Baron Hill Forum

Our illustrious Representative is finally scheduling a formal public event and evidently a second invitation event. I am not exactly sure if this second event is open to everyone or invitation only, but the following letter was received last week.



Tonight is the open town hall at IUS and this is an opportunity for our voices to be heard related to the disastrous healthcare bill that he voted to get out of committee.

Maybe he’ll be prepared to answer some of the tougher questions at this meeting but I'd be willing to bet, the democratic machine will have the audience stacked in his favor.

The Obama World

Here is a perfect example of what an Obama healthcare system and his radical agenda will mean to everyday citizens.

http://aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

Brace yourself citizens. You’ve had ample warning and there is still time to put an end to this!!

Letter to Editor

Frustrations are mounting by many people since our Representative Baron Hill has wasted nearly all of the august recess before he finally decided to have some meetings. The delays has caused many people to submit letters to the local media in an effort to be heard.

With permission from the author, I am posting one of these letters to the editor that has been submitted to all of the local newspapers. But since we have no way of knowing if it will be published, we are at least going to give it some exposure here.

Town Halls and Public Discourse

I have watched with interest the many news clips from town halls across the United States. Sometimes they show the best side of public discourse. Sometimes they show the worst as both angry citizens and elected officials simply resort to name-calling. Our local Congressman, Baron Hill, has decided not to engage in any public forums during the recess and simply dismisses these angry citizens as “political terrorists.” I believe Baron Hill’s decision to avoid his constituents, with or without the ridiculous slander he used to rationalize it, to be the worst response of all.

As Thomas Jefferson said: “When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.” I am 44 years old and, as Congressman Hill knows, have never even called my Congressman about anything until the past month. Not surprisingly, I am not alone in my sudden interest to express an opinion to my Congressman. Emails and calls, however, only generate form responses and polite conversations with uninformed staff. Regardless of his ultimate opinion on the healthcare debate, he owes it to his constituents to stand amongst us, state his opinions and answer questions. That, at a minimum, is his job.
Newspapers are supposed to be the advocates of free speech and public debate. It is past time for the newspapers in this District to call on Congressman Hill to debate publicly this important issue. After all, as Jefferson also said, “truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict.”

Rodney Scott

The VA Mistake

Here is another perfect example of one of the government run programs in health care. 1,200 Gulf War Veterans Wrongly Told They Have ALS - Local News News Articles National News US News - FOXNews.com

How many disastrous examples do people need to understand the Government cannot run anything more efficiently than the private sector? Yes, coding mistakes happen, but not usually on a scale quite like this.

Hopefully they didn’t send these 1200 vets the end of life workbook to go through with their families.

Why are the malpractice attorneys not suing for wrongful diagnosis and pain and emotional suffering. Could it be because you cannot sue the VA system?

Tactics of the "Left"

Andrew Breitbart has it right in this op-ed. The tactics of the “left” could never be highlighted as clearly as he does in this piece. Anyone reading the comments on the blogs also has seen this very clearly. What is so ironic is these same so called "intellectuals" or "progressives" are always claimng to be more "tolerant" than those on the consevative side. But reality is completely different. Maybe it is something they're smoking!

BREITBART: George W. Bush-by-proxy syndrome - Washington Times

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn't do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don't do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.

Next were the Mormons.

Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.

Next, tax-day "tea party" attendees were "tea bagged."

Then there was a beauty contestant.

And a Cambridge cop, too.

And now we have town-hall "mobs."

Smile ... you've been "community organized."

When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.

This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.

The origins of manufactured "politics of personal destruction" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based "progressive" street agitator titled, "There Is Only the Fight."

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, "Rules for Radicals." In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

With the complicity of the mainstream media and abetted by George Soros' money and netroots nation, Mr. Bush never stood a chance.

But the more the virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective.

In fact, one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best.

Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim.

A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.

Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.

Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules - or double down on the old ones.

Worse yet, as his approval ratings descend rapidly - Rasmussen has him at 47 percent, the lowest of his presidency - angry citizens may be turning the tables on him, using Mr. Alinsky against him.

They won't have to "freeze" and "personalize" him either. He's got 3 1/2 years left with the klieg lights focused on him. And if Mr. Obama can't get the economy rolling and continues to demonize everyday folks for his failures, he will be further isolated from sympathy and even ridiculed.

Yes, it's cruel - and effective.

Ask Mr. Bush, the magnanimous guy who gave the new president a heartfelt hug the day he took office. He knows.

Boy, I wish I could see his famous smirk right about now. I always loved how much they hated that.

• Andrew Breitbart is publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. His latest endeavor, Big Hollywood (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com), is a group blog on Hollywood and politics from the center-right perspective.

More Obama Falsehoods

Obama’s recent townhall meeting was more of the same. Falsehoods, lies and misleading statements all while using the same straw man fallacy by stating it is this radical change or keeping the same system which isn’t sustainable. Here is a partial list from the “Morning Bell”

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter.” This is directly contradicted by candidate Barack Obama’s own website which quotes Obama at a rally in Ames, Iowa form 2008: “If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system. … So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system.” So there you have in one paragraph the true purpose of Obama’s public option: a vehicle to slowly transition all Americans out of private coverage and into a government-run single payer health care system. This Trojan Horse view of the public option has been reaffirmed by Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

“Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” This statement is also plainly false. Again, as demonstrated above, the true purpose of Obama’s public option is to move Americans out of their private coverage and into government run health care. Independent, non-partisan analysis from the Lewin Group has confirmed the House bill, H.R. 3200, will do exactly that: About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

“That’s what the health exchange is all about, is that you — just like a member of Congress — can go and choose the plan that’s right for you.” This statement isn’t false, but it is misleading. Members of Congress do purchase their health care through a health exchange: the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Through the FEHBP 283 private plans compete for federal employees’ health care dollars. The Heritage Foundation has long been a supporter of health reform that empowers consumers to utilize a FEHBP like system. But Obamacare is nothing like the FEHBP system. There is no government run public option competing with private plans in the FEHBP. So whenever Obama says that a health exchange already “drives down costs” he is right … but remember that this cost reduction is achieved purely by private health coverage without any “competition” from a government run public option.

“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” This is just plain false. The AARP released a statement late yesterday directly contradicting the President: “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

“I just want to be clear, again: Seniors who are listening here, this does not affect your benefits. This is not money going to you to pay for your benefits; this is money that is subsidizing folks who don’t need it.” Under the current system, more and more seniors are discovering that it is becoming harder and harder to find and keep doctors who will accept Medicare patients. A 2008 survey found that 29% of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them. Obamacare will only make this problem worse by cutting $313 billion in Medicare reimbursements to health care providers over the next 10 years. This will only force more doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. Obama also mentioned yesterday that he wants to pay for subsidized health care by killing the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage plans cover all of the traditional Medicare benefits and much more, including coor­dinated care and care-management programs for enrollees with chronic conditions as well as additional hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays. 22% of all Medicare patients, which translates to 10.5 million seniors, are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans.

“I said I won’t sign a bill that adds to the deficit or the national debt. Okay? So this will have to be paid for.” That is a nice promise, but so was Obama’s October 2008 promise that he would enact a “net spending cut.” We all know how that has turned out. The reality is that the Senate still has not figured out how to pay for their bill and the House bill would increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over the next ten years. CBO director Doug Elmendorf has said: “In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.”

“My belief is, is that [Obamacare] should not burden people who make $250,000 a year or less.” Both the House and Senate bills partially pay for Obamacare by imposing “employer mandates” or “pay or play” provisions that require employers to pay higher taxes if (a) they do not offer health insurance, or (b) they offer it but have employees who decline it and instead use the government system. Multiple studies have shown that such provisions cause both lower wages and lost jobs for low-income workers.

The Obama Commandments

The Patriot Update has given us the following: “The Ten Commandments According to Obama” - A Free Press for the Conservative Revolution


After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of “Ten Commandments.” They’re certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.

I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you've been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

The moral decline of society is accelerating at a rapid pace under the Obama and Democratic leadership. But then, who is surprised

An Alternate Plan from Whole foods

In a recent WSJ op-ed, there is a very sensible solution to fixing some of the problems with our healthcare system without the radical takeover by Obama and the Democrats.

The approach here is very sensible and would fix many of the problems regarding the expense of the system.

Although wiser lifestyle choices would go a long way in reducing medical costs and improving the health individuals, there is still a genetic component to many diseases that even excellent lifestyles cannot overcome.

Otherwise, this is a wonderful article.

John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare - WSJ.com

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America
Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Bus tour

There will be an organized bus tour of 4 cities in the Southern Indiana area on Wednesday and that will be focusing on the HealthCare bill now being considered.

The tour ends in Jeffersonville, so come out and become better informed.

The Obama Advisors

In this op-ed piece we see more of the Obama agenda as his appointments and key figures advising him are scrutinized a little closer.

Rationing of care and poorer quality of care is what lies ahead if we follow the Obama plan.

DEADLY DOCTORS - New York Post

July 24, 2009

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president's budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors' lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they're "associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it "debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you'll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist "embedded clinical decision support" -- a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Americans need to know what the president's health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians' offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms" (JAMA, June 18, 2008).
No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Do we want a "reform" that empowers people like this to decide for us?

Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infec tion Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor.

Wasteful spending

Two reports unveiled recently, that were mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, were supposed to help HHS implement a strategic framework for effectively implementing and coordinating comparative effectiveness research (CER) across federal agencies.

The act provided $1.1 billion and the National Institutes of Health and HHS received $400 million each, and the Agency for Healthcare Research Quality received $300 million.

This may outline what might be the government's preliminary plans for comparative effectiveness research (CER).

In one report, the Institute of Medicine recommended 100 government research priorities for comparing the effectiveness of drugs, surgical procedures, medical devices and other approaches such as exercise.

In another, the Federal Coordinating Council for CER recommended that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) focus funding efforts on data infrastructure such as linking current data sources to enable answering CER questions. The council report also identifies six interventions that must be addressed through CER, including medical and assistive devices, procedures and surgery, diagnostic testing, behavioral changes, delivery system strategies and prevention.

What is sad is that with 1.1 billion dollars, you could have bought a private insurance policy for every one of the 40 million people without insurance and solved the problem without rationing care which is exactly where the Obama/democratic plan is heading.

The Obama Democrats

Here is a recirculated joke that is very characteristic of our current dilemma.

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him,

"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Republican."

“I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

Ongoing Historical Mistakes (lies)

Even though the media and left wingers will not hold him accountable, at least there are a few who still do.


In this recent article Our Historically Challenged President by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online, Hanson points out just a few of the many historical errors Obama has already made in his speeches. "The one" continues in his smooth talking rhetoric while the media just gives him a pass.


By Victor Davis Hanson

In his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a “student of history.” But despite Barack Obama’s image as an Ivy League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation.

This first became apparent during the presidential campaign. Candidate Obama proclaimed then that during World War II his great-uncle had helped liberate Auschwitz, and that his grandfather knew fellow American troops that had entered Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Both are impossible. The Americans didn’t free either Nazi death camp. (Regarding Obama’s great uncle’s war experience, the Obama team later said he’d meant the camp at Buchenwald.)

Much of what Obama said to thousands of Germans during his Victory Column speech in Berlin last summer was also ahistorical. He began, “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.” He apparently forgot that for the prior eight years, the official faces of American foreign policy in Germany were Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — both African-Americans.

In the same speech, Obama seemed to suggest that the world had come to together to save Berlin during the Airlift. In fact, it was almost an entirely American and British effort — written off by most observers as hopeless and joined by a handful of Western allies only when the lift looked like it might succeed.

In the recent Cairo speech, Obama’s historical allusions were even more suspect. Almost every one of his references was either misleading or incomplete. He suggested that today’s Middle East tension was fed by the legacy of European colonialism and the Cold War that had reduced nations to proxies.

But the great colonizers of the Middle East were the Ottoman Muslims, who for centuries ruled with an iron fist. The 20th-century movements of Baathism, Pan-Arabism, and Nasserism — largely homegrown totalitarian ideologies — did far more damage over the last half-century to the Middle East than did the legacy of European colonialism.

Obama also claimed that “Islam . . . carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” While medieval Islamic culture was impressive and ensured the survival of a few classical texts — often through the agency of Arabic-speaking Christians — it had little to do with the European rediscovery of classical Greek and Latin values. Europeans, Chinese, and Hindus, not Muslims, invented most of the breakthroughs Obama credited to Islamic innovation.

Much of the Renaissance, in fact, was more predicated on the centuries-long flight of Greek-speaking Byzantine scholars from Constantinople to Western Europe to escape the aggression of Islamic Turks. Many romantic thinkers of the Enlightenment sought to extend freedom to oppressed subjects of Muslim fundamentalist rule in eastern and southern Europe.

Obama also insisted that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition.” Yet the Spanish Inquisition began in 1478; by then Cordoba had long been re-conquered by Spanish Christians, and was governed as a staunchly Christian city.

In reference to Iraq, President Obama promised that “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” Is he unaware that the United States imposed democracies after World War II?

After the defeat of German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism, Americans — by force — insisted that these nations adopt democratic governments, for both their own sakes and the world’s. Indeed, it is hard to think of too many democratic governments that did not emerge from violence — including our own.

Obama also stated: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.”

With all due respect to our president, this assertion is again not fully accurate. The only thing that ended slavery in the United States was the Civil War, which saw some 600,000 Americans — the vast majority of them white — lost in a violent struggle to ensure that nearly half the country would not remain a slave-owning society. Also, the massive urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s were certainly violent.

This list of distortions could be easily expanded. President Obama, in elegant fashion, may casually invoke the means of politically correct history for the higher ends of contemporary reconciliation. But it is a bad habit. Eloquence and good intentions exempt no one from the truth of the past — President Obama included.


But Victor, he looks good and is so likeable!!

Letter to President on Reform

Most have heard through the media that many health care entities met with Obama and committed to lower health care costs. The following is a part of the letter they sent to the Obama administration. A lot of rhetoric, but no details!

To achieve all of these goals, we have joined together in an unprecedented effort, as private sector stakeholders—physicians, hospitals, other health care workers, payors, suppliers, manufacturers, and organized labor—to offer concrete initiatives that will transform the health care system. As restructuring takes hold and the population's health improves over the coming decade, we will do our part to achieve your Administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate—saving $2 trillion or more.


This represents more than a 20% reduction in the projected rate of growth. We believe this approach can be highly successful and can help the nation to achieve the reform goals we all share.

To respond to this challenge, we are developing consensus proposals to reduce the rate of increase in future health and insurance costs through changes made in all sectors of the health care system. We are committed to taking action in public-private partnership to create a more stable and sustainable health care system that will achieve billions in savings through:

· Implementing proposals in all sectors of the health care system, focusing on administrative simplification, standardization, and transparency that supports effective markets;

· Reducing over-use and under-use of health care by aligning quality and efficiency incentives among providers across the continuum of care so that physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers are encouraged and enabled to work together towards the highest standards of quality and efficiency;

· Encouraging coordinated care, both in the public and private sectors, and adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies that reduce hospitalization, manage chronic disease more efficiently and effectively, and implement proven clinical prevention strategies; and,

· Reducing the cost of doing business by addressing cost drivers in each sector and through common sense improvements in care delivery models, health information technology, workforce deployment and development, and regulatory reforms.

These and other reforms will make our health care system stronger and more sustainable. However, there are many important factors driving health care costs that are beyond the control of the delivery system alone. Billions in savings can be achieved through a large-scale national effort of health promotion and disease prevention to reduce the prevalence of chronic disease and poor health status, which leads to unnecessary sickness and higher health costs. Reform should include a specific focus on obesity prevention commensurate with the scale of the problem. These initiatives are crucial to transform health care in America and to achieve our goal of reducing the rate of growth in health costs.

We, as stakeholder representatives, are committed to doing our part to make reform a reality in order to make the system more affordable and effective for patients and purchasers. We stand ready to work with you to accomplish this goal.


As you can see, even in this letter, there are a lot of ideas but once again very limited details on what the plans and implementation really mean. There is no consensus thus far, and what Obama and his liberal colleagues have proposed is no where close to building consensus.

Rising Costs of Drugs

In a recent report from HealthDay News, they reported on more Medicare Part D plans using specialty tiering for the newer drugs that treat rheumatoid arthritis and stated it may impose an intolerable financial burden on poor and disabled beneficiaries and the Medicare system itself.

This is just the beginning of what will occur if universal healthcare with the Obama plan goes forward.

This study followed 14,929 low-income rheumatoid arthritis patients who were enrolled in the Medicare Replacement Drug Demonstration and whom 81 percent were enrolled in Medicare Part D, and compared the cost-sharing provisions for the drugs vs. stand-alone plans.

Although the researchers found that Medicare Advantage plans had lower deductibles and premiums, and fewer restrictions on prior authorization, step therapy, and quantity limit than the stand-alone plans, they found that about 75 percent of all plans used coinsurance as the preferred form of cost sharing. In all of their cost-sharing scenarios, they estimated that out-of-pocket expenses for patients were higher than $4,000 per year.

The study showed that patients assume up to 28 percent and Medicare assumes more than 58 percent of the costs of these drugs and neither is in a position to sustain such financial burden. This ultimately means that high cost drugs such as these would not be covered by a universal health plan and the cost is too great.

Hasn't worked in Tennessee

The National Center for Policy Analysis is wondering why more people don’t look at what happened in Tennessee when they tried to have the state manage their healthcare.

In 1993, Tennessee received a Medicaid waiver that allowed the state to leave Medicaid but use the same federal funds for its own managed care plan. Their plan pulled in nearly 800,000 Medicaid recipients and 300,000 more deemed uninsured or uninsurable.

It was originally set up as a budget measure and just like Obama; they promised more care for less money.

The results of the Tennessee program:

***By 1998, enrollment had grown by 100,000, as employers moved employees into the TennCare system.

***In 1999, a review by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers found that TennCare paid health care providers 10 percent below what would be considered actuarially sound, most hospitals had between 10 and 14 percent of their care delivered as charity care, indigent care or nonreimbursed care and the state's hospitals were being paid about 40 cents on the dollar for TennCare patients, which eventually rose to 64 cents on the dollar.

***Also in 1999, a state audit showed Tennessee was spending $6 million to insure 14,000 dead people, that 16,500 enrollees lived outside the state and that 20 percent were not eligible for the program.

Now, their current governor Phil Bredesen (D) has tried to fix it by limiting prescriptions to five per person per month and limiting the number of doctor visits and days in the hospital. When this didn’t work, by November 2004, he scaled the program down even further with the hope of realizing savings. (Sounds a lot like rationing to me)

Bredesen has called Obamacare the "mother of all unfunded mandates."

Hopefully, the four Blue Dog Democrats from Tennessee, congressmen Bart Gordon, Jim Cooper, Lincoln Davis, and John Tanner, who have already expressed skepticism about the Obama health plan, will speak up about the disastrous system and the rationing of care they have experienced in Tennessee.

More on this can be found from Fred Lucas in the Weekly Standard, August 3, 2009.

Novel cure for constipation

If you are bothered by occasional or frequent constipation, look in the mirror and repeat the following phrase three times in succession when symptoms occur:

My present and future financial and personal well being are totally in the hands of…

OBAMA

BIDEN

REID

PELOSI

GEITHNER

EMMANUEL

DODD

FRANK

If this doesn't scare the crap out of you, then you are probably destined to be backed up for the rest of your life.

You may also need to see a doctor and with the new Obama plan, you may get an appointment sometime next year

Small victory on Medicare physician payments

A recent change announced may become a major victory for organized medicine, but I have my doubts with Obama in office. It certainly won't happen if he gets Obamacare passed.

It was announced that the cost of physician-administered drugs will be removed from Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR) calculations retroactive to the 1996 base year. The announcement came as part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid's release of its 2010 Medicare physician payment proposed rule and is a move which the AMA has been calling for since 2002.

This current action will help avert many of the payment cuts that have been forecast because of the SGR and substantially reduces the cost the Congressional Budget Office would assign to legislative proposals to permanently repeal the SGR. The AMA is very happy with the action and notes that it paves the way for Congress to ensure stable Medicare physician payment rates that reflect increasing practice costs and preserve seniors' access to care.

Strengthening Medicare has to be part of Healthcare reform or it will fail.

HealthCare reform pitfalls

“If we don’t get it done this year, we’re not going to get it done,” President Barack Obama said of healthcare reform

Obama certainly wants to fast-track his radical healthcare reform before the year ends and his comment is indicative of this. This is his continual straw man fallacy he continues to use on Americans.

Certainly, it will be easier to do when you share no details and the media just blindly follows without much questioning.

But based on a recent Modern Healthcare article, there are at least five big stumbling blocks.

1. Avoiding detours
The not-a-minute-to-wait timetable for congressional action this summer leaves little room for detours or distractions. While Obama wants the House and Senate to pass a health care bill by their August break, for instance, he also has set that as a deadline for the Senate to confirm Sotomayor to the high court.

The debate over her confirmation not only will consume some time but also could strain the bipartisan comity he hopes to forge on health care. And North Korea's nuclear test last week underscored how a foreign policy crisis can command instant attention.

Congress rarely acts so quickly on major legislation, but policymakers call the compressed schedule critical if the bill is to pass during Obama's first term. The Senate health committee is slated to hold its first public session on a bill in two weeks.

"If you don't have it this year, you won't have it for four years," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, warned in an interview. He noted that 2010 was a congressional election year and by 2011 the next presidential campaign would be underway, when politicians might be reluctant to cast tough votes.

"If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama said Thursday in a conference call aimed at rallying his supporters on the issue.

2. Defining roles

There is considerable agreement that the best path to universal coverage is for the government to require Americans to buy health insurance, just as drivers have to buy car insurance. A sliding scale of subsidies would help those who would have trouble affording premiums.

The biggest ideological debate is whether the insurance options Americans could consider should include a public, government-run plan that would compete with those offered by private insurance companies.

Include a public plan or there's no deal, some liberal Democrats say. "The public option is a compromise by many Democrats who would like to have a single-payer system," says Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of one of three House committees with jurisdiction over the health care legislation. The California Democrat says the House bill will include a public option, arguing it would create a "healthy tension" to keep costs down and protect consumers' interests.

Kennedy said last week that his proposal also would include a public option, though Baucus has been trying to find some middle ground. On Saturday, the two senators issued a joint statement promising their committees would have "similar and complementary legislation."

The quandary: Include a public plan and there's no deal, some Republicans and industry leaders say. They say a government plan's reach would enable it to crush private competitors, creating a back-door path to a government-run health care system like those in Canada and Britain.

"Any activity in which I participate in which the referee and the player are the same person and I'm on the opposing team, I'm going to lose," says Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

Both sides are floating compromises. Karen Ignagni, who heads the leading association of health insurance companies, suggests federal regulation of insurance markets nationwide, replacing a patchwork of state regulations and addressing some of the concerns of those who back a public option.

Meanwhile, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., proposes that any government-run plan be required to comply with all the rules that apply to private ones, including a requirement that it be self-sustaining and establish a reserve fund. That would be an effort to level the playing field.

3. Paying the price

It won't be cheap.

Kenneth Thorpe, a health care analyst in the Clinton administration and now a professor at Emory University, estimates the cost of expanded coverage at $1.3 trillion to $1.8 trillion over 10 years. Under congressional rules, the legislation can't increase the deficit. That means other spending has to be cut or taxes raised to offset its costs within 11 years.

Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, has estimated that up to $700 billion over 10 years could be saved by making the health care system work better — eliminating duplicative treatments, changing the ground rules for how doctors and hospitals are reimbursed and moving to more electronic record-keeping. While past promises of savings often have proved elusive, Orszag, Baucus and others say they are possible and an essential first step.

One problem is that the task of implementing new policies and systems would require significant spending at the beginning with savings projected only down the road. Advocates have been working for months with the CBO, which calculates how much a proposal costs.

When it comes to raising money, all the options being floated are controversial, from taxing soft drinks to imposing a national sales tax. Senators from both parties balked when Obama proposed limiting the amount Americans could claim for charitable and other tax deductions as a way to boost revenue and help pay for health care reform.

Baucus has suggested curbing the tax break companies get for providing health insurance to their workers, a step that would increase taxes for those who have the most expensive plans.
However, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said last month there was "no way" he'd support that. He and other critics worry that taxing health benefits would discourage employers from providing coverage. He didn't suggest another way to raise the money.

Finding the money is particularly tricky at a time the recession has reduced tax revenues and the budget deficit is projected to soar to an unprecedented $1.8 trillion this year.
"It's a game of dominoes," says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, which has been pushing for expanded coverage since the Clinton effort. "If you don't get the financing, you don't get the mandate. If you don't get the mandate, you don't get the subsidies. And if you don't get the subsidies, you don't get health insurance reform."

4. Writing the rules

Passing a bill is likely to be easier in the Democrat-controlled House than the Senate. Senate rules enable Republicans to threaten a filibuster and force supporters to round up 60 votes to move forward.

That would leave Democrats with no wiggle room. Since Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter switched from the GOP, Democrats count 59 senators. Al Franken would become the 60th if he wins the pending court case over Minnesota's Senate contest.

Just in case, Democrats have put in place rules that would allow parts of the proposal to be included in a process called reconciliation — a procedure that can't be filibustered and requires a simple majority to pass.

That prospect enrages some Republicans, who argue such an important issue shouldn't be enacted on a shortcut that limits debate, though Democrats note a GOP majority used reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts in 2001.

The issue sounds arcane, but Republicans warn that if Democrats use reconciliation, nearly every GOP senator would vote against the plan. "This is too big for political gamesmanship," says Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a member of the Senate health committee. "The partisan part of me says, 'Oh, I hope they do that; they'll have to live with every stinking problem that comes up' " in a system passed without significant GOP support.

5. Testing the coalition

Making specific policy choices will test the coalition that has been built around the general idea of revamping health care.

Fifteen years ago, vociferous objections from insurance companies, drug manufacturers, business owners and others helped defeat the Clinton plan, epitomized by the "Harry and Louise" ads sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America that warned of the perils of change.

So Obama called it a "watershed event" last month when he was joined at the White House by lobbyists representing many of those groups as they promised to curb the growth in costs over the next decade and said change was essential. An odd-couple's group including the National Federation of Independent Business, the American Hospital Association and Families USA have sponsored the new "Harry and Louise" ad that showed the same actors, older now, discussing the need to fix health care.

Many in the industry have concluded that some sort of bill is likely to pass, and they want to be part of the discussion to protect their interests. Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals now and a mastermind of the original Harry and Louise ads, says the leaders of trade associations and other groups reason, "Something's going to happen here and they've got to be involved."

The pharmaceutical industry is most concerned about avoiding government price controls on drugs, the insurance industry about competition from a public Medicare-style plan.

The question: Will the groups splinter when the most difficult trade-offs are decided?

Those trade-offs could be disquieting consumers, too. An effort to squeeze out savings by eliminating duplicative tests could make it harder for some patients to be reimbursed for a test they want. Capping the deductibility of insurance premiums would raise the tax bill for those with the priciest plans.

The debate last time demonstrated how quickly public support can evaporate if concerns are pressed about government "rationing" of health care, or limits on patients' ability to choose their own doctors and hospitals. In January 1994, the Clinton reform plan was supported by 56%-38% in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. After six months of debate, that majority support had turned around to majority opposition, with 55%-40% opposed.

"There are lots of moving parts here, and everything is on the table," Baucus says. "One challenge is education, getting people up to speed, and the other is keeping everybody together, talking together, working together. Now the rubber is going to start meeting the road. We're going to have to start making choices."

More exagerations

President Obama as well as many other Democrats just cannot seem to keep their facts straight and always want to exaggerate them to make thinks look worse for America in order to promote their take-over strategy.

Here is yet another example from the White House transcript given at the AARP forum:

Last point I would make, just to give you a sense of why I know that we can get savings in the system without over the long term spending more money. We spend about $6,000 per person more than any other industrialized nation on Earth — $6,000 more than the people do in Denmark, or France, or Germany, or — every one of these other countries spend at least 50 percent less than we do, and you know what, they’re just as healthy.

Obama used the same numbers during his health care press conference on July 22, after which the OMB told FactCheck.org that the president was referring to the average spending per family. Here the president clearly says, “We spend about $6,000 per person more than any other industrialized nation on Earth.”

The following is from The American Spectator:

If you look at OECD data (which can be downloaded here), you will find the following statistics for per capita health care costs, adjusted for purchasing power parity:
United States: $7,290
Denmark: $3,512
France: $3,601
Germany: $3,588
Obama is correct that all of those countries spend less per person on health care, but it isn’t anywhere near $6,000 less. The widest gap among the countries mentioned, between the U.S. and Denmark, is $3,778 per person.

Sources:

The White House, July 28, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN AN AARP TELE-TOWN HALL ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

The American Spectator, July 28, 2009
President Obama’s $6,000 Lie

Another Viewpoint on the Obama takeover

Here’s another viewpoint on what the Obama healthcare fiasco will bring to America. I know it’s hard, but let’s see if any of the Liberals can actually discuss the facts.

Socialized Healthcare vs. The Laws of Economics - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute

The government's initial step in attempting to create a government-run healthcare monopoly has been to propose a law that would eventually drive the private health insurance industry out of existence. Additional taxes and mandated costs are to be imposed on health insurance companies, while a government-run "health insurance" bureaucracy will be created, ostensibly to "compete" with the private companies. The hoped-for end result is one big government monopoly which, like all government monopolies, will operate with all the efficiency of the post office and all the charm and compassion of the IRS.

Of course, it would be difficult to compete with a rival who has all of his capital and operating costs paid out of tax dollars. Whenever government "competes" with the private sector, it makes sure that the competition is grossly unfair, piling costly regulation after regulation, and tax after tax on the private companies while exempting itself from all of them. This is why the "government-sponsored enterprises" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so profitable for so many years. It is also why so many abysmally performing "public" schools remain in existence for decades despite their utter failure at educating children.

America's Healthcare Future?

Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled "Input and Output in Health Care," Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.

Friedman's key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased "inputs," such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased "outputs" in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy "customers") is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.

Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be "only" $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount — $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, "The Genesis and Development of Medicare," in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15-86). The Obama administration's claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.
All government-run healthcare monopolies, whether they are in Canada, the UK, or Cuba, experience an explosion of both cost and demand — since healthcare is "free." Socialized healthcare is not really free, of course; the true cost is merely hidden, since it is paid for by taxes.

Whenever anything has a zero explicit price associated with it, consumer demand will increase substantially, and healthcare is no exception. At the same time, bureaucratic bungling will guarantee gross inefficiencies that will get worse and worse each year. As costs get out of control and begin to embarrass those who have promised all Americans a free healthcare lunch, the politicians will do what all governments do and impose price controls, probably under some euphemism such as "global budget controls."

Price controls, or laws that force prices down below market-clearing levels (where supply and demand are coordinated), artificially stimulate the amount demanded by consumers while reducing supply by making it unprofitable to supply as much as previously. The result of increased demand and reduced supply is shortages. Non-price rationing becomes necessary. This means that government bureaucrats, not individuals and their doctors, inevitably determine who will get medical treatment and who will not, what kind of medical technology will be available, how many doctors there will be, and so forth.

All countries that have adopted socialized healthcare have suffered from the disease of price-control-induced shortages. If a Canadian, for instance, suffers third-degree burns in an automobile crash and is in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, the average waiting time for treatment is more than 19 weeks, or nearly five months. The waiting time for orthopaedic surgery is also almost five months; for neurosurgery it's three full months; and it is even more than a month for heart surgery (see The Fraser Institute publication, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada ). Think about that one: if your doctor discovers that your arteries are clogged, you must wait in line for more than a month, with death by heart attack an imminent possibility. That's why so many Canadians travel to the United States for healthcare.
All the major American newspapers seem to have become nothing more than cheerleaders for the Obama administration, so it is difficult to find much in the way of current stories about the debacle of nationalized healthcare in Canada. But if one goes back a few years, the information is much more plentiful. A January 16, 2000, New York Times article entitled "Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South," by James Brooke, provided some good examples of how Canadian price controls have created serious shortage problems.

A 58-year-old grandmother awaited open-heart surgery in a Montreal hospital hallway with 66 other patients as electric doors opened and closed all night long, bringing in drafts from sub-zero weather. She was on a five-year waiting list for her heart surgery.

In Toronto, 23 of the city's 25 hospitals turned away ambulances in a single day because of a shortage of doctors.

In Vancouver, ambulances have been "stacked up" for hours while heart attack victims wait in them before being properly taken care of.

At least 1,000 Canadian doctors and many thousands of Canadian nurses have migrated to the United States to avoid price controls on their salaries.

Wrote Mr. Brooke, "Few Canadians would recommend their system as a model for export."
Canadian price-control-induced shortages also manifest themselves in scarce access to medical technology. Per capita, the United States has eight times more MRI machines, seven times more radiation therapy units for cancer treatment, six times more lithotripsy units, and three times more open-heart surgery units. There are more MRI scanners in Washington state, population five million, than in all of Canada, with a population of more than 30 million (See John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave, Patient Power).

In the UK as well — thanks to nationalization, price controls, and government rationing of healthcare — thousands of people die needlessly every year because of shortages of kidney dialysis machines, pediatric intensive care units, pacemakers, and even x-ray machines. This is America's future, if "ObamaCare" becomes a reality