I was performing a 7AM employee meeting yesterday at a nursing home explaining their new coverage.

During my presentation, one of the nurse aids mentioned that she currently does not have coverage, but participates with a program run by Cleveland's MetroHealth Hospital (a highly-rated, public hospital). As I was explaining the prescription drug coverage of the plan I was installing, she politely interrupted and asked me "how does your plan compare to the $5.00 prescriptions that I get at Metro?". I asked her to explain more, and she told me that through Metro, she gets $5.00 prescriptions, low cost doctor's visits, pays nothing for therapy, diagnosti, and inpatient. She pays no monthly premium because of her income.

Technically she is UNINSURED. She would show up in the number of 47 Million uninsured that Obama and others are constantly fretting about.

However, if this "Uninsured" lady, and my wife...who is fully insured with a high deductible HSA Plan both had a major hospitalization........who do you think would come out owing more money? You bet, my wife would owe more.

So maybe being "uninsured" is not always so bad.

I thought they had a better system then WE do???? No?

N.L. Premier Danny Williams is scheduled to have surgery this week. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 59, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure.

Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday morning.

She's expected to provide more details about Williams's condition, as well as how the provincial government will function during his absence.

CBC reporter David Cochrane said Williams appeared to be in good health recently. He described the premier as "fairly active," playing pick-up hockey at least once a week when work permits.

click here for link

"I did not make a bunch of deals"
--BHO describing how he was not involved in the bribery of Senators to pass Obamacare.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "a bunch of deals" is...

Yes, it is one year into the Obama administration, and he still has not nominated and seated the top Medicare oversight slot. There is no Administrator for CMS.

By Dave Petno

I don't think anyone, even me, would say we don't need reform.

However, the "reform" that I desire and the "reform" that Obama and the congress are speaking of are 180 degrees opposite

a better term for what Obama says regarding reform is "regulation" or even "nationalization"

by "reform" we mean, making things better for the consumer, letting markets work, so that non-government companies can compete...driving up quality and drive down prices.....like everywhere else in our economy (computers, cell phones, flat pannel TVs....)

Our reform does not include increasing taxes on people and giving it to the government to spend on our behalf

Our reforms, we hope, will create a vibrant private (non-government) market...that will be in higher demand by the consumer...

Obama's reforms will destroy private markets. Period

I do not trust anything that can come out of this Congress. I am convinced that whatever it is will be bad for our industry. They are a poison tree, and all of their fruits will be tainted as well.

Gird your loins......we have won the battle against the 2000 page monstrosity, but the war against Statism, Socialism, and Obamaism continues.

Yes it is dead. The 2000 Page monstrosity will not pass, nor will it be forced on the American People.

We can thank Ted Kennedy for changing the rules when he thought that John Kerry was to be elected president, and Mitt Romney was the governor. Uncle Teddy forced through a change that called for a special election, rather than having the Governor appoint the empty seat.

Fast forward to 2010, the election to fill Uncle Ted's seat....turned to a national referendum on Obamacare, and a conservative Scott Brown won.

RIP Obamacare........and let's hope that John McCain does not seek to resurrect it.

Also.....now the left is arguing that 1300 Private Insurance companies constitutes a monopoly. Arguing that monopolies are bad....only to argue that government-only monopolies are good. ??????

Hey....anyone want to wait for heatlhcare like Canada. Avg wait for senior to see a Ortho Spec in Canada is 17 WEEKs, in US its 16 Days!

Great piece by Sally Pipes

More on my favorite topic;

The U.S. Postal Service spent more than $792,000 "without justification" on meals and events in one five-month period even as it reported losing $3.8 billion this year, the agency's inspector general says in a report. Employees spent $792,022 on meals and external events "without justification for food purchases, purchased alcohol without officer approval and exceeded the dollar limit for meals," the report says. Among the purchases were crab cakes, beef Wellington and scallops at an installation ceremony for one of several postmasters in the United States, the report says.

Read full article here


All of this just to move some packages from here to there.

Just imagine how much money they can lose under Obamacare!

Click Here for Rasmussen Poll Results

He has explained his intentions over and over....all we need to do is listen to his words.

Click Here for the Video

http://www.breitbart.tv/exposed-expanding-medicare-has-been-obamas-plan-to-get-to-single-payer-all-along/

“There’s no point in reinventing a program if you already have all the infrastructure that can set it up. What they’ve done is allow people who are over 55, instead of over 65, buy into Medicare. So that’s a big step forward and it does two things. First of all, of course, it allows more people to get in the government single payer if they want to. And, secondly, it uses a bureaucracy, which makes much more sense than even what’s in the House bill.”

Howard Dean
via RedState

In 1994, the CBO said of an individual mandate to buy health insurance:

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.


From Heritage Morning Bell 12-10-09

Obamacare projections are made to diminish the actual costs of the bill. The program is not fully implemented to until 2014. Taxes are created in the first 4 years, but not offset by expenses.

Once the program is fully implemented, the costs go through the roof.

I have several clients who are ambulance companies.

I have spoken to many of the paramedics over the years, and I have found an interesting trend. They report that a massive percentage of all of their runs (70 - 85%) are the result of fraudulent calls from people who don't need emergency care.

Low income fraudsters know that they can get a free ride, a meal, and a warm bed if they call 911 and complain of certain symptoms. Some, even admit......"it's a couple more days until my welfare check comes...so I just need a meal"

Some know that if they say "I am going to kill myself" in front of the driver, they will get 3 days overnight in a locked unit, in with a bed and meals.

Some people will call 3 or 4 times per week with fake symptoms.

One driver tells the story of a "frequent flyer" who meets arrives at the Hospital, then refuses all care, then walks across the street to the grocery store.

Some people meet the ambulance at the curb, then jump up into the bay, onto the bed, where they are strapped in.

The ambulance companies MUST PROVIDE transport regardless of their ability to pay....and of course these fraudsters almost never pay.

Can you imagine the cost to the system if 80% of all ambulance runs, which arrive at the hospital emergency room are fraudulent?

Yes, fraud by rich guys like Bernie Madoff is criminal, and should be punished...and doctors who bilk the system with fraudulent claims should go to jail.

But what about these low income system-abusers? They are constantly crying wolf, filling our ambulances, and emergency rooms....with their bogus medical claims?

They are taking advantage of the system at the expense of all of us.

President Obama says that he will root waste out of the system.....and this is a perfect place to start.

Please call me if you would like to discuss further.

Is this a sign of things to come for Obamacare?


A drug that can prolong the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer has been rejected for use in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said the cost of Nexavar - about £3,000 a month - was "simply too high".

But Macmillan Cancer Support said the decision was "a scandal".

More than 3,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer every year in the UK and their prognosis is generally poor.

"The psychological feeling when a group of people decide that you cannot have a treatment that can help you is really devastating."

Cancer Research UK's chief clinician Peter Johnson said the decision was "enormously frustrating" because there was no doubt about the drug's effectiveness.

He said: "There's no alternative treatment and there are no other places for people to go. It is expensive, but the only issue is cost and the number of patients affected are quite few - there's probably only six or seven hundred patients a year."

Nexavar - also known as sorafenib - had already been rejected in Scotland, despite studies showing it could extend the life of a liver cancer patient by up to six months.


Read full article here

And this after "cutting" $6 Billion in expenses.

CNNmoney.com is reporting that the US Postal Service will lose $3.8 Billion dollars in FY 2009.

So they cannot even deliver our mail (with a federally imposed monopoly) without losing billions of dollars per year. Can you say automatic bail-out?

I can't wait until they fix healthcare for the rest of us.

READ CNNMONEY ARTICLE HERE

By Dave Petno

All Americans shall be financially responsible for any of the medical services that they consume.

Medical expenses will not be eligible for elimination via bankruptcy process. If you incur big medical bills, you will not be able to avoid them by filing bankruptcy. Medical bills will assume the same status as student loans, or taxes........you cannot avoid them, and they will follow you around until you pay them.

Since nothing will be free, people will now have a huge incentive to purchase insurance or expend the effort to enroll in available government programs that are already available to them.

It is possible that approximately 25 to 35 million of the uninsured will voluntary enroll in programs or purchase coverage to protect themselves from the new un-avoidable future liability that this change corrects.

This is not overly complicated. We are just saying that YOU MUST PAY for the services that you use. No more free lunch.

Additional Ideas that have been discussed prior, and that will further enhance competition:

1) Malpractice Reform
2) Allow purchase across state lines
3) Private voluntary clinics

Hat tip: Hot Air

By Dave Petno

Can any one human understand the 2000 paige Pelosi/Obama bill?
Can any one person assure the American people that this bill will actually work, or at least do no harm?

The statements made by the Democrats who supported this bill were filled with guarantees, and promises. "This bill will insure 96% of all Americans." "This bill will reduce the cost of healthcare and stabilize Medicare" "This bill will not cut any services for Medicare". "You will be able to keep your current plan and your doctor."

These are all bold and definitive statements.
At the same time, not one member of Congress has, or can, claim that they actually understand 100% of the bill, or that they know with certainty that there will be no adverse side effects.

If you listen to their words, they actually diminish and play down any possible side-effect that the bill could have. They want us only to focus on the positive aspects.

As a financial services professional, I am highly regulated in what I can and cannot say to my clients. I am legally prohibited from making guarantees regarding the performance of investments, or the future costs of insurance products. If I do so, I will lose my license, and potentially be prosecuted.

Also, I am ethically, and legally obligated to only sell products that I can understand, and that reasonably can be assumed to be in the best interests of my clients.

If I ever sold a policy or investment whether 2000 pages or 20 pages, that I did not understand, or that my client did not understand I would lose my license and my ability to make a living.

If I ever sold a policy or investment that would have such predictable negative results as the Pelosi/Obama plan, I would be sued for malpractice.

So why is it that I must live by by a strict ethical and regulatory code, while our politicians seem to live by no code?

One more point: Did you ever notice that you cannot view an ad for drugs without having every possible side-effect disclosed. It is obnoxious. They tell us for 30 seconds all of the benefits, then another 30 seconds about all of the things that could go wrong. Why do they do this? Because the drug company knows that they will be liable for any negative effects of the drug, and they could be sued for damages. By disclosing potential side-effects they are informing the public of the risks, so that those who are concerned can opt for another type of treatment. It is a way to build an informed public, and to mitigate their risks at the same time.

So, where are the disclaimers for the Pelosi/Obama bill?

Up to 40 Democrats could oppose the bill if it does not specifically ban public funding of abortions.

This is a major area of disagreement, with no clear middle ground:


Read Washington Post article here

According to the AP, The federal government promised to have 120 Million Swine Flu vaccines available by October of this year, so far, they have only been able to deliver 13 million.

That is underestimating their production by about 900%.

Can we face the facts, the Federal Government is terrible at predicting EVERYTHING. That includes flu vaccines, healthcare costs, cash-for-clunkers demand, climate temperatures......YES, EVERYTHING

from the CMS website

In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual's ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.

How do we know that our American system is the best system in the world? Little boy with NO INSURANCE receives World's Best Care!

This story is a continuation of an earlier post. Remember, DJ's Family was uninsured, and unemployed.
He received 2 months of world class care at Wisconsin Children's Hospital.
I thought the uninsured did not receive care???

via WT Editorial

Earlier this month, Humana Inc., one of the nation's leading insurance providers, sent its customers who are enrolled in Medicare Advantage a simple one-page letter of warning. "If the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable," it said. The letter suggested two ways customers could "show Congress the importance of Medicare Advantage." Those concerned could "Let your members of Congress know why Medicare Advantage is important to you," and customers were invited to write Humana for more information.

After a complaint from Chairman Baucus, this instruction came out from Medicare to Humana.

"Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions," wrote Teresa DeCaro, acting director of the Medicare Drug and Health Plan Contract Administration Group

Read the Washington Times Article Here

hat tip: Hot Air

Fred Barnes: Why Obamacare NEVER WILL save money

In Massachusetts, "universal" coverage was enacted in 2006 along with a requirement that everyone be insured or pay a fine. (By 2009, the fine was up to $1,068.) Again, the claim was made--a claim Obama repeats--that costs would decline once everyone was covered. Today, 97 percent of Massachusetts citizens are covered, the highest rate in the country. But costs have soared to the point the New York Times characterized them as "runaway." Spending on the state's health insurance program has risen by 42 percent. A major cause shouldn't have surprised anyone: The newly insured have flooded doctors' offices for medical care paid for by others. Now Governor Deval Patrick, a close ally of Obama, wants to impose cost controls.

Read whole article here

From: www.examiner.com


President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were on hand Wednesday, September 16th for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's awards dinner honoring Marc Anthony. The President spoke on health care and illegal immigration, stating that no illegals would be covered under pending legislation. However, he also stated that the country's immigration system was broken and that we should work to fix the system in order to provide health care for those here legally.

In other words, amnesty for illegals, health care for legals, and the Democrats get to fulfill all promises and the media largely skirts the matter and the President's promises largely go unreported. Has anyone else seen the following on major media, television news or even FOX for that matter?

via NAHUnewswire
The Los Angeles Times /Kaiser Health News (9/21, Meyer) reports, "Critics say some insurers intentionally make their policies and procedures confusing." But the "Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's health reform bill would require insurers to meet new standards for honesty and transparency," and an amendment added by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) would "encourage states" to fine insurers that fail "to communicate with consumers in plain English." America's Health Insurance Plans spokesperson Robert Zirkelbach says AHIP wants to "look at the details" of any proposals for "standardized information. 'We could do a better job of providing information to consumers, but burdensome regulations could stifle innovation and make healthcare coverage unaffordable,'" he explained. Meanwhile, many health plans are "making better communications a priority."
A separate Los Angeles Times /Kaiser Health News (9/21, Meyer) piece notes that Aetna has "published a simply written paperback book for members called 'Navigating Your Health Benefits for Dummies.' It features breezy language, cartoons about healthcare and even some saucy double-entendres."

Dave's Comment:
This from the same government who's own tax code is over 16,000 pages long. An entire army of CPAs and lawyers is required to interpret it.

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

By TERRY JONES
News Analysis by IBD | Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:30 PM PT

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

Read full article here

By Dave Petno;

Meeting with a large client yesterday, we informed them that the Federal Mental Health Parity Act is going to be implemented.

That means that they have to revise and enhance the Mental health benefits in their current plan. Their current cost of mental health is approximately 1% of their total medical claims.

Compliance with Mental Health Parity is expected to cost them .375% of their total medical claims.

Do the math with me: Increased cost .375% divided by current cost: 1% = a 37.5% cost increase.

In other words, a FEDERAL MANDATE is going to increase the cost to employers by 37.5% over what they currently cover.

So why are costs skyrocketing again?

Check out Pete Stark, D- Calif show that he has absolutely NO clue that government borrowing is a problem.
He mocks the reporter for his inferior education, and show an elitism that is usually kept away from the press.

Stark has been in the Congress forever, and has been a major critic of free market healthcare for as long as I have been an adult.

by BETSY MCCAUGHEY

Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

Read whole article here


Hat tip: Hot Air

Factcheck.org has the facts on this.

Summary

President Obama has repeatedly said that under the health care overhaul efforts in Congress, "if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan." But he can’t make that promise to everyone.

* In fact, under the House bill, some employers might have to modify plans after a five-year grace period if they don’t meet minimum benefits standards.

* Furthermore, some firms are likely to buy different coverage for their workers than they have now, or simply drop coverage and pay a penalty instead, leaving workers to buy their own private coverage or go on a new federal insurance plan.

The legislation is a moving target, and projections of how many employees would be switched to a federal plan are wide-ranging – from near zero to a high of 56 percent of all covered workers under the most extreme assumptions. We sort through several scenarios.

Post office operating in the RED by $14 Billion Dollars over the last two years.........what "free market" business could weather that kind of a storm?

Their solution? Increase the price of stamps, and decrease the services available (no more Saturday delivery).

Remember: The it is against the law for FedEx and UPS to deliver standard, first-class mail. THE USPS is a federal monopoly on non-urgent local delivery.

By Dave Petno
You have heard the Prez say over and over. "I make you this promise.....If you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep him...."

This is the central theme of his Obamacare.

Here is why even the President CANNOT BE ACCOUNTABLE TO KEEP THIS PROMISE.

If you like your insurance company / plan you can keep it.

1) And what happens if your Insurance Company closes down because it cannot operate profitably under the Obamacare Regulations??? Out of luck
2) What happens if your employer cancels your plan, and tells you to enroll in the public plan? Again, out of luck
3) What happens WHEN the government mandates that your plan coverage mandated to be changed?
4) What happens when your government says that your plan is "too good" and decides to tax you on it?

If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her.
1) What happens if your doctor decides he does not want to be a part of Obamacare?
2) What happens if your doctor decides to retire early, rather than have government "efficiency" experts looking over his shoulder.

President Obama's spokesman said, today, that he does not support the single payer system, and opponents are chopping up his words, and making them look like he DOES.
Watch this 54 Second Youtube and see what you think.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

So in America, poor and uninsured people do not get healthcare right?

If that were true, then how is it that little 4 year old David "DJ" Harper is receiving world class medical treatment in the Burn Unit in Madison Wisconsin Children's hospital?

Little DJ made national news when his mother, Angela Baldessari crashed and flipped the family SUV. Millions have watched the video of 2 off-duty firefighters, and ordinary citizens fighting the fiery blaze to save little David from the back of the car.

The child was rushed to the Children's Hospital in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The Today Show reports that the child is uninsured and the family had been traveling to Madison from their home in Tennessee. It showed footage of DJ in the burn unit, and interviewed his doctor, Dr. Marjorie Arca. Dr. Arca mentioned that David will have a long way to go to heal from his wounds, but she is taking great care of him. She made special note his hands stating that "someday he might want to be a surgeon."

Communities are now mobilizing to help the family with their medical bills, and care: www.helpingdavid.com

How can this be possible? How can an out-of-town family, with no insurance, and with no means to pay their bill end up in a world class burn unit with top quality doctors and nurses caring for the family around the clock?

The fact of the matter is that this case represents the BEST OF THE AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

It started with the everyday citizens and off-duty firefighters who saved the boy's life from the fiery wreckage. It continues with DJ's doctor who knows that she will not be paid for her care of this boy, but she gives her best anyway. The hospital, too, has provided world-class facilities, staff, technology, and lodging for the family (who are staying in the adjacent Ronald McDonald house).

Since the family is uninsured, none of these parties can expect to be paid for their efforts. Yet they labor on.... because this is America and it is the right thing to do.

Little DJ Harper, uninsured, without financial means, and away from his home, is receiving the type of medical care that the rest of the world can only dream of.

God Bless America, little DJ, and his doctors and nurses.

http://wcco.com/national/burning.suv.rescue.2.1094543.html

Great video to share with your friends / family.

Look at the Date on this. July 27, 2009

"If we get a good Public Plan option, it could lead to Single Payer. That's the best way to get to Single Payer."

via Grace Marie Turner

The White House and many Democratic leaders in Congress are ready to fall on their swords insisting that any health reform legislation must include a new government health insurance program.

Yet more than six months since his inauguration, President Obama still has not appointed anyone to head the two gigantic programs the government already is charged with running -- Medicare and Medicaid.

Set aside the huge problem that the government has absolutely zero expertise in running the proposed public plan. The administration can't seem to get around to nominating anyone to administer the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to run these public programs that will spend more than $700 billion this year.

About Obamacare....

"(It) will mean a cap on your costs,

"but no cap on your benefits."

So she said in order to calm the Blue Dogs....

Tony Blankley explores this Miracle Here

By Dave Petno
I just spoke with a friend of mine who distributes and sells Dental Equipment. He reports that nearly all purchases of technology and equipment has been put on hold.

"The Dental Community has no idea if they are going to be included in the Obamacare proposals, and most of them are small businesses. As a result, they have decided on a wait and see approach and are not investing in new equipment."

So American manufactures of dental equipment are in a major slump because of the potential of Obamacare....which is not even close to being enacted.

To quote Seinfeld, this appears to be "anti-dentite" activity.

Click to see why Congress does not read their own bill.

Via Heritage Morning Bell: 7-27-09

When Medicare was launched in 1965, Part A was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990, but ended up costing $67 billion.

When Medicaid’s special hospitals subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million annually, but it already cost $11 billion by 1992.

When Medicare’s home care benefit was added in 1988, it was projected to cost $4 billion in 1993, but ended up costing $10 billion.

NOT EVEN CLOSE TO REALITY.

IF I, OR ANY OF MY CLIENTS RAN OUR BUSINESSES THIS WAY....WE WOULD ALL HAVE BEEN BUST MANY YEARS AGO

Nothing is easier than for governments to impose price controls. They have been doing this, off an on, for thousands of years-- repeatedly resulting in (1) shortages, (2) quality deterioration and (3) black markets. Why would anyone want any of those things when it comes to medical care?

Refusing to pay the costs is not the same as bringing down the cost. That is why price controls create these problems. When developing a new pharmaceutical drug costs roughly a billion dollars, you are either going to pay the billion dollars or cause people to stop spending a billion dollars to develop new drugs.

Read the whole article here

On July 20 at 11:00 I had the opportunity to be a guest on The Matt Patrick Show. We discussed Obamacare and the Free Market

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO DAVE'S RADIO INTERVIEW

http://www.mattpatrickshow.com

Watch this true story of Beth's mom, and her experience with Canadian Healthcare.
In Canada, no Dialysis after the age of 55.

Washington Post Blogger, Ezra Klein: "I would like to sign the insurance companies out of existence with my pen. It would be sweet."

Again, shows how Obamacare is a sham on the way to 100% government healthcare.

via ABC News Post.
Hat tip Michelle Malkin:

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.["]

From Karl Rove and the WSJ 6/11/09

The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits.

Full article here

The President has bragged about an unprecedented $635 Billion “down payment” on healthcare reform. On 6/12/09 he added another $313 Billion in savings, bragging that he now has $948 Billion total to pay for his massive plan.

But where do these savings come from? I clipped the table below directly from http://www.whitehouse.gov/MedicareFactSheetFinal/

It shows that 2/3 of the total, or $622 Billion comes from Medicare and Medicaid.
The remaining 1/3, or $326 Billion comes from “Revenues”, also known as TAX INCREASES.

So now it can be said, the President wants to fund 2/3 of his massive new healthcare program, giving away Health Insurance to the so-called uninsured by Cutting Medicare and Medicaid.















See below from http://www.whitehouse.gov/MedicareFactSheetFinal/

2008 Average Cost of Single Coverage: (Towers Perrin)
$394/Single with a $1000 Deductible Plan

From Reason.com

When another Kaiser poll asked uninsured adults how much they would be willing to pay to get coverage, only 64 percent would fork out $100 a month and just 29 percent would pay $200. Given that most are not poor, why is it so important to provide the uninsured with something they don't value highly?

Read Full Article here

Self Funded employers must now provide mental health coverage on parity of major medical coverage for their employees.

And this will stimulate the economy how?

From Human Resources Executive:
In late 2008, the latest iteration of the Mental Health Parity Act was passed as part of the economic-stimulus package. This version, unlike the previous federal law, applies to both mental-health and substance-abuse services.

It forces plans that offer mental-health and substance-abuse coverage to provide parity with respect to financial requirements (deductibles, coinsurance, co-payments, etc.) and treatment limits (inpatient days, outpatient visits, etc.). It also requires all out-of-network coverage for mental-health and substance-abuse services to be consistent with out-of-network coverage for general medical benefits.

Full Article Here:

Here are the main players, in their own words.

via Grace Marie Turner

The original legislation creating Medicare, enacted in 1965, made the following promise:

"Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided or over the selection, tenure, or compensation of any officer or employee of any institution, agency, or person providing health services. . ."

More than 100,000 pages of regulation later, the federal government controls virtually every aspect of medical care provided through Medicare, deciding what will be covered and what won't, what every person or institution providing those services will be paid, and the rules and regulations they must follow to stay out of jail. Beware of early promises because Congress can come back to amend any legislation it passes.

CLICK HERE AND BOOKMARK DAVE'S LINKS

Great video about the uninsured..... a little dated, but makes the point quite well. About 1/2 of the current uninsured could get coverage today if they just bought it (rather than other choices that they make in their lives.

Michael Moore reveals what an out of touch nut he really is in his latest pots "Goodbye GM" on June 1, 2009.

He basically cheers the death of an all-American company, and demonizes their products:


He Says:
The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet. ......

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine

Is it me, or did this man 100% discredit himself from ever being a credible source on the American Economy or Politics again?

"Future increases in spending could be moderated if costly new medical services were adopted more selectively in the future than they have been in the past and if the diffusion of existing costly services was slowed," Mr. Orszag told Congress last year, when he was CBO director. He was careful to note that "savings are possible without a substantial loss of clinical value,"

So the Obama Administration is going to tell us what new technologies will be cost-effective, and which are just too expensive.


Read full article here

In a 2001 study, David Cutler (an Obama adviser) and Mark McClellan (a Bush adviser) found that the benefits of lower infant mortality and better treatment of heart attacks "have been sufficiently great that they alone are about equal to the entire cost increase for medical care over time."

Read entire article here

Of the 2.2 Trillion Total Health Bill, the Uninsured received $116 Billion in Care in 2008 according to Families USA (A liberal advocacy group). That is approximately 5% of total healthcare spending. The study says that they paid 37% out of their pocket, and another 26% was paid by government programs and charity.

That means that 63% of the uninsured bills were covered.

That leaves 37% as a write-off for the doctors and hospitals. Only 43 Billion of 2.2 Trillion is uncompensated. 37% of 5 % is 1.8% in total uncompensated care.

Sound like a crisis? Is the American Healthcare System broken?

Click Here for the article

By Dave Petno:
Maybe they missed a memo or something, but MORE REGULATIONS slow down businesses, while less regulation speeds things up.

The Stimulus Bill has now increased HIPAA violation fines to as high as $250,000, has expanded who has to comply, and has basically required that all employers, and health plans spend large amounts of time trying to identify the best way to comply.

Recent guidance from the department of HHS defines how covered entities must react if there is ever a breach through theft or error.

Some will need to inform the Department of HHS.......in some circumstances, you will be required to alert "a prominent media outlet."

This was all passed under the guise of the Stimulus Bill. But I ask you, will more regulations and fines stimulate our economy?

Read full article here:

So the Pres includes a bailout for anyone who lost their jobs since Sept, and who loses it this year as well. The Stimulus Bill will pay 65% of their COBRA healthcare costs in order to help them stay insured.

Small problem, the Stimulus Bill requires employers to become administrators of the COBRA notification process, and management AND BE THE BANK paying the 65% up front to the insurance companies when an employee elects COBRA. The employer is made whole by reducing their Federal Payroll tax payments the next time they pay.

This creates a CASH FLOW issue for the business that has been laying people off.

Does anyone think that a business that is going through Layoffs might not be the best place to be imposing additional cash flow issues?

Once again, the Federal Government gets to take credit for helping someone, while making life more difficult for others.


Read the article below to see how it is effecting some businesses.


http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2009/05/18/story1.html?b=1242619200^1828825

So the Pres says "if you like your current health plan, you can keep it"....then he explains how he wants to add a Public Plan option that all Americans can choose.

He does not mention that the Public Plan will make your current plan more expensive to you......


Here is a summmary of the study:

Creating a new government health insurance plan that uses Medicare provider reimbursement levels and is only open to individuals, the self-employed, and small businesses will shift an additional $43.0 billion per year in costs to private payers, an increase of 75.0 percent from the current cost shifting level of $57.3 billion that comes from Medicaid, Medicare, and the uncompensated care provided to the uninsured. Further, this higher level of cost shifting will be passed on to fewer private sector payers as small businesses move into in the new government plan. If all employers are allowed to participate in the government health plan, the additional cost shifting to private payers will be $124.5 billion per year – a dramatic increase that will likely drive even more employers who provide private health insurance into the government plan as their health insurance premiums rise, which could ultimately lead to the end of private, employer sponsored plans and create a defacto single payer system dominated by the government health plan.

READ THE ENTIRE SUMMARY HERE

Healthcare is broken, but our Federal government is working just fine.........riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Anyone check the long term feasibility of Medicare lately? Goes bust pretty soon.
Any health insurance companies asking for bail outs? NO

I am noticing a theme from the new administration........"We need to let the Science be out guide......"...........from global warming, to swine flu, now to how much care should be given to people and at what time....

via the Washington Times:

President Obama admitted he wants the government to decide what health care Americans receive. "There's always going to be an asymmetry of information between patient and provider," he said. "And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options."
......
It's a scary picture the president paints. He stated that "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." For them, he said, "I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels."


READ ENTIRE WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL

From his article:

The bottom line is medical care. But the rhetoric and the talking points are about insurance. Many people who could afford health insurance do not choose to have it because they know that medical care will be available at the nearest emergency room, whether they have insurance or not.

This is especially true for young people, who do not anticipate long-term medical problems and who can always get a broken leg or an allergy attack taken care of at an emergency room -- and spend their money on a more upscale lifestyle.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

AHIP put out this study in November 2007

These are the number of private sector jobs that are immediately put at risk under ANY health reform plan.

Nationally: 1.35 Million Jobs in Health Insurance Industry
Average Wage: $50,119

Ohio: 51,061
Average Wage: $42,312

Source: AHIP 2007

These numbers do not include the roughly 1/6th of our nation's economy that is health care related.

Changing the funding structure of the free market in this area will effect the long term job growth in the health care industry as a whole.

This is a must read which explains why the "Public Option" will kill the free market for Health Insurance.

WSJ THE END OF HEALTH INSURANCE

It looks to me like Obama wants to do for the Health Insurance industry what the feds did for the banks with the creation for Fannie Mae.

from my Sept 22 08 Post:

Fannie + Freddie provide a case study of how Government programs work in the long term:

Can you see any parallels to the current National Health care Debate? You can remove the terms home ownership and mortgage, and replace it with affordable healthcare or health coverage.

Fannie Mae is the dba of the Federal National Mortgage Association:
yes, that is a Federal Program.

From their web site:

Fannie Mae was created in 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when millions of families could not become homeowners, or risked losing their homes, for lack of a consistent supply of mortgage funds across America
The government established Fannie Mae in order to expand the flow of mortgage funds in all communities, at all times, under all economic conditions, and to help lower the costs to buy a home.


Freddie Mac is the dba of the Federal Home Lone Mortgage Corporation:
From their web site:
Since Freddie Mac was created in 1970, we have pursued the purpose our Congressional founders set out for us: to provide a continuous and low – cost source of credit to finance America's housing.
Our mission strives to create:
Stability: Freddie Mac's retained portfolio plays an important role in making sure there's a stable supply of money for lenders to make the home loans new homebuyers need and an available supply of workforce housing in our communities.
Affordability: Financing housing for low- and moderate-income families has been a key part of Freddie Mac's business since we opened our doors. Freddie Mac's vision is that families must be able both to afford to purchase a home and to keep that home.
Liquidity: Freddie Mac makes sure there's a stable supply of money for lenders to make the loans new homebuyers need. This gives everyone better access to homefinancing, raising the roof on homeownership opportunity in America.

They are batting 0 for 3

Got Government?

I just called a local college, asked for Human Resources, and ended up at the "Department of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equal opportunity"

......and we wonder why college costs are out of control!

Filmed at the NAHU Convention for their video blog.
http://benefitsexplained.blogspot.com/

By Dave Petno

So the President is confident that he can implement a plan that can actually reduce the cost of healthcare, while adding 47 million people to the healthcare rolls.

Really?

And how does one reduce the cost of ANYTHING? Think about it. Here are the options.

You can....
1...Buy something that is of lesser quality.
2...Buy more of it and get a volume discount (not usually a lower total cost)
3...Negotiate a lower rate with the vendor
4...Demand a lower rate from the vendor
5...Purchase less of the thing
6...Wait longer to get it

Since the vendor is most certainly in the business of making a profit, he is already heavily incented to operate efficiently.

Do any of the above options look attractive in the area of healthcare? My bet is that the results will be 1, 4, 5 and 6.......

ObamaCare here we come!

From the WSJ

What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered. But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues. Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811121310853037.html

Dear Jim and Rose...

As a neurosurgeon, I was somewhat perplexed and appalled to find that Ms Richardson, the actress, died of an "epidural hematoma", according to the autopsy results released minutes ago.

Why? Because, in the US, this condition is rarely fatal; in fact, most people recover normally. As this story unfolds, it will be interesting to see if Canada's trauma system becomes an issue.

An epidural hematoma is a rare blood clot that develops between the skull and the dura, a thick membrane covering the brain. It is usually caused by a bleeding skull fracture and, if left untreated, the epidural clot can indeed cause pressure on the brain and be lethal. HOWEVER, because the bleeding arises from damaged bone and NOT from a damaged brain, the victim is usually fine until the clot grows too big. That's why Ms Richardson looked so good for so long. Moreover, these clots develop slowly, because the dura, particularly in adults, is stuck to the skull and tends to impede the clot from forming. There is usually ample time to get the patient to surgery, and in this country virtually everyone would get surgery for this condition regardless of their clinical condition. People can even appear "brain dead" and return to nearly normal with early surgery for this condition. In fact, the legal diagnosis of brain death is generally NOT ALLOWED in people with correctable conditions.

In an earlier New York Times article, written before her autopsy, neurosurgeons in the US speculated that she might have had an epidural clot but dismissed this possibility because no one bothered to operate on her. Like me, they could not fathom someone with an epidural clot, particularly such a high profile person, not having surgery at all.

Had she hit her head at Seven Springs in Pennsylvania, she would have been flown to Hershey, AGH or UPMC where a CT scanner is available within minutes and a neurosurgeon is available at a moments notice. She might be home by now, not in a morgue. And that's not an outrageous claim ...I have taken epidural clots out of unconscious people and have them walk out of the hospital the next day; epidurals result from skull trauma, not brain trauma. Get the clot out before the brain is irreversibly damaged and the person is instantly cured.

Did she die because she had the misfortune of being hurt in Canada, a geographically immense nation which has fewer brain surgeons than Los Angeles county? A country where getting a brain scan takes a bureaucratic act of God? We don't yet know for sure, but it looks fishy. I'll admit that we don't yet have all of the facts. Perhaps she did have surgery and we simply don't have the whole story, but it seems strange that such a detail would remain secret.

Slow or non-existent treatment of emergency brain conditions is par for the course in our Northern neighbor. The stories my colleagues have told me about patients being left untreated with brain clots, even in the so-called "best" Canadian centers, would curl your hair. Let's see if the media even hints at Canadian socialized non-medicine as a possible factor in her death. I doubt it. All we will see is a bunch of stories about helmets and how dangerous skiing is (even on bunny slopes?).

I feel sick for this family, and it is painful for me to suggest that things could have been much different for them. Nevertheless, if the Canadian system failed her, we need to know that so that people in America recognize what sort of second-rate care they seek to institute here.

This case should be a lesson to those who want socialized medicine. The Canadian system is great if you have VD or a cough, but when you need an MRI or brain surgeon fast, well...that's a different story. It's also a lesson for travelers: almost no country has the care we have here, so be careful when you are abroad. Pretty soon, we won't have it either, I'm afraid.

If Obama gets what he wants with health care, I am going to start wearing a helmet just to go to the bathroom...

Frank Vertosick MD FACS

By Universal he means, "Government defined and controlled"

By Healthcare he means "people and organizations who are controlled by the government who are told how, where, and how much healthcare, pharmacy, and therapy they can receive and give."

The Canadian Surgeon involved in her case admits that the Canadian System is not really set up for Traumas.

I would like to know, then what is it set up for?


Meanwhile, Montreal's top head trauma doctor said Friday that the lack of medical helicopters in the province of Quebec may have played a role in Richardson's death.

"It's impossible for me to comment specifically about her case, but what I could say is ... driving to Mont Tremblant from the city (Montreal) is a 2 1/2-hour trip, and the closest trauma center is in the city. Our system isn't set up for traumas and doesn't match what's available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States," said Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre, which represents six of Montreal's hospitals.

Being driven by ambulance to two separate hospitals rather than airlifted by helicopter directly to a trauma center could have cost Richardson crucial moments, he said.

"A helicopter is obviously the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B," he said.

Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, the first treatment center Richardson was brought to, does not specialize in head traumas, so her speedy transfer to Sacre Coeur Hospital in Montreal was critical, said Razek.

"It's one of the classic presentations of head injuries, `talking and dying,' where they may lose consciousness for a minute, but then feel fine," said Razek.

Read the full article here

Have you ever received a mailing from your insurance company explaining that you are currently taking one drug, but another drug on the market might be less expensive and actually work better. Sounds like good cost management to me. Both the patient, and the insurance company win when costs are lower and results are at least as good.

Here is an example: You currently take Prilosec, and we would like to inform you that Symbostat is just as good, and costs about 1/3rd of the cost.

Well not anymore.

Thanks to the HITECH Act, which was part of the Stimulus Bill, THIS IS NOW ILLEGAL!

So now insurance companies are PROHIBITED from making pharmacy suggestions to their own subscribers!

This will do nothing but INCREASE HEALTHCARE COSTS.

See how the HITECH Act reduces communication:

I can't wait for that government controlled healthcare.....they are really going to control those costs.

The Porkulous Bill Was CHUMP CHANGE:

According to the AP the $634 BILLION is a "down payment" for healthcare reform.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090225/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_budget

So the Feds in 1965 projected that MEDICARE would cost $9 Billion over the first 15 years.

Actual cost for Medicare in 1990 was $66 Billion, an error rate of 639% (or 7.3 times the original amount.)

You see, Washington Feds are REALLY BAD at predicting healthcare costs.

If OBAMA is as acurate as Washington was in predicting Medicare growth.......the actual cost for ObamaCare would be.....
$634 Billion x 7.3 = 4.62 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!

I think this is a Win / Win for Obama and for us.

President Obama wants to “save or create 4 Million Jobs”

The Health Insurance and medical Industry employs approximately 2.5 million people (my estimate…probably too low). Those jobs are likely to be eliminated in his healthcare reform plan.

How about this?

The President abandons his drive to create a Socialized / Nationalized, government-controlled healthcare system.

We would be able keep our businesses and our jobs.

It would “save” our 2.5 million jobs.

We would credit him for the save.

He would be at 2.5 of his quota of 4 Million jobs. That would put him to 62.5% of his goal.

….BY DOING NOTHING!!!

Now that is Change I can Believe in.

How could this happen?

Studies have shown that many people who become eligible for SCHIP cancel their private insurance. If an employer has several employees who cancel their private policies through the employer, then the employer might not be able to meet participation requirements of the insurance company.

See Heritage Foundation Summary Here

Tom Daschle, incoming HHS Secretary, said that Obama will create the Federal Health Board which will be called "FedHealth".

This will be a panel of political appointees who will be the ultimate authority on medical coverage and treatment issues.

Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation says that this group would function as the Supreme Court for healthcare issues.

Of course this will be an un-elected decision body, who's members are appointed by the President, and/or by Congress.

No, I can't imagine that it will be political..............why would it be?

By Dave Petno

President Obama's latest catch phrase is that employers need to provide "Meaningful Coverage" or make a "Meaningful contribution" to the cost ....

So who will determine "meaningful?" I'd imagine that will not be in the eyes of the employer, employee or an individual.

What are the odds that a government bureaucracy will determine the term "Meaningful"

Would my current $5,000 deductible HSA program suffice as Meaningful?

Will "Meaningful" require chiropractic visits, mental health, hair transplants, hearing aids, dental care.........and dare we ask Abortion?

since healthcare is a right, and we all have limited resources........we need some "really smart" people to tell us what is good for us...

I'm from the government, and I'm hear to check your fridge.

from the NY Times via Heritage

When a dozen consumers gathered over the weekend to discuss health care at the behest of President-elect Barack Obama, they quickly agreed on one point: they despise health insurance companies.

They also agreed that health care was a right; that insurance should cover “everything,” not just some services; and that coverage should be readily available from the government, as well as from employers.

By Dave Petno

The AP is reporting that Gov. Strickland's Childrens buy-in program is a little short on enrollment.

The Gov set aside $12.5 million to cover as many as 5,000 children by June 09. So far a whopping total of 335 have enrolled.

To qualify, employees must be without coverage for at least 6 months (in order to not cannibalize private plans), then pay $250 to $500 per child to participate.

The report states that there are 215,000 uninsured children....although that number seems to be inflated by at least 3x since children can often register on the spot if they are uninsured, and charitable care abounds.

How could this be?
Could it be that people don't want to over pay for a government health plan?
Could it be that the government is not effective at enrolling people in programs?
Could it be that citizens will be glad to complain about their status about anything, but they will opt-out of a solution that costs them anything to fix the problem?

Sure Fire Solution: Mandate that all people purchase this coverage, then tax it out of their paycheck, then sprinkle in some jail time if someone refuses to enroll and pay...........yes, a little socialism, backed by the power of the state can solve anything

By Dave Petno
So I have a client who owns a nursing home in rural Ohio. They have about 100 nursing home beds.

For the privilege of being allowed to take care of elderly people, the client must pay a "bed tax" which amounts to approximately $60,000 / quarter.

The bed tax needs to be paid regardless of whether there are patients in the beds or not. The facility is operating at about 55% occupancy, and the bed tax is really killing their cash flow.

This tax is in addition to taxing profits, payroll taxes, FICA, FUTA.

So they cannot stop paying taxes..........

But they can reduce costs of benefits. So, effective 2/1 they will no longer offer a group health insurance plan to their employees.

So since they still need to pay salaries, and the BED TAXES, something had to go...

Bringing a new drug to market requires 12 - 15 years and costs more than $1.2 Billion to get it through the FDA for approval to distribute to the market.

Drug companies eventually recoup the R+D costs in only one in five of the drugs that are approved.

Once approved, the drugs are patent protected for only a limited period of years.

The government is now talking about getting MORE INVOLVED in paying for drugs, thus limiting future profits of the drug companies.

(Statistics via: Miller and Gershon as published in the Weekly Standard)

So you tell me, if you have $1.2 Billion dollars......would you want to invest it in the development of new drugs?

Via Grace Marie Turner

Great quote from Paul Starr, the Pulitzer-Prize Winning Sociologist who wrote The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry (Basic Books, New York. 1982. P. 235).

"Whoever provides medical care or pays the costs of illness stands to gain the gratitude and good will of the sick and their families. The prospect of these good-will returns to the investment in health care creates a powerful motive for governments and other institutions to intervene in the economics of medicine.
"Political leaders since Bismarck seeking to strengthen the state or to advance their own or their party's interests have used insurance against the costs of sickness as a means of turning benevolence to power."

Tom Daschle gears up:

Health Care Fight Looking Tougher

And so it begins......the IRS Code now reflects that employers may now reimburse employees for bike commuter related expenses up to $20 / month.
I thought that people who rode Bikes to work already are saving money from all other sources.

Today, employers may reimburse..........tomorrow "thou shalt provide for all employees????"

The employer may reimburse a maximum of $20 per month for each month in a year that the employee uses the bicycle regularly for a substantial portion of the travel between the employee's residence and the place of employment. An employee may not receive the bicycle commuter reimbursement in any month in which the employee receives any other qualified transportation fringe benefit (i.e., transit pass, transportation in a commuter highway vehicle, qualified parking). Unlike the other qualified transportation fringe benefits, the bicycle commuter reimbursement will not be adjusted for inflation.

By Dave Petno

Yes, a government monopoly, socialist mail system is Failing Big time.

2008 losses at $7.7 Billion. 2009 losses projected to be $2.7 Billion.

This is the same government system that regulates what can go into your mail box. That makes an alternative mail system ILLEGAL.

The same system that INCREASES postage prices when use goes down.

If the US Government can lose $7.7 Billion delivering mail, just imagine how much they can lose when we give them our healthcare.

Read Article here

Got FREE SPEECH? Seems like governments are on the March.......taking away freedoms around the world.

by; Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson

November 13, 2008 12:32pm

AUSTRALIA'S mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified "unwanted content".

full article here

From the WSJ August 19, 2008

“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.

Read entire Article Here:

This is where his heart is........so we have to assume that any "Reforms" would take us on the bath of his IDEAL circumstance.

Are you kidding me?

from the NY Times:

The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.

Full article here.

During a press conference, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) said passing healthcare reform and averting a massive cut in Medicare doctor payments cannot realistically be done unless Congress waives its so-called pay-as-you-go rules (PAYGO).

Full Article Here

via Neil Boortz;
National Health Service officials in Great Britain are rolling out a new plan to pay (overweight) to lose weight. Yep, the government healthcare system of Great Britain will spend about $9 million to reward widebodies for trying to lose weight. And that $9 million, folks, is just for one town – Manchester – which will act as a guinea pig for this scheme. No pun intended.

The Points4Life program will allow obese people to win points on their NHS loyalty card (a loyalty card?). They will earn points by showing up to health clubs or exercise classes ...even if they don't lose any weight! They can also gain points by running or walking in the local park where you can swipe your government issued card at a government-run exercise machine that will track your exercise. They can gain points by simply walking their children to school rather than driving them or taking public transportation to work. If they buy healthy food (according to the government's definition of healthy) they can also earn points.

In exchange for your healthy behavior you can use the points to buy health products and services or get discounts on healthy food.

Are you seeing where this is going, folks? Government healthcare cards that track your exercise. Government-sponsored exercise equipment in parks. And who tracks whether or not you walk your child to school in the morning? Oh and the government will also offer "a new award scheme" to encourage restaurants to stock more healthy food. People living in government housing will be encouraged to join a 'grow your own' fruit and vegetable scheme.

This is the government-run healthcare system of the United Kingdom. And you really want this to happen to our great nation?

By Dave Petno
The AP is reporting that the Capitol Visitor Center, originally estimated at $265 Million, was completed for $621 Million. That is over $360 million ABOVE Budget. That is 235% higher than projected! (It was also 3 years behind schedule)

Could anyone, even Microsoft, function by botching projections that severely? Would this not bankrupt ANY American company?

So Congress cannot accurately project the cost of a construction project literally out the front door of their office.........BUT THEY ARE GOING TO PROJECT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF HEALTHCARE EXPENSES from sea to shining sea????

Don't worry, they'll get the math correct this time.

I can see it now. The Kennedy Act of 2009......Kennedy Care....

Buckle your safety belts, your freedom is under attack:

Click Here for Full Article:-

Another example that Socialism leads to shortages and rationing:

From the article

SAN FELIX, Venezuela (Reuters) – Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez.

"With so much energy in Venezuela, how can we be without power?" asked Fernando Aponte, 49, whose slum neighborhood of Las Delicias in San Felix spent 15 days without electricity -- leading him to block a nearby avenue with burning tires in protest.

Chavez last year fired up his supporters with a wave of state takeovers including the nationalization of electricity operations, among them Electricidad de Caracas, which was majority owned by U.S.-based AES Corp.

Click Here for Complete Article:

From Heritage Morningbell:

Obama likes to sell his health care plan as similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) that is available to all members of Congress. But there are fundamental differences between Obama’s plan and FEHBP, as Heritage scholars Bob Moffit and Nina Owcharenko detail in an analysis of Obama’s health care proposal:
1. The Obama plan imposes a standardized benefits struc¬ture on both the new government plan and every private health plan that participates in the pro-posed National Health Insurance Exchange. There is no comprehensive, standard benefit package in FEHBP.
2. The Obama plan creates a gov¬ernment-run health plan in the National Health Insurance Exchange. No federal agency offers a government health plan through FEHBP. Only private health insurance plans compete in that program, and even more importantly, they compete on a level playing field.
3. The Obama plan would require price controls, including “fair” premiums and “minimal co-pays.” Either Congress or some government bureaucrat would have to define these terms. This would put the federal government in the business of deciding what constitutes a fair price and a proper co-payment for benefits and ser¬vices, leading to some type of centralized rate set¬ting or standardization of payments for providers. By contrast, prices are market-based in FEHBP. No price regulation is imposed on plans or services.
In addition to having the power to set prices and control benefit packages, the government plan would also enjoy a huge advantage in the marketplace since employers and tax¬payers would subsidize the new government plan and cover any related risks — a unique advantage unavailable to the private health plans in the exchange. Remember, Congress will have ultimate control over Obama’s new government-run health plan and the new health exchange.
It is impossible to imagine how political incentives, not just economic and medical incentives, could not end up paving the way for a government monopoly over health care. At a minimum, the pri¬vate plans could be reduced to operating simply as administrative agents of the federal plan. In either case, without any realistic market options, would-be consumers, patients, individuals and families seeking value for their health care dollars would be the biggest losers.

After 7 months...they scrap the program.

Click here for full story

Via Neil Bortz;

Obama, to absolutely nobody in the universe's surprise, said that health care was a "right."

Let's run through this again:

The standard rights guaranteed and protected by our Constitution are such things as freedom of religion and speech. The right to peacefully assemble and gripe about government. You have the right to keep and bear arms, and then there's the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The point here is that all of these rights can be recognized and honored without any other party having to give up either a portion of their lives or their property. It doesn't cost anyone anything for you to own a gun, speak your mind, worship your God, or stand on the street corner with a like-minded group to gripe about government.

Now what about this "right" to healthcare thing? Healthcare comes in the form of both treatment by health care professionals and the administration of therapies or drugs. For you to exercise your "right" to healthcare some other individual must sacrifice some of their time attending to you, and some other individuals must surrender some of their property (drugs and treatment devices) to be used in your care. So, in saying that you have a "right" to healthcare you are saying that you have a right to a portion of someone else's life as well as a portion of their property.

By Michael Cannon, Cato Inst

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (IL) has proposed an ambitious plan to restructure America’s health care sector. Rather than engage in a detailed critique of Obama’s health care plan, many critics prefer to label it "socialized medicine." Is that a fair description of the Obama plan and similar plans? Over the past year, prominent media outlets and respectable think tanks have investigated that question and come to a unanimous answer: no.

Those investigations leave much to be desired. Indeed, they are little more than attempts to convince the public that policies generally considered socialist really aren’t.

A reasonable definition of socialized medicine is possible. Socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs. Notice that under this definition, it is irrelevant whether we describe medical resources (e.g., hospitals, employees) as "public" or "private." What matters-what determines real as opposed to nominal ownership-is who controls the resources. By that definition, America’s health sector is already more than half socialized, and Obama’s health care plan would socialize medicine even further.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether Obama’s health plan would be good or bad. But to suggest that it is not a step toward socialized medicine is absurd.

Go to 1:55 and they give a clear explanation:

Can the public actually benefit through free market efficiencies? Yes, they can.

The Minnesota Bridge project came in under budget, and ahead of schedule. See this testament to the free market:

By Dave Racer:

What does the mortgage crisis have to do with the future of health care reform? Plenty.

Stan J. Liebowitz, economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, tracked the intervention of the federal government into mortgage lending during the past 20 years. Boiling it down: In the name of home ownership, economic laws were suspended so that people without assets could buy houses. Should we be surprised when they cannot pay for them, and when they are foreclosed upon?

Now economists insist that free markets cannot adequately serve the lending industry, and that is why the federal government must step in to rescue it.

The commonality with health care reform is twofold:

1. The federal government, since at least 1965, has continuously ratcheted up its involvement in the payment and delivery of health care. States have either stayed a step ahead of the feds, or followed closely behind. Government has nearly destroyed the health care market economy.

2. The same logic used to justify a federal bailout of mortgage lenders and the banking industry will be used to reform health care. We have been told for decades that health care cannot operate in a free market environment. When it fails to meet governments' goals for it, our vaunted U.S. health system, so the politicos will claim, need to be rescued by the government.

The big difference is that we have time to do something about health reform. An army of health insurance agents can dispatch itself to work overtime to convert the insurance market to consumer-directed health plans.

Only by bringing consumer (aka voter) pressure on Washington, D.C. and state capitals will the United States be able to avoid a national health plan. I am convinced that without such a movement, the march to socialized medicine will reach the tipping point by 2012-2014.

Please, don't let this happen.

Once Government starts "helping" they just can't seem to stop themselves......

Via the Washington Times: Patrice Hill

In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other "troubled" assets held by banks.

STUDENT, CAR DEBT ADDED TO BAIL OUT PLAN : CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Fannie + Freddie provide a case study of how Government programs work in the long term:

Can you see any parallels to the current National Health care Debate? You can remove the terms home ownership and mortgage, and replace it with affordable healthcare or health coverage.

Fannie Mae is the dba of the Federal National Mortgage Association:
yes, that is a Federal Program.

From their web site:

Fannie Mae was created in 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when millions of families could not become homeowners, or risked losing their homes, for lack of a consistent supply of mortgage funds across America
The government established Fannie Mae in order to expand the flow of mortgage funds in all communities, at all times, under all economic conditions, and to help lower the costs to buy a home.


Freddie Mac is the dba of the Federal Home Lone Mortgage Corporation:
From their web site:
Since Freddie Mac was created in 1970, we have pursued the purpose our Congressional founders set out for us: to provide a continuous and low – cost source of credit to finance America's housing.
Our mission strives to create:
Stability: Freddie Mac's retained portfolio plays an important role in making sure there's a stable supply of money for lenders to make the home loans new homebuyers need and an available supply of workforce housing in our communities.
Affordability: Financing housing for low- and moderate-income families has been a key part of Freddie Mac's business since we opened our doors. Freddie Mac's vision is that families must be able both to afford to purchase a home and to keep that home.
Liquidity: Freddie Mac makes sure there's a stable supply of money for lenders to make the loans new homebuyers need. This gives everyone better access to homefinancing, raising the roof on homeownership opportunity in America.

They are batting 0 for 3

Got Government?

By Dave Petno:
The Feds could use the AIG model as a way to passively nationalize Healthcare.
Step 1) Create all sorts of mandates that require insurance companies to do things that they would not ordinarily do
Step 2) Watch Insurance Companies profits, share prices drop
Step 3) Watch the media scream about the impending colapse
Step 4) Ride in on a white horse, with a "bail-out plan" that leaves the Federal Government owning half the company.

Could this sort of thing happen with a Health Insurance Giant like United Healthcare? I think so: See below


From Greg Scandlen:
This week Business Insurance reports that United Healthcare is facing problems similar to other major carriers. Its share price has fallen 49% this year, "worse than its rivals," says the article by Reuters, and it has "significantly reduced its profit expectations for 2008, in part because of pressures in its commercial (non-government) business." The company has shaken up its senior staff and reorganized into regional business units that can respond better to localized trends. It has brought on Gail Boudreaux, who was EVP of Health Care Services Corp. (which runs the Blue plans in Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma) to run the division.
Ms. Boudreaux is quoted in the article as saying, "We got a bit out of balance with more of a national focus. Our focus is about making sure we listen to the marketplace. Health care is an inherently local market, especially in the small group (employer) business. We are listening a lot more to our brokers, to our customers." The article suggests that in the future United will emphasize customer service over "leveraging its scale."

Scott Gottlieb, American Enterprise Institute
The Wall Street Journal, 09/02/08

At the University of Chicago Medical Center, Michelle Obama worked to expand a program that encouraged uninsured patients to visit local health clinics in lieu of the hospital emergency room. While she has been criticized for this, Gottlieb writes that the success of these community health clinics is supported by plenty of clinical data proving that patients are helped by the continuity of care that they offer. Also, medical expenses for community health centers run about 40% lower than for patients seen in emergency rooms, saving the country an estimated $17.6 billion a year. The real challenge, Gottlieb says, will be in allowing these clinics to survive under the health reform proposals of an Obama administration.

By Dave Petno;

A major NYT article tells the saga of a young couple who felt the urgency to get married to provide medical benefits to the woman.

Read the Article Here:

What is interesting......is that the woman is already covered BY GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE (Medicare). Her coverage is so poor, that she would do anything to get a private sector plan that would eliminate the gaps in her current government coverage.

Got Government Healthcare?






http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/13/us/13marriage.span.jpg

Could it be that non-Americans use our system for FREE??? Then the rest of us pay for the cost in our insurance premiums / taxes / fees.
Must Watch

Excellent Web site on Government Run Healthcare

www.BigGovHealth.org

By Dave Petno:

Well, Well...so Mitt Romney's "landmark" government takeover of healthcare financing was more expensive than they thought.

How could that be?

I thought "there is more than enough money in the system to pay for this plan without any tax increases?"

Funny how that never works.

Mass Increases Smoking Tax by $1.00 / pack

By Dave Petno
Oddly enough, the founder of the Canadian System, the really "smart" guy who put it all together, now thinks that Private Insurance and Private doctors will repair it.

from the IBD article:
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."


Read the whole article here:

...the U.K. is restricting access to the use of drugs it knows it will work because the U.K. can't pay for them. There is a drug out, Tarceva, I think it is. It's for lung cancer. Listen to this. "Despite numerous studies showing that the drug significantly prolongs the life of cancer patients and the unanimous endorsement of lung cancer specialists throughout the U.K., the government has determined that a drug is too expensive to cover."...

More from Glenn Beck

But our government will SURELY make better decisions here!

Via Glenn Beck

You know the guy who designed the Canadian healthcare system now admits that it's in a crisis? The guy who designed the Canadian healthcare system says it's in a crisis and he's now advocating private control of much of the system and we're going towards that? What the heck is wrong with us? He said, "We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it." This is the guy who created the Canadian healthcare system. "We thought we would solve the problems by rationing services." Oh, that's fantastic. I love rationing healthcare. He now says it means a radical overhaul. "We're proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so people can exercise their freedom of choice."

June 3, 2008

EUGENE, Ore. — After weeks of bad news, things turned Barbara Wagner’s way this week.

"Last month her lung cancer, in remission for about two years, was back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover it. It would cover comfort and care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide......."

Also from the Article:

"The Oregon Health Plan started out rationing health care in 1994."

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

Brett J. Skinner and Mark Rovere
Fraser Institute, 06/16/08

Prices for generic drugs in Canada are more than twice as high as those in the United States because government policies in Canada distort the market for prescription medicines, according to a new study from the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. The study found that Canadian prices for generic prescription drugs in 2007 were on average 112% higher than U.S. prices for identical drugs in 2007. Of the total prescriptions dispensed in Canada in 2007, 48% were for generic drugs and 52% were for brand name drugs. In the U.S., 67% of prescriptions were for generics with just 33% for brand name drugs. If Canada repealed policies that distort the market for prescription drugs, net savings for Canadians could reach between $2.9 billion and $7.5 billion (2007) annually for total retail pharmacy sales of generic and brand-name drugs.

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

Got GINORMOUS Government?
Click Here for the Link to Obama's Health plan

Barack's plan will regulate virtually every aspect of American Healthcare. The 15 page plan, would soon expand to 150,000 pages of regulations.

Do markets work? Barack does not think so.

From the Heritage Foundation Morning Bell:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Monday that health care spending will “rise relentlessly” unless lawmakers overhaul the health care system. As if trying to prove his point, PriceWaterhouseCoopers released a study yesterday showing employer health care costs will increase 9.9% in 2008, more than double the annual rate of inflation.
Liberals will tell you that health care costs can be controlled through more government regulation of the health care industry. For example, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) says he can save $200 billion in health care spending every year through investing in electronic medical records, more centralized coordination of individual care, and government mandated reduction of unnecessary medical procedures. Problem is, no one with any training in the economics of health care believes that savings will materialize. John Sheils, vice president of the health care consulting firm the Lewin Group, says the savings “are just dramatically overstated .” And MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber calls the numbers “nonsense,” noting that there is “zero credible evidence to support that conclusion.”
Obama is right about one thing, though. In February of this year, he said: “The reason people don’t have health insurance isn’t because they don’t want it, it’s because they can’t afford it.” That is true. But the solution to expensive health insurance is not more government mandates and regulations; it’s less. A major why reason health insurance premiums keep rising is because special interests keep successfully lobbying state legislatures to mandate more and more procedures into all insurance plans. So even though a 25-year-old male has no need for in vitro fertilization and no interest in acupuncture, a state like New Jersey forces him to buy a plan that covers those procedures. The result? That 25-year-old could buy a basic health plan in Kentucky for $960 a year, but the cheapest plan in New Jersey (full of mandates he doesn’t want or need) costs him $5,880. A study for the Health Insurance Association of America found that 20% to 25% of uninsured Americans lack insurance due to benefits mandates.

James C. Capretta, Ethics and Public Policy Center
National Review Online, 05/29/08

Sen. Barack Obama's health reform plan would sow the seeds of destruction for private health insurance, writes Jim Capretta. Sen. Obama's plan would create a new publicly-run insurance plan modeled on Medicare, with the federal government acting as the insurer and collecting premiums from enrollees. Large employers might, for a time, continue providing health insurance for their workers. But with each passing year, the premium differential between private plans and the public option would grow and induce additional migration from private to public insurance, he writes. This would, in turn, increase the government's ability to impose lower prices, further widening the premium gap. The tragedy is that price controls are only effective if they control and limit the supply of services. In time, he warns, that means waiting lists and other barriers to accessing care, along with skyrocketing costs to the taxpayer.

But they can run our healthcare system:

News Story: click here for full story
The Senate Dining Room has lost more than $18 million since 1993 and has dropped about $2 million this year alone. They are now going to privatize the Senate Dining room.

The Senate Dining service is a monopoly in one of the wealthiest spots of real estate in the country.
How could anyone lose money in that situation?
I have a good friend who would make millions in that real estate.

This is exhibit A in why we should not allow government to take over our health care system.

What in the name of Al Gore is this about?
A new American trend is to install the new position of Chief Sustainability Officer. Or Chief Green Officer!

Georgia-Pacific Names Chief Sustainability Officer

CAN YOU SAY OVERHEAD????? Business tip of the day....Try to keep your overhead costs to a minimum. Also, you might want to try to make something that people actually want to buy.

We recently took a field trip to the Dearborn Ford plant with 6th graders. The tour guide spent easily as much time telling us and showing us how having grass on the factory roof and the semi-permeable parking lot WOULD PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT....blah, blah blah.

Tip for Ford: Build some cars that people want to buy.

By Dave Petno;
Should a gas station owner be allowed to sell gas at $10 / gallon?
Yes, no-one is forced to buy.

Should a grocery store be allowed to sell an apple for $15.
Yes, no-one is forced to buy.

Should a business be allowed to loan someone $100, and charge a $15 fee?
Same Answer.

By interjecting themselves into the payday loan industry, the Ohio government is moving into the area of private business where they do not belong.

Whereas, I have never received a payday loan, and don't expect to in the future, IT IS MY CHOICE AND THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT TAKE THAT CHOICE AWAY FROM ME.

It is also the choice of the loan-giver to charge interest based upon the risk of the payback of the loan.

Most affluent, well-educated people do not utilize payday loans....so they are inclined not to care about this issue. As such, they are inclined to look the other way while thousands of small businesses and up to 6,000 jobs are eliminated in Ohio.

Could eliminating healthcare jobs be next? What about consulting jobs?

As free people, we need to recognize government infringement upon free market activity.

In America, the buyer and the seller set the price. Not the government.

Can someone tell me how regulating free-market jobs out of existence helps the people of Ohio?

Not the amazing arrogance of Rep. Maxine Waters as she grills the oil executives. She truly believes the Government could produce and deliver oil better than the free market. (She would also have the government take over healthcare in a minute). What would be next for these people?

Link: sevenload.com

www.ohiodrugcard.com

Residents of Ohio can download a free prescription drug card by visiting the site. It is available to all residents.

Sounds like a free-market solution to me.

The architect of Quebec's now-over burdened health care system is proposing strong changes, and further privatization of the healthcare system in Quebec.

He believes the cost is now out of control.

Some of his recommendations:
==Family doctor fee: $100 / visit
==New Deductible based upon income
==Lifting the ban on private doctor practice
==Raising Sales tax by 1%

Source: Sean Gordon, HIU April 2008

Link to the NY Post:

from the NY Times:

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured…

Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February…

A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”

Here is the story:

Great website:

http://www.chronicdiseaseimpact.com/

I admit it, I watch the Daily Show. About 60% of it is irritating, but every now and then they put out a great satire piece like the one below. Enjoy!

From Grace Marie Turner;

Partial list of what they agree upon:

• Requiring insurers to charge basically the same premium to everyone regardless of age, gender, or occupation, called community rating
• Requiring insurers to offer coverage to anyone who applies through guaranteed issue and prohibiting denials for pre-existing conditions
• Requiring insurers to offer health insurance that is at least as generous as the comprehensive coverage available to members of Congress
• Requiring employers to contribute to the health coverage for their workers through a "pay or play" mandate, with small business getting added help to offset costs
• The government would repay businesses for some of the catastrophic costs of employees with large medical expenses, providing certain conditions are met, a proposal similar to one offered in 2004 by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry
• Opening the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to millions more workers and setting up other regulated health insurance purchasing exchanges
• Expanding Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program
• Allowing people to buy in to Medicare, thereby setting up competition between a taxpayer-subsidized program with federal pricing and policing authority and private health plans
• Curtailing private competition in Medicare by scaling back payments for Medicare Advantage and allowing the government, rather than private companies, to negotiate prescription drug prices for the Medicare drug benefit
• Allowing prescription drug importation from abroad, which means importing other countries' systems of price controls (as Sen. McCain also has proposed), and placing new controls on prescription drug prices
• Greater government involvement in determining the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments and requiring doctors and hospitals to practice according to its evidence-based protocols.

Source: Health Policy Matters 3-7-08

Massachusetts Enforcement
Brian McManus of the Health Care Freedom Coalition has been circulating the new Massachusetts tax form, "Schedule HC Health Care Information," which must be filed by all taxpayers along with either Form 1 or Form 1-NR/PY. The form requires you to enter the date of birth for yourself and your spouse, indicate whether you were enrolled in a health insurance plan on December 31, 2007, enter the name of the insurance company along with the company's federal tax ID number and your subscriber number, or indicate whether you are enrolled in a government program such as Commonwealth Care, MassHealth, Medicare, Veterans Health, or other. The penalty for failing to comply in 2007 is loss of the personal tax exemption, worth $219 that year. Next year the penalty will be one-half of the lowest cost coverage available through the Connector, or $912.
It appears that one could enroll for just the month of December each year and still be in compliance with the law. On the other hand, someone might be covered for 11 months, lose their job in December and lose their coverage and be penalized for it. It will also be interesting to see how the state plans to verify the coverage, say, if the taxpayer is employed as a
manufacturing rep for a self-funded company in Boise, ID. Oh, boy! The real fun is just beginning!

NCPA's Devon Herrick is quoted in an article on World Net Daily as observing that, "The Massachusetts universal coverage plan is overregulated and largely unworkable. The least expensive plan would cost a 37-year-old male resident of Massachusetts $196 a month and a fine for not having insurance could run half of that, or $98 a month. The same 37-year-old living in Dallas could buy coverage for $98 a month."

SOURCE:
World Net Daily.
Hat tip: Greg Scandlen

Kaiser Foundation does a head to head comparison of the three candidates.

Click Here to review Kaiser Analysis

On the democrat side, the key difference is about the mandate. Obama says no, Hillary says yes. Hillary would be willing to get the IRS Involved in healthcare, and garnish wages of those who do not buy into her plan. (not a tax, mind you.)

Click Here for the full article from WSJ Online

- Sen. Clinton: When you pledge to cover every one of the 47 million uninsured, do you include recent and future newcomers to the United States, legal and illegal?

- Sen. Obama: You have said that you will require all parents to have health insurance for their children. What will you do to enforce this law?

- Sen. Clinton: a question about young adults. They think of themselves as invincible and are not apt to buy insurance. Your "mandate" would force them to do so, and more than that, to pay the same premium as middle aged people whose health care needs generally are much greater. You defend the one-price rule as "shared responsibility," but isn't it an unjust, hidden tax on the younger generation?

- Sen. Obama: You have pledged to make health insurance "affordable." Texas lawmakers have made insurance less affordable by requiring that every plan include in vitro fertilization, acupuncture, marriage counseling and some 50 other features. This is like passing a law saying that the only car you're permitted to buy is a fully loaded luxury sedan.

- Sen. Clinton: You promise that "everyone who is already insured will be able to keep the coverage they have today." Yet your proposal says all health plans must cover services "experts deem necessary."

About 4.5 million people have high-deductible insurance, because it costs less and allows them to make their own decisions about where and when to get medical care. But when Massachusetts passed mandatory health insurance, people with high-deductible plans were forced to switch to more expensive medical policies to meet that state's definition of insurance.

Will that also happen under your proposal?

- Sens. Obama and Clinton: Some doctors and hospitals are worried about your plans to make electronic record-keeping compulsory. What will be the penalty for a doctor who doesn't get computerized?

- Sens. Obama and Clinton: Both your proposals call for limits on the profit margins of insurance companies. Attacking the most unpopular industry in America may sound politically attractive, but if profit margins are legally capped, investors will flee to other industries and private insurance could become a thing of the past. That would leave only a government-run health-care system.

Do you believe the nation should take that risk?

“Government planners are good at producing two things: shortages of goods that people want, and surpluses of goods that they don’t want”

What we want and Use:
In the CATO Letter Winter 2008…………he goes on to illustrate this point by contrasting the congestion of government highways. # of miles driven in urban highways has tripled 300%, but new construction of highways has only grown by 65%..........thus, gridlock, congestion and waiting

What we don’t want and use:
On the other hand, increasing dollars have been spent on public transportation. In 2005, the Average public transit bus had room for 60 people, but carries just 10. The average light-rail car had room for 175 people, but carried just 25.

The Onion sarcastically observes we persist in building expensive rail systems because “98 percent of US commuters favor public transportation for others.”

Excerpts from :
Randal O’Toole, CATO Institute, Winter 2008

Hillary in 1994: Not much support in this Seattle Audience.

The Wages of HillaryCare

The Wall Street Journal, 02/07/08

Sen. Hillary Clinton's individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance is an attempt to force everyone to buy into a highly regulated and price-controlled system where government redistributes income and dictates coverage, writes The Wall Street Journal. In other words, HillaryCare II isn't all about "choice," but would require financial penalties, including garnishing wages. To put it more accurately, the individual mandate is really a government mandate that requires brute force plus huge subsidies to get anywhere near its goal of universal coverage. The news here is that all of this is being exposed now by a fellow Democrat, Sen. Obama. Many Americans are uncomfortable with the coercion of the mandate. The California health-care overhaul was recently done in by liberals concerned about its consequences for the working poor.

Hat Tip: Grace M-Turner

By Neil Boortz

In Massachusetts Mitt Romney touts that he created a state healthcare insurance plan, subsidizing citizens for health insurance. Recent reports disclose that families earning up to $103,000 a year are eligible for these government subsidies. $100,000 ... and the government is paying for their health insurance? Sadly, Massachusetts officials refuse to disclose how many families are making that much and are enrolled in the state insurance program. That's the thing about entitlement spending ... now that they have it, you can't take it away.

What's the cost, you ask? The state's healthcare plan is going to exceed state budget estimates by $400 million in 2009. That is more than 85% more than what the costs were initially projected to be. That is one scary statistic. Scary, but typical. Just take a look at the original estimates of Medicare costs vs. the reality. How about from $9 billion to $70 billion.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia also notes that ArnoldCare was shot down mostly because of opposition from labor unions that thought it wasn't fair to working families to make them pay insurance premiums before all the other pressing needs they have. She says in Massachusetts premium are rising 12% largely because once people are forced to spend money on buying coverage, they will squeeze every drop of value out of it. The Bay State is spending $400 million more than budgeted because of unexpected utilization. Not surprisingly, she says, the government is resorting to price controls. The state has warned the insurers not to raise premiums by more than 5%, and not to increase cost-sharing. What's left? Send patients only to the cheapest doctors and hospitals. That oughta make them happy - make them pay full premiums for second-rate care, and fine 'em if they refuse.

SOURCE:
Wall Street Journal.
Hat Tip:
Greg Scandlen

By Dave Petno
The British system is a socialist system, meaning the government runs all healthcare through the National Healthcare Service (NHS).

From The Guardian:
"The health secretary, Alan Johnson, has threatened to cut the income of practices refusing to work extended hours. He believes evening and weekend surgeries will be more convenient for patients, and businesses hope the plans will reduce employees' sickness absence."

Read the full article Here:


Why do you suppose that British Doctors need to be Mandated to work more hours?
Could it be that their income is paid by the government system, and they have no incentive to work harder, or smarter?

We all know that American Doctors work long and hard hours (60 - 80 hours per week, holidays, and weekends).....and they are well compensated for their efforts!

Exit question: If your salary is capped, or controlled by the government.....how many hours per week do you work? (see answer below)

God Bless America!

Answer: The fewest hours possible to keep your job.

by Dave Petno
Mit Romney is a super-smart guy....but this just proves my point. Even Super-duper, valedictorian-types like Mit can't design an economy that works better than the free market. Read below and you can see the financial fiasco that the his Health Reforms in Mass have become.

Massachusetts, is sinking deeper into the quicksand. About a month ago the state reported they were short about $140 million from what they had budgeted for subsidized care. This month it turns out that they are short $245 million, and expect to be $400 million short next year. It turns out that the expected savings from reduced uncompensated care haven't materialized (surprise!), and more people than expected are enrolling. I guess they figured more people would ignore the mandate. It never occurred to them that most people actually try to obey the laws they enact. Also the expected revenue from the employer assessment hasn't born out. They expected to collect $45 million but only received $5 million from that source.
Now they want the federal government to bail them out. An article in the Boston Globe reports, "the state is counting on getting about half (the money) from the federal government, but officials have just begun negotiations on how much Massachusetts will actually receive."
SOURCE:
Boston Globe.
From Greg Scandon Report
www.chcchoices.org

The Mass Commonwealth Care Plan, passed and promoted by Mitt Romney, includes abortion as a standard covered benefit for a small $50 Copay.

Click Here to see Mass Commonwealth Plan Abortion Coverage

This is generally not covered by insurance except in the most extreme situations.

When the government mandates healthcare insurance on the population, it must define what standard or adequate coverage is, and have alternatives available to the population. In Massachusett’s, the state program/alternative includes Abortion at a very low cost to the subscriber.

How Cute! She has a present to America called Universal Health Care. By that, she means that she will initially have the government approve and control all financing of health care in America, create new and increased taxes on all Americans.....Eliminate, and Destroy the existing health insurance markets.....and eventually creating huge waiting lines like Canada, England and any other Socialized Country.

This document was promoted by SPANOhio. It is a call to Socialism. Yeah, the government will make it better.

They say that we should not have to pay more than 10% on Healthcare, or it will be an undue burden.

Can anyone say Taxes? If 10% is too much, what about 45% in mandatory taxes?

At least my healthcare dollar goes to world class healthcare….the envy of the world.

Click here: http://familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/too-great-a-burden/ohio.pdf

By Dave Petno

A colleague of mine, in the business, Joe Blasko Jr, made this point.

The number of uninsured is not a relevant or important number.

We need to care about the number of uninsurABLE. Those are the people who desire health insurance, would pay a reasonable price for it, yet cannot find coverage due to factors beyond their control.

In healthcare: the three legged stool is always Cost, Quality, and Access....

We would add a fourth: Personal Responsibility.

Without Personal Responsibility, a person will not take the necessary steps to protect himself from unforeseen costs of a major health event!

(From Greg Scandlons email)

" Now that Massachusetts has mandated everyone purchase health insurance, the next steps are already becoming evident --

-- Since everyone must buy, we can't make them pay too much. So the State will require premium increases of no higher than 5%, according to the Boston Globe. This is an arbitrary number having no relationship to underlying costs. "


So if medical costs are going up by 10% and premiums are capped at 5%........will we "approve" less care? How many insurance carriers will want to take part?

Looks like a place where you don't want to be in the private market.

Romney is a great candidate, it is too bad that he decided to interject into the free market of healthcare in Mass.

By Dave Petno
Whoever controls healthcare, controls the population. Once the government controls healthcare, EVERYTHING will be measured with regard to how it effects exposure to the health costs of the population. Are you a Smoker? Overweight? Do you eat cheeseburgers? Bungee jump? IT ALL EFFECTS HEALTHCARE.

Don't believe me? Read below the story of New Zealand (which has a National Health Service), refused to admit a British Immigrant's wife because her BMI was 42 (anything over 25 is overweight).

Limited budgets lead to rationing.

New Zealand bars British man's 'fat' wife

By Paul Chapman in Wellington and Graeme Baker
Last Updated: 7:31pm GMT 19/11/2007

CAN YOU GIVE ME ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHERE THE GOVERNMENT HAS ELIMINATED AN ENTIRE SECTOR OF OUR ECONOMY? ??

OK, there is the Air Port Screeners….who were nationalized after 911. That has worked out so well………..the system is now fail-safe, and no-one needs to wait in lines there….

Our airports are a picture of simplicity, and efficiency.

Dave Petno

So then it finally dawned on me, the only way that Government can do something, is by taking something away from someone else.

Most often the thing that they take away is our tax money, and lots of it.

Taking our taxes is the only way that Government can have schools, libraries, our defense department.

Duh! This is so obvious

What about providing healthcare insurance for all Americans? What would the government need to do in order to make that happen?

First, there would need to be massive taxation. The US spends over $2 Trillion dollars in healthcare per year. That money currently comes from many sources such as :

• Insurance companies
• Private pay dollars
• State / Federal / Local Governements
• Private Charities / foundations
• Unions
• Donations

How are the feds going to absorb all of this money?

Pretend that Employer A has 20 employees and is currently paying $20,000/month in medical premium, $244,000/year. Will that money automatically be sent to Washington? How?

What if Employer B (same size pays) $40,000 / month…..will they continue to pay double of the first employer?

Employer C pays $10,000 / month. Will they continue to pay ½ of employer A?

What about money collected from private charities? Will that money go to Washington? I doubt it.

Could it be that a massive new tax is created, and assessed upon all employers in an equal way? LIKELY

So if you are an employer who has worked hard to keep these costs controlled, and you currently pay less than the national average….through your hard work…..you are going to pay more in the new system?


CAN AND SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT EVER ELIMINATE AN INDUSTRY?

If the government pays for healthcare for Americans, will there be a need for private insurance companies?

Some might say “yes” to fill in the gaps from the government program. If this is the case, then we are basically admitting that there will be a 2-tier system, where people with means pay twice. They will pay once through their taxes, and another time in insurance premiums. How is this reducing costs?

If you say “No”, private insurance is no longer necessary, the next question is ….would additional coverage be legal?

If the answer is “not legal’, the question I have is…..on what basis are we going to make a product that is currently owned by over 100 million American’s illegal??

Either way, the government’s “take-over” of the payment system of healthcare eliminates entire sectors of the local economy

The following people would lose their jobs:
• People who work at insurance companies
• Insurance agents
• Staff at Insurance agencies
• Third party adiminstrators
• Employer-based benefit administrators
• Wellness programs
• Disease Management programs
• Dental Insurance plans

People create businesses to provides goods and services to their clients in order to turn a profit, and build value in the business.

“You create a business to sell a business”

Given that many politicians (All the leading Democrats, and some of the Republicans) would be glad to nationalize the entire system……………..would it be wise to invest in Health Insurance stocks today? Would you buy United Healthcare?

Would it be wise for me to purchase a small health insurance agency as a strategy to grow?

Would it be wise for me to purchase an agency from someone else right now?

The answer is clearly “no”

So what has happened to the value of my business RIGHT NOW? I have a nice sized block of business, housed inside my partner’s agency?

Who would want to buy it now?

So, my value has already been degraded. My net-worth already diminished…

By a politician.

Now assume that Hillary wins the election, and the congress approves her plan. They determine to implement the plan within 2 years, perhaps.

How many businesses linked to health insurance will disappear?

How many entrepreneurs like myself will lose all of the value of our property that we have built over the years?

What if my business is worth $1 Million at the time of the government takeover?

Will I be compensated for the loss of my business?

by Dave Petno

“I’m for it” so said a friend of mine regarding government take-over of health care “have you ever seen what I have to pay for health insurance?” she continued?

So my friend would be glad to have Hillarycare or something similar….she thinks it will make her life better, less expensive.

I asked her some questions:

Are you aware of how Government involvement in healthcare leads to massive waiting lists for you and kids everywhere it is tried?

Are you willing to see our healthcare system degraded due to this change?

Do you realize that I have been building a business for the past 6 years, and that these programs will put me out of business?

Do you think we should do this if it causes 100s of thousands of people to lose their jobs? (those who work in the insurance business)

October 11,2007
By Dave Petno

Governor Strickland wants to provide a solution (FREE) to bring 500,000 of the current uninsured, into the fold of those who have health insurance.

So free coverage will be offered.

How can we be sure this coverage will go to the uninsured?

Could those with current coverage, ditch their current coverage and go get some of that FREE stuff?

Image.......
A grocery store worker makes $25k / year, and pays $50 / month to participate in his employer's company sponsored plan.

What if he can get the coverage for free? Is free better than $50 / month? Is that real money?

Americans like Free Stuff......so as soon as Free Insurance becomes available, people will try to get it......yes, even if they currently pay for it....especially if they currently pay for it.

By Dave Petno

Here are some basics about America.

In America, we buy our own stuff.
In America, we take care of our own kids.

In America, we have compassion for the poor.
Americans are generous people, and don't like to see the poor suffer.

We contribute privately, and we are taxed to take care of people who are in need.

The key phrase is "who are in need".

We do not want to create more people in need.

S-CHIP was implemented to take care of a very small segment of children who live in very low income families.

Congress wants to expand it to provide FREE STUFF to non-poor families. This reaching out to give FREE STUFF to the middle class is inherently un-American.

It disrupts the Free Market, where most middle class kids are already covered.

It removes an entire sector of health plan members from the private sector.

S-CHIP is problematic to the very fabric of our free market system.

Bravo for your Veto President Bush!

By Dave Petno

So GM is paying the Union $35 Billion to establish a healthcare trust for it's retirees, with promises to make additional giant payment in the future.....

This poses several questions that lead me to believe that the UAW will exempt itself from Hillarycare 2.0 if it happens.

Why should they be a part of a national plan if they already have this resolved?

Do you think they will be subject to Government Run healthcare?

That $35 Billion is a part of the national expenditures for healthcare.....do you think the UAW will just hand that over to Hillary to manage their care?

The UAW Retirees have Cadillac care....do you think they will be subject to the premium taxes that are going to be assessed against people who have better plans than the standard plan?

Is the UAW going to be exempt from any national government run system? ......let's just wait and see....

by Dave Petno

We keep hearing about 45 million uninsured, and how our system is broken because of it (the actual number is closer to 8 million who really deserve our attention...but I will leave that to another blog)

Lets assume that there are 45 million.

We have 300 million citizens.

45 million / 300 million = 15%

That means that 255 Million people are current covered with Insurance.

That means that 85% of our population is currently Insured. Since when is an 85% score the sign of a failing system.

About those 255 Million people: Last year's Kaiser Foundation survey showed that almost 90% of them would rate their coverage as good or excellent. In the same poll, 93 percent were happy with the quality of care, and 86% were satisfied with their ability to get an appointment. (Source: Levin as printed in The Weekly Standard Oct1, 2007)

Now how is that a crisis of Uninsured?

by Dave Petno

The outline of her plan is out. It’s comprehensive nature is astounding. The new reach and regulation of Government as a result of the plan is larger than any other government program ever.

Hillarycare 2.0

Hillary is one who believes that Government (aka “really smart people”) can rearrange an economy as easily as moving chess pieces on a chess board……..little do they know that each piece has its own momentum, and continues in motion , long after it is moved, and effecting all of the other pieces on the board…….(that is my version of a quote who’s source I cannot remember or find).

Her plan demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how insurance works. It is as if I were to describe how one would make a car…….out of the junk that I have in my garage. (Absurd)

Hillary’s clear agenda is to one day move us all to a Government Run Health system. She does this in her plan by allowing Americans to buy into government run programs. No doubt the government programs will be subsidized, and enticing. The net result of Hillarycare 2.0 would be the collapse of the American health insurance markets as we now know them.

American capitalism requires that capital and investments flow to the area of greatest financial return. What investor will want to invest in a market where the government is offering massive regulation, and dreaming of making them insolvent and unnecessary…or perhaps illegal?

Here are some basic questions to address with Hillary’s plan:

The plan is based upon a mandate of all Americans to purchase a plan:

Who determines what is a bon a fide plan?

My wife and I have a HSA plan with a $5,000 deductible. Would we have to buy a more expensive plan?

What is covered in the plan? Who makes that call? Will it include abortion?

What is my penalty if I choose not to buy one? Jail? Fines? Will they ban me from the healthcare system? Really?

The plan says that it will be Guarantee Issue: That means anyone can buy in at any time, regardless of health conditions.

So why would I not just wait until my disease is greater than the premium that I would need to pay? Why would I buy before I am sick?

How will they know if I have a plan? Will there be a new IRS?

Why would insurance companies want to provide insurance when they cannot manage their risk? (by mandating guaranteed issue?).

Other Thoughts:

Has ANY government program ever resulted in INCREASED QUALITY, and LOWER COST?

Will your plan slow medical innovations? Will there even be any private market innovations?

Finally, what assurances do we have that your cost estimates are even close to reality?

Read through my blog for more discussion of Free Market vs. Government run systems.

Nationalized Health Care is Broken
By John Stossel

Last week I pointed out that Michael Moore, maker of the documentary "Sicko," portrayed the Cuban health-care system as though it were utopia -- until I hit him with some inconvenient facts. So he backed off and said, "Let's stick to Canada and Britain because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things."

OK, here we go.

One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what's available.

That's why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.

click here for full article

from Consumer Power #96

-- to Hayak. The Cato institute has published an article by Glen Whitman, an economics professor at Cal State, Northridge disputing individual mandates from a very different perspective. He says the "free rider" problem is exaggerated, that uncompensated care is not a huge problem in the American health system and that the uninsured are a small part of it in any case. He further notes, as we have repeatedly, that mandatory coverage hasn't worked very well in auto insurance and is unlikely to work any better in health. He also notes that mandatory coverage "does nothing to make insurance more affordable." Yes, it can be subsidized, but "it would be possible to have the subsidy without the mandate." Further, "to the extent the public has to subsidize the formerly uninsured, the free riding problem has not been solved, it has merely been shifted." And "taxpayers could actually be subject to more cost shifting than before" because it is impossible to confine the subsidies to only those who were uninsured.

SOURCE:
Cato Institute.

by Dave Petno

It is clear that programs like SCHIP "crowd out" private insurance companies. CATO is reporting that in 1996, more than 60% of eligible children had access to private health insurance. In 2005, only 55 already had private health insurance.

It only makes sense, if government will provide it for "free" why would the private sector want to pay for it?

See Michael Cannon's Sinking SCHIP

YOU WILL HAVE YOUR GOVERNMENT MANDATED CHECKUP EACH YEAR.....OR YOU WILL GO TO JAIL???

Only the first 2 minutes of this video really matter.



OR ELSE!

By Dave Petno

USA Today is reporting a story of mom who delivered Quadruplets IN MONTANA because there were not enough neo-natal beds available in the ENTIRE COUNTRY CANADA

Once again, the USA free-market system bails out Canadian socialism.

In the USA, we have excess capacity so that people can access care when they need it. In Canada, they have restricted capacity, to slow the utilization of care....in order to control costs.

from USA Today Posted by Michael Winter at 08:34 PM/ET
Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia were born within five minutes of each other Sunday afternoon at 31 weeks, at Benefis Healthcare.

Why Great Falls? As the Toronto Globe & Mail explains, Jepp and her husband, J.P., were sent across the border because no neonatal intensive care unit in Canada had enough beds for them. She was two-centimeters dilated and having contractions when airlifted 300 miles.

Full USA TODAY STORY HERE

by Dave Petno
Ohio's "uninsured" spent $3.5 billion of their own money, and donations from charities last year for their medical care. Yes that is BILLION.

That is $3,500 per each of the alleged 1million uninsured (a number that is actually grossly inflated by the media...probably around 270,000).

That is a significant amount of resources from people who are supposedly not capable of paying their own bills.

So it appears as if, the uninsured get health care, and they pay significant amounts for it.

Where is the crisis?


August 29, Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:
"And Ohio has done a very good job of insuring kids," said Jason Sanford, spokesman for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Health Policy Institute of Ohio. "We have a very low rate of uninsured kids." ......

(The Uninsured)
They spent $3.5 billion of their own money and donations from charity last year to pay doctor and hospital bills. And that only met half their needs, Sanford said.

"Healthcare cannot be free, because nothing is ever free"

height=26 width=132 alt="Google Groups">

NEOHUA Legislative Committee

Visit this group

by Dave Petno
The Chicago Tribune, Judy Peres , is reporting that a Swedish Study and a second study performed by University of Utah showed that patients who received bariatric surgery were less likely to suffer heart attacks and cancer than similar obese people who did not have the surgery.

Question: Will Insurance Companies Now Cover Bariatric Surgery?

There is one answer to this question. If Insurance Companies and their underwriters determine that the long term cost to the system, is less than the current, also taking into account the risks.

So, the free market should be able to handle this calculation without government intervention.

Prediction: Lawyers and Politicians will use this study to attempt to mandate that private health insurance companies provide the surgery to anyone who wants it.

Looks like another legal battle / government mandate is ahead of us.

By Dave Petno

The AP is reporting that the use for 3 major pain medications has more than quadrupled between 1997 and 2005 (Stats from the US Drug Administration). In Ohio, Oxycodone use increased 689% and morphine was up 149%.

These medications are being increasingly prescribed by doctors who are managing patients with chronic pain. Previously, many of these patients lived with Chronic pain.

Questions:
How do you think 689% increases in usage effect overall health plan inflation?

Are the patient's better off managing their pain?

Should we tell them to live with pain, so health care inflation can be decreased? (maybe you can tell them)

What do you think would happen if a government bureaucrat was in charge of pain management approval? Would more people be living with pain?

I'm just sayin.....

Have you or your loved ones been effected by the Historic Passport Delays? Millions of people have been frustrated by the huge delays in attaining passports within the past 90 days.

The problem is more than that. The State Department originally estimated that the new procedures would cost $289 Million. The actual current estimate is reported to be $944 million. That is more than a 300% variance.

If our federal government cannot project how much it costs to process paperwork for passports, HOW IN THE WORLD CAN IT PROJECT THE COSTS OF SOMETHING AS COMPLICATED AS HEALTHCARE?

The latest short film about Socialized Medicine in Canada. Must see.

Even before the SUV, and the industrial revolution.....the earth was warming....how could this be?

August 14, 2007

John McCaslin - Before Gore

D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."

The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."

"This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s," says Mr. Lockwood. "I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."

A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work
By DAVID GRATZER | Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 4:30 PM PT

Investor's Business Daily Editorials

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.

My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.

Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment.

These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.

Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.

Single-payer systems — confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment — are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries — but to markets.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli is at the center of this changing health care scene. In the 1990s, he organized a private Quebec practice — patients called him, he made house calls and then he directly billed his patients. The local health board cried foul and began fining him. The legal status of private practice in Canada remained murky, but billing patients, rather than the government, was certainly illegal, and so was private insurance.

Eventually, Chaoulli took on the government in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Representing an elderly Montrealer who had waited almost a year for a hip replacement, Chaoulli maintained that the patient should have the right to pay for private health insurance and get treatment sooner. A majority of the court agreed that Quebec's charter did implicitly recognize such a right.

The monumental ruling, which shocked the government, opened the way to more private medicine in Quebec. Though the prohibition against private insurance holds in the rest of Canada for now, at least two people outside Quebec, armed with Chaoulli's case as precedent, are taking their demand for private insurance to court.

Consider, too, Rick Baker. He isn't a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He's a medical broker — one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada's government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests and specialist consultations, privately and quickly.

Baker describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion — he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren't usually seen in the disorder — he requested an MRI.

The government told him that the wait would be 4 1/2 months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours — and who, after the test revealed a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks. Some services that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but governments are loath to stop him.

Other private-sector health options are blossoming across Canada, and the government is increasingly turning a blind eye to them, too, despite their often uncertain legal status. Private clinics are opening at a rate of about one a week.

Canadian doctors, long silent on the health care system's problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. Day has become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center and challenging the government to shut him down.

And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80% of government-funded diagnostic testing.

This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain's Labour Party — which originally created the National Health Service — now openly favors privatization. Sweden's government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of its total health services.

Since the fall of communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany.

Yet even as Stockholm and Saskatoon are percolating with the ideas of Adam Smith, a growing number of prominent Americans are arguing that socialized health care still provides better results for less money.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," celebrates the virtues of Canada's socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance.

One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health.

Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. Such factors aren't academic — homicide rates in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries.

In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don't die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.

And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation.

Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn't quite as clear as he suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn't unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. Take America's high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.

That said, American health care is expensive. And Americans aren't always getting a good deal. In the coming years, with health expenses spiraling up, it will be easy for some to give in to the temptation of socialized medicine. In Washington, there are plenty of old pieces of legislation that like-minded politicians could take off the shelf, dust off and promote: expanding Medicare to Americans 55 and older, say, or covering all children in Medicaid.

But such initiatives would push the U.S. further down the path to a government-run system and make things much, much worse. True, government bureaucrats would be able to cut costs — but only by shrinking access to health care, as in Canada, and engendering a Canadian-style nightmare of overflowing emergency rooms and yearlong waits for treatment.

America is right to seek a model for delivering good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to Canada, but close to home — in the other four-fifths or so of our economy. From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up. Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.

Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This article is adapted from the forthcoming issue of City Journal.

Freedom to use our property as we see fit.

This post by Dave Racer illustrates how money in America flows to where the American People choose to send it. There really is no comparison in our world to what American choose.

We need DogiCaid before it’s too late. By Dave Racer

My “Business Week” magazine came on Saturday. Dated August 6, 2007, the cover features a very ugly (in my opinion) dog. The dog is wearing gold bling and a diamond tiara.

“The Pet Economy” sits in huge, blocked letters next to the ugly, fancied-up dog. And herein lies a most interesting factoid.

“Americans now spend $41 billion on their pets,” says the article on page 44. We learn here that $41 billion exceeds the GDP of 78 nations.

Of that $41 billion, $9.9 billion goes to supplies and over-the-counter medical products. (The article doesn’t mention doggie generics, but maybe a Congressional committee could investigate this to cut the cost of doggie pharmaceuticals.)

Another $9.8 billion is paid to veterinarians. Outrageous sums of money like this demands federal government intervention. Clearly, doggie care has gotten out of control. We need a DogiCaid program for low income cat and dog lovers.

Actually, my real reflection about this is based on the much-repeated mantra of the government-knows-best health reformers, the one that goes, “Americans spend twice as much on health care as do other nations.”

Hey, Americans spend $41 billion on their pets! We have bigger houses. More cars. TV sets. Our grocery stores are the world’s envy.

We spend nearly $10 billion on doggie health care.

Americans spend 16 percent of U.S. GDP on health care because we can. And the wealthier we become as a nation, the more we will spend on health care. While we do not spend it wisely, and health care cost is a great concern, the fact that we spend it should not astonish anyone.

We spend $41 billion on our pets!

by Dave Petno

I can truly say that I have never been so BORED as when I was sitting through Michael Moore’s latest propaganda piece, SiCKO.

About an hour into the movie, a vicious battle was raging in my mind……get up and leave, ask for your money back! But alas, I decided to stay….feeling that it was my duty as someone who manages and sells American health insurance to know what Moore is saying and how he is bashing my industry.

The movie is easily summed up this way.

Moore found examples of the worst case scenarios of the American healthcare system, and compared to examples of the best cases of socialized medical systems around the world. Isn’t that like having my parenting judged based upon my kid’s worst day…..compared to your little Johnny’s best day. Not a fair comparison.

Much has been said about the factual errors throughout the movie, so I don’t need to repeat them. If you want to you can jump to this site http://sicko.ncpa.org/

I have some simple questions for Mr. Moore that might shed some light on the topic.

Do you think there might be some examples of amazing medical miracles in America?

Are there stories of poor people in America who have been treated for no charge?

Do foreign people ever come to America for medical treatment? (From Canada?)

How much of the world’s technology and drugs were developed in the USA?

Could you fill a movie with tragedy stories of people denied care from those socialist countries like France (perhaps 10,000 people who died in that heat wave a couple of summers ago?)

Do you really think that you can have unlimited supply….for less money?

What are the tax rates in those other countries?

Does their government really spend those funds efficiently? Is there any fraud?

What would happen to all of the people like me who own businesses, or who work in businesses that were created to help people manage and pay health expenses?

Do you think Cuba put on its best face when you brought your sympathizing cameras to their country? Do you think Cuba would allow any American citizen to come over there for free medical care?

You show several ex-Americans who have immigrated to socialist countries like France, Canada, and England so they can get free medical care……it seems like socialist medicine countries are magnets for people from around the world….do we really want people to come here for our free stuff?

What would happen to people who own insurance agencies like myself, do you just take our property….give it to the government, and tell us we are no longer needed? What about all those people who work in insurance related professions?

Should we allow people the “free choice” to opt out of a socialist system?

What about the doctors, would they be allowed to charge for their services for people who opt out of the socialist system?

Basically, you movie shows that socialist systems are all sweetness and light, and capitalism is basically going to kill us……….is that really the truth?

Finally, Mr. Moore, if you are so amazed and enamored by Socialized countries like France, Canada, and England………why don’t you immigrate there. Please.

The private sector ALWAYS works better than Government.....ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS.

Click Here to go to the site where the latest Waiting times from the Canadian System are summarized

I just returned from an excellent SHRM meeting by Tim Dimoff about Identity Theft.
If my identity is ever stolen, I will be forced to work my way through government agencies to get my name cleared. That sounds like a HUGE pain.
Imagine if I had to manage my way through a big-government bureaucracy for my family's healthcare????? What compassion would I receive if it was just one Government Monopoly. NO THANKS

Dave Petno

SPEAKING TOPIC: Healthcare reform will be one of the three hot topics of the upcoming Presidential Election (along with the War in Iraq, and Global Warming)

My presentation will cover the myths surrounding a "Free" healthcare system where the Government imposes single payer, universal coverage model.

How would coverage work? Who pays for it? What will it do to our freedoms?

Dave Petno

SPEAKING TOPIC: I am prepared to provide a response to Michael Moore's assault upon our Free Market system...explaining the myths of Government Imposed Universal Health Insurance.

Dave Petno

Sent by Ralph Weber, a California agent, and former Canadian Citizen. He has become a strong voice for free market health care, and perhaps this note will show you why:

“I am in Canada visiting my mother and she had to see a dermatologist last year and waited 9 months, then finally went to a city 75 miles away. That was the only dermatologist serving a 150 mile long valley with close to a million people. Now the government has ordered a new dermatologist to move to the central city of the valley, a city of 150,000 with suburbs maybe 250,000. They are trying to reduce the wait time to 4 months, but will accept anything under 6 months.”

Anyone else want a single-payer system?

Dave Racer

651.340.1911

dgracer@comcast.net

June 21, 2007, 9:00 a.m.

Against Universal Coverage

By The Editors

The Democrats running for president are competing over whose health-care plan gets closest to “universal coverage.” The Republican presidential candidates, meanwhile, have been mostly silent. Their inattention to the issue is a mistake. A great many voters are anxious about health care, and better government policies could alleviate that anxiety. The Republican candidates have an opportunity to present a distinctively conservative set of reforms.

Those reforms should begin with the rejection of the goal of universal coverage. Deregulating health insurance would make it more affordable, and thus increase the number of Americans with coverage. But to achieve universal coverage would require either having the government provide it to everyone or forcing everyone to buy it. The first option, national health insurance in some form or other, would either bust the budget or cripple medical innovation, and possibly have both effects. Mandatory health insurance, meanwhile, would entail a governmental definition of a minimum package of benefits that insurance has to cover. Over time, that minimum package would grow more and more expensive as provider groups lobbied the government to include their services in the mandate.

The health-care debate has centered on the uninsured. That so many people do not have health insurance is a consequence of foolish government policies: regulations that raise the price of insurance, and a tax code that ensures that most people get their insurance through their employer. If you don’t work for a company that provides health insurance, you’re out of luck. People locked out of the insurance system still have access to health care. But they often end up in emergency rooms because they did not receive preventive care.

For most people, however, it is another aspect of our employer-based health-care system that causes the most trouble: the insecurity it creates. People worry that if they switch jobs, they will lose their health insurance. They worry that their company will cut back on health benefits. Universal coverage is not necessary to address these worries. Making it possible for individuals to own their health-insurance policies themselves, rather than getting them through their companies, would solve the problem. It would also reduce the political momentum behind socialized medicine.

Most universal-coverage plans accept the least rational features of our health-care system — its reliance on employer-based coverage and on “insurance” that covers routine expenses — and merely try to expand that system to cover more people. Republicans should go in a different direction, proposing market reforms that make insurance more affordable and portable. If such reforms are implemented, more people will have insurance.

Some people, especially young and healthy people, may choose not to buy health insurance even when it is cheaper. Contrary to popular belief, such people do not cause everyone else to pay much higher premiums. Forcing them to get insurance would, on the other hand, lead to a worse health-care system for everyone because it would necessitate so much more government intervention. So what should the government do about the holdouts? Leave them alone. It’s a free country.

Michael Cannon talks about his real life experience of an ACL Injury with his HSA Account.

What Mitt and Hillary Have in Common

by Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

As he campaigns for the White House, Mitt Romney has had to tap dance around the health-care reforms he enacted while governor of Massachusetts. The first bit of bad news was that the plan's cost was higher than predicted. Then it reneged on its commitment to cover the uninsured. But the latest bit of news about "RomneyCare" may require even fancier footwork.

The Left is now thanking Romney for making HillaryCare respectable again.

Jonathan Cohn has an article in the latest New Republic titled "Hillary Was Right" [$] that helpfully explains similarities between HillaryCare and RomneyCare:

In Washington, at least, praising HillaryCare will get you laughed off the talk shows. But...if you look closely at the proposals experts and officials are tossing around, you may start to recognize some familiar elements...They also envision, as did HillaryCare, a government role in making sure affordable, high-quality plans are made available — typically, by creating (again, like HillaryCare) some sort of purchasing cooperative through which some, if not all, of the population would buy their coverage. That's true of the plan former Senator John Edwards proposed as part of his presidential campaign a few months ago. It's true of the plan Senator Ron Wyden introduced in Congress back in December. It's even true of the plan former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed into law before leaving office last year — even though Romney has made mocking HillaryCare a staple of his campaign rhetoric as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination.

Cohn does not think the similarities to HillaryCare are a liability. As the title of the article suggests, he is trying to pat Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) on the back for the reform plan she put forward in 1993 and defended until its death in 1994. The fact that a prominent Republican such as Mitt Romney has now embraced Hillary-style government planning strikes Cohn as confirmation that Sen. Clinton was on the right track.

By bundling the tax dollars of six million Massachusetts residents, Mitt Romney may have made the largest contribution yet to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Cohn is not even referring to some obscure aspect of RomneyCare that was forced down Romney's throat by a left-wing legislature — which is how Romney's defenders have tried to explain away parts of the plan, such as the individual mandate, that are unpopular with conservatives. According to Cohn, the aspect of RomneyCare that most resembles HillaryCare is its very centerpiece, which Romney borrowed from the conservative Heritage Foundation: the health insurance "Connector."

Cohn is essentially correct. The objective of the "Connector" bureaucracy, as described by Heritage Foundation scholars, reads like an exercise in government planning. The "Connector" is supposed to "reorganize[e]...a large part of the state's private insurance system into 'single market' structure with uniform rules and a central 'clearinghouse' for administering coverage."

Why, exactly, do we need a new layer of government bureaucracy to do these things? So we will have someplace to buy health insurance? We're getting along just fine without layering more bureaucracy on our auto insurance. In fact, we already have a connector for both health and auto insurance. It's called the Internet. Has anyone ever heard of eHealthInsurance.com?

Why do we need a "Connector" to tell health insurers what to sell and at what price? Those sorts of price controls and mandated benefits are exactly the kind of government planning that is making health insurance so unaffordable. Shouldn't conservatives be trying to repeal those laws, instead of creating new bureaucracies that will propose, enforce, and defend them?

Aren't such efforts a distraction from reforms that would reduce government planning? For example, conservatives should be pushing Congress to let individuals and employers purchase coverage from insurers in other states. That would make health insurance more affordable by allowing those purchasers — are you listening, Massachusetts? — to avoid the costly regulations imposed by their own state government. A nationwide market for health insurance would make the Heritage/Romney approach look less like a "Connector" than a "Constrictor."

If health-insurance markets don't work as well as they should, it's because state and federal governments are doing too much planning already. Most importantly, the federal tax code denies workers ownership of their health care dollars and slaps a huge tax penalty on those without job-based coverage. Shouldn't conservatives be rolling back those government interventions instead of cooking up even more?

If I were advising Sen. Clinton, I would be urging her to boast that her approach to health-care reform enjoys support from conservatives like the Heritage Foundation and Gov. Romney. If I were advising Gov. Romney, I would prescribe a severe case of amnesia and a health-care agenda that actually reduces the role of government.

This article appeared in the National Review on June 5, 2007.

Commentary about Michael Moore's new film "Sicko"

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael D. Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute.

Michael Moore's new film Sicko, a critique of the U.S. health-care system and paean to socialized medicine around the world, premiered amid great fanfare at Cannes last month. Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss rejoiced, "The upside of this populist documentary is that there are no policy wonks crunching numbers."

Wouldn't want anyone messing up Moore's fantasy with . . . facts.

The American health-care system undeniably has serious problems, and Moore effectively dramatizes the suffering of people caught up in them. Yet he often exaggerates those problems. For example, he frequently refers to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, but fails to point out that most are uninsured for only brief periods, or that millions are eligible for programs like Medicaid but fail to apply.

Moreover, he implies that people without insurance don't get health care. In fact, most do. Hospitals are legally obliged to provide care regardless of ability to pay, and while physicians don't face the same requirements, few are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance. Treatment for the uninsured may well mean financial hardship, but by and large they do get care.

Moore talks a lot about life expectancy, suggesting that people in Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba live longer than Americans because of their health-care systems. But most experts agree that life expectancies are a poor measure of health care, because they are affected by too many other factors like violent crime, poverty, obesity, tobacco and drug use, and other issues unrelated to a country's health system. Americans in Utah live longer than those in New York City, despite having essentially the same health care.

And when you compare the outcome for specific diseases, like cancer or heart disease, the United States clearly outperforms the rest of the world. When former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery last year, he didn't go to an Italian hospital or to France, Canada or Cuba. He came to the Cleveland Clinic.

While overly critical of U.S. health care, Moore overlooks the flaws of national health-care systems. He suggests, for example, that Canada's waiting lists are mere inconveniences, interviewing apparently healthy Canadians who claim they have no problem getting care. Yet nearly 800,000 Canadians aren't so lucky. The Canadian Supreme Court has pointed out that many Canadians waiting for treatment suffer chronic pain and, "Patients die while on the waiting list."

Similarly, Moore shows happy Britons who don't have to pay for their prescription drugs. But he didn't talk to any of the 850,000 Britons waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals. Every year, shortages force the NHS to cancel as many as 50,000 operations. Roughly 40 percent of cancer patients never get to see an oncology specialist. Delays in getting treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon-cancer cases considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered. Perhaps Moore could have talked to some of these folks?

Visiting France, Moore waxes ecstatic about the government's willingness to pay for nannies to help care for newborns. He apparently doesn't notice that the taxes necessary to pay for such a system have given France one of the lowest rates of economic growth in Europe or that many of the country's best and brightest are fleeing.

Moore also slides over the facts when he implies that the French system is "free." It's funded through a 13.55 percent payroll tax, a 5.25 percent income tax and other taxes on tobacco, alcohol and drug-company revenues. And the system is still running a $15.6 billion deficit.

And French patients still have to pay high copayments and other out-of-pocket expenses, and physicians can bill patients for charges over and above what the government reimburses. As a result, 92 percent of French citizens have private health insurance to complement the government system. Yet there remain shortages of modern health-care technology and a lack of access to the most advanced care.

America needs to have a serious debate about how to fix our health-care system. But Moore's demagoguery and refusal to address the numbers will do little to contribute to that debate. Maybe he could've used a few policy wonks after all.

This article appeared in the New York Post on June 3, 2007.

Michael Cannon of CATO Inst. Makes a very interesting observation that uninsured people do not receive sub standard care.

Michael Cannon's Article: It's not the Uninsured

It's Not the Uninsured, Stupid

by Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

Today marks the beginning of "Cover the Uninsured Week." Funded by a conglomeration of unions, corporations, and foundations, the goal of this campaign is to provide health insurance to all of the estimated 47 million Americans who lack it.

After several years, the campaign seems to be making progress. Presidential candidates from former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) have endorsed the goal of universal coverage. In a true sign of the apocalypse, Wal-Mart (Big Business) has joined hands with the Service Employees International Union (Big Labor) to push for universal coverage.

I may lose my health policy decoder ring for asking this, but should we really be focusing specifically on covering the uninsured? What do we think covering the uninsured would accomplish?

Would it improve health? Perhaps. But according to health economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago there is "no evidence" that expanding coverage is a cost-effective way to do so. That is, there are other approaches that could purchase more health for the money spent. Nor would expanding coverage appear to increase overall longevity. Health economist James Smith of Rand notes that health insurance "is vastly overrated in the policy debate."

Would it improve the quality of care? Evidently not by much. Steven Asch and colleagues found that "health insurance status was largely unrelated to the quality of care." If you show up at a hospital or clinic in the U.S., you generally get the same quality care whether or not you have insurance.

Maybe expanding coverage would reduce health disparities across races and socio-economic groups? Harvard economist Christopher Murray and colleagues conclude that "expanding insurance coverage alone would still leave huge disparities in young and middle-aged adults."

At least expanding coverage would stop free-riders from taking advantage of others, right? Apparently not. Jack Hadley and John Holahan of the Urban Institute estimate that nearly one-third of uncompensated care goes to people who have health insurance but don't pay their bills. (In total, uncompensated care accounts for just four percent of health spending on the non-elderly. That's less than half of some estimates of fraud and one-sixth some estimates of wasted spending.)

Everyone wants to make health care better and more affordable. But if simply expanding coverage won't get us there, where should policymakers focus their efforts?

They could start with the fact that federal laws have created a health care system where patients are too often spending someone else's money when they purchase medical care. On average, third-parties pay for 86 cents out of every dollar of medical care American patients receive. That's about the same share as under Canada's socialized health care system.

As a result, U.S. patients demand too much medical care and pay too little attention to whether that care is cost-effective. Is it any wonder health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, our uninsured rate is too high, and quality is less than it should be?

There's a lesson here for those who want to cover the uninsured: focus on the incentives facing the 250 million Americans who have health insurance, not on the estimated 47 million who don't. If the federal government stopped encouraging people with health insurance to be less careful consumers, then coverage would be more affordable, the number of people without coverage would shrink, and the quality of care would improve.

That's why the most important reforms would allow workers to control the health care dollars that their employers currently control. If workers are allowed to own those dollars, 180 million Americans would start making more cost-conscious decisions about their health insurance and their medical care. President Bush's proposal to give all taxpayers a standard deduction for health insurance is one such reform. Another would allow workers to take all their health benefits as a cash contribution into a health savings account.

Health care looks to be a key issue in the 2008 presidential election. The quality of that debate would be greatly improved if every time some candidate uttered the words "cover the uninsured," someone would remind him or her, it's not the uninsured, stupid.

This article appeared in TCSdaily.com on April 20, 2007.

Canadian Medical Journal finds that patiens who wait more than six months for cataract surgery experience more vision loss, a reduced quality of life, and fell more during the wait period compared with patients who waited less than six weeks.
--Academy Express American Academy of Ophthamology April 25, 2007

The Canadian Province of Sask., reports average wait times for Cataract Surgery of 120-180 Days......NOT GOOD

US Wait times; ZERO Days

Short Version (Looped) Longer version of first 6 minutes of the show is below.


A six minute clip from the beginning of the show. Kendall's solo is about 1.5 minutes into the video.

If you are a parent, or supporter, please feel free to join our group. This group site will be your main source of information about the team.

Please note. Any posts that you make will be viewable to the entire team...so please keep it positive. If you have constructive criticism, please communicate directly to the coaches or email Dave at dpetno@gmail.com

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Did you know the Federal Government funds Primary Care centers to provide preventative, diagnostic, and wellness activities for people REGARDLESS OF THEIR ABILITY TO PAY????

Did you know that there are over 175 such centers in Ohio?

Click here to see a list of centers.

http://www.ask.hrsa.gov./pc/

Dave Petno - Admin

Englands actual government report of waiting times.

England Hospital Waiting Times (Measured in Weeks) 2006

I wonder why they need to keep track of this statistic?

Canadian MRI / CT Wating Report from 2005 by Province

Would you like to wait 91 days for a CT Scan? How about 112 days for an MRI? Those are the Mean wait times in Man., Canada. But there is really no rush to diagnose your medical condition.....eah?

You won't mind waiting 175 days for a knee replacement, or 132 days for a hip? Those are the wait times in B.C., Canada
Major Joint Replacement Wait times Canada 2005

Your Heatlh Matters. This book is a great read, and a very good resource for anyone who wants to know the facts behind our current system.

Your Health Matters

On the Fence Films:
A very good resource with excellent videos. Real life stories of the Canadian System.

The American people would never tolerate Canadian syle healthcare. Correction: The only way we would ever tolerate it is if it was imposed.

Any single payer system would require that the current free market system become illegal. Imagine, it would be a crime to pay your doctor to provide you with service (see Canada).

Future links to Legislative Committee materials for NEOUA.

Check back later.

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Katrina Relief Videos: 2007