Recently in Health Care Category

It seems to me that this whole ObamaCare mess is simply demonstrating the inability of politicians of any stripe to look at healthcare differently.

They are all about the insurance and costs, to the detriment of actual health care.

I suggest they look into outlawing HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations)and PPOs (Preferred Provider Organizaions) and all other policies that offer unlimited doctor visits for a tiny copay, or no copay at all.

One of the reasons that our healthcare has become so expensive is that many (not all) people who have that kind of insurance go to see the doctor for a lot of extremely minor problems. Have a headache? Oh, go to the doctor! Did your child scrape his knee? Better go to the doctor! So doctors get tied up with minor issues and people end up waiting much longer than necessary to see a doctor when there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.

The original idea behind the HMO model is that doctors would be practicing preventative medicine. That did NOT lower health costs, and Obamcare’s ideal of doing the exact same thing as as HMO will also NOT lower health costs. HMOs were created to ration specialized healthcare - your own physician is paid more if he or she does not refer you to a specialist. Obamacare will be much, much more of the same.

Here’s the thing. Back when health insurance was basically just catastrophic coverage, no one had a copay to see the doctor. We went to the doctor when we needed to go. We rationed our own healthcare by making our own decision because it was our money going to pay for that visit. All the copay stuff has done is raise the cost per visit for the doctor because he/she has to now pay staff to file for the insurance coverage for the costs of that visit that was not covered by the copay.

Now, Obamacare is simply adding to the costs of a visit by creating several humongous bureaucracies to determine if and when you get to visit the doctor at all.

I believe simpler is better. Lower doctors’ costs, lower the country’s health care costs by eliminating copays for doctor visits. Go back to Catastrophic Health Care insurance and get rid of all the prepaid stuff.

And there is not one politician that I can find who can see how that would work. Why? Because, I think, even the Republican Pols think Americans are too stupid to understand basic economics.

Ugh.

Hattip to HillBuzz.org

This will be a first for me. I am going to attend Rep. Lynn Jenkin’s “listening tour” townhall meeting this afternoon in Leavenworth, Kansas.

I do wish she had used some other term than “listening tour” - as that phrase was coined by Hillary Rodham Clinton, not my favorite politician.

Anyway, I will be armed with our video camera and my Nikon to record the proceedings.

I will upload it to Pajamas Media (I got approved as a citizen journalist by them) once I get home and if I can figure out how to properly edit it all.

This being a smallish town, I hope there will not be a huge crowd. But just in case, I am leaving early.

True Story.

There is a woman who has a lovely horse - 1/2 Thoroughbred, 1/2 Welsh Mountain Pony (making a nice little dressage horse). This mare was injured a year or so ago, destroying the woman’s hopes of having an eventing horse, as the mare can no longer jump without risk of injury.

So, the lady kept the horse out in the pasture for a year, and the mare is ridable on easy trails or for some dressage classes. But certainly does not have the high stakes future she once had. This horse is 8 years old.

The woman has decided that feeding this horse is just not worthwhile, because the mare’s quality of life is not what it was intended to be, so the woman is going to put the horse down in 4 weeks if no one steps up to take care of this horse.

Now, the woman thinks she is being really altruistic by “giving” the horse away to someone who will take care of her.

The lady will only give the horse to someone who promises to only ride the horse gently, even if the injury is someday ‘cured’. Because she wouldn’t want to put the horse through the stress of being competitive, don’t you know. The horse would be better off … dead.

Naturally, John and I believe that once you get an animal, unless it is meant for food, you take care of that animal for its natural life, so this lady loses all claims to goodness in our eyes. One of our horses, Petey, is blind in one eye and is really not ridable at all (he spooks and bucks if something shows up suddenly), but we would never dream of putting him down or of giving him to someone else to care for.

What does this have to do with health care?

If Obamacare goes through, some bureaucrat will decide the fate of those of us who might suffer an illness or an injury. No, they are not going to “put us down”, but they WILL decide whether the contributions we can make to society are worth enough to pay for treatment for us. So, many people will be neglected by the Government-run health care program, because we have already had enough life.

And what’s worse, is the government won’t even allow you or your family to find your own health care and pay for your own medicine, surgery, etc. It will not matter if you can manage to get your own - Big Brother will make the determination that you will or will not get health care, even if the Govt. does not have to pay for it,

In this case, the horse lady is being kinder than Obamacare will be, for she is at least giving the horse a chance at life if someone else will pay for it. The Federal Bureaucrats who will be running the show will not treat people as well, ask the Brits.

If you look at the statistics for 5-year survival rates for prostrate cancer victims in the USA vs the UK,you will be stunned to find that men in the USA have a nearly 100% survival rate, while in the UK, it is only about 75%.

This is because Bureaucrats decide when your cancer is bad enough for treatment and delay treatment, often for many months, or deny treatment altogether if you are considered too old. No, these are not death panels, in that you are not slipped a dose of Hemlock with your afternoon tea. But they ARE denying people the opportunity to live because of health care rationing, and the determination that only the youth deserve a healthy life, the rest of us can just suck it up and rely upon our happy memories of youth, as that is all we really deserve.

So I suppose, in reality, the poor little injured horse has a better chance at living a long life as someone can rescue her. Whilst we Americans will not even have a chance at being rescued if the Bureaucratic panels decide we are not worth the money for treatment.

And the fact that they are now starting to term the whole mess “Health Insurance Reform”, proves my point. So, maybe I don’t even need to go into this big ol’ mess!

Sorry, I have to get into it just a bit. I object to this Democratic plan that will within a few years force ALL non-Congressional Americans into a Single Payer Plan.

The USA leads the world in medical advances because we have a free-enterprise system. Doctors who develop new procedures can expect to be rewarded by making more money performing such procedures and teaching other doctors how to perform these procedures.

MONEY IS AN INCENTIVE.

That is why our Pharmaceutical Companies, our Medical Research Hospitals and Universities keep coming up with new treatments.

For example a particular type of genetic blindness has a cure in sight (yeah, I know, not meant to be punny) due to the work of Ophthalmology Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s gene therapy, and whether or not gene-therapy would be allowed under Obamacare is not at all clear, and very possibly unlikely because of the costs involved.

In the United Kingdom, the NHS (National Health Service) rejects many life-saving cancer drugs as being too expensive. My dear friend, Cassandra, has many examples here.

The NHS also has a high incidence of MRSI Infections. It seems the understaffed nurses in the State-run hospitals don’t have the time to clean hospital BEDS when a new patient arrives or even wash their hands much. But heh, it’s free, Nationalized Health Care, those are the chances you take.

I have several Canadian friends who have that wonderful “free” healthcare. But how long is an emergency room wait in Toronto? Not too bad - 4 or 5 hours - but the wait is often much longer as the patient is simply shunted off into a bed that is in a hallway, and does not get the treatment he or she needs for a very long time.

That’s what happens when cost-cutting occurs. Cost-cutting has been President Obama’s main excuse for nationalizing our health care.

I’m not looking forward to the overcrowded, understaffed hospitals that would be the result of this government power grab.

So, I’m one of those evil-mongers who is totally against it.

I’m writing letters, making phone calls and now, blogging against this huge, expensive boondoggle.

There may be a way to improve access to our health care, but dismantling the free enterprise system is NOT the way to do it.

I’m pissed.