OBAMACARE'S REDISTRIBUTION OF HEALTH

This bill is so wrong on so many fronts, and everything they have told us is not in this bill -- is in the bill. It's clearly redistribution of wealth. By now, it's apparent the radicals in this administration are not concerned with their political future. Fundamentally transforming America is first and foremost.

There may be a few holdouts, but not enough to make a difference. It's frightening to see what happens when too many have too much power. In this instance, I blame Bush, whose big spending and out-of-control congress set this country up for such a radical swing to the left.

Hopefully this transformation has shaken our country. Hopefully this transformation attempt has shown us how fragile our democracy is, how precious it is, and how much it needs to be protected from big government. We can't stop now -- Yankee forebears!

An excellent piece in PajamasMedia writes:


ObamaCare’s Redistribution of Health
Of course the president and Congress are after money, but they really want control over your life.
by Tom Blumer, November 7, 2009

The House’s latest iteration of ObamaCare now weighs in at 1,990 pages. That’s hundreds of pages longer than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s summer rendition. At the rate these people are churning out thousand-plus pagers (stimulus, cap and trade, health care, etc.), they’re going to have to build a separate wing of the Library of Congress just to hold this year’s production.

After sifting through the bill’s deliberately obfuscatory, favor-laden language, it is clear that the Democratic leadership wants to pretend that last August’s town hall meetings, congressional budget watchers’ most recent cost estimates of up to $1.2 trillion (not “only” $894 billion), and Tuesday’s key gubernatorial race results never happened. The elections of Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia were as much a rejection of establishment politics as usual and the specific policies and proposals of President Barack Obama and Congress as they were affirmations of the positive qualities of the victors. The establishment newspapers that obsessed over defeating Christie and McDonnell also extended the cycle of rejection they continue to experience in the form of reduced circulation. The Internet is certainly not the primary reason why the Washington Post’s and Newark Star-Ledger’s circulations are down 6% and 23%, respectively, in the past year.

As to the House bill, everything the populace has been loudly rejecting remains firmly in place.

Abortion? It’s still there; Planned Parenthood has in essence admitted it. Provisions Sarah Palin courageously and accurately characterized as de facto “death panels”? You betcha. Rules that force the termination of any private plan if it tries to change even minor provisions, effectively spelling what Investor’s Business Daily has called “the end of the private medical insurance market” a few months ago? Yes, according to Betsy McCaughey on Sean Hannity’s radio show last week.

Beyond that, as I have previously shown, ObamaCare is still a moral clunker. As has happened in statist health care systems elsewhere, it will inevitably lead to rationed care. That rationing will inevitably favor the currently healthy with longer lives ahead of them over the aged and seriously infirm. Finally, ObamaCare’s operations will be managed and/or heavily influenced by people who, as I said in August, “have frighteningly ghoulish outlooks on life and humanity.” To name just one example of many, there’s Zeke the Bleak Emanuel, who believes that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” That’s not “obvious” to me or to the vast majority of others, pal.

Of course, the latest House bill has the requisite tax increases on “the rich,” which really means “high income-earners” (politicians and the press really don’t seem to understand the difference). Employing what I consider to be the correct language of taxation, the bill, in combination with other increases that will occur next year unless proactively stopped, will increase the amount of federal income taxes paid by the highest income-earners by as much as 30%-50%. In a worst case scenario, it will reduce the effective take-home pay of some by as much as 30%-35%.

Taking a cue from the Massachusetts state-run disaster known as RomneyCare, the bill imposes penalties on individuals and families who don’t purchase mandated health insurance. As the Associated Press reports, these penalties “are described as taxes in the legislation.” That these penalties make mincemeat of Obama’s core 2008 campaign promise not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year seems not to matter. Thus, there is plenty of what Barack Obama in his more honest moments likes to call “redistributive change.”

But ObamaCare is not simply or even primarily about the redistribution of wealth. It’s about the redistribution of health.

That is why the “public option” remains in the House bill. That polls supposedly tell us that this “public option” remains popular is a testament only to the utter failure of ObamaCare’s opponents to describe and explain its true nature.

The “public option” is not about “competition.” It is about elimination. That “the uninsured” receive “coverage” is only incidental.

The newly conceived entity will more than likely not have to pay federal, state, or local income taxes, and may not have to pay a myriad of other taxes private companies must pay unless they wish to go out of business. This entity will often be in a position to use existing government-owned facilities instead of having to pay for its own. Some of its employees, overhead, and outside services may be charged to other sectors of the government. It may, because of sovereign immunity, be exempt from crippling lawsuits and related legal costs. This stack of playing field de-levelers constitutes what the bill’s sponsors call “competition.” It’s really a sick (pun intended) joke.

Thanks to these self-evident advantages and the restrictions the bill imposes on private plans, the “public option” will inevitably corral tens of millions of American individuals and families into its one-size-fits-all plan design, which will be the standard against which all surviving plans are judged. If a private plan is too generous, ObamaCare will either tax and penalize it until its sponsors bring it down to the same level, or kill it. If a private plan is too restrictive, regulations and penalties will force it up to the “public option” level or terminate it. Terminations will be rampant. If you dare try to step outside the box yourself and privately arrange for superior medical care for yourself or your family, even with your own resources or funds from charity, you can expect the full force of the “public option” and its friends at the IRS to come after you, your medical providers, and perhaps even those who provided financial kindness.

This is “redistributive health care justice.” Nobody will be able to get health care that is better than anyone else’s. Some of us may somehow still have a bit more money and wealth, but, with the exception of the elite, who always figure out a way around the peons’ restrictions, we’ll all be subject to one health care system.

That’s the openly stated goal. When rationing and other more serious side effects inevitably intrude, we will see that ObamaCare’s “fairness” will be in how it makes us all equally miserable.


Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.

CANADA'S HEALTHCARE DISASTER

This administration is determined to make America another 3rd world country, with government run health care as the big ticket to accomplish that. Picture overcrowded hospitals and waiting rooms, and second rate care.

45% of doctors have said they would be forced to quit their profession if this passes, and Dick Morris explains why:

CANADA'S HEALTHCARE DISASTER
By DICK MORRIS, November 3, 2009

After more than a decade of public healthcare with mandatory coverage, so many Canadian doctors have left the practice and so many young people have entered other fields that Canada ranks 26th of 28 developed nations in its ratio of physicians to population. Once, Canada ranked among the leaders in the number of physicians, but that was before government healthcare drove doctors out of the practice in droves.

The fundamental fact is that we cannot cover 36 million new patients without more doctors and nurses, much less with the declining census of medical professionals the Canadian experience points to. A recent survey of doctors by the Pew Institute found that 45 percent of all practicing doctors would consider retiring or closing their practices if the Obama healthcare bill passes. This scarcity of medical personnel heightens the likelihood of draconian rationing, lengthy waiting lists and lower-quality medical care for all of us, particularly for the elderly.

This physician shortage leads to massive and never-ending waiting lists. In 1993, for example, there was an average wait of 9.3 weeks from the time a patient got a referral from a general practitioner to the time he could see a specialist. By 1997, the wait was up to 11.7 weeks. Now it's 17.3 weeks -- over four months just to see a specialist!

In Canada, unions control the entire healthcare process. In Manitoba, for example, there is an eight-month wait for colonoscopies, yet the unions do not permit weekend or evening procedures, thereby extending the waiting lists. The unions are doing to healthcare in Canada what they have done to education in America: stifling creativity, reinforcing bureaucracy and extending waiting times.

Because of these long waits for colonoscopies, there is now a 25 percent higher incidence of colon cancer in Canada than in the United States. And because the leading drugs that we routinely use to treat the malady in the U.S. are banned in Canada because of their high cost, 41 percent of Canadians who get the cancer die of it, compared with only 32 percent in the United States. Overall, the cancer death rate in Canada runs 16 percent higher than in the United States. Cancer does not wait for waiting lists to clear.

The potential of healthcare changes to shrink the doctor population, exacerbating scarcity and extending waits, is even worse now that it is apparent we have overestimated the number of doctors in the U.S. Where we once thought there were 840,000 doctors, the total is now estimated to be only 760,000.

The proposed $400 billion cut in Medicare raises the probability that more and more of those doctors who do practice will refuse to accept Medicare patients, aggravating the doctor shortage among the elderly, the population that needs them the most.

As Obama's program moves through Congress, despite the fierce opposition of a majority of American voters in virtually all the polls, it becomes clear that those moderates who vote for it will face harsh retribution at the polls from their outraged constituents. A kind of suicide-pact mentality is gripping the Democratic majorities in Congress, akin to that which came over it when Congress passed President Bill Clinton's tax package in 1993. This disregard for the will of the marginal voter may make sense for those who come from safe districts, but it makes none for those who come from swing districts. For them, suicidal conduct leads to political demise.

Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!
Get Dick's new book CATASTROPHE here.

IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

The constant cry from the left about 'death panels' -- "It's not in the bill". It doesn't have to be in the bill. Common sense tells you, the only way to pay for 50 million new people is to ration.

Dick Morris defines the Obama-speak:


IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, August 17, 2009

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.

Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care systemwide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Make sure to order his new book "CATASTROPHE" here