TEN REASONS FOR NO SINGLE-PAYER PLAN

TEN REASONS THAT GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE IS WRONG FOR AMERICA - or what will happen if the feds control the delivery system for health care.

1) It would take from us our right to keep our health records private, and to decide for ourselves our own health care.

2) For Americans who happen to be against the government paying for abortions, The Capps Amendment unfortunately requires the establishment of at least one plan covering elective abortions in every federally-subsidized exchange, and it gives the HHS Secretary the authority to include abortion coverage in the public plan. President Obama must not have read the bill, for he continues to deny this provision, saying that it is we who are "bearing false witness". Maybe Obama is just plain prevaricating, or at least parsing the language of the bill, for it says that only the portion of the government money coming from the patient's premium will be used for the abortion. Say what? It is still government money, of course, and would probably cost more than the small premium paid by many.

3) The feds will have the power, via this law, to determine the following things for our MDs, for changes to the plan are permitted from all the new commissions and boards, and the following have already been suggested by those who are developing the plan:

a) the salary they may make (general practitioners would be paid the same as any other specialty, regardless of money and time spent perfecting their expertise), partly because we need more general practitioners, particularly in rural areas (page 127). Page 124 stipulates that there shall be no administrative or judicial review of a payment rate set by the government..
b) just who will be allowed to go to medical school (diversity of gender and race being the primary factor, not intelligence). Since females either practice part time, to a much larger degree, and/or retire early, for instance, the pool of physicians will dwindle.
c) just where in the United States the physician will be paid the most to set up practice
d) through the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, as well as the Health Choices Administration, the actual care the patient may receive as, for instance, in parts of Section 121:
e) government surveillance of doctors' actions via The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology wherein unauthorized private care given will be illegal, punishable by high fines and imprisonment

3) The government rules will force many current physicians to retire early, for they did not become doctors in order to work for the government. It will also, because it contains a provision to further reduce reimbursements to doctors and hospitals for Medicare and Medicaid, cause some doctors and some hospitals to close their doors.

4) It will greatly reduce highly qualified prospects from applying to medical school in the first place, for a doctor’s ability to heal patients without government interference and guidance, and get paid appropriately for doing so while maintaining a capitalistic, private practice will be eliminated. Thus, the medical school students of the future could be chosen from a potentially inferior pool of applicants, endangering our care when we do see a physician.

5) Because of the preceding "rules" from the government and their unintended consequences, there will be fewer doctors and even fewer good doctors to care for us. The Congress, of course, has exempted itself from its’ own wonderful plan. Many more millions of people will be getting insurance, including all the illegal aliens who currently drain our resources with their care and who have not been excluded in this legislation. This will occur at a time when we will have fewer doctors and hospitals to care for them, necessitating rationing..... even if our government were not trying to ration care, which they clearly are. To reduce Medicare reimbursement at the same time that we have an enormously growing number of seniors in America will also necessitate rationing. It is not surprising, then, that under the auspices of the National Health Care Board, it has been suggested that the Board should “approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment”.

6) It will require many thousands more government workers to man the many government boards and panels required to actually oversee all this. Another new entity will be the Health Choices Administration, a independent agency in the Executive Branch of the Government, ruled by a "Commissioner" . This Administration will have many functions, the last one listed being open-ended by describing "such additional functions as may be specified in this division". Yes, read it for yourself on page 42. "Data collection", which may be shared with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, will be expected, to "protect consumers and prevent disparities in health and health care, don't you know (described on page 43). Oh! That’s right! It is this President's plan - more government, fewer private jobs.

7) The government has clearly proven that it cannot run Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid (or even a Capitol Building cafeteria) without bringing them close to or into bankruptcy, and without being riddled with billions of dollars of fraud, misuse and corruption. Perhaps our government should be forced to show it can fix these programs prior to taking over another 17% of our economy. The President himself has just recently pointed out that the U S Post Office does a terrible job! How good of him to point this out. Exactly, Mr. President!

8) It just plain costs too much, and will bankrupt our country, which should never try to "afford" it. Taking money from the very richest of us cannot fund this program and its' government bureaucracy. Well - of course - we can just make ALL Americans work for the government, the liberal left's dream (inch by inch - one law at a time). If single-payer legislation is passed, it will have opened the door to the next planned government take-over, and once passed, this legislation will be almost impossible to rescind. Think Cap-and-Trade.....

9) It is in direct conflict with Capitalism, which has made America the most successful country in the world with the best health care as well, for capitalism rewards hard work and inventiveness, entrepreneurship and intelligence. It is no accident that since the last election the American city with the least unemployment is Washington, DC, for this President's hope is full employment via government jobs. When the results of the few are redistributed to those who did nothing to receive them, the few will begin to work less hard, or to quit working altogether. It's the law of civilization, proven time and again through the ages......the law of risk and reward, the law of common sense, and the law of unintended consequences.

10) What this government should be doing is what anyone would support: finding a way to insure or care for those 12 million or so who cannot insure themselves - and leaving the rest of us alone! I say 12 million, for this number removes the millions of illegal immigrants, those who are only temporarily uninsured, those who are eligible for and have not signed up for S-Chip and Medicaid, and those who turn down employer offered insurance (choosing instead to spend their money on other things such as travel, big screen televisions, cell phones, or a new car, perhaps). Of course, when any of these people get sick or injured, they know they can't be turned down for care in any hospital. Guess who pays for these people's care? Perhaps "insurance" should not be the goal at all. Instead, being cared for when sick should be and currently is the standard. Our government should be the insurer of last resort – not the first.

A few sensible laws could reform the current insurance programs, and have been suggested by some conservatives in Congress: allow small businesses to band together to gain insurance as a group for their employees; allow insurance policies to be sold across state lines, thus increasing competition; allow some to purchase only catastrophic, high-deductible insurance while they pay for their everyday health care needs out of pocket; encourage Health Savings Accounts, carrying tax advantages, for the payment of individual insurance and doctor’s visits; equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits; disallow insurance companies from dropping insurance on sick patients; force insurance companies to cover those with preexisting conditions, even though that coverage may cost more (perhaps offering a government tax credit for the extra premium amount); and enact tort reform to end the devastating lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These initiatives would solve some of our problems without dismantling our valued Free Market System.

Remember this quote from Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take from you everything you have".

Sticking His Neck Out To Inform Us

Just sticking his neck out to inform us!

MD’s opinion of Obama Care; keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner at The Capitol Building in Washington last Friday (7/17)

Dr. Dave Janda
To The Point
Thursday, 23 July 2009

As a physician who has authored books on preventative health care, I was given the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner at The Capitol Building in Washington last Friday (7/17).

The presentation was entitled Health Care Reform, The Power & Profit of Prevention, and I was gratified that it was well received.

In preparation for the presentation, I read the latest version of “reform” as authored by The Obama Administration and supported by Speaker Pelosi and
Senator Reid. Here is the link to the 1,018 page document:
http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Let me summarize just a few salient points of the above plan. First, however, it should be clear that the same warning notice must be placed on The ObamaCare Plan as on a pack of cigarettes: Consuming this product will be hazardous to your health.

The underlying method of cutting costs throughout the plan is based on rationing and denying care. There is no focus on preventing health care need whatever. The plan’s method is the most inhumane and unethical approach to cutting costs I can imagine as a physician.

The rationing of care is implemented through The National Health Care Board, according to the plan. This illustrious Board “will approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment.”

Translation…..if you are over 65 or have been recently diagnosed as having an advanced form of cardiac disease or aggressive cancer…..dream on if you think you will get treated…..pick out your coffin.

Oh, you say this could never happen? Sorry…. this is the same model they use in Britain.

The plan mandates that there will be little or no advanced treatments to be available in the future. It creates The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research, the purpose of which is “to slow the development of new medications and technologies in order to reduce costs.” Yes, this is to be the law.

The plan also outlines that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology.

This ” coordinator” will “monitor treatments being delivered to make sure doctors and hospitals are strictly following government guidelines that are deemed appropriate.” It goes on to say…..”Doctors and hospitals not adhering to guidelines will face penalties.”

According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment.

So according to The ObamaCare Plan….if your doctor saves your life you might have to go to the prison to see your doctor for follow -up appointments. I believe this is the same model Stalin used in the former Soviet Union.

Section 102 has the Orwellian title, “Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage.” What this section really mandates is that it is illegal to keep your private insurance if your status changes – e.g., if yo u lose or change your job, retire from your job and become a senior, graduate from college and get your first job. Yes, illegal.

When Mr. Obama hosted a conference call with bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible, a blogger from Maine referenced an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private
insurance.

He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” Mr. Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”

Then there is Section 1233 of The ObamaCare Plan, devoted to “Advanced Care Planning.” After each American turns 65 years of age they have to go to a mandated counseling program that is designed to end life sooner.

This session is to occur every 5 years unless the person has developed a chronic illness then it must be done every year. The topics in this session will include, “how to decline hydration, nutrition and how to initiate hospice care.” It is no wonder The Obama Administration does not like my emphasis on Prevention. For Mr. Obama, prevention is the “enemy” as people would live longer.

I rest my case. The ObamaCare Plan is hazardous to the health of every American.

After I finished my Capitol Hill presentation, I was asked by a Congressman in the question-answer session: “I’ll be doing a number of network interviews on the Obama Health Care Plan. If I am asked what is the one
word to describe the plan what should I answer.”

The answer is simple, honest, direct, analytical, sad but truthful. I told him that one word is FASCIST.

Then I added, “I hope you’ll have the courage to use that word, Congressman. No other word is more appropriate.”

Dr. Dave Janda, MD, is an orthopedic surgeon, and a world-recognized expert on the prevention of sports injuries, particularly in children. His website is noinjury.com

Riding the Wave of "Change"

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the provision [for "death panels' in the Obama health care plan] had been dropped from consideration because it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly. Said Newt Gingrich: "You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards," Gingrich said Sunday on the ABC's "This Week."
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How's this for hypocritical? The following is a statement by none other than Nancy Pelosi, encouraging those "protesters" who were against "Bush's" war in Iraq:
January 17, 2006: "So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view. All of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important." My how times change....
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VALLEJO, Calif. -- Wall Street Journal: A health clinic in this blue-collar city north of Oakland, partly funded by the county, is saving local hospitals thousands of dollars in emergency-room visits by treating uninsured patients who suffer only non-urgent ailments. A watchdog group is now calling on county officials to cut funding for clinic patients who can't prove they are in the U.S. legally, a debate certain to surface in the national health-care overhaul.
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Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake, and writes: Yes, I do realize that health-care costs can be prohibitive for many people, myself included, but that doesn't mean I have to choose to bankrupt our country -- or overthrow its foundational principles -- in order to solve the problem, does it? There is no money for the program, and there is no constitutional provision for it.

Besides, I -- along with many of my fellow citizens -- believe that the reason health care is so expensive in the first place is because of burdensome government rules and regulations that force doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to waste huge amounts of time, energy and money. So getting the government more involved is definitely not my preferred option.
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Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say.

“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.” Terrific, I say!

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Philip Elliott of AP: WASHINGTON – Apparently ready to abandon the idea, President Barack Obama's health secretary said Sunday a government alternative to private health insurance is "not the essential element" of the administration's health care overhaul.

The White House indicated it could jettison the contentious public option and settle on insurance cooperatives as an acceptable alternative, a move embraced by some Republicans lawmakers who have strongly opposed the administration's approach so far.

As proposed by Conrad, the co-ops would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. They would have to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims.

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A Washington Times editorial: Obama's Mad Science Advisors: When it comes to having past views that should frighten every American citizen, Ezekiel Emanuel (see above editorial) has nothing on the president's ''chief science adviser, John P. Holdren. (Snip) The question naturally arises why President Obama chooses to surround himself with extremists like Mr. Holdren or Dr. Emanuel. No matter how much they claim their views have ''evolved,'' health and science under Obamacare would be a frightening prospect with people like this advising the President.

Earlier this month, Mr. Holdren served as co-chairman when the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology met for the first time. It's a disgrace that Mr. Holdren is even on the council. In "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," a book he co-authored in 1977 with noted doomsayers Paul R. and Anne H. Erlich, Mr. Holdren wrote: "Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

In case compulsory abortion wasn't enough to diffuse his imaginary population bomb, Mr. Holdren and the Erlichs considered other extremist measures. "A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men," they wrote. "The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control."

It gets worse. The Holdren-Erlich book also promotes "Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods." After noting that, well, yes, there were "very difficult political, legal and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems," Mr. Holdren and his co-authors express hope that their idea may still be viable. "To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements," they wrote. "It must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets or livestock."

Most Americans can be forgiven for thinking that mass sterilization through drinking water is never acceptable and that someone who supported such horrors should have no place on a prestigious White House council. The question naturally arises why President Obama chooses to surround himself with extremists like Mr. Holdren or Dr. Emanuel. No matter how much they claim their views have "evolved," health and science under Obamacare would be a frightening prospect with people like this advising the president.

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After a weekend of relatively tame town halls President Obama found one vocal skeptic in a college student who challenged the President to an Oxford debate over the public option at his Grand Junction, Colo., town hall this evening.

Zach Lahn, a 23-year-old student at the University of Colorado got the President’s attention after shouting out during the Q and A a few times. The President finally called on him during the end of the town hall.

“I just want proof here that I'm happy to get a good debate going,” [well, if it only lasts for 3 minutes, of course] the President said, knowing that he could be wading into harsher waters than he is used to.

“I'd love to have a debate, just all out, anytime, Oxford-style, if you'd like,” Lahn said to President Obama and then proceeded on with his question. “How in the world can a private corporation providing insurance compete with an entity that does not have to worry about making a profit, does not have to pay local property taxes -- they do not have to -- they're not subject to local regulations? How can a company compete with that?”

Lahn said he didn’t want any generalities, or philosophical arguments from the President as a response.

Obama praised his young challenger and said this is a legitimate debate to have.

“It's good to see a young person who's very engaged and confident challenging the President to a Oxford-style debate, I think this is good," he said. "You know, this is good. You know, I like that. You got to have a little chutzpah, you know.” [If this is so good, perhaps the President should set aside some time to do it, instead of setting time aside for, perhaps, being interviewed by an 11 year old (which he's already done).... And just perhaps, the debate should disallow telepromters . So far, no debate has been offered for, in my view, it would tend to highlight just how little Obama understands about health care, insurance companies, and our Constitution.}

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MARIETTA - Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson's office has gotten 10,000 calls just in the last week on the president's health care reform proposals, and 9,000 of those oppose the plans, Isakson said.
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Marc Ambinder: An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "misspoke" when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option "is not an essential part" of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president's view, the most important element of the reform package. A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to reduce costs and promote competition among insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill.
The perception that the White House had backed away from the public plan has roiled many prominent Democrats, who took to their blogs, and to Twitter, to protest. [Our work is not yet done!]
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"The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House Web site. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list, again, all e-mails come from the White House Web site as we have no interest in e-mailing anyone who does not want to receive an e-mail," the statement said. "If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the e-mail, we hope they were not too inconvenienced." One possible reason for the confusion is that advocacy groups, when dealing with online petitions, are sending in their membership lists whenever they make contact with the White House - the e-mail addresses affiliated with those members could then become embedded in the White House distribution list. The White House indicated its Web site managers are going to seek out and block online petitions so that people can only sign up for information individually.
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