What socialized medicine looks like

What you have to look forward to if the socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders win in 2018: "Native Americans have received federally funded health care for decades. A series of treaties, court cases and acts passed by Congress requires that the government provide low-cost and, in many cases, free care to American Indians. The Indian Health Service (IHS) is charged with delivering that care." [IHS web site quote].

The per person cost is about 1/3 of what the other Americans spend, but is in line with Europe. Also, native Americans have a life expectancy 5.5 years less than all other Americans.

https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/

A hospitalist looks at socialized medicine

Erik DeLue, a hospitalist who blogs, recently had a paid 4 day visit to St. Petersburg, Russia with his wife, an art historian. Since Obamacare had recently been passed, he decided to take a quick look at state sponsored health care.

"As if vodka were a truth serum, I got an earful of reality about Russian health care. If you need basic care, and by that I do mean very basic care, everyone has access. If your health care needs are more complicated, be prepared to wait a long time or be willing to pay much more money out of pocket than most can afford.

The other option is to find healthcare in another country—again, an option available to only a select few. But Russia is an extreme example of socialized medicine gone bad, and the demise of its health care system has more to do with the country’s political history than it does with the basic tenets and structures of socialized care.

As this was an international conference, I had a chance to speak to people from many different countries, including Germany, France and England. Most of these Western Europeans were generally happy with their health care system, but all complained of longer wait times and difficulties with getting subspecialty care, at least when compared to how our current American system works. They also noted that those with money were able to move ahead in the line, hardly a surprise no matter which the nation or particular political system."

For the rest of the story, see it here.

DeLue seems to believe we are moving to the idea that health care is a right, and if that is so, we need to determine how to ration it.  Did anyone hear that during the months of debate?

Most Europeans and even most Americans don't realize that all Americans have health care, they don't all necessarily have health insurance. In fact, if they don't have insurance, they may actually get to spend more time in the hospital healing and not be sent home according to a pay formula, as I learned when my friend's son who was unemployed had an appendectomy.

 I'm really puzzled when I read that if people only had insurance they wouldn't be struggling with obesity. As if there were no fat, middle-class, well-employed white people. It's peer pressure, not insurance, that keeps people trim, exercising and eating right.

Seniors and the viability question

The e-mails of alarm about the Obamacare intention and HR 3200 just keep coming. Baby-boomer seniors need to take a deep breath and reexamine what they really believe about life and viability, because although rationed care is a concern in this bill, and should be, many are outraged by the thought of "counseling" for end of life care. Oh, they may point out its other failures and Bogey man features, like the huge increase in the bureaucracy that will be making decisions about their lives, but that periodic counseling feature is a real stick in the craw feature. It's not a huge stretch from rotator cuff surgery at 65 so you can continue playing golf to a new heart valve at age 90 so you can continue walking around the block and enjoying the great-grand babies. But think about it. Even those who didn't vote for the most anti-life President we've ever elected, who never wrote their congressman or carried a poster at a pro-choice rally, may have gone squishy along the continuum of aborting a fetus with Down Syndrome to removing the feeding tube from Grandpa because "he wouldn't want to live this way."

Well, now it's our turn isn't it? Now we're the ones about which someone unknown and nameless is debating--our viability and life-worthiness. Doesn't feel so good, right? In case you've never thought of it, none of us is "viable" without the help and care of others--our family, our friends, our employer, our drug companies, our truckers, our farmers, our merchants, etc. We're all just as much "parasites" as that developing fetus in the womb. If for some reason you were dropped on Mouse Island on Lake Erie without clothing, food, water, matches, or tools of any kind, you'd soon find out just how "viable" you are, whether 20 years old or 80. Oh, maybe you'd survive August or September on berries or an occasional dead fish that floats past--it is after all a fresh water lake--but January and February, if you lived that long, would be a bit chilly as the Civil War prisoners on Johnson's Island discovered looking at near-by Sandusky across the bay.

Also, it's past time for a lot of seniors to remember Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, WIC etc. are socialized medicine. They are out of control precisely because they are government programs, and what the government gives it can take away at the stroke of a pen, or smack of a gavel. Seniors need to be careful what they ask for or destroy. You didn't vote for tort reform, you didn't object when the government began limiting what it would pay doctors and hospitals, you didn't cry foul over regulation of certain professions or industries that drove good people out, you didn't look through those itemized invoices in the thousands for a day or two of care that dropped in your mail box 6 months later, you didn't ask questions when technology and drug research outran the bioethics arguments, so now it's time to pay the piper. I fear the price is more than you'll want to pay.

Of course you can choose to keep your insurance

But. . . here's how it will really work. "Of course, no sane 23-year-old will "choose" a $400-plus per month insurance premium over whatever subsidized plan the government offers. And as younger people leave the private risk pool, older, sicker people will remain—driving up premiums more and more for those riskier folks who're left. Eventually, a steady stream of people will "choose" to abandon private health insurance altogether. And where will they go? Obamacare. All according to plan."

See how easy it is? Socializing medicine in 3 easy steps.

Will she find a wise Latina doctor

Rush asked today in commenting on the unfortunate accident of Judge Sotomayor

The White House says Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has broken her ankle after an airport stumble in New York City.

Sotomayor fractured her right ankle Monday morning at New York's LaGuardia Airport before boarding a shuttle to Washington for an afternoon of meetings with senators.

He was being snarky, but health is all about disparities and minorities being included in the medical system. In fact, if you read American Journal of Public Health (recent issues only contain table of contents, but older ones have full articles) the only problems the minorities and poor in the U.S. have are caused by discrimination and evil capitalists. Diseases, except for race based HIV, seem to be a thing of the past, as is personal responsibility.

No health czar, no hearings, no choice

We've got it anyway. SCHIP protecting "children," who are adults, and electronic records snooping to make sure our doctors won't be able to give us too much help or quality care. On this one issue alone, the Republicans should have stopped the "hear no evil, see no evil, smell no stench" routine. Obama didn't need a single Republican vote to launch his war on the economy.

"Two provisions in President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan could give the federal government the authority to oversee the medical decisions made between doctors and patients, critics warn, which could result in the rationing of health care." Story here.

I can understand why the Democrats fall in line--he's their guy. They can see what's happening, but they've invested so much of their passion and belief in a false prophet, that even when the crash of planets doesn't happen, they prepare to climb on board the spaceship ready for the next lie. But why would the Republicans be willing to accept the blame? Arlen Specter of PA, and Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of ME. RINOs helped stampede us into a recession. In case you haven't lived long enough to remember history, here's a picture of what we've had in my adult life.


The chart is from JWF, a site not known to me, but I was around then, and it looks familiar. If you disagree with the figures, take your questions to him. I recall paying 10.5% for a mortgage in 1988.

In Sickness and in Wealth is sickening

This week the OSU College of Public Health presents as part of Public Health Week socio-economic marxist propaganda in a film produced by California Newsreel called, In Sickness and In Wealth, which I mentioned last week I saw on WOSU. It would make Michael Moore proud--my public library will probably buy dozens of copies when it is on DVD. Unbelievably one sided--at least the 10 minutes I saw before turning it off in disgust. The news blurb reports, ". . . state and local public health leaders will participate in a panel discussion, “In Sickness and In Wealth:” at 3 p.m. on Tuesday (4/8) in 160 Meiling Hall, 370 W. 9th Ave. The event, which is part of Ohio State’s College of Public Health’s celebration of National Public Health Week, is based on a new PBS series called “Unnatural Causes,” which explores America’s racial and socioeconomic inequities in health. “In Sickness and In Wealth” is the title of the first installment of the series. The episode investigates how a person [sic] a person’s work conditions, social status, neighborhood conditions and lack of access to power and resources can actually altar [sic] their human biology and, similar to germs and viruses, make them sick."

Yes, I'm white, middle-class, college educated, married, never collected unemployment, worker's comp or welfare, saved my money, tithed my income, invested in a private pension, had married parents, married grandparents, paid a ton of taxes over my lifetime, purchased private health insurance, kept my weight down, exercised, don't smoke or drink--therefore, I'm causing someone else to be a victim of poor health? I'm altering their biology! They aren't responsible at all! Check out California Newsreel; where do they find these people? California, our proud and loud left coast, of course.