and use your tax dollars to treat only the patients they deem deserving.

The Democrats have shown they will stop at nothing to blur the lines between government and private sector, so we must keep the pressure on them. And at the same time, we must get our message of common sense GOP health care reform alternative out to more Americans.

That's why I'm again asking you to support our continuing efforts to get our message past the mainstream media filter. If we don't stop the Obama Democrats' disastrous health care takeover now, we'll all be facing the end of health care choice and endlessly rising taxation very soon.

Don't let that happen -- help Americans keep their health care freedom. If you agree please make your contribution to the RNC today!

Sincerely,

Michael Steele
Chairman, Republican National Committee

P.S. You and the RNC are all that stand between sensible Republican health care reform and Democrat government-run medicine. Please help us win this fight by making an online contribution of $25, $50, $100, $500 or $1,000 to the RNC today. Thank you.

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Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• Canadian Health Care Coming Soon to the USA