August 19, 2009

I have created a video expressing my opposition to socialism - 'No to Socialism - Part I & Part II'. 

Nationalization of Health Care

My Congressman is Dennis Moore (D) 3rd District of Kansas. On his web site (http://moore.house.gov) he has a link to a section titled ‘ Quality Affordable Health Care For The Middle Class’. If you click on this link you will find a listing of pdf files that provide high-level, non-legal descriptions of the health care reform proposal (aka H.R. 3200).

The aforementioned pdf’s were prepared by the Offices of Democratic Leadership and House Committees on Way and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor. I’ll venture that many of you have the same pdf’s on your own congressman’s web site. I will henceforth refer to this collection of documents as ‘talking points’.

On Congressman Moore’s web site there is also a pdf file containing the entire text of bill H.R. 3200. This is a 1,018 page document. I downloaded this pdf and printed the entire bill.

I then compared what the ‘bill’ said versus what the ‘talking points’ said. What follows is my assessment of the ‘truthfulness’ of the ‘talking points’. When presenting my ‘assessment’ I will at times paraphrase the actual text of bill H.R. 3200 for the sake of clarity and brevity.

What Health Care Reform Means for You (pdf from Moore’s web site)

Under the heading “Greater Choice” there were several bullet points:

Keep your doctor, and your current plan, if you like them

What does the bill say? On pages 16 and 17, sec. 102 – Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage. To paraphrase:

If you have health insurance coverage effective prior to the first day of the enactment of this legislation your health insurance coverage will be “grandfathered”. This means you get to keep the health insurance coverage you have. This is true!

What the ‘talking points’ don’t tell you is that if any of the terms or conditions of your coverage changes then you will be kicked out of your private health insurance plan and be forced to take the government sponsored plan. If you don’t subsequently enroll yourself in the government plan you will be fined thousands of dollars and enrolled automatically by the government. See pages 167 - 168 of the bill.

If your current health insurance provider changes the copay or deductibles you pay (aka out-of-pocket expenses), or change what’s covered within your plan – you will be jettisoned from your ‘current plan’.

Health insurance carriers change benefits and ‘out-of-pocket’ limits all the time. At some point in the near future you will be forced out of your ‘current plan’. 

How convenient that the ‘talking points’ failed to mention this critical detail in the bill! Nonetheless, President Obama and the Democrat Congress continue to lie about this, insisting you can keep your ‘current plan’ as long as you want. That’s like saying you can speak what’s on your mind as long as you keep your trap shut. They have wrapped a small truth inside a very big lie. All expert liars know that an effective ‘lie’ is one that contains a scintilla of truth. 

More choice, with a high quality public health insurance option competing with private insurers 

I’ll get to the “high quality public health insurance option” assertion later. Right now let’s talk about the claim that there will be competition between government run health care and the private insurers.

The government has an endless supply of money (printing presses) to sustain them even though their programs are consistently failures. Private enterprise must produce a service or products that people actually want and make a profit else they expire. Not so with government run programs. They just continue to dump hard-earned taxpayer dollars into their financially failing, under-performing programs. 

Private insurers cannot compete with a government run health care program. This bill drives consumers out of their ‘current plan’ and into the ‘public’ option. The private insurers are left with no one to insure and subsequently forced to ‘close their doors’. 

Under the heading “ Higher Quality” there are several bullet points:

You and your doctors make health care decisions – not insurance companies

That bullet point is blatantly false. This language is intended to ‘demonize’ the insurance companies in order to make the government run health care option appear more just. The truth is, it is the ‘public’ option that will not allow us to make our own health care decisions!

When I discuss ‘Comparative Effectiveness’ it will become clear that health care rationing is the centerpiece of this legislation and that it will take the ‘decision making’ out of you and your doctor’s hands and delegate it to a government bureaucrat.

The assertion that insurance companies make our health-care decisions for us is a misleading statement. Insurance companies are contractually obligated to approve any health care decision that you and your doctor make as long as it is covered within your plan. Insurance companies are state regulated. Who regulates the government?

Of course there have been disagreements between the consumer and the insurer over the interpretation of what is covered and what is not covered but that is nowhere close to your insurance company “making health care decisions for you”.

Prior to a consumer purchasing their ‘private’ health care plan they are given information that outlines all of their health care benefits and the levels of copays and deductibles they will be responsible for. They know what they are paying for up front.

This bill does not define what is covered or not covered – that will be done after this bill becomes law. Additionally, there will be health care rationing used as a means to control costs. So, even though a treatment or procedure or drug may be covered by the bill, if the medical service you require is deemed as not being cost effective you will not be approved to receive the service.

Translation: You are too old and the medical service too expensive to justify the expenditure of funds for someone whose life expectancy will not be long enough to provide an acceptable return on the investment.

It doesn’t matter what you and your doctor want – the health care bureaucrat and their cost/benefit spreadsheets will make the ‘treatment’ decision for you. 

What Is Comparative Effectiveness? I extracted this definition from a Congressional Budget Office paper titled, “Research on the Comparative Effectiveness of Medical Treatments: Issues and Options for an Expanded Federal Role – December 2007.

“As applied in the health care sector, an analysis of comparative effectiveness is simply a rigorous evaluation of the impact of different options that are available for treating a given medical condition for a particular set of patients.

Such a study may compare similar treatments, such as competing drugs, or it may analyze very different approaches, such as surgery and drug therapy. The analysis may focus only on the relative medical benefits and risks of each option, or it may also weigh both the costs and the benefits of those options. In some cases, a given treatment may prove to be more effective clinically or more cost-effective for a broad range of patients, but frequently a key issue is determining which specific types of patients would benefit most from it.

Related terms include cost–benefit analysis, technology assessment, and evidence-based medicine, although the latter concepts do not ordinarily take costs into account.”

In the ‘preface’ of this paper is the following text, “At the same time, only a limited amount of evidence is available about which treatments work best for which patients and whether the added benefits of more-effective but more-expensive services are sufficient to warrant their added costs.”

I increased the font size within the above quote to bring attention to that portion of the statement. This is where the concept of health care ‘rationing’ (at the expense of the elderly) comes blazing out of the text.

What does the bill say about Comparative Effectiveness? On pages 501 through 524 there is a new entity created to “conduct, support, and synthesize research with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services and procedures in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically.”  (page 502)

These ‘findings’ from the above research will then be disseminated and “the use and incorporation of such findings into relevant activities for the purpose of informing higher quality and more effective and efficient decisions regarding medical items and services.” (page 522)

Translation: Watch out for that word ‘effective’. That is the code word for denying services based on a person’s age. If the research findings conclude that the cost of a treatment is not cost effective for individuals of a certain age then the treatment would be denied.

A formula would be used that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. So, treatments for younger patients will more often be approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly.

In Great Britain, comparative-effectiveness research is actually used to deny patients treatment for age-related diseases such as heart disease and macular degeneration.

The funding for the comparative effectiveness research was in the stimulus bill signed into law in February 2009. President Obama has appointed Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) as a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Dr. Emanuel is an advocate of comparative effectiveness research and has written extensively on that topic. He sees no problem with denying care based on the age of the patient and says doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Isn’t that what we want from our doctor – a ‘no stone left unturned’ attitude regarding the pursuit and attainment of our wellness? Dr. Emanuel would elect to send senior citizens to an early grave in the name of effectiveness – declaring that the money could be better spent on someone else.

Dr. David Blumenthal is another key Obama advisor and recommends slowing medical innovation to control health care spending. With this kind of approach patients will be denied the latest life-saving treatments in the name of cost control.

Blumenthal has been appointed as Obama’s national coordinator of health-information technology. He will be responsible for ensuring that doctors obey electronically delivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

The stage is being set for health care rationing. All that stands in the way is the passage of the health care reform bill.

More family doctors and nurses will enter the workforce, helping guarantee access

What empirical data is there that leads to this conclusion? There are many objectionable and downright deadly aspects of this bill. One of the most egregious of these is the government telling a doctor what treatment he is permitted (if any) to provide for his/her patients. What future doctor would view that as an incentive to join the health care profession?

If this legislation passes there will be 47 million uninsured people (according to the Democrats) added to the health care roles. There are barely enough doctors and nurses to address our medical needs today.

A significant percentage of this 47 million is our illegal alien population. The House bill states that, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.” (page 143, sec. 246)

So, illegal aliens will not be eligible to participate in the government health care program. Here we go again with that small ‘truth’ wrapped inside a big lie.

All informed people know that Congress (Democrats and some shameful Republicans) have been pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens. If the amnesty crowd gets their way, our illegal alien population will become so-called citizens and eligible for participation in the ‘public’ option.

How will the confluence of 47 million new people and a shortage of primary-care physicians result in quality health care for the population while at the same time reducing costs? That is absolutely impossible.

The impossible can only be made possible through the ‘selective application’ of health care rationing. Some people will receive treatment while others are denied. This is all done in the name of ‘effectiveness’.

Below I have inserted an article from the British publication MailOnline. This is an outstanding example that illustrates one of the many issues endemic to the British national health care system.

MailOnline (June 2008)
Melanie Phillips

“Labour's playing medical poker - and the stakes are patients' lives

To the Labour Party, the National Health Service is the talismanic proof of its own moral superiority.

Time and again, Labour brandishes its undying commitment to the NHS as the embodiment of its social conscience, and vilifies anyone who suggests that a different system of health care might be better as a heartless brute who would force the sick to choose between death and bankruptcy.

Well, now we can see quite what odious hypocrisy that is. For in the cause of supporting the NHS principle of equal treatment for all, the Government is actually ordering the withdrawal of treatment from desperately sick and dying people as an act of ideological spite.

A woman dying of cancer was denied NHS treatment in her final months  - because she had paid privately for a drug which offered her the chance of living longer, but which the NHS had refused to provide.

When she decided to use her savings to pay for this drug, the NHS withdrew her treatment, including her chemotherapy.

Threat

This is by no means a one-off case. Six other cancer patients are taking legal action against the NHS after their own treatment was cut off or a threat was made to do so because they too paid for life prolonging drugs.

This is simply obscene. It is hard to imagine anything more vicious than stopping, or threatening to stop, the treatment of seriously ill people simply because they have the audacity to want to improve their chances of staying alive.

These are people who, on top of the suffering caused by their illness, are having to raid their own savings to pay for treatment that the NHS is failing to provide.

To say to such people that if they pay for a bit of their treatment they will have to pay for all of it is quite simply blackmail.

To force them into a situation where, at a time when they need most support, they have to endure the worry of massive bills imposed upon them, as an act of gratuitous punishment is really intolerable.

It is profoundly unethical for doctors to stop treatment in such circumstances. Hippocrates, who gave his name to the doctors' oath of care for their patients, must be spinning in his grave.

It is almost certainly unlawful  - and if it isn't, it damn well should be. The founding principle of the NHS is equal care for all, not care that is conditional provided patients don't do something of which the government disapproves.

But the Health Secretary Alan Johnson has rewritten the founding principle of the NHS to be that someone is either an NHS or a private patient.

Accordingly, last year he ordered NHS trusts to refuse to allow patients to pay for additional medicines. This was to stop a 'two-tier service', with people receiving top-up drugs being treated on the same ward as those getting only standard NHS medicines.

What next  - people with health insurance being refused NHS treatment? Will patients be turfed out of hospital if their relatives bring in 'top-up' food for them?

Will children be banned from state schools if their parents pay for private tutors for them (if that rule were applied, the children of half the Government would surely be banned).

Just whom does Mr. Johnson think will be hurt by patients buying additional drugs? The Left has always opposed private medicine on the grounds that it takes doctors away from the NHS, thus reducing the amount of treatment for everyone else.

But if a patient buys extra drugs, that won't deprive a single person of any treatment.

Of course that's not the point at all, is it, and never has been. The Government isn't concerned about the quality of treatment for those patients who are not buying top-up drugs; indeed, it's not concerned about the quality of treatment for anyone.

Punishing

No, what drives it instead is the obsessive determination that if everyone can't have something, then no one should have it.

It really would rather that people were dead than that they might have something that someone else didn't have. This is the equality of the graveyard.

Threatening people with dire consequences if they spend their own money on something of which ministers disapprove isn't fairness or justice. It is coercion, and it is inimical to a free society.

Moreover, the Government is punishing people for trying to mitigate the effects of its own failure towards them.

After all, the only reason this has arisen is that the NHS is failing to provide patients with drugs that are available and might help them. Britain has some of the worst cancer survival rates in Europe, and as some doctors privately acknowledge, one reason is that NHS patients are prevented from buying the most effective drugs.

And this is surely the deeper point of this lamentable business. The founding myth of the NHS, that it can treat everyone equally all the time, now stands exposed for the nonsense that it always was.

The combination of galloping advances in medical science, unlimited demand and a finite pot of funds makes that commitment demonstrably impossible.

A state-run, top-down system makes some kind of rationing absolutely inescapable.

But with new treatments exploding, a society which believes in the right of consumer choice makes such rationing decisions intolerable.

The inevitable consequence is that, one way or another, people will start paying for those treatments that the NHS denies them. So those who have the money are increasingly dipping into their savings to pay for surgery or drugs.

This is indeed a two-tier health service  - for people who pay once for medical care through their taxes and National Insurance, and then again for the treatment that the state refuses to provide.

Survival

The real issue is the one that at present no political party will acknowledge. This is that the NHS is bust as a model of medical care. It needs to be replaced by schemes, which allow people to pay for treatments and care that they cannot presently receive.

There are various ways of doing this. European social insurance systems, under which people buy different types of health schemes, raise survival rates and standards for all  - including those who can't afford to pay the premiums but who nevertheless enjoy a guaranteed standard of care higher than anything they can get in Britain.

The Government refuses to consider this for two reasons. First, the NHS is too valuable a stick with which to beat up the Opposition. And second, given the wreckage of Labour's core beliefs, it's the one thing that gives them the illusion that they are still pursuing a moral project.

But in fact, as we can now all too graphically see, it is anything but moral.

When the NHS was founded in 1948, some warned then that state control of medical care would destroy medical ethics. They were vilified as money-grabbing reactionaries.

But surely even they could not have foreseen that the NHS would end up forcing terminally ill patients to play double or quits in some diabolical game of medical poker  - with the stake being their life.

How dare they do this to people? Let us never again hear that social conscience is a Labour monopoly. This is a Government that is blackmailing the dying. Can there be a greater betrayal of progressive ideals?”

The above article is a preview of what’s ahead for America should ObamaCare become a reality.

What else should we know about this death-dealing health care bill? I will provide some additional information that the ‘talking points’ did not highlight – and for very good reasons.

End of Life Counseling

Advance Care Planning Consultation (pages 424 - 443)

Golly gee, it sure makes sense to have ‘advance planning’. How innocuous sounding that is but the devil is in the details.

These ‘consultations’ between you and the practitioner must occur at least once every 5 years (page 425). These ‘consultations’ may be conducted more frequently if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual such as the “diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury…” (page 429)

The cause for the ‘early consultation’ as defined on page 429 could result in a medical directive that “may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all or specified interventions.”  (page 430)

The medical order could limit or forego the “use of antibiotics; the use of artificially administered nutrients and hydration”. (page 430)

The euphemistic phrase of “Shared Decision Making” (page 442) is accompanied by these comforting words: “The term ‘shared decision making’ means a collaborative process between patient and clinician that engages the patient in decision making, provides patients with information about trade-offs among treatment options, and facilitates the incorporation of patient preferences and values into the medical plan.”

Question: Does the patient have the final say in what treatment he/she desires? Nowhere in the bill is it stated that the patient has the final say but only that it will “facilitate the incorporation of the patient’s preferences and values into the medical plan.”

This so-called counseling has a built-in conflict of interest. With more baby-boomers coming into the Medicare system there will be pressure to curtail the costs associated with end-of-life care.

To that end the bill on pages 438 – 440 sec. 1235 introduces the use of “patient decision aids”. On page 440 it states, “An eligible provider participating in the program shall routinely schedule Medicare beneficiaries for a counseling visit after the viewing of such a patient decision aid to answer any questions the beneficiary may have with respect to the medical care of the condition involved and to assist the beneficiary in thinking through how their preferences and concerns relate to their medical care.”

It sounds like a situation ripe for the elderly to be ‘persuaded’ into refusing care.

Imagine for a moment if the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans engineered similar ‘decision aids’ for end-of-life counseling for their members. There would be outrage over this obvious conflict of interest.

It is no one’s desire to put terminally ill people through painful and pointless procedures. With that said, it should be the members of the patient’s family along with the patient who decide what type of end-of-life care is desired – not some stranger from the government who is ostensibly there to ‘help you’.

Summary

There is much more in the bill that is distressing to me but it is hoped that what has been presented here will help you decide for yourself the ‘merits’ of this bill.

There are other, better solutions for improving our health care delivery systems that address the costs and plight of the uninsured, but that was not the topic for this discussion.

This bill will provide less care to those already insured and will literally kill those that need the care the most – the elderly. The bureaucracy being created by this bill will rival any the government has established in the history of our union.

President Obama’s motives to ‘reform’ health care is not about reducing costs and providing health care for everyone. That’s a con.

Obama is a socialist in the vein of Lenin and Stalin in terms of his ideology regarding the subjugation of the populace to government control. The nationalization of our health care is simply a means to that end.

Stripping away our freedoms in the name of equality, feeding the addiction of government dependency through expanding entitlement programs, onerous taxation and the nationalization of private enterprise is the path that leads to a socialist state. Capitalism is being dismantled along with the American spirit of self-reliance.

Obama’s objective is to destroy the America our founding father’s envisioned as through the Constitution. He seeks a socialist state wherein the entire citizenry becomes dependent upon the government for their very existence.

We have a God-given right to our freedoms – it is not something the government dispenses. Those ‘freedoms’ are in mortal danger of being swept away by Obama and his Congress if the nationalization of our health care becomes law.

Our country approaches a seminal moment in her history where Americans have a clear choice; to stand up and fight the government takeover of our very lives or to remain passive and accept a servile existence subject to the tyranny of absolute government control.    

Objectively examine for yourself the content of House bill H.R. 3200. The information I provided is intended to bring awareness to the implications this bill has on our freedoms and on our health.

God Bless America
 

February 23, 2009

Destroying Capitalism

Tsar Obama has one overarching objective in mind for America – the total destruction of capitalism. He understands that his socialist policies will not work. His stimulus bill is a Trojan horse. The uninformed will connect with the word ‘stimulus’ and simply accept the horse at face value, never questioning its pedigree.

In the course of time the belly of the horse will reveal a stimulus for socialism that will smother capitalism and kill our economic freedoms. 

This makes Obama supporters a horse’s ass with the rest of us walking behind cleaning up the mess.

Winston Churchill said, “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Tsar Obama knows his record setting spending policies will not work yet he will pronounce that in time, the economy will turn around. This suits his purpose. This buys him time until the free market economy is utterly destroyed. 

The ‘man of hope’ must destroy our hope and faith in self-reliance. Once that is accomplished through the destruction of our economy, he will have many Americans right where he wants them – needy.  In steps the nanny government and like sheep they will bleat for government entitlements – with many strings attached. This is the part where they tell you to jump and you ask, “how high”. 

But whoa there partner! That’s his plan, not ours. We are not sheep! We are Americans! Tsar Obama does not understand what it means to be a ‘real’ American.  Nobody tells us how to live or what to think. We don’t appreciate the ‘smart’ people in Washington telling us what’s best for us. 

There is a rage building in America that the Democrats can’t attribute to global warming. That rage has its origins in the arrogance and stupidity of our elected officials.  John Adams said, “In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.”  

We are saddled with a useless Congress and it is up to us to put them out to pasture or send them to the glue factory. How will this be accomplished? Take a proactive role in local and national political organizations. Where we live becomes the epicenter of our conservative values. Family, friends, business associates and acquaintances are all within the sphere of our influence. We are the true messengers of hope. Deliver the message. 

We must do more than just have cyber conversations amongst ourselves. That’s like phone sex (I imagine) where it can be satisfying to a point but ultimately falls short of being a ‘game changer’. We are just singing to the choir. 

We need to get our message to those individuals that are not in the choir – yet.  Through personal interactions and initiatives we must seek to gain the notice of those where we live and work. I’m ‘stirring the pot’ in my neighborhood – you can too.