ObamaCare | Grant County PowerNet

Dec 02

Wall Street Journal - Obamacare at any cost

We have now reached the stage of the health-care debate when all that matters is getting a bill passed, so all news is good news, more subsidies mean lower deficits, and more expensive insurance is really cheaper insurance. The nonpolitical mind reels.

Consider how Washington received the Congressional Budget Office’s study Monday of how Harry Reid’s Senate bill will affect insurance costs, which by any rational measure ought to have been a disaster for the bill. CBO found that premiums in the individual market will rise by 10% to 13% more than if Congress did nothing. Family policies under the status quo are projected to cost $13,100 on average, but under ObamaCare will jump to $15,200.

Read it online at the WSJ

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Aug 24

The Cost of OBAMACARE

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(WJS) VIDEO LINK

It’s not about now…it’s about tomorrow and the day after…

written by Webmaster \\ tags: Health Care, ObamaCare

Aug 18

From the Web…OBAMACARE AND ME

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August 06, 2009
OBAMACARE AND ME
By Zane F Pollard, MD

Read it at American Thinker

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

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

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta, Georgia that accepts Medicaid.

For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For those of you who are over 65, this bill in its present form might be lethal for you. People in England over 59 cannot receive stents for their coronary arteries. The government wants to mimic the British plan. For those of you younger, it will still mean restriction of the care that you and your children receive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

written by Webmaster \\ tags: ObamaCare

Aug 16

Act IV - Circus Health Care

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Health Forum Turns Personal for Obama

Read the article at the Wall Street Journal…ask yourself…what’s next in the big drama?

Wall Street Journal Article

The current debate (or shall we call it a war) over the proposed and promised changes to health care in America has had the stops pulled out on it. The debaters or warriors are pulling weapons from their arsenals and are holding nothing back when it comes to deploying them. Information, misinformation, character smearing, playing the fake emotion cards, appeals, cajols, threats, bald-face lies, it doesn’t seem to matter, it is pure 100% politics at it’s finest (or perhaps its worst). There is nothing that they will not do or say to get what they want, and each side argues that their motives are the pure ones. (Proverbs 16:1,2)

After Sarah Palin used her status as a celebrity to make the “death squad” argument public. The other side went crazy in poo-pooing and demonizing her, the very thing she claimed that Federalized health care would do to those who no longer fit a future profile of national usefulness. In your opinion, Sarah may or may not be a Barbie-Noodlehead, but think about it, isn’t this issue worth debating? What will happen ten or twenty years from now with a different generation of people at the controls operating with a new moral, ethical and economical medical base? Consider what has happened to smokers over the past twenty-years since smoking was demonized by the nation? No, we do not put smoker’s to death for smoking (they are perfectly capable of putting themselves to death by smoking).

But to be an American smoker today, is to be a pariah, a target for hyper-taxation and a convenient dumping ground for much of the daily anger of the nation. If you do not believe me, light up a cigarette in a non-smoking place and see what happens to you. People will not tell you that Jesus loves you. I am not a smoker but I have seen and heard the abuse, disdain and scorn heaped upon them.

If you require another example of the viability of the argument that governments may rule that unwanted or unqualifying people may be put to death for assorted reasons, consider abortion in America. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a certain class of person, a “future person” if you will, was not as viable as a current person. Today, in America, unborn children are aborted in the name of personal choice, freedom and convenience.

Once an unborn child is defined as unwanted or a hardship, it can be legally disposed of by abortion and it is called “health care”. There are many methods. Tearing it to pieces, burning it to death with a high-salt solution, and even assisting it to be nearly born before puncturing the skull and sucking the child’s brains out. All these methods are now perfectly legal in the Untied States. The last one, called a D & X abortion (or a Partial-Birth Abortion), was ruled illegal until President Obama achieved office and he re-legalized it with an executive order.

Obama and Abortion in Illinois

This is from the “compassionate”, “Christian” man we elected as President of the Untied States and whose is now pushing for a revamp the entire American medical system. I warn you, it is also a revamping of America’s future ethical and moral base.

Abortion

Recently President Obama played the “my grandmother died, I understand suffering” card at the public town hall meetings. Well, we all have had people who were dear to us die. We have all experienced the pain of losing those we love. In my opinion, playing it out as a reason for Federalizing health care is simply a lawyering debating trick, appeal to the emotions. Federalized health care will not eliminate death. It will still come to everyone. This is simply a political appeal to the emotions. It is the same thing that Al Gore did in the 1990’s TV debate when he tearfully told how his sister died of lung cancer caused by tobacco. Later we found out that he forgot to mention that he and his family made millions of dollars and built his political career supporting tobacco. Some might say that he indirectly shared the responsibility for his sister’s demise.

This is all charade and stage acting, folks, none of it has any bearing upon anything except getting one’s way in the political arena and staying in power. When will we wake up and get it?

“When You Gonna Wake Up ?”
By Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming Album

God don’t make promises that He don’t keep
You got some big dreams baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep.