The American Spectator

Melvin| 6.9.09 @ 7:29AM

Let me throw reality into this fray. I have retired from the military and have access to what some would call Socialized Medical Care.
To make an appointment with my Primary Care Provider which is either a Nurse Practitioner or Physicians Assistant, I have to at least wait thirty days and sometimes longer to obtain an appointment.
Once I see my provider I have 15 minutes or less to explain my malady and receive some sort of treatment.
Many times I have literally chased the provider out the door trying to talk to them because he or she is restricted in how long they can be with a patient because there is so many that need treatment.
If I need to see a higher level of care first, I have to obtain a referral which is written by my provider from Health Net that is located in CA and I live in NC. If the referral is approved it will arrive in the mail which takes about a week.
Then when I have the referral in hand by a doctor that is chosen by Health Net and not me I call this civilian provider and that usually takes another 30 or longer to make an appointment with them.
In some instances it has taken over two to two and a half months to finally see a doctor for a course of treatment.
Military retirees are small in number compared to the population of citizens and illegal aliens that reside in here. It took me two or more months to see a specialist I can’t imagine would it would be like if every person flooded the ill prepared system all at once.
In my opinion the medical system would collapse by the sheer weight of numbers hitting all at once.
Let me make it clear, that I have received good medical care by the military since I have retired and I’m not complaining at all. I’m just explaining what people will have to go through if Obama Care gets instituted.

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Rearden| 6.9.09 @ 7:47AM

Lets cut right to the chase, this is designed to help nobody but the democratic party. By passing this the government will become the arbiter of yet another "safety net program". Why aren't our leaders screaming from the hilltops about the immorality of nationalized health care.

Furthermore, why is the administration saying if we're happy with our plan we can keep it. It might not be up to most of us. Why would our employer continue to pay for our coverage (which he is not obliged to do) when he could just dump his employers into a national system?

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Galen| 6.9.09 @ 8:08AM

Under the plan I'd be dead. The cardiac mantra is
"Time is muscle"

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Son Of Sam | 6.9.09 @ 8:16AM

I, like most Americans, believe in providing a safety net for the truly needy. What I do not want is for the safety net to become a hammock, or even worse, for it to become a strait jacket.
I am a middle class professional living in the suburbs with my wife and three teenaged children. NONE of the plans floating around Washington does anything to help me and mine in any way. They're just another method for witless power hungry politicians to dig their hands in my pocket and run my life even more than they already do.

"40 million unisured"? Fine, make a plan to "help" them if you must. Meanwhile, LEAVE ME THE F*CK ALONE!

stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadmassos.bravehost.com

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Peter Balsam, MD| 6.9.09 @ 8:33AM

While there are plenty of "holes" in health care (there is no system), mandating the equivalent of managed care - excuse me - managed denial, will not improve quality of care. It may improve access to be seen by someone, perhaps a kindly administrator. The only "system" which will work is one in which patients and doctors have a personal and responsible relationship. All else is doomed to failure. Similarly, as P. J. O'Rourke says, "If you think medical care is expensive now, wait until it's free."

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1Freeman| 6.9.09 @ 8:41AM

Folks, I am part of the military healthcare system. EVERYTHING Melvin (above) said is true. Military medicine relies heavily on the civilian sector to cover when it can't provide appointments within 30 days. Obama and the democrats will destroy your health care and spread misery pretending it is "for the poor and the children". It is feel-good politics that will cost lives and fail. Emergency rooms will fill up with minor problems just like the military system is today. Go to any military ER and you will see families there with ear aches, colds and other minor problems because the system can't and won't meet their needs. You need to see a doctor? In the Military it takes 30 days if you are lucky. Just what we want: the state telling us we are not sick enough to get care. Just like the car dealerships, the state will start by closing hospitals and clinics that are not "cost effective" for the democrats model. This will be sold as "making the system stronger". Mark my words!

If you haven't contacted your congressional representative then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!! Do it NOW!

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Ellis Wyatt| 6.9.09 @ 8:41AM

"Blumenthal argued that government controls are needed to push down healthcare costs (and by inference, standard of care) to a level that everyone, including the poor, can afford, or to what government can afford to provide to everyone equally. The goal is not only universal coverage but also a similar healthcare experience for everyone, regardless of ability to pay"

The money quote in my opinion. This pretty much sums up socialist, collectivist philosophy - trying to make everyone equal only leads to everyone suffering. Time for Americans to wake up and realize rationed substandard healthcare is at the doorstep. Interesting to note that countries where this has already failed are attempting to transition healthcare back to the private sector where it belongs.

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Indiana Alex| 6.9.09 @ 9:13AM

The biggest problem in the Federal budget is runaway entitlement spending.

The liberal's solution is expanded entitlements.

And everything's a crisis.

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loulou| 6.9.09 @ 9:18AM

Why is a brain dead (literally) slob like Kennedy involved in writing this bill?

HIS care should be rationed.

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Unhappy America| 6.9.09 @ 9:39AM

Unhappy America
Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

If America can learn from its problems, instead of blaming others, it will come back stronger

NATIONS, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United States, normally the world’s most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as about a flailing nation.

One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism (see article). The “Washington consensus” told the world that open markets and deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar’s face, credit is scarce, recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, “America’s beer”.

And it’s not just the downturn that has caused this discontent. Many Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush’s presidency went to that top 1%. Economic envy, once seen as a European vice, is now rife. The rich appear in Barack Obama’s speeches not as entrepreneurial role models but as modern versions of the “malefactors of great wealth” denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts, avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Globalisation is under fire: free trade is less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. People mutter about nation-building beginning at home: why, many wonder, should American children do worse at reading than Polish ones and at maths than Lithuanians?

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survey results | 6.9.09 @ 9:47AM

Published: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 1:16 a.m. MDT
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When it comes to real health-care reform, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound — maybe two — of cure.

According to survey results released Monday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Trust for America's Health, more than three-quarters of Americans — 76 percent — say the U.S. health-care system should get serious about reorienting away from expensive, specialized sick care and toward much cheaper and more effective programs to prevent health problems in the first place.

Investing in prevention programs and public-awareness campaigns about how people can stay healthy will do more to reduce costs and improve the quality of U.S. health care than any of the proposals, such as better records management, better surgical procedures or regulating private insurers, according to the poll results.

Dr. Paul Grundy, a health-care consultant to IBM who was in Salt Lake City recently for a conference of preventive-medicine physicians, said surveys extolling the benefits of prevention will continue to mount. He noted that Utah's health-care-reform effort, now in its third year, recognizes and is facilitating more consumer involvement that is needed nationwide.

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America's Health Care | 6.9.09 @ 9:53AM

What's Wrong with America's Health Care

Home > Issues > Health Care > America's Health Care

Some 47 million U.S. residents have no health insurance, and the numbers keep growing. Because employers increasingly are moving in the direction of providing Wal-Mart-style health coverage by shifting health care costs to employees, America’s workers struggle to pay higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments—if they can afford such coverage at all.

Of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, 8.7 million are children. Read the AFL-CIO Executive Council's call for a universal health care system based on Medicare.

Working families are experiencing double-digit increases in the costs of health insurance, more out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits and skyrocketing prices for prescriptions, forcing many to delay getting needed medical care or worse—to decline coverage for themselves or their families because of cost. Health care costs are rising at five times the rate of inflation. According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, health care spending rose 10 percent in 2002 and that followed a slightly more than 10 percent increase in 2001—the largest jump in more than a decade. In the first six months of 2003, health spending rose another 8.5 percent. Premiums for employer-sponsored coverage increased nearly 13 percent in 2002. As employers refuse to pay their fair share, this trend may result in millions of workers losing their employer-based coverage (PDF).

Employers are responding to growing cost pressures by shifting more and more health care costs onto workers, especially through larger co-pays and deductibles that must be paid at the time treatment is sought.

Employer’s demands to slash health care coverage for workers was the major issue in the recent Southern California grocery workers' strike and lockout in which nearly 60,000 workers saved health care benefits and beat back employer demands to freeze pension funds after holding strong on the picket line for five months. Under grocery management’s original proposals, a worker making slightly less than $20,000 a year would have had to pay nearly $5,000 to maintain the same level of benefits they had in the previous contract.

Other cost increases hitting workers include larger hikes in the cost of family coverage, less access to needed prescription drugs through stricter HMO formularies and higher prices for more comprehensive coverage. See the Consumers Unions’ Health Care Plans and Managed Care (PDF).

Consumers are using more prescriptions, at younger ages and for more conditions, and substituting newer, more expensive medications for established products. As a result, pharmaceutical spending increased by 17.4 percent annually between 1999 and 2000 and another 16 percent from 2000 to 2001 (PDF).

The lack of quality health care in the United States also stems from our system’s lack of comprehensive quality measure and assurance programs, which unions now are establishing with community partners.

Our most successful public health insurance program, Medicare, is increasingly under attack at a time when the lack of access to health care is already a crisis in America. Most Americans ages 65 and older rely on Medicare, which serves more than 40 million beneficiaries in the United States. Instead of strengthening and modernizing Medicare to include a comprehensive, affordable prescription drug benefit for all seniors, the Bush administration in late 2003 strong-armed through Congress a Medicare prescription drug bill that moves Medicare toward privatization. The Medicare bill also:

Forced 32.5 million seniors and people with disabilities to pay higher premiums and other Medicare costs.
Dropped coverage for out-of-pocket expenses between $2,250 and $5,100.
Prevented the federal government from negotiating lower drug costs and does nothing to rein in soaring prescription drug prices.
Threatened the employer-provided drug benefits of millions of retirees.
Our health care system lacks safety controls that endanger front-line workers and patients. Staffing levels are dangerously low in hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities. As a result, medical errors are rising—and account for an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 needless death each year. See Medical Errors and Patient Safety and 20 Steps to Prevent Medical Errors from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

How can we fix our health care system?

Require employers to pay their fair share. The U.S. system of providing health care coverage is employer-based. Unfortunately, this system leaves too many working families uninsured or under-insured. Fifty-six percent of uninsured workers worked full-time in 2002. New incentives and rules can change this. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has proposed legislation to require employers of more than 50 workers to provide employees with health insurance, and in 2003, California passed a state law (PDF) that requires employers to provide insurance for workers or pay into a state fund to insure workers. With little federal action on health care, more states are addressing health care issues.

Beware of new “defined-contribution” health care coverage. Shifting health care costs onto working families already is creating hardship at the doctor's office and the bargaining table. Now, many employers are talking about passing most or all of the risk of rising health care costs onto employees by adopting "defined-contribution" plans (also described with terms including "vouchers,” “consumer driven health care,” “tiered benefits” and “fixed premiums”).

These defined-contribution plans can come in many shapes and forms, but they share one feature that makes them different and more harmful to working families than the traditional "defined-benefit" plans, which guarantee a certain amount of coverage. In a defined-benefit plan, employees are guaranteed a fixed package of health insurance benefits. But in a defined-contribution plan, the employer pays a fixed amount toward the premium, regardless of how much it costs, leaving it to the employee to pick up the rest. So under a defined-contribution plan, a worker in poor health or someone who has a family member with medical problems would have to shoulder a much larger financial burden than a healthier person. Learn more about these plans through health care research group websites.

Provide coverage for all children. To expand health coverage to the 8.7 million children in America who today lack health insurance, Congress in 1997 passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to work with the Medicaid program to cover low- and moderate-income families. Bringing eligible families into the program requires extensive education and outreach, and unions are playing a key role. But states are facing their biggest budget crisis since World War II. Confronted with three-plus years economic downturn, and the Bush administration’s cuts in state aid, coupled with larger financial burdens imposed by new and under-funded federal mandates, states are cutting back on health care programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP.

Help curb runaway prescription drug prices by supporting state legislation that gives lawmakers the power to negotiate drug discounts with pharmaceutical companies just as HMOs and insurers do. States then can pass savings to seniors covered by Medicare and to working families who lack drug coverage and make less than 300 percent of the poverty level.

Everyone loses when health care workers are forced to work overtime and are exposed to life-threatening diseases because of unsafe equipment. After years of struggle, health care workers won federal legislation to require safer needlesticks in 2000 and 24 states now have safer needlestick laws on the books. States can pass their own legislation mandating safety devices for needles.

Other Good Sources of Information:

The Families USA website is a comprehensive source of information on health care issues affecting children, seniors and other family members and provides opportunities for action. The uninsured includes separate sections on the general population, children and immigrants. The site also features Proposals to Expand Coverage and an Advocate’s Corner that offers media tips, a legislative action center and other resources and tools for advocacy in the area of health care reform.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the largest U.S. foundation devoted to improving the health and health care of all Americans. A related site describes the Covering the Uninsured Campaign comprising 12 national organizations working together to seek solutions of the problems of the uninsured and help state coalitions enroll more eligible families in SCHIP and Medicaid.

The Children’s Defense Fund provides useful information about the SCHIP and Medicaid program eligibility rules and way to boost outreach and enrollment.

The National Partnership for Women helps women navigate various aspects of the health care system.

The National Health Law Project website is one of the most extensive resources for health care consumers and advocates. It’s a particularly good resource on health care issues affecting low-income families and the uninsured and links to a comprehensive list of organizations and agencies around the country.

See Consumers Union: Health for information on a variety of health policy issues, including on Health Care Affordability, Health Care Reform, Health Care Plans and Managed Care, Medical Savings Accounts and Medicare.

The National Coalition on Health Care is a broad alliance of unions, employers and advocacy organizations working to improve America’s health care. It’s an excellent source for policy studies on health care in the United States.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has conducted many studies on health care in America and its website contains a wealth of information, particularly from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. It also offers a news service providing updates on critical health policy developments.

The Center for Studying Health System Change is a nonpartisan policy research organization that designs and conducts studies focused on the U.S. health care system to inform the thinking and decisions of policymakers in government and private industry. Its studies contribute to the body of health care policy research that helps decision makers to understand change and the market forces driving that change.

The National Senior Citizens Law Center website covers Medicare, Medicaid, long-term care, nursing homes and other issues affecting seniors.

Copyright © 2009 AFL-CIO | American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations Contact Us | Union Jobs | Privacy Policy | Site Map

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Melvin| 6.9.09 @ 9:54AM

I saw a doctor (Dermatologist) in the Philippines for a "Fungus," There was no appointment you just signed in and sat in the chairs outside the office.
The wait was about as long as I have to wait here about 45 minutes to an hour.
The doctor saw me, said I had a fungus prescribed medication in which she kept in her office and one from the pharmacy, and you know what it cost me? $14.00 for an office visit and medicine, and the medicine was Pfizer to boot.
I looked at the doctor funny and she said what was wrong? Nothing I replied, it just that this type of treatment from the United States would cost a hundred times more and I would have to see three or for specialists just to say I have a fungus.
She further added that doctors in the Philippines do not have to put up with 90% of the crap that US doctors have to. No lawyers, no bureaucrats, no hot looking former cheerleaders peddling medicine. I saw a doctor (Dermatologist) in the Philippines for a "Fungus," There was no appointment you just signed in and sat in the chairs outside the office.
The wait was about as long as I have to wait here about 45 minutes to an hour.
The doctor saw me, said I had a fungus prescribed medication in which she kept in her office and one from the pharmacy, and you know what it cost me? $14.00 for an office visit and medicine, and the medicine was Pfizer to boot.
I looked at the doctor funny and she said what was wrong? Nothing I replied, it just that this type of treatment from the United States would cost a hundred times more and I would have to see three or for specialists just to say I have a fungus.
She further added that doctors in the Philippines do not have to put up with 90% of the crap that US doctors have to. No lawyers, no bureaucrats, no hot looking former cheerleaders peddling medicine, just a doctor practicing medicine period.
The funny thing is I saw three different medical providers in the US before I went overseas and none of them knew what the hell was wrong. I saw on doctor overseas and within 15 minutes she diagnosed me, provided medication and I was on my merry way.
By the way for inquiring minds, the fungus was on my arm.

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Melvin| 6.9.09 @ 9:56AM

Sorry for the post above, damn spell checker made my post go nuts.

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DC Smith| 6.9.09 @ 10:20AM

The reality is that American spend the most for health care but DO NOT receive the best health care regardless of what metric is used to measure the quality of care or outcome. We are, however, the most tested, x-ray, and MRI-ed group in the world, resulting in us, as patients in the American medical system, being at greater risk for cancer, kidney failure, and other serious illness due to exposure to radiation, contrast dyes, and other test-related materials. Most of this over-testing is done for defensive legal reasons but an even greater amount is due to lack of coordination of care, the total inability to access the complete medical records for any patient, and often just plain laziness on the part of physicians, nurses, and support staff in our system. Rather than obtaining old records from another institution, the SOP is to just repeat tests even if they cost thousands of dollars and expose the patient to additional radiation, contrast dye, and other materials associated with serious or deadly outcomes. With today's degree of technology, this is just excusable.

The second reality has to do with our current system and the fear of having some "government worker" determining the course of our treatment. In case everyone is not aware of this fact, and clearly most of the public is not, anyone with private insurance or a medicare alternative policy currently has some "corporate worker" reviewing and often dictating care at a micromanagement care. They are in frequent contact with hospital social workers or nurse case managers by phone or have the right to dirctly access and review hospital charts. Most large insurance companies have reviews in every hospital reviewing charts of the hospitalized daily. Allowed hospital days and tests are often granted one or two at at time by someone whose decisions are, in part, always driven by a profit motive with an eye on the bottom line to keep stockholders happy. Decisions on movement from a hospital to a more appropriate level of care, a rehabilitation center or discharge to home with adequate home nursing or physical therapy for example, are often blocked by corporate reviewers. Or the selection of facilities is dictated by the payer and some plans often insist that patients either be place in a contracted facility far from the patient's home and family or to an inferior facility with which they contract. The group that is most free of these restrictions are the patients on traditional Medicare, the government plan. Rather than the hype, traditional Medicare patients often receive the best care, and providers often have the greatest liberty in making medical plans for these patients without the restrictions and micromanagement of for-profit insurance corporations.

These observations are based on my daily experience and involvement in care planning and discharge planning as a hospital-based nurse practitioner with 28 years of experience. Our system clearly needs reform and a giant step forward would be to develop methods where a patients entire medical record is available or ways to allow easy access to records when patients receive care in a number of unrelated facilities and providers. The reality is that many, perhaps most, of the heaviest consumers of health care services are unable to tell you the names or dosages of mediations they have taken in the past 24 hours. To get them to be able to accurately recall when and where they had an MRI or CT is almost impossible if you make the assumption that they even understood what prior tests they had or what the test actually was. A second thing that could help reform our system would be to stop allowing consumers the ability to demand an unlimited amount of service regardless of how unrealistic their view of the outcome will be. Hospitals are filled with patients who have no realistic expectation of survival with families demanding that care continue full speed ahead. Often hundreds of thousand, even millions of dollars are spent on a single patient just to extend one or two months of "life" as a comatose patient with no quality of life. Unfortunately, this is not some once in a blue moon situation but is the daily reality in every hospital in our country. In these cases, insurers often deny a large percentage of payment to the treating facility and the hospital is stuck with six- or seven-figures losses after the family that demanded, full treatment that was futile does not pay the bills for the services they requested. Our current system basically requires that hospitals provide the care demanded by patients and families. Health care is the only service I know of where consumers have the ability to get unlimited services (once hospitalized) when there is no realistic way that the providers of these services will ever get paid. At the same time that our system absorbs this costs on the inpatient side, those who might benefit most from preventive care are denied access to those services as outpatients. In reality, we have developed a systems where the vast focus and allocation of funds is on the last few years of life and futile care while totally ignoring the majority of the life span of most people. In other words, we are in a quagmire of fighting a war in an area where we almost always are defeated and those victories that we do win are at an extreme price to the health care system and our society as a whole.

To be honest, I am not sure anyone really knows the best way forward on this. Our system is a complex mess. But what I do know is that we have to stop this belief that we have the best system (it is just a fact, we are not the best by any measure) and that nations with socialized medicine have terrible care (again the fact is that many nations with government systems of many different designs have better outcomes on multiple metrics of quality, survival, and satisfaction). The ongoing mantra about us being the best and socialized medicine being terrible is just not reflected in outcome data and is not true.

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Washington Consensus| 6.9.09 @ 10:48AM

Washington Consensus
The phrase “Washington Consensus” is today a very popular and often pilloried term in debates about trade and development. It is often seen as synonymous with “neoliberalism” and “globalization.” As the phrase’s originator, John Williamson, says: “Audiences the world over seem to believe that this signifies a set of neoliberal policies that have been imposed on hapless countries by the Washington-based international financial institutions and have led them to crisis and misery. There are people who cannot utter the term without foaming at the mouth.” [1]

Williamson originally coined the phrase in 1990 “to refer to the lowest common denominator of policy advice being addressed by the Washington-based institutions to Latin American countries as of 1989.” [2] These policies were:

Fiscal discipline
A redirection of public expenditure priorities toward fields offering both high economic returns and the potential to improve income distribution, such as primary health care, primary education, and infrastructure
Tax reform (to lower marginal rates and broaden the tax base)
Interest rate liberalization
A competitive exchange rate
Trade liberalization
Liberalization of inflows of foreign direct investment
Privatization
Deregulation (to abolish barriers to entry and exit)
Secure property rights
Since then, the phrase “Washington Consensus” has become a lightning rod for dissatisfaction amongst anti-globalization protestors, developing country politicians and officials, trade negotiators, and numerous others. It is often used interchangeably with the phrase “neoliberal policies.” But, as Williamson also states:

Some of the most vociferous of today's critics of what they call the Washington Consensus, most prominently Joe Stiglitz... do not object so much to the agenda laid out above as to the neoliberalism that they interpret the term as implying. I of course never intended my term to imply policies like capital account liberalization...monetarism, supply-side economics, or a minimal state (getting the state out of welfare provision and income redistribution), which I think of as the quintessentially neoliberal ideas. [1]

Clearly, the definition of the term has gone well beyond the control of Williamson and other economists. That is, if you believe it is useful to talk of a Washington Consensus. Moses Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy, has argued that no such consensus exists. Naim highlights the fact that economists are often divided over such issues as the East Asian crisis, the need for an international financial architecture, and the effectiveness of “open” trade policies. “If this sample represents the Washington Consensus, then just imagine what a Washington Confusion would be like,” he says. [3]

Some of today’s policy discussion, however, might still be understood by using the term as a reference point. For instance, Dani Rodrik argues that there now exists an “Augmented” Washington Consensus, which in addition to the items listed above, adds: [4]

Corporate governance
Anti-corruption
Flexible labor markets
WTO agreements
Financial codes and standards
“Prudent” capital-account opening
Non-intermediate exchange rate regimes
Independent central banks/inflation targeting
Social safety nets
Targeted poverty reduction

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Big Leo| 6.9.09 @ 11:49AM

What's wrong with American medicine? I see a lot of very long posts here, which are very useful. However, I can put it much more succinctly. Fifty years ago, when I went to the doctor's, he had one nurse who also answered the telephone. Malpractice insurance was incredibly cheap, since virtually nobody sued. Now, that same GP (if you could find a GP), has two nurses, a receptionist, and two people doing the paperwork for Medicaid, Medicare, and multiple insurance companies. There's the problem. Fix it.

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rssg| 6.9.09 @ 12:28PM

We have a quasi-socialist, Mooooslim boy, who never worked a real job in his life, an academic who lived a priviledged life, who "journalists" have called "a God". A "God" who thinks he can run companies and now centrally plan the economy, including healthcare?

Give me a break, you big eared, anti-American mooooslim boy. Please leave immediately.

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JeffW| 6.9.09 @ 12:53PM

I came to see the liberas blast our current medical system and praise socialized medicine while ignoring the fact that people from all over the world come here for the medical care. Nice to see I won't leave dissapointed.

Hey Melvin,
Great story. Now explain to the masses just how many people in the Phillipines couldn't afford that $14 dollars.

If you want to rant about our systems high cost, look to the malpractice insurance, that is sky high. Add to it the red tape and cost of dealing with the Goverment programs and you will begin to understand why the bills are so high. They know that the goverment will only pay them a percentage anyway and they rest gets passed on to everyone else. Will Washington ever set limits on Malpractice claims? Don't hold your breath.

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Lois| 6.9.09 @ 1:41PM

Let's take out the profit motive...then we'll have quality health care. Let's train our doctors, pay them a good wage. By taking out the MAJOR profit motive, we'll attract men/women with a conscience, that care more about people than the almighty dollar.

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Nick| 6.9.09 @ 2:30PM

Lois,

Medical care is a service, not a right. Services cost money. Take out the profit motive in medicine and you get the VA.

Education is a service, not a right. Take out the profit motive and you get our current public school system.

Both are disasters.

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2 Guns, AZ| 6.9.09 @ 4:55PM

This not about Health Care, its about "fairness" to those who are at the perceived bottom of society.

It just isn't "fair" that those who don't or can't work don't have access like those who do work.

I was talking to a friend who is in the insurance business and went to D.C. for a meeting with lawmakers. She's under the impression that we will have a government plan and that we will be able to buy private supplimental insurance. I told her that isn't the plan, because that would be "unfair" to those that can't afford the extra insurance.

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Health care| 6.9.09 @ 5:53PM

All people will still be eligible for the daily pop of Viagra, stop worring.

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John II| 6.9.09 @ 7:33PM

Save for "Rearden" at the posting way back at 7:47 a.m., all these interesting responses seem to me to neglect the heart of the issue: I mean, the false morality at the heart of the socialized medical system. What I see again and again among the most passionate advocates of Obamamedicine is the Left's fundamental contempt for the human animal.

Think about it. Why do the same people who advocate state control over medical care also advocate for abortion and euthanasia--i.e., for killing humans on both ends of the life cycle, when humans are most vulnerable and least obviously useful?

The Left's secular-utilitarian ethos (shared, I'm afraid, by many libertarian types who object to socialized medicine strictly on economic grounds) is the motive force behind Obamamedicine. The keynote is not health and well-being, but control and death.

I think conservatives should wake up to such a modestly deeper understanding of the issue. In re Obamamedicine, we're not dealing with something merely mistaken; we're dealing with something sinister and hostile and dangerous.

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Health Care Wrestling Pro| 6.9.09 @ 10:23PM

Betsy, go back to school. I cant believe I just read something so stupid.

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hoads| 6.9.09 @ 10:49PM

John II, you are exactly right. Obamacare is about control. He and the Dems lured the country into healthcare reform with "affordable universal health care for the uninsured". Now that the momentum has been set, a bait and switch is apparent to those of us who don't trust what is going on and we now see the focus is not on the 15% (their number) uninsured but, about the 15% (and growing by the day) of the population dependent upon Medicare.

This is all about controlling medical care, decreasing dependents of government healthcare spending and balancing the country's birth rate.

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Truthfairy| 6.10.09 @ 4:31AM

I had to pay for all costs associated with the removal of my second breast with my mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Not because Obama or the Government were controlling my patient care decisions, but because my physicians and I only decided to remove the second breast three days before the scheduled surgery and I didn't get separate permission from my insurance carrier. Forget that the biopsy on it showed early lobular carcinoma. Forget that, as the owner of a 55-person business, I had been paying this carrier for health insurance for all 55 employees + their families for 30 years. I was denied the right to receive the care deemed appropriate by my surgeon and oncologist, and my right to be reimbursed, by the insurance company I'd been helping to enrichen.

Betsy, most of your article is c - - p. You are not a patient advocate, you are on the payroll of Cantel Medical Corp and paid to disseminate propaganda for the other side.

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AMCNYC| 6.10.09 @ 5:04AM

A few facts re rising health care costs which have escaped Mrs McCaughey in her preparation for the above:

The US spent $2 trillion on health care in ‘06 - 3 times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and 8 times the $253 billion spent in 1980 - while health care spending in ‘06 grew by only 6.7%, it still outpaced inflation & wage growth. 2008 spending was approx $2.4 trillion, 17% of US GDP, and is projected to exceed $3 trillion by 2012. The US spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.

Since 1999, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 44 percent and cumulative wage growth of 29 percent during the same period. Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing P&L issue for employers.

National surveys have revealed that the primary reason people are uninsured is the high cost of health insurance coverage. A recent Harvard University study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.

McCaughey claims two-thirds of health care cost increases are due to life-saving innovation and technology, while the cost-efficiency of prevention exists only in the minds of politicians, presumably only Democrats. And Ms. McCaughey claims that 80% of preventive measures actually increase medical costs. Well, 70% of US healthcare spending is attributed to chronic diseases, like diabetes and asthma, yet half of these diseases are linked to PREVENTABLE problems like smoking, obesity & physical inactivity? Almost half of Americans are overweight or obese, at a much higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, arthritis and some cancers. Obesity and obesity-related conditions result in $62.7 billion in doctors’ visits and $39.3 billion in lost workdays each year. Type 2 diabetes, has the highest contribution with an estimated $98 billion per year in health care costs because of its links with other health issues such as coronary artery diseases, renal diseases, hyperlipidemia and stroke.

Big Pharma and corporations like Cantel Medical Corp. benefit from a US health care system that is disease management-driven, rather than focussed on preventive health risk detection and pre-emptive lifestyle management promotion of disease-related care and expense rather than preventive, pre-emptive lifestyle changes and wellness education. Spending in the US for prescription drugs was $216.7 billion in 2006, more than 5 times the $40.3 billion spent in 1990. Although Rx drug spending has been a relatively small proportion of national health care spending (10% in 2006, compared to 31% for hospitals and 21% for physician services), it has been one of the fastest growing components, until recently growing at double-digit rates compared to single-digit rates for hospital and physician services. US drugs cost American consumers 30% more than in Canada or Europe.

Mrs. McCaughey conveniently confuse s Obama's imperative to increase system efficiency and arrest the unnecessary spiralling of US healthcare cost with a reduction in quality of care. Quite the opposite.

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Be Pro Active| 6.10.09 @ 2:19PM

Got a peoblem with social healthcare, take up the issue with AIPAC, after all they run America, or you did'nt know?.

Got a problem with the economy, take it up with the FED, the Mafia controled Anglo Israeli Organisation.

Got a problem with health care, swap the Zionist Doctor and find an American Doctor, whose interest is not money to kill and vaccinate your children to kill them, or leave them with Autizism.
Insist on the single vaccine a time like in the old days, and ask for a sample of the vaccine to have it annalized, before giving it to you children.

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LeeHinAlexandria | 6.11.09 @ 4:22PM

Big Leo| 6.9.09 @ 11:49AM
What's wrong with American medicine? I see a lot of very long posts here, which are very useful. However, I can put it much more succinctly. Fifty years ago, when I went to the doctor's, he had one nurse who also answered the telephone. Malpractice insurance was incredibly cheap, since virtually nobody sued. Now, that same GP (if you could find a GP), has two nurses, a receptionist, and two people doing the paperwork for Medicaid, Medicare, and multiple insurance companies. There's the problem. Fix it.
============
Exactly Big Leo...see:
http://redalexandria.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/universal-health-care-why-it-is-bad-news/

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LeeHinAlexandria | 6.11.09 @ 4:25PM

loulou| 6.9.09 @ 9:18AM
Why is a brain dead (literally) slob like Kennedy involved in writing this bill?

HIS care should be rationed.
===========
Kennedy started us down this path about 35 years ago with the HMO act of 1973.

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Richard Cummings| 6.11.09 @ 6:42PM

Robert Taft. the most conservative person ever to have served in the Senate, proposed catastrophic health insurance. Most expenses related to this category involve stroke, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's. The AMA should fix the rates for care and the doctors make the decisions and send the bill to the government, releaving the HMOs to deal with lesser problems. It would also help if the pharmaceutical companies didn't spend $60 billion a year on advertising and only $30 billion on research. The rest of that $30 billion could go to helping people with their medications. There are lots of things we can do without cutting the quality of care. I was operated on by a surgeon who used a robot for prostate cancer. It saved money because I left the hospital the next day and had a shorter recovery period. Think about that!

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matt jones| 6.13.09 @ 1:19AM

irony runs rampant through this article. primarily found in the references to time being of the essence in terms of tests for cancer, attempting to connect the delay in instutionalized health care to causing severe damage to patients who rely on such 'treatments' which are actually prevenative medical treatments, yet still complaining the prevention is not the answer. if prevention saves lives, or rather as logically inffered prevents the need for further treatment, thab money is saved even if prevention caused a direct spending increase. further more the charts are a nice touch. however, documentig spending increases is an obvious way to attempt to disprove skyrocketing health care costs. however common sense says to simply look at the overall increases which show a huge overall increase in costs, and also steady relativly large increases of 6% are not negliable simply because of one larger increase. in addition the notion, overall, of current standards being acceptable are fooloish indeed. one of the greater threats to medical professionals is being sued for malpractice- generally by people convinced that their doctor did not do enough to save their beloved as well as by individuals who want someone to blame their own poor habits on. thus healthcare faces threats that force them to recind care- especially in surgery to patients with low chances of survival because they face consequences if the patient dies under their care, no matter how unforseeable or impossable it was to avoid. so, already sick individuals and those who are most at risk are avoided whenever possable to avoid consequences. for the record cancer is relativly incurable- ity occurs due to resons that are encompassed in the human genome and cellular replication, which can only be fixed through human genetic engineering- a topic most conservatives will not support. and to clarify, research is entirely differenty from medical care which is where the actual cures come from. medical health care is only useful to severely sick individuals if it can make them better- not simply halt their slide in to decay. to be sure, health care requires unlimited access, doctors who are not afraid to treat their patients, and the continuing efforts of researchers to develop afforable cures. this is what must be fixed and President Obama's plan intends to do just that.

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Kyle Ver Steeg, M.D.| 6.14.09 @ 12:47PM

Dr. McCaughhey, in her article, stated she agrees with Dr. Blumenthal that "fully two-thirds of the annual increases in health spending " are due to new technology. I fundamentally disagree with this. The problem with escalating health care costs is the absence of a free market.

For example, the technology sector itself has the freest market with access soaring, prices plummeting, and quality constantly improving - just the opposite of our health care sector. Why? Because literally thousands of tech companies are competing for market share, whereas in health care most states have "Certificate of Need" laws preventing free competition. In health care more than one or a few competitors is considered "duplication of services." Any wonder why the two sectors have dramtically opposite results when it comes to access, price moderation, and even quality?

Another culprit causing rising health care costs is the insurance industry including government insurance. The best way to illustrate this is to compare technology introduced into the health care system that is covered by insurance to that which isn't covered by insurance. Take Lasix eye surgery for refractive correction. This procedure is not covered by insurance and over the past decade the cost of the procedure is down at least 50% . Why? Competition is allowed because Medicare and other insurers have no say in preventing competition in this area since they are not paying for it. Note that when something is covered by insurance such as CT-scanning, MRIs, total joint replacements [and on and on], the price is set and never comes down.

What needs to be done is to free up the market for health care using the technology sector as the template. Start by reforming the health insurance industry, so more competition occurs. For example, a consumer should be able to purchase insurance in another state that doesn't have expensive in-state mandates placed upon it like marriage counseling, hair pieces, or chiropractic care for example.

The above narrative is by no means all that needs to be done, but in summary, free markets and free minds work.

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Lisa Hillman MD| 6.16.09 @ 1:57AM

shadowstats.org show near double-digit inflation for a while now. If 6% a year inflation for health care is correct, that's not bad. Wait till the $12 trillion that O and co. has printed makes its rounds. GET RID OF MEDICARE, MEDICAID, and let's go back to a free market system. Obama wants the minions to have rationed care, but HIS and his cronies' will be top notch. Just watch.

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Lisa Hillman MD| 6.16.09 @ 1:58AM

shadowstats.org show near double-digit inflation for a while now. If 6% a year inflation for health care is correct, that's not bad. Wait till the $12 trillion that O and co. has printed makes its rounds. GET RID OF MEDICARE, MEDICAID, and let's go back to a free market system. Obama wants the minions to have rationed care, but HIS and his cronies' will be top notch. Just watch.

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Lester Karotkin, M.D.| 6.16.09 @ 4:17PM

The main cause of high cost medical care is the very existence of "Health Insurance" . It adds an enormous cost to services & supplies. Everything medical one gets carries the enormous cost of maintaining & operating insurance entities. Having practiced medicine most of my career before medical insurance existed, I am acutely aware of what an enormous cost is added by the very existence of insurance. The delusion that something is free because it involves no out of pocket cost is a pitiful human fallacy.

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Krista| 7.1.09 @ 12:51PM

"heath care crisis"....that 's what the media is calling it. I am not having a "health care crisis" and neither is anyone I know. But if the media says it, it's true right? If the media says health care costs are skyrocketing and people can't afford it, it must be true because they are the be all end all. It's too bad we have so many stupid liberal Americans who believe in all this BS. How many of the 40 million uninsured are immigrants who don't pay taxes or people making over 50 K who just opt not to buy it??

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Truthfairy| 7.1.09 @ 2:14PM

DEBATE ABOUT FUNDING COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH
Jerry Avorn, M.D.,
New England Journal of Medecine, May 2009

The proposal to include $1.1 billion for comparative-effectiveness research (CER) in the federal stimulus package encountered a vigorous and well-coordinated backlash. The campaign to gut this funding ultimately failed, but the debate it engendered and the resonance of the opposition's arguments in both lay and policy circles reveal much about the issues that will surround such research and its application in the coming years.

The contested provisions were designed to support studies comparing the efficacy and safety (and, by extension, the cost-effectiveness) of alternative ways of addressing common clinical problems. Interventions to be evaluated will include pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and diagnostic approaches, such as imaging studies. This research will fill important information gaps facing clinicians, patients, and payers concerning what works best. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) often approves new medications on the basis of modest-sized studies involving patients with relatively few coexisting conditions who are followed for brief periods. Sometimes the only efficacy requirement is a demonstration that a new product works better than placebo in improving a surrogate outcome measure, such as a laboratory-test result, rather than achievement of an actual clinical benefit. The bar is set even lower for medical devices such as pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, which may only have to be shown to be similar to previously approved products or simply not to be dangerous.

CER represents one of the best investments we can make to edge the health care system away from the fiscal catastrophe it faces, since such studies will help to reduce spending on poorer clinical decisions and to spare resources for expenditures that will help patients most (and most affordably). This research is a public good, like highways and clean air. The private sector is no more likely to identify badly mispriced or potentially toxic treatments than it was to spot badly mispriced or potentially toxic products of the banking industry"

As the stimulus bill was being debated in January and February, the opposition to CER found its voice in commentators who claimed that these studies will inevitably lead to government domination of the doctor–patient relationship, "cookbook medicine," and rationing... The assault took on a more Orwellian tone 10 days later when Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, linked funding for CER with the stimulus bill's provisions supporting the use of electronic medical records. She warned that the inclusion of both initiatives was designed to enable electronic monitoring of individual patient-care decisions by the federal government and punishment of clinicians who fail to comply with imminent rationing guidelines.

This avalanche of nonfacts did not succeed in derailing the stimulus bill or its CER funding. Although these commentaries painted caricatures of new federal powers that were not in the bill.....As the debate continues, we are likely to see more diatribes designed to further an ideological or commercial agenda. Fortunately, Congress did not let warnings of a dystopian scientific police state undercut the nation's need to learn what works best in medicine. Given the quality and cost crises we face, preserving ignorance would have been a poor strategy for improving the effectiveness, safety, and affordability of health care.

(Dr. Avorn is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women's Hospital, director of the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative on Medications and Society)

Dear American Spectator Editor,

If you are going to publish Betsy McCaughey, please fact check her content first. So far, both Factcheck.org and Truth-O-Meter have busted her hallucinatory conclusions, what you choose to call "groundbreaking analysis", wide open.

Core to McCaughey's deviant interpretation of Obamacare is the idea of Obama's "one new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology", Tom Daschle's handiwork, and "Daschle's proposed appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make. ...The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research." You may be amused to know that the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology was appointed in April 2004 by George W Bush, and Comparative Effectiveness Research was introduced into the health care debate in 1989 by Dr. Willensky, a Republican, during the Administration of George HW Bush.

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Laura Borris| 7.5.09 @ 5:44AM

The Doctors know the truth about healthcare. Listen to them!
I've had diabetes for 42 years and I know the difference between quality health care and government run healthcare. You can see it in the health of the patients. The patients getting the government subsidized health care look unhealthy compared to the patients at private clinics.

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Gil| 8.6.09 @ 12:04AM

Implementation of the single-payer, government, bureaucratic health-care system, as promulgated by the Obama administration and certain members of majority party in the House of Representatives and the Senate is very much like an accident waiting to happen. However, in the case of the s0-called healthcare reform program promoted by President Obama, there is no accident; the desire for a single-payer system is deliberately designed to centralize power at the Federal level, just as is the other legislation that has thus far been passed under the Obama. Soon the cars like the "Smart Car" will be what we are told we can drive. The cap and trade energy bill will end up increasing costs that are paid by those who can least afford it--all in the name of "climate change." The fact is China, India and other countries will not be following any greenhouse legislation--and we will, as a country, make ourselves even less competitive in the world because of this (energy) legislation--at a time when we have double-digit unemployment. I mean, after all, as Mr. Obama's Chief of Staff, has said in so many words--One needs to get the most one can from a crisis. There is absolutely no urgency, whatsoever, in the passing of the single-payer(government), taxpayer financed health care program. The only urgency involved is the desire on the part of the Obama administration to ram the healthcare program down our throats before most people know what happened. It's actually quite similar to the way in which President Obama became President. There was an economic crisis and many people voted by emotion instead of using their brains. After all, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Yet, it's just fine to waste the United States of America and its citizens. Frankly, I don't believe the Obama Administration gives a tinkers damn about the fact that the vast majority of Americans are against a single-payer, national healthcare program.
It is rather interesting that, thus far, no real legislation has been passed that would actually promote and expand the business sector, thereby ensuring the creation of ongoing employment for a greater number of Americans than we now have unemployed. To do this, it would be necessary to reduce taxes on corporations, small businesses, investors and others who provide the commerce and business that is needed now. Methods to bring back production employment to the United States should be considered now. Revenue is generated only from the taxes the government gets from corporations, businesses, investors, and individual employees. Yet, why would the President and a Democrat Party want to make certain that unemployment remains high; yes, a certain, large number of employees may not have the health insurance they did have because they are now unemployed. Some may well turn to the Federal Government as their earthly savior; I think the current administration is banking on it.
All honest studies of Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries that are using the healthcare system proposed by President Obama, absolutely indicate that our citizens would not benefit--but would have the personal relationship they have with their doctor seriously impaired or eliminated.-The doctors would have to check their computers for directives from Washington D.C. to be sure they are providing the treatment, rationed treatment or no treatment for patients, as ordered by the Federal government. If the physician did not cooperate, he or she would be penalized by the government. Americans would receive inferior, inadequate, seriously delayed treatment, or no treatment at all. The elderly would be written-off as not being worth the expense to treat them, as is already being done in countries using the Obama Plan. I am speaking here of the formula used that would, and does in other countries, deny treatment to a person who is over 65--such as for heart surgery, hip surgery, breast cancer, and other therapy needed to avoid the death of patients. It would be along the same lines as is euthenasia.
I do recall that in Communist countries, such as mainland China, a concerted and ongoing, diligent effort was made by the government to have the younger adults torture and kill elderly people all across mainland China The elimination of the older people is necessary because the older people know their true history, their traditions, and what's really going on--so the fewer alive the better--less opposition--much easier to continue the brainwashing of our students which has been going on in our public schools,(K-12) and the universities--these schools mostly staffed by left-wing, radical liberals who have no problem, at all, teaching their brand of the way it should be. I am speaking of the fact that the rewriting of our history books and the left-wing, radical, and often Godless teaching has been going on now for over 40 years in our public schools, from kindergarten through doctorate levels.
I heard yesterday(have not verified it yet) that there is now a website at which anyone who hears a person or group disagreeing with President Obama's healthcare reform??? plan should be reported to this site. The purported reason for reporting this is to gain information--it sounds a lot like snitching--something that Adolph Hitler had the children do, if the children heard their parents say anything negative about Adolph Hitler and his plans for Germany.
I noticed that many contributors wrote about their experience with healthcare programs, such as in the military. However, I didn't see very much about how to stop this single-payer, bureacratic, nationalized health care program from being passed.
I strongly recommend that during the next month, when Congress is taking its vacation, all Americans who sincerely care about the United States and its people and about our beloved Constitution and freedoms, get in touch--by phone, email, letters, townhall meetings, etc. and let their Representatives and Senators know they do not want this single-payer, nationalized healthcare program.
The next step would be to vote any representatives who don't give a damn about what the vast majority of the people think out of office in the 2010 election. That's about the only power we have left at this point--as long as only Chicago follows Chicage politics. In some cases, it is a matter of life and death, especially as cocnerns the elderly; the plan, as I've heard it, plans to reduce spending by about 21 percent for those on Medicare. Already, the Federal government pays the doctors less than they would normally be paid.
In terms of our national debt, our printing of money, and our monetary debt to China, passage of President Obama's healthcare nightmare would doom several future generations to debt obligation that would most certainly reduce their opportunities and their standard of living.

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GIL| 8.6.09 @ 1:05AM

In my first entry of today, I neglected to mention that I do understand that some kind of healthcare reform is needed. The minority party, the Republicans, should be formulating and promoting those kind of reforms that would not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We most definitely do not need to go to a single-payer, nationalized, no choice, bureaucratic directed system.
We already have the insurers in place. How about legislation that would eliminate individual policies that can be bought and used in just one state. Why not in all states? Have everyone enrolled or have access to enroll in a group policy; group health insurance policies always cost less and provide more coverage.
How about eliminating the pre-existing condition concept for being insured? How about making those who can afford health insurance buy it--it would seem that about half or perhaps more than half of the people who are not currently insured(about 47 million, not 300 million) are younger and make over 70K a year--and apparently just don't think they need health insurance since they plan to live forever here on earth.
By doing this, these younger people would not end up having the taxpayers foot the fill for the ski accident or unforeseen sickness that even younger people can experience. Now, the uninsured go to an emergency room--the highest-cost method of delivering medical care.
How about providing appropriate tax credits so people can choose to buy their own health insurance. How about putting a limit on certain, medical law suits? We must allow for some human error, even on the part of doctors. I mean why is a neurosurgeon paying $200,000/ year for malpractice insurance?
And how about having free clinics, including those based on ability to pay for the downtrodden and unemployed. Then they won't need to go to the emergency rooms for treatment.
And why not consider that strange possibility that the United States of America simply cannot allow every immigrant, especially from Mexico, to come and stay in our country illegally--thereby forcing us to pay those costs, too.
I can guarantee you that if one airplane was landing in Washington D.C. every hour, loaded with illegal immigrants, the illegal immigration problem would have been quashed right away. What is the difference when hundreds of thousands are illegally crossing the Mexican/United States border, staying here and seriously damaging the economic infrastructure of California, Arizona, New Mexico and many other states. And how about enforcing the law, you know, the one that's been on the books for years--fines to be paid by any employer who hires illegal aliens.
Oh no, please do not give the people that nonsense about how the illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, are benefiting our economy.
That is hogwash. And no, I am not a racist. However, I am an American who cares about the United States of America. Some just don't seem to be aware of the fact that Mexico stops people south of them from illegally entering their country. We don't! Now, which country is exercising a degree of intelligence???The fact is I sincerely believe that most of the Mexican people who emigrate to the U.S. are decent, very hard-working people who know what family means. I'll have to discount the gangbangers and drug dealers--sometimes one and the same. Even so, the gangbangers almost look like saints when compared with certain political leaders in high places that we currently have running the United States today.
I can't blame those Hispanic, honest, hard-working people for moving here. I would, too, if I were in their shoes and the government of the country was too politically greedy or economically greedy to stop this illegal emigration. Stupid should also be included here, too. The world is laughing at us, and the illegal immigrants probably are, too.
Doesn't it seem that it's about time the leaders of Mexico started taking care of their people and not forcing them to dump themselves in our Country? No, please do not tell me Mexico is a poor country--poor because their people who could change it will not. Why should they? And please, please do not tell me the people from Mexico will do the work that United States citizens won't do. That's hogwash, too.
Nor do I wish to hear that nonsense being taught not only in Mexico but in our California Universities--along the lines that the United States stole California, Arizona, New Mexico, maybe Texas, and Utah, et al from Mexico. Check your history.
The war was fought between the U.S. and Mexico and Santa Ana, the legal representative of Mexico at the time, having lost the war, agreed the the above-mentioned states would belong to the United States of America--and as I recall, Mexico was compensated with about $15 million dollars. Yet, I understand a certain Hispanic Studies Professor at a Southern California University teaches just the opposite--so here we are paying our taxes so people can teach lies about the United States. I also know that this same lie is taught to students in Mexico.

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Gwen| 8.9.09 @ 4:52PM

I have begun to read the bill which was passed by the house committee. All that I see is a lot of language that sets up government control and lots of government beaurocracy. Perhaps that will help the unemployment numbers! Other than that, everything is extremely vague. I realize that this is purposeful in order to allow THEM to determine at a later date what they want to allow and at what price and for whom to pay. Everything that the government has taken over has become out of control and ineffective. No child left behind. Every child left behind and teachers teaching to tests. Why have they never realized that some children are not academically gifted? Why not do something effective like teach these children something that might be useful to them and perhaps ready them to be productive, tax paying, economically savey
members of our society instead of losing them by trying to jam our values down their throats. Perhaps we could along the way instruct them to be better advocates of their own health.

As for health care costing approximately the same percentage of our income, well mine have increased by 500% in the past 13 years. How many of you have seen an income increase of that percentage? I do believe that as HMO's came about, and I can remember our GP's extreme reaction to that, the reduction of the cost of a visit directly to the patient along with the number of doctors which it became necessary to visit in order to arrive at the one which was needed caused an increase in the overall cost of medicine rather than the decrease that was promised.

When I say cost directly to the patient, I mean the check that is written at the time of the visit. When it cost $45 to visit a doctor 20 years ago, people weighed their decision to make that visit more carefully. Was it something which really qualified as a reason to visit or would some OTC medicine and time do the trick? Now, it is $10, $15 or $20 for that same visit and, of course, with inflation, that is a much smaller amount in the patient's mind. So, something that was supposed to decrease the cost of the average person's care caused people to crowd their doctor's offices. It also increased the amount of paperwork and therefore the number of staff members which the doctors needed in order to run their office. Colds became RSV's or something like that. Colic, which I called BPD(bad personality disorder, lovingly, of course) became something else which I cannot remember the name of which required tests and medications. It used to be something which was lived with until the child grew out of. And all of the tests and medications seem to still leave the child with the need to grow out of it. They just require more money.

The point to all of the above is that as the government adds its complications to the health care process as it is bound to do, the overall cost of each particular health issue will, as it has in the past, increase. Three things have come together to increase the cost of health care. They are:
1. lawsuits
2. education costs(doctors pay a lot to become doctors)
3. technology increases(and we don't want to do without them, do we)

The other parts of it are controllable. If people felt the cost of their medical choices at the point of purchase instead of through increases in insurance, they would make more intelligent selections in their choices. They used to until insurance companies came up with the HMO idea. Having the government remove us from the real cost even more and counting on taxing a very few people to cover very many is a recipe for disaster.

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Gwen| 8.9.09 @ 5:07PM

Oh, one more thing, perhaps the lawyers could help to pay for the insurance of the uninsured since as you would note, I have nothing in parenthesis after their part in the increased in health care. I couldn't think of anything that would justify them.

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did you know that in the current bill, the govenment would have access to your bank accounts to debit your premiums? umm, no thank you!

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