Posts Tagged health care
Tort reform without tort reform: Pelosi Democrats at work
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in analysis on November 1, 2009
The new House health care bill — H.R.3962 — encourages states to enact “medical liability alternatives” as long as ” the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.” There’s change we can believe in! The CBO estimates tort reform would reduce health care costs by $54 billion in 10 years but it’s illegal in the Democrat’s new health care bill.
See the text of section 2531 for yourself at govtrack.us.
I’ll Pass on ‘Opting Out’
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in analysis on October 29, 2009
Ann Coulter explains how the “opt out” plan is a scam and how government is the problem in health care at Human Events.
A GOP health plan
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in commentary on October 28, 2009
Finally. An other major media outlet — the Chicago Tribune — admits there is a GOP plan for health care. In fact, the ideas presented are part of the Patients’ Choice Act (HR.2520 and S.1099), a GOP plan presented to the House and Senate BEFORE the Democrats’ own HR.3200 (the official name of the House’s version of ObamaCare). The legislation is stuck in their respective introductory committees by their Democratic committee Chairs.
Health care bill violates Constitution
Posted by Jon Kovaciny in analysis, letter on October 22, 2009
This Letter to the Editor by Paul Bade was published in the October 20, 2009 issue of the Mankato Free Press. Has your letter been published recently? Submit it!
Congress is ignoring two crucial factors in its debate over health insurance. One is the reality that the problem is not health insurance, but high medical prices due in part to market distortion caused by federal entitlement programs and income tax policies related to health insurance.
The more crucial issue is that the proposed federal health insurance mandates are unconstitutional in principle and in detail.
You have a constitutional right to be secure in your person, property and papers. That means that no government has any authority to search or demand your health insurance or medical records unless there is probable cause that they are related to a criminal matter.
You have a right to a federal government limited to the powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The power to mandate individual or employer-based health insurance is not among those powers, nor can such power be properly derived from the power “to collect taxes…to promote the general welfare of the United States” or even the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Congress is proposing variously disguised taxes on those who do not have health insurance. These are direct taxes, which are prohibited by the Constitution unless apportioned by state, yet they cannot be apportioned since uninsured persons are not apportioned. Therefore these schemes are illegal.
Congress also wants to criminalize lack of health insurance as intent to defraud health care providers; this is as absurd as declaring gun ownership proof of intent to murder.
It is up to each of us to sternly remind our senators and representatives that they are acting outside their legal authority, and demand that they cease and desist.
Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in news on October 9, 2009
From Best of the Web Today (10/7/9)
London’s Daily Mail reports, “A grandmother dying of ovarian cancer was sent home five times by medics who said her crippling pain was caused by trapped wind.”
Barbara Collins, 68, was bed ridden for months with agonising pain and bowel problems, classic signs of the killer disease, but sent home with only laxatives. The mother of four was correctly diagnosed with ovarian cancer a staggering four months after her first visit to Manchester Royal Infirmary, and died 10 days later. Mrs Collins’ family criticised the medics, who they say made her feel like a nuisance. She could have survived if only her cancer had been diagnosed sooner, they claim.
As former Enron adviser Paul Krugman notes, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”
Health care is unequivocally not a right
Posted by Jon Kovaciny in analysis, letter on September 11, 2009
This Letter to the Editor by Jon Kovaciny was published in the September 11, 2009 issue of the Mankato Free Press, in response to this letter, published September 4. Has your letter been published recently? Submit it!
In his Your View published Sept. 4, Scott Urban attempted to connect government-provided health care to natural rights and our nation’s founding documents. His letter was littered with noble-sounding words and emotional appeals, but was wholly inaccurate, in my opinion.
Health care is unequivocally not a right. It’s especially not an American right, as Urban stated several times. Are those living in other countries somehow less worthy? Life, liberty, and property are rights; health care is a responsibility. Don’t confuse the two. Unlike rights, health care (and other goods and services) must be provided by someone. I have no more right to free health services than I would to a free shopping cart full of groceries. Whether I need a dozen eggs or an MRI, it is my responsibility to pay for them. If you need eggs or an MRI, please don’t use the government to forcibly and anonymously extract money from me to pay for what you’ve received.
Government “charity” is not charity at all, and it has destroyed real charity and created a permanent class of dependents. Urban appealed to the Constitution’s general welfare clause to legitimize federal provision of health services. This clause is a common excuse for government to do nearly anything it wants, as someone always benefits whenever the government hands out other people’s money. General welfare is not doing nice things for individuals, but for the good of the Union as a whole.
The Constitution does not and cannot grant fundamental rights, nor can any document or proclamation – it instead prohibits our government from interfering with the rights that all people already have. It is this that made America unique and allowed liberty to flourish.
The original version of this letter, before awkward editing by the Free Press staff, is available here.
CATO on Health Care legislation
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in analysis on September 9, 2009
The CATO Institute has just published an 18-page analysis of current legislative initiatives in Congress. Entitled, “Halfway to Where? Answering the Key Questions of Health Care Reform“, it includes the following observations.
Under all three proposed bills, millions of Americans would not be able to keep their current coverage.
All three bills contain an individual mandate, a legal requirement that every American obtain adequate health insurance coverage.
As with the individual mandate, employer-provided policies must meet the government’s designated minimum benefit requirements.
Since the rules for HSAs require that they be accompanied by a high deductible plan, the result would be to end HSAs.
Under one scenario, 89.5 million workers would be forced into the government plan.
Under the House bill, physician income would decline by $13.4 billion in the first year alone, a decline of 6.3 percent or almost $20,000 per physician.
Despite promises being made today, taxes will eventually have to be raised for the middle class.
Using the 75-year actuarial period that the government applies to other entitlement programs … the net present value of the program’s unfunded liabilities would exceed $9.2 trillion.
National health care systems in other countries use comparative effectiveness research as the basis for rationing. [This is supported by real world experience.]
In the long run, the only way to spend less on health care is to consume less health care.
While the bills contain no direct provisions for rationing care, they nonetheless
set the stage for government rationing and interference with how doctors practice medicine.
Under all the current versions of health reform, Americans will end up paying more and getting less.
Stossel on Health Care
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in analysis, video on September 9, 2009
400 seconds of reason brought to us by John Stossel on ABC via YouTube.
Government health care has sad stories and worse. Dogs and cats have it better than people in Canada.
Eye Care in the U.K.
Posted by Bruce Kaskubar in analysis, news on September 5, 2009
This just in from the Missouri Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons …
The United Kingdom in the late 1990′s established the National Institute for Health and Clinical Experience (NICE). It was pitched as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used “best practices” in Medicine. What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. [emphasis added] NICE has become the sole gatekeeper that reduces spending by limiting treatments that NHS will provide for 61 million UK citizens.
In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: “When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients.”
– adapted (by MoSEPS) from Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2009 “Of NICE and Men” page A14.
