The LA Times writes: Provided it survives legal and legislative challenges, the health care reform law extends insurance coverage to 30 million Americans. And aging baby boomers are expected to double the population of elderly by 2030. Will we have enough doctors to accommodate them?
A June 2010 report issued by the American Assn. of Medical Colleges says no. In a model that accounts for the influx of newly insured patients, increasing utilization of doctor visits, decreases in physician working hours, modest growth of the resident workforce and greater use of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, a 130,600-physician shortage is anticipated by 2025, half of which will be primary-care doctors.
Even now, it can be challenging to find a primary-care doctor accepting new patients, and the current estimated shortage is only 7,400. Imagine the task in 2025. Few realize that these residency programs are mostly funded through Medicare and other government programs, and since 1997, the number of federally supported positions — and thus the annual number of freshly credentialed doctors — has been capped by Congress. Universal healthcare will succeed only if there are enough physicians to render it.
[Well - that is one solution to the problem! There just won't be enough doctors - so that will be like having death panels, won't it? Our waiting time to see a doctor will rival those of any country with Socialized Medicine.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wertheim-mdshortage-20110124,0,1134878.story
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The Denver Post: The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.
The health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 14 outlining the plan to open the new drug center by October — an unusually rapid turnaround for an idea first released with little fanfare in December. [This fits right in with Obama's belief that it is the government who should be the job provider.]
Read more:
Federal agency to spearhead new drug-development center - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_17171570?source=rss#ixzz1BssZgLCj
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The Detroit New writes: The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is wringing its hands over the state of the city in a recent tidbit that bemoans the steep
"Detroitification" of...well, Detroit.
Apparently coined a few years ago by some other guy at the Mackinac Center, the term "Detroitification" refers to the so-called "hollowing out" of private industry to, as the piece puts it, "prop up" an unsustainable government.
Jan. 21, Michigan Capitol Confidential: In Detroit's case, six of the top 10 employers are not private businesses at all, but government entities: public schools, the city government, the U.S. government, Wayne State University, the State of Michigan and the U.S. Post Office.
[Overwhelm the system so that citizens look to government to be the savior - where have I heard that before?]
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The Hill writes: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Hill that oversight would be a key function of the panel, particularly funding to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) that is "a waste of taxpayer dollars."
"I'd like to make sure that we once and for all kill all U.S. funding for that beast," she said last month. "Because I don't think that it advances U.S. interests, I don't think that that's a pro-democracy group, it's a rogue's gallery, pariah states, they belong there because they don't want to be sanctioned."
[I'll add that Obama "turned us in" as violators of human rights because people have lost their mortgages. That is equal to beheadings, killings, imprisonment and deaths? Just asking.]
http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/foreign-policy/139563-the-world-from-the-hill-un-funding-an-early-target-for-house-republicans
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The NYT explains that you and I paid $160 million in defending execs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: We are defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/business/24fees.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha2&adxnnlx=1295874315-dsTNNIqKYfywA/VmtezrTQ
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The New York Post reveals: Chinese-born pianist
Lang Lang gave a musical shout out to America-hating patriots in his homeland when he played at the
White House state dinner last week. During his performance, Lang tinkled the ivories with the famous anti-American propaganda tune "My Motherland" -- the theme song from the Chinese-made Korean War movie "Battle on Shangangling Mountain."
Chinese President Hu Jintao, the guest of honor at the dinner, surely recognized the melody. The song has been a favorite anti-American propaganda tool for decades.
Lang apparently knew exactly what he was playing.
The 1956 film "Battle on Shangangling Mountain" depicts Chinese troops pinned down under enemy fire on the mountain. Then reinforcements arrive and the troops attack the US soldiers, whom the Chinese refer to as "jackals."
The song Lang played in front of Hu and
President Obama includes the verse: "When friends are here, there is fine wine/But if the jackal comes/What greets it is the hunting rifle."
Lang said in a TV interview that he played the song to reflect Chinese pride.
"I think playing the tune at the White House banquet can help us, as Chinese people, feel extremely proud of ourselves and express our feelings through the song," he told the Chinese network Phoenix TV.
Read more:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/sour_note_at_hu_fete_sU6ZLyo3xXs8F1mmr6kmSN#ixzz1BzH6eSgz-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[And what did the White House say about all this? Could it be possible that the Chinese powers are as clueless in "gift-giving" and protocol as is Obama?-
and were we once again duped by our adversaries?] As reported by the LA Times: A spokesman for the Obama White House says any suggestion that it's an insult to play a patriotic Chinese song that refers to American troops as "jackals" in the U.S. president's house is "just flat wrong."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/01/lang-lang-china-my-motherland-hu-obama.html
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The New York Post writes: The song, Lang Lang said afterward, showed world leaders that "our China is formidable, that our Chinese people are united." Though he assured fans he chose the song himself, it's unthinkable he would have performed it without Beijing's explicit approval.
So China has embarrassed Obama abroad
[by sinking the Climate Pact in 2009 while Obama was at the meeting, and unveiling their stealth fighter jet only when our Defense Secretary Gates was visiting China]. This time they came into our house -- literally Obama's home, and metaphorically the seat of American power.
What is most astonishing is that Obama has turned the other cheek so often he's spinning like a top.
[And we are enabling the rise of China, who wants to "control" us, as I was told while visiting there about 12 years ago.]
All good stuff to know about....not widely reported elsewhere and appreciate the insight...Nothing I have read about Obama gives me anything close to "Hope and Change" except for negatives for both expressions !!
ReplyDeleteAnd Detroit is a 'cancer/failure' that will spread across Michigan if our Legislature does not stop it.