Why Obamacare will not work – Many links

I am certainly not against anyone being treated for an illness. In fact in the United States No one can be refused emergency service for inability to pay. That includes millions of illegal aliens who seek medical attention every year. The cost of this is one of the many factors that are driving the cost of insurance through the roof. The system is broken indeed. But the major cause of the broken system is our representatives creating the problem by allowing litigation that is frivolous. Actually encouraging it. Also the state and federal government take a large percentage of tax on every piece of medical work done and then pass that cost onto the insurance company. They in turn must pass that cost onto the policy holders.

Government care is NOT the answer. It is part of the problem. Attached are many links that prove that government care does not work. The solution is simple.

Tort reform- cut back on frivolous lawsuits. This enables insurance companies to insure doctors for less money since they pay less in law suits that really should not be there to begin with.

Allow Insurance companies to compete across the United States. By having open competition the United States residents can select a very wide variety of plans at different costs and different options. Naturally companies will continue to offer better and more services at less cost to attract policy holders.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? It is, but our representatives don’t want to be part of that because there is nothing in it for them.

Lets look at some epic failures when the government is involved in health care. ~~~~ The Munz

 

Mass. Pushes Rationing to Control Universal Healthcare Costs Written by Thomas R. Eddlem  Sunday, 19 July 2009 14:00 - A 10-member Massachusetts state healthcare advisory board unanimously recommended that the state begin rationing healthcare to keep the state’s marquee universal health care program afloat financially.

 

Massachusetts' Obama-like Reforms Increase Health Costs, Wait Times 

by Michael F. Cannon Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It. Added to cato.org on August 28, 2009 This article appeared in Detroit News on August 27, 2009. If you are curious about how President Barack Obama's health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts. In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.

Those reforms reveal that the Obama plan would mean higher health insurance premiums for millions, would reduce choice by eliminating both low-cost and comprehensive health plans, would encourage insurers to avoid the sick and would reduce the quality of care.

 

NHS blunders allowed cannibal Peter Bryan to kill two A catalogue of systemic failings and blunders allowed a schizophrenic killer, Peter Bryan, to murder two more people, including eating parts of the brain of one, two inquiries have found.

Bryan, 39, killed Brian Cherry in 2004 after being allowed out of a psychiatric ward before cooking and eating part of his flesh and brain.

Following that killing he was sent to Broadmoor secure hospital but within 10 days of his arrival there he attacked fellow patient Richard Loudwell, who later died from his injuries. Two separate inquiries in to the killings both found failings in his care and supervision.

Pushing Veterans Toward the Grave 

By Bradley Mattes

First there were angry senior citizens at town hall meetings, literally fearing for their lives. They're worried that under the President's proposed health care plan they'll be denied critical life-saving services because of their age. There's good reason for their concern. And what's come to light since then won't make them sleep any easier.

The Obama administration now seems to have our nation's veterans in the crosshairs. Perhaps you've heard about the booklet Your Life Your Choices-also known as the Death Book for Veterans. This book is particularly alarming, so I want to share some detail you may not have heard.

 

Obama Health-Care Plan Would Drive Up Inflation and Health-Care Costs, Shrink Economy, and Reinforce Worst Features of Status Quo

ObamaCare would shrink the economy, drive up health-care costs and inflation, and increase the deficit, notes David Kopel, a “lifelong Democrat.” Kopel provides “Economic projections of the consequences of Obamacare” drawn from a study “from the Independent Institute” on “the national and Colorado consequences of Obama care, based on” its “one trillion dollar increase in health care subsidies over the next decade. These consequences include:

Overall, total federal expenditures will be 5.6 percent higher than otherwise by 2019, adding $285.6 billion to the federal deficit in 2019.

An increase in national health care expenditures by an additional 8.9 percent by 2019.

 

Massachusetts: the laboratory for ObamaCare

Earlier this month, we used DirigoChoice in Maine as an example of the disaster a public-plan health-care reform can generate.  Cato Institute looks a little farther down the coast to Massachusetts, where the state began its own health-care reform complete with individual mandates and a government plan.  Cato calls it an “almost perfect” mirror of ObamaCare, complete with promises of reducing cost and extending care — that failed in both respects:

Massachusetts reduced its uninsured population by two-thirds — yet the cost would be considered staggering, had state officials not done such a good job of hiding it. Finally, Massachusetts shows where “ObamaCare” would ultimately lead: Officials are already laying the groundwork for government rationing.

The most sweeping provision in the Massachusetts reforms — and the legislation before Congress — is an “individual mandate” that makes health insurance compulsory. Massachusetts shows that such a mandate would oust millions from their low-cost health plans and force them to pay higher premiums. …

 

Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.

Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

 

Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Doctor-Assisted Suicide Instead of Medical Care

PORTLAND, Ore. — Some terminally ill patients in Oregon who turned to their state for health care were denied treatment and offered doctor-assisted suicide instead, a proposal some experts have called a "chilling" corruption of medical ethics.

Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon's state-run health plan for help.

Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup's request with a letter saying the state would not cover Stroup's pricey treatment, but would pay for the cost of physician-assisted suicide.

"It dropped my chin to the floor," Stroup told FOX News. "[How could they] not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?"

The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:

• 63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
• 117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
• 115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
• 399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.

A Very Sick Health Plan      Bay State’s ‘Grand Experiment’ Fails

For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system, or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time — that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care.

Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so. Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide, “RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million, or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents, has caused Massachusetts’ overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.

Hospital patients 'left in agony'

Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain and drinking from flower vases on a nightmare hospital ward.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a damning Healthcare Commission report said.
The watchdog's investigation found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.
Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said there had been a "gross and terrible breach" of patients' trust and a "complete failure of leadership".

Paramedics told: 'Let accident victims die if they want to' in new row over patient rights

Health Service paramedics have been told not to resuscitate terminally-ill patients who register on a controversial new database to say they want to die.

It has been set up by the ambulance service in London for hundreds of people who have only a few months to live so that they may register their 'death wishes' in advance.

It is believed to be the first in the country, but other trusts around the country are expected to follow suit to comply with Government guidelines which state that patients' wishes should be taken into account, even at the point of death.

 

Massachusetts Universal Healthcare System Breaking Down Already

When Governor Mitt Romney instituted a universal healthcare plan for Massachusetts in 2006 he proclaimed it a conservative idea. “It’s a conservative idea insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care,” he said. “I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.” The plan passed and was put into practice. But has it worked? Has it been successful?

For a time, many thought it might but cracks in the system are already being seen. These cracks are instructive as a lesson on how Obamacare will crash and burn just like Romneycare is now in the process of doing.

One of the early claims that helped push Romneycare through to law was the insistence by its supporters that Emergency Room visits would fall as more and more citizens became covered under healthcare insurance. Since ER care is far more expensive than a doctor’s care, it was thought that more people with insurance would ease the overcrowding of ERs as well as lower the overall costs of healthcare.

 

Patients forced to wait hours in ambulances parked outside A&E departments

Ambulance chiefs have warned that lives are being put at risk "on a daily basis" by long delays allowing patients into Accident and Emergency units.

Delays to patients arriving to A&E by ambulance are increasing in many parts of the country as hospitals struggle to cope with a massive increase in the number of emergency hospital admissions An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors – in some cases for more than five hours – before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.

Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients – or are diverting them to different sites – in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them.

 

Life prolonging cancer drugs to be banned because they cost too much

Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.

The Government's rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is expected to confirm guidance in the next few weeks that will effectively ban their use.

The move comes despite a pledge by Nice to be more flexible in giving life-extending drugs to terminally-ill cancer patients after a public outcry last year over 'death sentence' decisions

Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait

WAITING times for cancer treatment need to be cut, the Scottish Government was told yesterday.

The Scotland Against Cancer conference in Glasgow heard Nicola Sturgeon, the health secretary, setting out what was being done to improve cancer care for Scottish patients.

But one cancer survivor, who spoke at the Cancer Research UK event, challenged

ministers to be more ambitious in reducing the time patients have to wait before starting treatment.
Cancer experts later said that patients elsewhere in Europe would be "outraged" by having to wait two months to start treatment, with most being seen within two weeks.

 

Hospital patient so shocked at dirty ward she climbed out of bed to clean it herself

After 12 years cleaning care homes and private houses, Tereza Tosbell has a keen eye for a dirty room.

But the last place she expected to need her skills was in hospital - where she was a patient.

The sick 48-year-old was so disgusted at the conditions after three days on a 'filthy' ward that she grabbed the antibacterial fluid dispenser at the end of her bed and some hand towels from the bathroom.

 

Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE

Thousands of kidney cancer patients are likely to lose out on life-prolonging drugs.

The NHS rationing body, NICE, has confirmed a ban on three out of four new treatments.

It has reversed its position on just one, Sutent, which will now be allowed for patients with advanced cancer.

 

Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage

A three-year-old girl awaiting heart surgery has had her operation cancelled three times this month because of a shortage of beds.

Ella Cotterell was due to have aorta-widening surgery on Monday at the Children’s Hospital, Bristol. But 48 hours beforehand, the operation was cancelled for the third time as all 15 beds in the intensive care unit were occupied, her parents said.

A hospital spokesman said that procedures would be reviewed, but the case highlights a growing problem of cancelled operations in the NHS.

More than 57,000 surgeries were postponed for non-clinical reasons, including a lack of beds, last year – 10 per cent more than the previous year.

 

Make no mistake about it, all Obama wants is to get something so that he can start his path to a single payer and put us in this position. They have said so up front, pay attention. We must not allow this to happen here in the United States

Certainly we have heard about all the uninsured people. But lets look at a film about the uninsured.

This has never been about Health Care … it is and has been about another take over of a private sector by the government for more control over our lives. ~~~~ The Munz