Two Women shows that when
governments determine health
care priorities, some people suffer
truly unfortunate consequences.
Watch It Now!
Indoctrinate U, reveals the
ugly truths about academia that
you won't see in their glossy
admissions brochures.
Watch The Trailer!
In A Short Course in Brain
Surgery, filmmaker Stuart
Browning shows the callousness
of "single-payer", government
-run health care systems. Watch It Now!
Our short film El Uno De Mayo,
casts a light on the left-wing
totalitarian groups behind the
recent May Day marches. Watch It Now!
Think Canada's government-run
health care system is a model for
the U.S.? Think again!
Dead Meat is a searing cine-
matic examination of socialized
medicine. Watch It Now!
A new video produced by the National Center for Policy Analysis features Canadian medical broker Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives who has appeared in several of our health care films. This piece serves as a warning from someone who sees suffering and waiting Canadians on a daily basis.
To sign the "Free Our Health Care Now!" petition, visit their website.
The Independence Institute in Colorado has just produced a good video explaining how individual mandates have worked in Massachusetts with the following introduction:
We all agree the health care system is in need of reform. That's not the issue. The debate is really what kind of reform is needed. There are those rooting for nationalizing health care - Obama Care. What's that you ask? Obama's idea of reform is a government takeover of the health care system. One of the most popular forms of government takeover is the "Massachusetts Model." Those of us opposing "reform" that involves yet more government interference, wish to see a system that incorporates more consumer choice and more competition. Take a minute to watch this new video outlining just one of the many reasons the Massachusetts model has failed.
If you think that government-run medicine will solve the problems in our health care system, listen to this sobering testimonial on socialized medicine in the UK:
The National Center for Policy Analysis, The Mike Gallagher Show and the Salem Radio Network have authored the "Free Our Health Care Now!" online petition. They hope to deliver hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures to Congress to stop ObamaCare in its tracks.
I always like to hear the reasoned arguments of our adversaries (see email below). I especially like his analysis of how costs are held down in the UK and Canada via "preventive medicine". I think what he means is that all those colonoscopies that the NHS prevents Brits from getting greatly lower their colorectal cancer outcomes - thus saving the system lots of money via the premature death of patients.
From: byron19119@yahoo.com
Subject: Ha Ha!
Date: May 12, 2009 12:51:10 PM EDT
To: stuartbrowning@onthefencefilms.com
If you weren't so stupid and so godamm funny I would actually be upset about your lies and stupidity concerning single payer health insurance. I never heard of any of your "films", but I'm sure they're as equally funny and misguided. Let's see - whose opionion should I trust? - a nobel prize winning econimist PhD from Princeton or a hack nobody? Tough choice. As for Canadian healthcare or British healthcare for that matter, the main focus is on preventative medicine. That's why the costs are so low. People in this country who are uninsured wait until the last minute to receive help, so costs ultimately skyrocket.
Aetna (one grand cocksucking "health" insurance swindler) actually requires a renal patient to pay a 50.00 co-pay out of pocket for each dialysis treatment. They also mandate that ALL renal patients need only three treatments a week. In Britain, if your doctor stipulates 5 treatments - you get 5 treatments - no copay. By the by, if you can't afford the co-pay I know of many patients who apply for Medicare. So big, bad government actually subsidizes these multi-billion dollar industries. Does this make sense to you, you fucking moron? Socialized Medicine Now!
More government bureaucrats involved in your healthcare would be destructive. Other countries with similar systems face lengthy and often deadly waiting lists. That is the only way to ration unlimited demand in the face of static supply. Go to YouTube and view the short films of Stuart Browning for a flavor of the Canadian system.
On Friday, I appeared on Canadian national television in a story about the popularity of my video "A Short Course In Brain Surgery" and its contribution to the health care debate. The video (of which there are at least three copies on YouTube) has been viewed over 2 million times. Click the thumbnail to play.
The Perils of Public Health Care (CBC, Feb 22 2008)
We've just posted details for two more campus screenings of Indoctrinate U: one at Louisiana State University (Shreveport) and another at San Diego State University. For more information, visit the Indoctrinate U screenings page.
A Short Course In Brain Surgery - my short movie which tells the story of Lindsay McCreith, a Canadian with a cancerous brain tumor who had to come to the U.S. to receive timely medical care - has now been viewed over 500,000 times on YouTube.
Not bad for a piece about health care policy.
As this nation barrels head-long towards government-controlled "universal healthcare", I hope that many more people are able to view the movie - and draw the appropriate conclusion.
Matthew Sheffield at NewsBusters has interviewed Evan Maloney. Topic: The making of Indoctrinate U.
Recently I had the privilege of attending the premier of the "Indoctrinate U," a documentary that exposes the widespread suppression of conservative and libertarian opinions on America's college campuses. Turns out, the same 60s and 70s radicals who marched for free speech back then aren't so interested in the concept now that they're running academia.
This is a great film and a very necessary one as well. I was so impressed by it that I wanted to interview its creator, Evan Coyne Maloney. We had an in-depth and candid discussion about a variety of things including how he got interested in film, getting funding for it, the background behind campus speech codes, how the media covers academic censorship and much more.
We are starting to post some of the scenes we loved but ended up having to cut from our feature length film Indoctrinate U. The first deleted scene is called "Columbia Quiz."
This less-than-five-minute video may prove embarrassing to the administration of Columbia University, which very clearly did not want Evan Maloney filming - unless he could convince them that our film would paper over the truth and make the university look good.
Jamie Court of Santa Monica, California's "Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights" has a frustrating editorial in today's L.A. Times.
He asks "Is it the right of the government to impose an obligation to buy a private product that costs $12,000 a year for a family of four?" and concludes:
mandatory private insurance on this scale will not work. Mandatory auto insurance, which has been in force in California for more than two decades, has failed miserably. That's why a portion of our auto insurance premiums today go to pay for "uninsured motorist" coverage.
One in seven drivers has no auto insurance, compared to one in five without health insurance under a nonmandatory system.
I think Mr. Court is right about this. Forcing people to buy what they do not want or cannot afford is nothing but a confiscatory tax that limits people's freedom to spend their own money and control their own lives. And, there will be massive non-compliance.
Mr. Court's "solution" to the problem, however, is totally off-base. He says:
Californians are ready for market reforms to make health insurance more available and affordable, including forcing insurers to price policies fairly and preventing them from denying coverage to less healthy patients. Sacramento legislators should make the system fairer, regulate healthcare costs, then expand subsidies for low-income families. They should fix the broken market, not foist it on the public.
What a mistake! How is government regulation of insurance pricing, "forced issue" mandates and regulation of healthcare costs a "market reform"? More government control is a prescription for socialized medicine, which will work just as well as the grand Socialist "experiments" in the USSR, North Korea, East Germany and communist China.
Why, oh why, don't more people realize that government already mucks around in the not very "free market" for healthcare too much? Why don't people realize that every time government mandates or regulates something, it prevents the market from offering value and options?
When government mandates force sober homosexual men to buy health insurance policies that cover pregnancy expenses, infertility treatments and drug and alcohol in-patient care, premiums for these patients cost much more than necessary. When government regulation prohibits health insurers from offering plans across state-lines, there is less competition in each state and prices are higher than they would be in a true open market.
It's simple economics, folks! Won't someone PLEASE take a refresher course in Economics 101 . . . and pay attention during class?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Contact:
Jon Caldara, president, 303-279-6536 or jon@i2i.org
Amy Oliver, operations director, 970-371-3413 or amy@i2i.org
Think tank hosts independent film maker and free market health care advocate Stuart Browning for the Colorado premiere of Free Market Cure
GOLDEN, Colo - The Independence Institute is proud to announce that it will be hosting the Colorado premiere of Free Market Cure, a series of short films that honestly depicts the dangers of socialized medicine. Independent film maker and producer of Free Market Cure Stuart Browning will be our guest of honor.
According to Browning, those on the left including Hollywood and many politicians "are gearing up to bring socialized medicine to the U.S. under the guise of 'universal healthcare.' Americans should be aware, however, that government-run health care means high taxes, medical rationing - and waiting lists to see specialists, get diagnostic tests and to receive surgery."
Free Market Cure is designed to counter Michael Moore's Sicko, which Browning called "a large dose of misinformation and propaganda."
The premiere will be on Wednesday, September 19, at the Shwayder in the Mizel Center for Culture and Arts at 350 S. Dahlia Street in Denver. The movies and Browning's commentary will begin at 7 p.m. and will be followed by coffee and dessert. The event is free and open to the public but seating is limited so reservations are requested. Please contact Kay at 303-279-6536 or kay@i2i.org.
"Anyone who is even remotely concerned about the direction in which medical care in Colorado is headed must see Free Market Cure," said President Jon Caldara.
Caldara issued a personal invitation to all of Colorado's 208 commission members. "I understand that members were invited to hear Donna Smith who was featured in Sicko. I invite all of them to hear another perspective." he added.
Visit the Independence Institute Web site for more information.
The Independence Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit public policy research organization based in Golden, Colo.
Yesterday I gave an interview about Indoctrinate U on KCOL-AM out of Loveland, CO. Today saw two more interviews with Greg Allen of Accent Radio Network and Bud Hedinger from WFLA-AM out of Tampa, FL.
Please listen for me talking about our important film on the Steve Deace show tomorrow (9/6/2007) on WHO-AM from Des Moines, Iowa and with Travis Jackson on Knucklehead Radio from Maine.
Then on Friday (9/7/2007) I'll be on Lynn Woolley's show on KTEM-AM out of Temple, TX. Finally, next Wednesday (9/12/2007) I'll be promoting Indoctrinate U on "Kelli's" show on WJON-AM out of St. Cloud, MN.
Please tune in -- on the radio or on the web -- if you get the chance. The discussions arising from the film and the entire topic of political correctness run amok on college campuses have been great.
A recent study says that the federal government has been restocking mountain streams in Colorado with the wrong species of an endangered trout for more than 20 years! President Bush's approval ratings are in the twenty-percent range. Approval ratings for Congress are wallowing in the teens.
But, hey, let's give the federal government complete control over our healthcare system.
Am I the only lunatic who thinks this kind of logic stinks like old fish on a hot summer day?
Canada, once considered the bedrock of national health care systems, is in the beginning stages of change toward free-market health insurance.
[...]
For the first time, private health care clinics are proliferating throughout Canada and arguments for allowing private physicians to practice freely are being heard.
"You are seeing the Medicare orthodoxy of the last 30 years being questioned in Canada," said Dr. David Gratzer, a registered physician in Canada and the U.S., and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank. "Over the last two years, the health care system has dramatically changed to allow more private health care."
The Supreme Court of Canada, widely viewed as among the most liberal in the world, nearly two years ago allowed a man in Quebec to buy health care on his own - striking down 30 years of precedent and giving advocates for private health care a major victory.
The case is known as the Chaoulli decision, after Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, who took action against the system after a patient was forced to wait nearly one year for a hip replacement.
If Moore's film channels the prevailing left-wing wisdom about the alleged glories of government-run healthcare, Browning's work represents a much-needed corrective: a skepticism about government's ability to provide efficient coverage and a confidence that the free-market is a better compass for change than a Hollywood ideologue. "I can't imagine anything more crucial than the right to make life-or-death decisions, the right to privacy, the right to choose one's own doctor. And all these things are at stake," said Browning in a recent interview from his Florida office.
Rather than quibbling with Michael Moore's omission of Cuba's position relative to the U.S. on a World Health Organization (WHO) international health care system ranking report, CNN should have called into question the use of that biased report itself.
The WHO report doesn't just rank health care systems according to how well they cure you when you're sick. Indeed, 25% of the WHO report's scoring is based on the "fairness" of a country's health care financing as measured by how redistributionist - socialist - it is.
The result is an absurd report that ranks the medical system of Morocco as superior to that the U.S. But it's good enough for Michael Moore!
Last night I appeared on the FOX News channel show "Hannity's America" discussing my films, Michael Moore's Sicko and the threat of collectivized medicine.
The only video to show up on the web so far is from an anti-FOX wingnut site who have edited the video with some inane commentary at the end - as well as this little jewel on their web site:
As for Stuart Browning ... According to one website, he has connections to some conservative (and possibly CIA or governmental) sources of money ...
For the advocates of government-run medicine who actually believe the United Nation's claim that the U.S. health care system is inferior to that of Morocco(!), it's not a big leap to assume that the CIA funds filmmakers like me to debunk socialized medicine.
Michael Moore isn't the only advocate of government-run medicine to use deception and lies to further the cause. Paul Krugman at the New York Times, in a column earlier this week, defends the Canadian system with all the deceit he can muster:
Yes, Canadians wait longer than insured Americans for elective surgery. But over all, the average Canadian's access to health care is as good as that of the average insured American ...
Krugman wants his readers to think that by "elective", he means things like hip replacements and cataract operations - when, in fact, "elective" surgery in Canada includes all cancer surgery and coronary artery bypass surgeries.
David Hogberg has an excellent article this morning over at The American Spectator explaining why the health insurance market doesn't work the way that other markets do. The answer? One word ... government.
By now it is no secret that Moore's new documentary Sicko shows health insurance companies finding all sorts of insidious ways to avoid paying for treatment. On the surface, it makes sense to blame this on the profit motive. Paying for sick people is often expensive and finding ways to deny them care is good for the bottom line. The health insurance company that utilizes the most innovative methods to avoid paying for care will be rewarded with the highest profit margin.
Yet such thinking overlooks a rather obvious question: How do health insurance companies attract customers if they treat some of their customers so badly? A company can't make any profit if no one is willing to buy its product or service. Sure, a company may be able to make a profit for a while by fooling customers into buying its shoddy products or services. But eventually customers wise up. Word that the company is bad spreads, and customers takes their business elsewhere. If the market for health insurance worked properly, then companies that deny paying for care on the flimsiest of reasons would risk getting a bad reputation and seeing their customers go to companies that do not engage in such practices. So why doesn't this happen?
The answer is that thanks to government policy the health insurance market doesn't work properly.
This site, and its new companion website Free Market Cure, feature short movies - made for the internet - which explore the U.S. health care system as well as the true nature of government rationing of health care as practiced in Canada's single-payer system.
The movement towards "universal health care" or "single-payer health care" represents government control over the standards and availability of medical care. Everywhere that these systems have been tried, the results have been the same: shortages and rationing. We feel a better way to control costs is for consumers to be responsible for - and in control of - their own health care spending.
I hope that you will find these short films and commentary a welcome antidote to the blatantly false propaganda offered in Michael Moore's film Sicko.
Update: We'll be putting our short film "Dead Meat" up on YouTube as we have maxed out our video server bandwidth limits due to heavy traffic. We plan to have it up soon. In the meantime, check out all of our short films dealing with health care at our companion site Free Market Cure.
Here's left-wing healthcare pundit Ezra Klein in an email message to me commenting on the anecdotal stories in my movies on Canadian health care:
Ah, argument by anecdote, the last refuge of the scoundrel. [...] America has no shortage of terrible tales of maltreatment, deprivation, and wrongful death, but I'm not going to dip into that pond as I try to not enlist other's misfortunes as pawns in my argument.
And here he is commenting on the anecdotal stories in Michael Moore's Sicko:
Every story, every tale, every vignette asks the same question: "Who are we?" Who are we that our fellow citizens have to decide which fingers they'll pay to get reattached? Who are we that our hospitals push the ill and indigent into cabs, and drop them off, disoriented and clad in a paper-thin gown, on skid row?
I am scheduled to appear today on Your World with Neil Cavuto on the FOX News channel beginning between 4:30 and 4:45 EST discussing Michael Moore's schlock-umentary Sicko as well as my own films.
Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives in Vancouver has appeared in two Free Market Cure movies that I have produced. Here he is in a new video excerpt explaining what many Americans don't understand about the Canadian health care system. Click the thumbnail image below to play.
I appeared Thursday on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. program discussing single-payer health care and Michael Moore's movie 'Sicko'. Click the thumbnail image below to play.
Michael Moore's new docutribe Sicko is set to unleash a torrent of disinformation about the U.S. health care system that will play into the hands of those who wish to turn our entire health care industry over to government bureaucrats.
However, we're firing back with a new internet movie that attacks one of the central premises of his propaganda: that 45 million Americans have no health insurance - and no access to health care. Uninsured in America is a new 9-minute film which examines the facts behind the oft-repeated cries of an "uninsured crisis".
Free Market Cure is sponsored by the Moving Picture Institute (www.thempi.org). MPI identifies and nurtures promising filmmakers who are committed to protecting and sustaining a free society, and supports their work through grants, travel scholarships, awards, internships, training workshops, and networking opportunities.
If you enjoy the film and the website commentary - and if you agree that we should preserve choice and freedom in life-and-death decisions about medical care, then please tell others who share your views - or better yet - those who don't.
My new film, The Lemon (run time 7:46) shows how today's single-payer health care initiatives have a lot in common with the failed economic systems of eastern Europe. A system without competition and profits will lead to tight government control, shortages and medical rationing.
The Washington Times has a write-up of our new film Indoctrinate U:
"Indoctrinate U" follows Mr. Maloney to different campuses, where he chronicles the stories of students like Steve Hinkle, who was prosecuted for posting flyers for an upcoming College Republicans event at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Because neither campus administrators nor university trustees are protecting individual rights on campus, Mr. Maloney said, someone must. "It's time for us as taxpayers and as citizens to exercise some oversight on our own," he said.
We're hearing that Michael Moore, in his upcoming movie, interviews some happy Canadians who are satisfied with their health care system. This doesn't surprise. Most healthy people don't like to think about getting sick and like the idea that if and when they do - they will be taken care of (especially if they think that someone else is footing the bill).
However, when Canadians get older and need more medical care, they run up against the strict rationing imposed by their system. After paying a life time's worth of high taxes to support socialized medicine, they come face-to-face with its' realities.
It's safe to say that Mr. Moore never interviewed Mary Lou Frye who has had her urgent brain surgery cancelled six times:
In March 2006, Mary Lou Frye had a seizure and drove off the Fraser Highway into a ditch.
A CAT scan revealed a golf ball-sized tumour behind her left eye. She had surgery in May 2006, but bleeding cut the operation short, leaving part of the tumour.
She now has two tumours in her brain, but since January Frye has had her surgery postponed six times, the latest last Friday when four other neurosurgery cases were also postponed.
The previous day, four neurosurgery cases were postponed due to a lack of beds.
Meanwhile, Frye, 64, who raised three kids as a single mom, is failing. Doctors have declared her urgent because of headaches, loss of balance and walking difficulty.
But Ms. Frye is not alone. Canada's Fraser Institute, in its' report Waiting Your Turn, estimates that over 770,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists.
We hear ad nauseum from the single-payer left about the supposed administrative efficiency of Medicare and Medicaid. Since insurance companies must control waste and fraud in order to make a profit for shareholders they are deemed inefficient. However, government can draw from the seemingly bottomless well of tax revenues. Here's the result:
In what was described as one of the biggest healthcare fraud cases ever in South Florida, federal prosecutors on Friday accused a couple of leading a billing company that bilked Medicare out of $56 million over a six-year stretch.
Mabel and Abner Diaz were accused of operating All-Med Billing Corp. of Miami Lakes in a scheme that used 29 durable medical equipment firms to submit false claims to Medicare.
"This is one of the most important cases ever filed by our office,'' U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said. "This is our money which could have been used to treat patients rather than line the pockets of the accused."
Just last week it was 45 million uninsured. Now, according to Michael Moore, it's 50 million!
How long, I wonder, before the number of uninsured exceeds the entire population of the U.S?
David Hogberg has some good commentary this morning on his blog about the inevitable results of community rating mandates:
The result of community rating is that younger, healthier people tend to decline insurance, since the average price they are charged is higher than what they would pay in an unregulated market. Those [who] do purchase it tend to be older and sicker, which drives the price of insurance higher.
FYI: Hillary Clinton is advocating community rating nationwide.
I've been meaning to comment all week about a particularly ignorant and erroneous (I'm being nice) health care op-ed in the New York Times this week by Nicholas Kristoff. Perhaps Mr. Kristoff should stick to covering Darfur rather than carrying water for the socialists at the PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Plan). Well, David Catron - at this excellent blog Health Care BS - beat me to the punch:
A New York Times journalist with a health care stat is like a toddler with a loaded pistol. The combination of intellectual underdevelopment and sophisticated weaponry is a recipe for mayhem. Anyone doubting this should read Nicholas Kristof's recent column ...
Stanley Kurtz at the National Review has a new, in-depth review of our new feature-length film Indoctrinate U:
One of the virtues of Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney's powerful new documentary, is that it helps us answer the "isolated anecdote" argument - both intellectually, and at a gut level.
Indoctrinate U explores the Kafkaesque nightmares that befall students and professors who run up against the P.C. behemoth: A woman with two brothers - one an adopted Guatemalan orphan - writes a letter to her school paper saying she wouldn't want to see one brother favored over the other because of skin color. A professor questions the fairness of a panel on which all seven speakers favor reparations for slavery. A representative of the College Republicans posts a flier at the campus multi-cultural center advertising a lecture by a conservative black speaker. A student writes a column complaining that the school's "issues committee" invites only left-leaning speakers to campus. A professor is accidentally revealed to be a Republican. A student from Kuwait writes an essay praising the role of the United States in world affairs. Everyone knows that such actions fly in the face of campus orthodoxy, yet few will be prepared for the enormity of the punishment these nonconformists face.
And ... if we did have a hole in our head, we might wait a very long time to get surgery for it if we adopted a system like the one in Canada.
Maybe, Michael Moore should have interviewed Canadian David Malleau who has endured a year-long wait for skull surgery after an accident:
David Malleau awoke in hospital with a gaping hole in his skull.
The 44-year-old Hamilton truck driver had suffered a devastating car accident in 2004 that forced doctors at Hamilton General Hospital to remove a fist-sized piece of bone from his skull to relieve pressure on his brain.
Once the swelling subsided and he was ready for surgery in March 2005, Malleau was sent home and placed on a waiting list.
Three months passed. Then six. He waited at home, a prisoner unable to leave the house for fear something would hit the exposed side of his brain - for him a potentially fatal incident. In the end, it took nearly a year before he could get skull replacement surgery.
[...]
Malleau, after finally getting his skull replacement surgery in January of last year, is paralyzed on his right side and his speech is only now beginning to return.
"I've pretty much had to fight for everything," says his wife Pat, a former bookkeeper.
"We were taxpayers. Owned our own home. We went from having our jobs, being in the middle class, to nothing."
Defenders of government-run medicine usually downplay waits for medical treatment by focusing on only one part of a multi-part wait process: the wait for scheduled surgery. They ignore the long waits to see a specialist and to get diagnostic tests. Further, they pretend as though the phenomenon of cancelled surgeries does not exist. But it does - and it is an expected occurance with real human consequences as this New Zealand story shows:
A Tuatapere man's 69th birthday celebrations turned sour last week when his hand operation at Southland Hospital was cancelled.
Retired mechanic Bob Warren was told his operation was cancelled because a surgeon had not performed the procedure for a long time, his wife said.
And of course, stories like this are everywhere in the English-language press of countries like Canada, Britain, New Zealand amd Australia - but not here in the U.S.
A CHIROPODIST whose operation was put back until April because of an embargo on non-urgent surgery, then fell victim to hospital staffing problems when she arrived to have it carried out.
Madeline Pavey, of Gillian Avenue, St Albans, saw her consultant in November about an hernia operation but was told that it could not be done until the beginning of April because the local Primary Care Trust had decided no non-urgent work would be carried out until the beginning of the new financial year.
But when Mrs Pavey got to Hemel Hempstead Hospital for the morning-scheduled operation on Monday, April 2, she soon realised something was wrong as time ticked away and there was no sign of the surgery being carried out.
Eventually she and the others who were waiting were told that there was no anaesthetist available and the hospital was trying to find one. Mrs Pavey said: "I almost fell off my chair. I thought it was a bit of a joke."
AN 81-year-old great-grandmother endured 82 hours of agony in a Perth hospital.
She lay immobilised on trolleys and in "holding pens'' before finally getting urgently-needed hip surgery in Royal Perth Hospital on Saturday.
Rita Robins' son Peter wants WA's besieged Health Minister Jim McGinty to explain why his fragile, elderly mum experienced days of fasting and constant surgery cancellations before she could get the operation for her seriously fractured left hip.
[...]
Mr Robins' wife Dianne said it broke her heart to see the suffering of her kind-hearted mother-in-law - who is a great-grandmother of five, grandmother of nine and a mother of four.
"I don't think you would do this to an animal,'' Mrs Robins said.
It's an amazing story of the brutality of health care rationing ...
The free-wheeling film first documents the rise of the "campus free speech movement" in the 1960s and '70s, then cuts to examples of modern-day conservatives being shouted down and otherwise intimidated on college campuses. Ward Connerly is verbally assaulted for daring to disagree with campus orthodoxy on the issue of affirmative action and black professors like John McWhorter, formerly of UC-Berkeley, Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University's Law School, and Temple's Lewis Gordon all express their dismay with the current state of the academy, and the suppression of intellectual diversity therein.
For anyone harbouring doubts that health care reformers are more concerned with income redistribution than actual health care, Paul Krugman's op-ed in yesterday's New York Times is worth reading. Ostensibly a column on trade policy, Krugman comes back to his favorite theme in the last paragraph:
... if Democrats really want to help American workers, they'll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy's winners, would be a good place to start.
Hogberg
National Center website, David Hogberg has a new, well-researched paper on the Swedish health care system:
While Sweden is a first world country, its health care system - at least in regards to access - is closer to the third world. Because the health care system is heavily-funded and operated by the government, the system is plagued with waiting lists for surgery. Those waiting lists increase patients' anxiety, pain and risk of death.
The CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is going to start cracking down on "inefficient" doctors:
CMS has the data and computer capacity to identify physicians who are inefficient compared with their colleagues and as early as mid-2008 might begin to contact those physicians and ask them to become more efficient, Herbert Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the agency testified on Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing, CQ HealthBeat reports. At a House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing, Kuhn said that identification of inefficient physicians, or "profiling," would involve a comparison of the number of tests ordered by physicians for certain types of patients with the number ordered by colleagues in cases that have the same outcome.
Nearly blind after 3 year wait for cataract operation
Elderly people go blind waiting for cataract operations in nations with socialized health systems:
"IT'S nice, isn't it?" says Richard Adams pointing to his widescreen television. "But it's pointless me having it because I can't see anything."
Richard, 85, is blind in both eyes as a result of cataracts, but spends all his time in front of the television, listening to documentaries or the news.
Wheelchair-user Richard started losing his sight three years ago, but for the past six months has been almost completely blind in both eyes and feels trapped in the one room of his home in Ealing, west London.
However, he has keen insight into the incentives inherent in socialized medicine:
"I've been waiting for three years but they don't seem to care. I think they're just waiting for me to die or something."
More evidence that much health-care "reform" has nothing to do with health care for the poor and everything to do with state power and political ambition:
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a second-term Democrat, decided months ago to push a new health care initiative that would be among the most comprehensive in the country. It would offer not only insurance to everyone in Illinois, but also wellness training, special attention to chronic disease and streamlined administration.
Unlike efforts in other states, the plan would not simply shift or borrow money from existing programs but would be financed largely by a new tax on gross business receipts.
[...]
The proposed tax would apply to the gross receipts of businesses that make more than $2 million a year, and would range from 0.08 percent for businesses like retailers or wholesalers to 1.95 percent for service businesses.
However, even acclaimed friend of free markets and liberty Jesse Jackson thinks he's going too far:
"It would come through the small-business community like a tsunami," he said in an interview. "For a substantial number of small businesses and many of our established businesses, the tax would be higher than the profit. That is the real problem with it."
I'm thinking that if Blagojevich could target only white-owned businesses for taxation, he could possibly get Jackson on board.
It's always amusing to hear single-payer advocates defend the Canadian health care system's long waits for surgery by cherry-picking the data, ignoring the long waits to see specialists just to get a diagnosis - and intentionally confusing the meaning of the term "elective surgery":
Canada has no abnormal waiting times for emergency treatment, and some evidence shows Canadians get it quicker. The problems come in elective treatments, like joint replacements. - Ezra Klein Feb 27, 2006
Mr. Klein would have you believe that serious, life-threatening conditions are treated quickly. But that would not be the case:
Joe MacPherson has been waiting almost eight months for heart surgery in Halifax and still doesn't have a date scheduled.
[...]
He has been unable to work as a painter since having his first angina attack last August. Tests in September showed blockages in three arteries and he was soon put on a list for surgery.
He's exhausted employment insurance and finds the wait stressful "You put your life on hold," Mr. MacPherson said. "When you're diagnosed with angina, it's nothing to kid with."
One of the health-care-left's most prolific prevaricators, Ezra Klein (at his eponymous website), has made a habit of stating that:
Canadians do not wait inordinate lengths of time for health care.
Since Canadians only wait for elective surgery, their system is not so bad.
There are 45 million Americans who lack health insurance - and thus health care.
The U.S health care system is the #37th best system in the world right after Costa Rica.
All of these assertions are false and each has been addressed at some point on this blog (although I may revisit these fallacious arguments soon).
However, Mr. Klein recently suggested that anyone who denies the validity of the "45 million uninsured" trope is intellectually dishonest and beyond the pale. Fortunately, David Hogberg, at his fantastic new blog Health Hog, is helping to neutralize young collectivist Klein's single-payer propaganda. Now would be a good time to bookmark his site.
The plight of Lindsay McCreith of Ontario, Canada was popularized by my video A Short Course in Brain Surgery which told the story of his struggle to get timely medical attention under a system which severely rations health care. Now, the Canadian Constitution Foundation has announced its support for Mr. McCreith's constitutional challenge to Ontario's unjust centralized system:
Lindsay McCreith says he was almost killed by Ontario's health care monopoly. Now he hopes to get even with a constitutional challenge that, if successful, will pave the way for private care in a province dead set against it.
After suffering a seizure in January 2006, the 66-year-old retired Newmarket autobody-shop owner was told he likely had a malignant brain tumour. But he had to wait four-and-a-half months for an MRI to verify that diagnosis.
Mr. McCreith, unwilling to risk the wait and suspecting the growth was cancerous, got an MRI across the border in Buffalo, New York the next day. The scan confirmed his fears -- the tumour was malignant.
Even with this diagnosis, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so Mr. McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the growth.
His best friend and employee for 30-plus years wasn't so lucky. Don Stanley died last year waiting for triple bypass heart surgery, Mr. McCreith says. He had been turned away from a scheduled procedure because of a lack of beds at a downtown Toronto hospital.
David Hogberg at The American Spectator attended the special screening for the press of our new feature film "Indoctrinate U". His review is up this morning:
"If you see one of those ragheads, shoot him right in the f****** face." Given the climate on today's campuses, one would reasonably expect that any student expressing those words would be severely disciplined, if not expelled. The fact that the student would did write such words in an email faced no consequences at all is one of the more eye-opening revelations in Evan Coyne Maloney's documentary, Indoctrinate U.
The ninety-minute look at political correctness run amok in colleges across the nation premiered Monday evening at the Tribeca Film Center in New York City. As the political right struggles to make inroads into cultural arenas such as film, Maloney's documentary is a major step forward. While it doesn't quite have the slick production feel of, say, a Michael Moore film, it still manages to effectively weave learning, controversy, and humor. It leaves the audience both entertained and outraged.
If you're a regular reader here and have noticed a paucity of new blogging, rest asssured that I'm not standing still. More regular blogging will resume soon once editing is complete for a new video that I am close to completing called "Uninsured in America". This new video will explore what politicians, the media and some health care pundits call the "crisis" of 45 million without health insurance. I think you'll be surprised at how just *who* makes up the ranks of the uninsured.
The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial about the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) scam:
The Schip legislation defines potential recipients as children in families making twice the federal poverty line, or $41,300 a year for a family of four. But states are encouraged to apply for waivers to allow for more flexibility. Now 15 states have eligibility thresholds above 200% of poverty, and nine of those are at or over 300%. In New Jersey, the figure is 350%. New York recently passed a budget raising eligibility to the highest in the nation at 400%--or $82,600 for a family of four. That's an income close to what Democrats usually define as "rich" when they're trying to raise taxes.
FrontPage Magazine has an interview with On The Fence Films' Evan Maloney:
It was after McCain-Feingold became law, and it occurred to me that the campaign finance laws had a huge loophole in them, what I call the Michael Moore loophole. Whereas private citizens like you or me could not buy airtime to express our views within 90 days of a general election--it would be illegal--Hollywood was exempt. So people in Hollywood would have a huge megaphone with which to promote their views, while people like us--people who didn't have access to the Hollywood distribution machine--are shut up and shut out of the process.
Defenders of single-payer health care habitually point out that waiting lists exist for only "elective" surgery in countries with government-run medicine. What they don't bother to mention is that nearly ALL surgery is considered "elective" including most vascular and cancer surgeries.
Additionally, discussions about waits for surgery seldom account for the near universal phenomenon of cancelled surgeries. This story from the South African press (which could easily have been Canada or the U.K.) chronicles the sad story of a man who died while waiting for a repeatedly delayed surgery:
We are told my father is to be scheduled for an angioplasty, a surgical procedure to restore normal blood flow through a narrowed or blocked artery. If this doesn't work his foot will be amputated.
The surgery is considered elective as opposed to an emergency procedure, and because of cutbacks this section has only been allocated three elective operations for the month. Preference is given to emergencies.
With the cutbacks the definition of an emergency has changed and those who might previously have been treated are sent home and told to come back three weeks later.
But, hey - as socialized-medicine-advocate Matthew Holt would say - he was 87 years old "and that as he was likely to die soon anyway that money would have been better spent on pre-natal care"!
I want to again bring attention to the excellent editorials of Richard Ralston, Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. Mr. Ralston writes from a pro-individual rights, pro-capitalism point of view which holds that socialized, government-run medicine as not only impractical, but immoral. Like this blogger, I believe Mr. Ralston is also an admirer of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand. His latest editorial is definitely worth a read:
In a free market, if you did not have much to spend on insurance premiums, you could buy a policy that simply covers you for a major illness or a severe injury. Many people worry about the financial ruin that might result from such misfortune and want coverage only for that. They are willing to take their own risk for routine medical expenses if they have reasonable coverage for emergencies.
Such policies are often forbidden by state governments. In California, for example, such policies are not available. Legislators and regulators have imposed 49 specific coverage requirements on all insurance companies. Many states have such requirements. It does not matter if you do not want coverage for chiropractic, or in vitro fertilization, or electronic shock or hypnotherapy for mental illness - you may still have to pay for it.
Private insurance companies must pay for medical care from premiums collected. Therefore, they must monitor and control health insurance claims. Government, however, can draw from a bottomless money-pit as Richard Ralston points out:
Critics point to supposedly lower administrative costs of Medicare and Medicaid as compared to those of insurance companies. Note that this claim is always stated as a percentage of higher spending. Medicare administrative cost can be disproportionately low because they do not bother to control expense or even fraud.
Extravagant spending by New York Medicaid has been justified by state legislators on the grounds that every dollar of waste and fraud brings a matching Federal dollar into the state. Such reasoning has been repeated by legislators across the United States. That is what passes in government circles for administrative efficiency.
Professional Detoxer
Today's New York Times provides a glimpse (registration required) at how New York administers its Medicaid program:
With grim humor, some doctors in New York call them "frequent fliers" - addicts who check into hospital detoxification units so often that dozens of them spend more than 100 nights a year in those wards.
Through its Medicaid program, New York spends far more than other states on drug and alcohol treatment, including more than $300 million a year paid to hospitals for more than 30,000 detox patients. One reason for the high cost is that $50 million is spent just on the 500 most expensive patients, at a cost of about $100,000 a person. These patients check in and out of detox wards, on average, more than a dozen times a year
[...]
George Epps, 59, was a heavy user of alcohol, cocaine and heroin and says he went through detox programs around New York City 20 to 25 times over several years. "I would come out of detox and rent a room, squander my money on drugs and women, be homeless again for a while, and check back into detox," said Mr. Epp
[...]
By law, hospitals cannot turn away emergency patients, and drug or alcohol withdrawal is considered an emergency.
However, such profligate spending requires tremendous sacrifices by taxpayers as shown in a must-read essay entitled "The Medicaid Penny" by Dr. Larry Huntoon:
It was a reality the politicians could no longer ignore. After paying the county a share of the Medicaid bill, Erie County, New York (home of Buffalo) had insufficient money left to run county government.
In November, 2004, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra announced the grim news: The cost of one single state-mandated program Medicaid is greater than the the entire Erie County property tax levy.
[...]
The problem of Medicaid costs is particularly acute in New York State for a number of reasons. New York differs from other states, where Medicaid funding is generally split 50:50 between federal and state governments. In New York State, 50 percent of the cost is federally funded, 25 percent is state funded, and 25 percent is funded by counties or, in the case of New York City, by a city income tax. County property taxes are the principal source of Medicaid funding for all of the counties in New York State. As a result, local property taxes in New York are among the highest in the nation
[...]
High property taxes have been particularly devastating in rural communities, where farmers are being driven out of business.
Single-Payer health care advocates like young collectivist Ezra Klein often point to 45 million uninsured Americans as a "moral disgrace". However, it's hard to know whether they mean that the more than 17 million people (37% of the uninsured) who make more than $50K a year are immoral for not buying health insurance - or - our government is immoral for not forcing them to.
One thing's for sure: as morally outraged as they are about Americans without insurance, they aren't similarly indignant about Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders without health care. And that's a shame - because they continually advocate that the U.S. adopt a nationalized, single-payer health care system like the ones in place in those countries. If they were truly concerned with health - as opposed to wealth redistribution - they might be morally outraged by stories like these:
A London family waiting for life-saving heart surgery for their 16-year-old daughter is angry after the operation was cancelled for a lack of hospital beds.
Julia de Zeeuw needs an operation to correct a narrowing in a heart valve.
The Grade 10 student was scheduled for surgery at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children in late February, but the operation was cancelled only the day before.
PETER Horne's art was his life, but now he spends his time sitting and waiting for hand surgery to revive his career.
Despite being assessed as a category 2 patient -- meaning he should not wait more than 90 days for surgery -- the 61-year-old has already been on the waiting list at Royal Melbourne Hospital for more than two years.
The Ashburton artist has been disabled since rheumatoid arthritis crippled his hands, shoulder and left ankle following a white-tailed spider bite in 1994.
Mr Horne has been waiting since January 2005 to have reconstructive surgery to repair his hands, and though he has twice been booked in for the surgery, each time it has been cancelled at the eleventh hour.
A FAMILY today told how they were close to breaking point after a vital operation was put on hold three times.
Gordon and Gillian Harris, who care for their two adult disabled sons and Mrs Harris's severely disabled brother Tony Pople, told how Ipswich Hospital postponed a vital operation, causing the family distress and anxiety.
The operation, to remove a large hernia from Tony Pople's face, was due to take place on March 22 and the couple, of Edinburgh Gardens, Claydon, had arranged transport and the necessary provisions for Mr Pople who lives with a severe mental and physical disability.
But the day before the operation was set to take place the hospital called to postpone it.
Following up on my post last week about the unreliability of information about waiting lists produced by governments with socialized medicine, is this story about a cancer specialist in the U.K. who has admitted to manipulating waiting lists:
A senior cancer specialist admitted today giving patients unnecessary treatments to manipulate hospital waiting lists.
Chris Hamilton, consultant clinical oncologist at Hull's Princess Royal Hospital, told the BBC the problem was a government requirement that all treatment began within 31 days of diagnosis.
He says it means some low-risk patients are being treated before more urgent cases.
Mr Hamilton told the BBC he had given some prostate cancer patients hormone therapy to move them down the waiting list.
He said: "You're caught in a bind. Either you give them unnecessary treatment with hormones and reclassify them or you put them to the front of the queue where they shouldn't really be."
He added that he knew other hospitals were carrying out a similar practice and he had informed national cancer director Mike Richards.
Another great op-ed from Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine:
In the face of this calamity and such inspirations as the tired response of all levels of government to Hurricane Katrina, the tireless advocates of medical socialism will continue to maintain that only the government can care for us adequately.
In the face of New York's cartel of hospital administrators and health care public employee unions driving the annual cost of New York Medicaid past $47 billion and clamoring for more, the friends of ever-growing government will tell us that they will always manage spending better than private providers.
Health care lefty Matthew Holt incredibly asserts today that "care is rationed in the US just as much as it is elsewhere". Certainly, Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA, and billions of dollars spent on charity care for the uninsured and illegal aliens have introduced waiting into the U.S. system. Who hasn't had to sit in a room full of Medicare recipients while waiting to see the doctor? However, in countries where the government fully controls the health care system - like socialized U.K. and single-payer Canada - medical rationing is explicitly built into the system - in the form of global hospital and technology budgets - as a matter of public policy.
Perhaps, Mr. Holt can tell us where the picture below was taken:
Nope, it's not the U.S. - or even Cold War-era Poland. It's a picture of citizens in Mr. Holt's homeland of Great Britain lining up for government-provided dental services.
Ever seen something like this in the United States?
Politicians and bureaucrats in countries with nationalized health care are shameless in their sloganeering and propagandizing for government medicine. Manipulation of wait time statistics and sheer up-is-downism prevails. This story from the British press would be amusing if not for the human suffering involved:
A HEALTH minister insists NHS waiting lists are falling - but ... readers are queuing up to tell him he is WRONG. Andy Burnham defended the health service's record in a letter praising its "world class" treatment.
He wrote: "I am proud of the NHS and I know staff share this pride."
And he paid tribute to "record low numbers of people waiting for treatment and the fastest ever treatment for cancer patients".
But we have been inundated with complaints from patients.
Retired engineer Phil Murdoch told how he had to wait six months for a vital cancer operation. Phil, 61, said the disease was just in his prostate when it was diagnosed. But by the time surgeons operated, it had spread to his bladder - slashing his chances of survival.
Dad-of-two Phil is now waiting to see if six months of drugs and radiotherapy has killed the tumour.
He said: "The waiting is agony - I shouldn't be going through this."
It's annoying to read Paul Krugman in this morning's New York Times complaining about evasion and dishonesty by the Bush administration in their opposition to expansion of the SCHIP program (State Children's Insurance Program) while he simultaneously posits that the program "would provide essential health care to the eight million uninsured children in this country".
What he doesn't mention is that the proposed SCHIP expansion will provide government health insurance to children whose parents make upwards of $80K a year while displacing private insurance. Also - there are certainly not 8 million truly uninsured children in the U.S. Out of the alleged 47 million Americans uninsured, over 17 million reside in households having over $50K in annual income, over 14 million are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but have not enrolled and over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34 who as a group spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, dining out and entertainment as they do on out-of-pocket spending for health care. Finally, millions of illegal immigrants are also included in the number of Americans without insurance. Indeed, David Gratzer in his book "The Cure" estimates that the total number of truly uninsured is around 8.2 million.
Getting reliable information about waits times for medical treatment in countries with national health insurance is difficult. Government bureaucracies, while inept at providing customer service, excel in obfuscation. While officials blather on about "wait time guarantees" and targeted reductions in waits for things like cataract surgery, shortened queues for one type of procedure often result in longer queues for another. Additionally, government-published wait times for surgical procedures are grossly misleading as there are typically multiple waits involved: waiting to see a specialist, waiting for a diagnostic test, waiting for surgery, waiting again for surgery after having it cancelled at the last minute.
New Zealand, with it's abysmal wait times and government-induced suffering, has a novel way of reducing the political fallout associated with long waits for treatment: make people wait to get on the wait list:
It used to be that people awaiting non-urgent treatment in the free health system languished on waiting lists. Now they languish off waiting lists ... Instead of putting all referrals on a waiting list, health boards must now assess patients' urgency and accept only as many as they can treat within six months. Thus waiting lists cannot grow to politically embarrassing proportions. Problem solved.
Tom Firey over at Cato has more analysis of the proposed SCHIP expansion:
CHIP was once intended to help children in families that are low-income but that do not qualify for Medicaid; now Congress is pushing for the state-operated/federally supported program to use its money to cover families up to four times the poverty level (e.g., a family of four earning $82,600 a year) - that is, nearly all families in the second-highest income quintile, aka the upper middle class.
The left has long conflated health insurance and health care. Patients in countries with national health insurance, however, can sadly attest to the fact that "coverage" does not equal timely access to quality medical care.
Now, as part of a shamefully exploitative and dishonest campaign to "cover the children", liberals have decided that only government insurance is true insurance:
The Bush administration says it will strenuously resist Democratic plans for a threefold expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, ...
Administration officials said that much of the new government coverage proposed by Democrats would simply replace private insurance ...
Dennis G. Smith, the federal official in charge of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, said 45 percent of all children were now covered by the two programs, up from 28 percent in 1998.
"The original intent of the Children's Health Insurance Program was to cover low-income children who were uninsured," Mr. Smith said in an interview. Democratic proposals to cover millions of additional children "would change the complexion of the program and take it away from its original intent," he said.
If the debate was truly about children's health care, liberal democrats would limit the program to children who are actually uninsured. However ...
[Senator John] Mr. Dingell and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, recently introduced bills that would encourage states to cover children up to four times the poverty level - up to $82,600 for a family of four.
... and if it were truly about children's health care, liberal democrats would consider the consequences of government-run medicine for children in places like Australia as described in this news story:
An eight-year-old boy has lost hearing capacity while waiting nearly a year for simple ear surgery.
... but, the debate is not truly about health care. Rather, liberal democrats and their allies seek government power over the lives of individuals and easier ways to redistribute income and wealth. Health care is merely a convenient vehicle.
Dr. Eric Novak is an orthopedic surgeon and health policy commentator in Phoenix. As a potential victim of the movement to "universal health care", he is speaking up:
Just as it is morally repugnant for employers or the government to require workers to work extra hours without pay, it is unethical for a society that cherishes freedom to create a system where a right to health care obligates doctors to provide care at any time, and for a price that is dictated by government.
The cover story of the April 2 New York Magazine is a long and sympathetic look at "young invincibles" in New York City - young and healthy people who can't afford or don't wish to buy health insurance. Artists, bike messengers and carpenters all go on record with their strategies for getting by in the big city without the financial safety net provided by insurance.
Certainly, health insurance in New York is all but unaffordable for young people just starting out and paying sky-high Gotham rents. However, the author of the piece only makes a cursory attempt to explain why this is the case:
The common assumption is that the exorbitant rates are schemed up by the politically influential executives governing the trillion-dollar insurance industry. But if insurers could target cheaper plans at younger New Yorkers, they would: Every business thrives by exploiting untapped markets. State law, however, requires insurers to follow a "community rating" system that throws everyone - young, old, sick, healthy - into one risk pool.
In 1993, the New York legislature essentially destroyed the market for individual and small group insurance by imposing "community rating" and "guaranteed issue" mandates. Community rating means that everyone in the same risk pool is charged the same. Guaranteed issue means that no one can be turned away - or charged more - for pre-existing conditions. This means that people can wait until after they've developed a chronic condition to get insurance. The result of these new mandates was skyrocketing insurance premiums for individuals. The annual premium for a policy covering a single male aged 30 before the imposition of mandates was $1,200. Afterwards: $3,240!
And now - according to the New York Times, Hillary Clinton wants to impose community rating and guaranteed issue mandates nationally:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York assailed the health insurance industry and said she would prohibit insurers from denying coverage or charging much higher premiums to people with medical problems.
The Indoctrinate U trailer has gotten a lot of attention. As of this morning, 7,878 Americans have signed up to have the full feature-length film screened in their home town. If you haven't seen the trailer or signed up, go to www.indoctrinateu.com.
Try as I might, I just can't find stories about the U.S. health care system that compare with the continuing stream of socialized medicine outrage that flows from the Canadian press:
When Carolyn Moss went into the Lakeshore General Hospital (LGH) for a pre-operation procedure Feb. 20, two weeks before she was scheduled to have orthopedic surgery, she never dreamed there wouldn't be an anesthesiologist available for her operation.
But when Moss arrived at the LGH March 6, the day of her operation, she was stunned to discover there were no anesthesiologists on call for her procedure.
[...]
After discussing her options with her doctor, Moss decided on the spot to have the operation with local anesthetic and an Ativan - an anti-anxiety drug - rather than wait a month or two for her surgery to be re-scheduled.
For four long years, I have been on the waiting list for duodenal switch surgery.
For me, this surgery is a necessity. Simply put, it cuts the size of your stomach in half and reroutes part of your lower intestine, aiding in faster weight loss.
Because of many medical problems, undertaking a large amount of exercise to lose weight is medically out of the question for me. A specialist told me I needed surgery, so I went onto the waiting list.
[...]
Earlier this year, though, I was informed that this surgery is no longer being done in Saskatchewan. I got this news in a newspaper, not from a doctor, and was given no alternative. "Go away, don't make any noise, just suffer somewhere else" -- that's what it feels like we were told.
Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine is one of my favorite health care policy writers as he emphasizes both the impracticality - and the immorality - of socialized medicine. He's written a fantastic new short editorial defending the rights of the biggest victims of government-run health care: doctors.
While Governor Schwarzenegger and California legislators are busy putting forward proposals to socialize health care, one element is profoundly missing: none of these politicians know or care what physicians think of the proposals. It should have occurred to them that physicians are, to say the least, rather central to maintaining good health care. But physicians and their views are obviously considered to be unimportant - an individual's need for healthcare entitles him to the knowledge, ability, careers and lives of physicians. Apparently, physicians are nothing more than a natural resource, like oil reserves - and are to be allocated by the government.
Read it all ... and if you agree with it, please forward it to your personal physician.
The U.S. Census Bureau now says that it has overstated the number of uninsured Americans:
The government's estimate of the number of Americans without health insurance fell by nearly 2 million Friday, but not because anyone got health coverage.
The Census Bureau said it has been overstating the number of people without health insurance since 1995. The bureau blamed the inflated numbers on a 12-year-old computer programming error.
[...]
The revised estimates show that 44.8 million people, or 15.3 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2005. The original estimate was 46.6 million, or about 15.9 percent of the population.
But what's a little 1.8 million person error compared with the Census Bureau's counting of 12 million illegal immigrants and 14 million Medicaid-eligible people as "Uninsured Americans"?
Funny how the proponents of single-payer health care always laud the French and Italian systems but never mention government-run health care successes in English speaking countries. Why could that be?
Here's a recent sampling of stories from the English language press about the health care hell that Kiwis endure:
It is more than 20 years since Colin Marchant missed out on an operation to have varicose veins removed from his left leg, because the anaesthetist was unavailable.
Breast cancer patient Louise MacKenzie waited three months for vital radiotherapy - and when she got it she also got burned.
The lecturer at Auckland's Unitec business school was meant to start radiotherapy within four weeks of having a partial mastectomy. She had her surgery in the first week of July, but radiotherapy started only in the first week of October.
She is among the thousands of New Zealanders whose health is affected by growing waiting lists for non-urgent treatment. The general trend in elective treatment is causing surgery such as varicose vein treatment to become almost impossible unless patients are in pain.
A woman waiting for radiotherapy is outraged that health chiefs say patients like her will wait 12 weeks for treatment, even though she received a letter indicating 14 to 16 weeks.
Our new film, Two Women (run time 4:32), shows that having the government determine health care access and priorities can have truly unfortunate consequences for some people. Set in Ontario, Canada - this powerful video serves as a cautionary example of where single-payer health care reform will lead if adopted in the United States.
Speech codes. Censorship. Sensitivity training. Political conformity and rehabilitation. Intolerance. Hostility to religion. Violations of freedom of speech and conscience. Kangaroo courts. We usually associate such things with the repressive regimes of North Korea, China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. But instead, this assault on free thought is taking place all over America--right now--on our nation's campuses.
Our new documentary film, Indoctrinate U, directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, reveals the ugly truths about academia that you won't see in their glossy admissions brochures.
A Few Questions for Administrators
A production of On The Fence Films with the support of the Moving Picture Institute, the film's trailer and website have just gone live. Maloney spent two and a half years investigating jaw-dropping incidents of political persecution--of students and professors alike--at over a dozen schools all over the country. From elite Ivy League campuses to the largest state universities and the tiniest community colleges, Indoctrinate U points a critical lens at every level of the academic establishment.
The film was produced by a team headed by software entrepreneur and filmmaker Stuart Browning, entertainment attorney Blaine Greenberg, and Thor Halvorssen, former CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
Director Evan Maloney will be appearing on Sean Hannity's television show tonight to discuss our upcoming film Indoctrinate U. We will be showing clips from the film as well as the trailer, which will be released online this weekend. Hannity's America airs on Fox News Channel at 9PM and again at midnight (Eastern time).
Children in the U.K. supposedly have a right to dental care. However, health insurance is not the same as health care:
A WORRIED mum has hit out because her young daughter has been waiting more than seven months to have a tooth removed.
Despite being in terrible pain and her tooth starting to fall out, Jasmine Maddox Dodd, seven, of Aberderfyn Road, Ponciau, has been put on numerous waiting lists to have an abscess on her tooth treated.
Mum Jacqui is furious at how long it is taking to end her daughter's agony.
She said: "Jasmine has been waiting to have her tooth removed since September of last year. I think it's absolutely disgraceful she should have to wait this long for something which, according to our dentist, should be relatively straightforward."
While Connecticut lawmakers flirt with single-payer health care, the results of government-run medicine are published daily around the world like a laboratory experiment for all to see:
The Belfast Telegraph revealed recently that nearly 7,000 patients across Northern Ireland are waiting for desperately needed scans to find out if they have potentially life-threatening conditions such as cancer.
It is understood some patients are waiting up to 12 months for an MRI scan.
Ulster patients with severe hip problems are being forced to wait more than three years simply to be assessed for surgery by specialists at an overstretched Belfast hospital, the Telegraph can reveal today.
Those found to require hip replacements at Musgrave Park Hospital also face a wait of more than three years for their actual operations, according to extraordinary new figures.
Anger is mounting over proposed R30 million budget cuts at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals, with a senior surgeon at Groote Schuur revealing he has patients who face a wait of more than 18 years for operations.
The federal government has provided provinces with an extra $36 billion in transfers for health care since 1997, yet Canada's health care system is in worse shape now than it was 10 years ago, according to a new report by the Fraser Institute.
In a fine example (registration required) of advocacy journalism, the New York Times, in an article on page A1 entitled "Lacking Papers, Citizens Are Cut From Medicaid", yesterday deplored an unconscionable hurdle that the Bush administration has heartlessly placed in the path of Americans seeking free health care: proving that they are indeed Americans. Predictably, the Times reporter profiles a child in need of heart surgery whose mother is unable to readily prove citizenship.
Rhiannon M. Noth, 28, of Cincinnati applied for Medicaid in early December. When her 3-year-old son, Landen, had heart surgery on Feb. 22, she said, "he did not have any insurance" because she had been unable to obtain the necessary documents. For the same reason, she said, she paid out of pocket for his medications, and eye surgery was delayed for her 2-year-old daughter, Adrianna.
The children eventually got Medicaid, but the process took 78 days, rather than the 30 specified in Ohio Medicaid rules.
It's hard for me to see the problem here. The health care was free and the child obviously did not wait for the surgery - as the citizens of countries with national health insurance do.
However, in case the reader missed the point, the Times followed up on the opinion page with an editorial (registration required) railing against the Bush administration's efforts to "promote its free-market philosophy" in health care:
At a time when the nation is pondering how to provide medical coverage to some 47 million uninsured Americans, it is logical and right to start with the country's nine million uninsured children. The Bush administration, unfortunately, is going in exactly the opposite direction.
Apparently, "All The News That's Fit To Print" doesn't include the fact that the number of truly uninsured - after subtracting illegal immigrants, the Medicaid-eligible and households with more than $50K in annual income - is closer to 8 million. Certainly, The New York Times is not letting facts get in the way of the effort to "promote its socialist philosophy" in health care.
Also: Here's one story we probably won't be hearing about in the NY Times. (Hat tip: David Hogberg)
More than 300 morbidly obese people waiting for weight loss surgery in Saskatoon have been told the program is being cancelled.
Patients have been told to seek other options after learning that as of mid-June, no more bariatric surgeries will be performed in Saskatoon - the main centre for the procedure in Saskatchewan.
The cancellation has left many people like Kathy Glasgow - who's been waiting four years for her operation - wondering what they will do now.
"I feel hurt because this is the one thing I looked forward to," she said. "We've been waiting ... it's like a waiting game with my life."
Marion Rodger is quick to stress she's not a complainer.
But the 74-year-old retired piano teacher has decided it's time to do some serious complaining about the state of Ontario's health care.
On Thursday, Rodger was driven from her Ipperwash home for scheduled hip replacement surgery in London -- only to learn at the last minute the surgery was cancelled because of a lack of beds.
She was one of five patients sent home that day from University Hospital without having their scheduled operations.
"I just broke down in tears," Rodger said of the moment when she, her husband and daughter were informed the surgery scheduled seven months ago was off.
For decades, federal and state governments have driven up the cost of health care and insurance with thousands of ill-advised interventions into the medical marketplace. One bright spot, however, has been cosmetic surgery. Over the years, cosmetic procedures have become cheaper while quality has greatly improved. The cosmetic surgery market is mostly unburdened with government and third-party payer distortions resulting in medical deflation as opposed to the inflation that we see elsewhere.
Democratic lawmakers in several states are now attempting to change that with a new "vanity tax" on cosmetic surgery beginning in New Jersey:
A new precedent has been set in the cosmetic surgery industry, but it has nothing to do with surgical results. In September, New Jersey became the first state to enact a vanity tax on cosmetic surgery and Botox injections - a move that lawmakers elsewhere are now seeking to emulate, potentially leaving physicians and their patients at a loss.
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers Tuesday unveiled a $900 million universal health care plan that would be financed in part by raising taxes on cigarettes and health care providers and initiating a new tax on elective cosmetic surgery.
The so-called vanity tax is particularly offensive. Productive individuals who have taken responsibility for their own lives and have made the decision to use their money to improve themselves aesthetically are to be punished for their vanity by a rapacious state eager for tax revenues.
As a followup to my posting last week, it should be pointed out that over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, people between 25 and 34 spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they do for out-of-pocket spending on health care. If we infer that spending for people in their early-20s is similar to their mid-20s and early-30s, then the graph below tells us something about the "crisis" of 47 million uninsured.
While the single-payer left blathers on about evil insurance companies and life expectancies in countries with socialized medicine, the reality of government-run health care in the mother country has been laid bare in an article just published in the UK press:
More than a million people are waiting for a first hospital appointment.
160,000 waiting from 8 to 13 weeks to see a specialist.
775,000 waiting for operations.
At one hospital, 1 in 4 patients waiting for rescheduled surgery after a month.
Today we present a guest editorial from author and health care commentator Dave Racer:
Mandate universal health insurance? Because the uninsured rate has soared? The "I" Word
Recently, I proposed to a broad coalition of health insurance agents that any legislative remedy for what ails health care had to start with a factual assessment of the data. When confronted by how immigration affects uninsurance, however, they protested. "Immigration is the third rail of modern politics."
Here is the reality-check: The U.S. Census Bureau claims there are 46 million uninsured Americans. They insist that the number of uninsured is swelling each year. This, we are told, is a "crisis" so grave that it requires overhauling our health care system.
Many governors assert that the only way to solve this crisis is to mandate health insurance for everyone. Many others demand that the government take over all of health care. The uninsured "crisis" is so bad that there just are no other wise choices. Ordinary people, we are told, can not be trusted nor afford to insure themselves.
Giving government the authority to mandate anything is a serious issue. Such a critical decision, then, had better be made based on sound data.
While picking through the minutiae of a Minnesota report about the increase in uninsured people, I found an astonishing fact: The 64 percent increase (from 4.5 to 7.4 percent) in the number of uninsured in Minnesota from 2001-2004 is almost entirely attributable to people who are " ...Hispanic/Latino and born in a Hispanic nation..." and who work as temporary or seasonal workers.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2003, more than 11 million immigrants were uninsured - they gave no indication whether this total included legal or illegal immigrants. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that during March 2006, the illegal immigrant population had swelled to 12 million. The truth is that we really do not know how many of the uninsured are illegal immigrants. Here is where it really gets interesting.
After performing walletectomies on North Carolina obstetricians with the aid of junk science about cerebral palsy, John Edwards is now outlining his proposal for government-run health care in a new video:
Apparently, a majority of Americans have bought into the myth - endlessly perpetuated in the media - of 47 million people without health insurance - and hence, without health care - as evidenced by a new CBS News/New York Times poll:
However, the 2005 U.S.Census Bureau Current Population Survey report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (Table 8 on page 22), shows that over 17 million - more than one third - of the uninsured reside in households with annual incomes in excess of $50K. I've created a piechart to illustrate:
2005: The Uninsured By Income
Also, an April 26, 2005 article in the LA Times estimated that from 10 to 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, but have not enrolled. Indeed, the actual number of Americans who can't get health insurance is much less than half of what is consistently reported. Various health care "reformers" don't feel the need to be honest about just who is uninsured while they strongly imply that health insurance equals medical care in order to press for total government health care financing - and the mainstream media is their dependable ally.
On The Fence Film's Evan Maloney will be in Washington, D.C. tonight for a screening of the trailer of our upcoming film on higher education "Indoctrinate U" at CPAC. This appearance is part of an event hosted by the Moving Picture Institute. Stop by and say hello if you're in the area of the Omni Shoreham hotel around 8:30PM.
Young collectivist Ezra Klein, lover of all things government, ponderer of actuarial tables, self-styled health care expert, advocate of socialized medicine, emailed me last year concerning the news items that I post here at my website showing the disastrous and predictable results of government rationing of health care:
Ah, argument by anecdote, the last refuge of the scoundrel. [...] America has no shortage of terrible tales of maltreatment, deprivation, and wrongful death, but I'm not going to dip into that pond as I try to not enlist other's misfortunes as pawns in my argument. You, unfortunately, have no similar scruples.
"It is shameful that the U.S. is the only modern nation without a nationalized health care system."
"The U.S. lets 46 million people go without health insurance while other OECD countries provide free health care for all."
"Poor Americans are denied health care while the citizens of Europe get equal access to health care without regard to financial status."
For a quick reality-check, let's review how the socialized health care systems of Europe and Canada have been portrayed in their own media in the last few weeks:
While Ottawa and the provinces are struggling to reduce surgical wait times for hips and knees, some Canadians are waiting years to see a back specialist, according to a new survey released to CTV and The Globe and Mail.
People with often crippling back problems are being forced to live with debilitating pain while they wait, said Dr. Michael Ford, a spine surgeon.
According to the informal survey of back specialists by the Canadian Spine Society, many of his colleagues have over 1,000 patients waiting for a consultation, he said.
"These people have been on waiting lists for up to six years," he told CTV News.
BREAST screening waiting times for patients from the Omagh district have been described as "absolutely disgraceful" by local GP and SDLP West Tyrone Assembly candidate Dr Jo Deehan.
She revealed for cases deemed as non urgent patients may have to wait up to six months, and even for urgent cases there is still more than 25% of woman wait up to six weeks to be seen.
Women in Hertsmere are among the 3,500 affected by the suspension of routine breast screening at the North London Breast Screening Service (NLBSS).
NLBSS, which serves Hertsmere, Three Rivers, Watford and north London, wrote to patients just before Christmas, explaining that their appointments for mammograms have been postponed until services resume.
But Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the service, has still not given a date of when this will be, two months after the sevice was temporarily suspended.
A Scarborough mother is hoping her complaint to Rouge Valley Health System will ensure other surgical patients don't encounter the same communication mishap she endured this month.
Catherine Baillie filed a grievance with the hospital's patient relations consultant, Jana Bartley, after spending a frustrating day Feb. 14 waiting for exploratory surgery at the Centenary site in Scarborough.
She was scheduled for a laparoscopy to determine if she suffers from a painful condition known as endometriosis.
However, after eight hours of waiting, a cold and hungry Baillie learned the operation had been cancelled in the morning, but the news had not been conveyed to her.
If politicians were forced to use the government-run health care rationing systems that they administer, we would probably see the downfall of socialized medicine around the world. Stephen Robertson is Minister of Health for Queensland, the third most populous state of Australia where he oversees the taxpayer-supported, government-run, public health care system. Australia has long waiting lists for diagnostic tests, appointments with specialists, and surgery. Mercifully, Australia (unlike Canada) also has private hospitals as an alternative to the public queue. Last week, when Health Minister Robertson needed an operation, guess where he chose to have it done?
Queensland's Health Minister Stephen Robertson has had minor heart surgery.
He was admitted to St Andrews Private Hospital on Friday after feeling unwell and short of breath.
The Premier Peter Beattie says Mr Robertson had an angioplasty procedure and is now back at home.
It's too bad that many citizens of Australia - having paid high taxes to support government-run health care system - can't afford to make the same choice.
Two stories from this weekend's British press provide (for anyone who wishes to see) great insight into the priorities of a health care system run by politicians:
Nearly half of NHS hospitals are delaying operations to save money and the political skin of under-fire Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
Surgery is being postponed for at least 20 weeks in 43 per cent of hospitals until the start of the new financial year in a bid to balance the books.
But despite beds being available and doctors and nurses on call, campaigners said the delays were a "scandal" designed to save the career of the beleaguered minister rather than promoting the interests of patients.
Ms Hewitt pledged to she would resign if the NHS was not in the black at the end of the financial year in April.
Cancer patients are having to wait months beyond recommended dates for treatment to prevent the disease returning, say frustrated consultants.
After tumours are removed by surgery, patients should get follow-up radiotherapy within 28 days, according to Royal College of Radiologists guidelines.
But in many areas the wait is much longer.
In Kent, for instance, the waiting time for breast cancer patients is at least three months. Three patients have seen the disease return during the long gap between operation and radiotherapy.
Older patients waiting for orthopedic surgery like hip and knee replacements are often the quiet victims of socialized health care. Their waits to see specialists and subsequent waits for surgery are often interminable. Not only do they wait for years - but they wait in pain and misery. Often, their cases are more expensive and disabling because of the long wait. Here's a story from New Zealand that shows this very clearly:
Orthopaedic surgeons at Dunedin Hospital say they are being forced to ration treatment to the crippled, immobile and housebound.
In the latest Otago District Health Board orthopaedic newsletter to GPs, the surgeons said they had no alternative but to limit their attentions to the worst-affected due to lack of funding and increased demand,
"Currently, we are typically operating on patients who have two crutches, a frame or are in wheelchairs. They are virtually housebound and...will be on maximum medication which may include opiates.
"In addition, they are likely to have serious bone loss on their X-rays. Unless your patient falls into this group it is unlikely that we will be able to perform their surgery within six months," the letter read.
[...]
Patients with conditions including "ganglion, bunion surgery, ingrown toenails (and) lesser toe deformities" would not be operated on.
Spokesman for the surgeons, John Matheson, verified the statements made in the newsletter, obtained by The Otago Daily Times.
By the time people had enough points to qualify for surgery, their quality of life was awful, he said.
The advocates of government-run health care focus on insurance in the U.S. forgetting (or ignoring) that health insurance does not equal health care.
Having scheduled surgery cancelled at the last moment is a routine fact of life under socialized health care systems. Because hospitals are run on annual global budgets that constrict spending on operating rooms and IC units - and because the hours that a surgeon is allowed to operate per week are severly limited, there's not a lot of slack in the system. When emergency patients arrive, elective surgery patients have their procedures cancelled.
Unfortunately, 'elective surgery' doesn't mean 'optional'. The term describes nearly all cancer treatments. Cardiac bypass operations are 'elective'. So when urgently needed surgeries are cancelled at the last minute - often after a patient has waited months and sometime years for a date - it's a big deal.
It's nearly impossible to find news stories in the U.S. about cancelled surgeries. However, in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and other countries who have completely turned over their health care system to government, these stories are a daily occurance. Here are a few recent ones:
HOSPITAL patient Barbara Grimsley is furious after her latest operation was cancelled - as she waited to go into theatre.
The mum-of-five said she waited four hours at Coventry's University Hospital for a knee operation but she was sent home because of emergency admissions.
Mrs Grimsley, aged 50, of The Moorfield, Stoke Aldermoor, was looking forward to having the operation after two previous operation dates were cancelled.
But she was distraught when it was cancelled again after the operating theatre had to be used to treat emergency patients.
Mrs Grimsley, who is registered disabled said: "They had my knee all marked up and I was sat in my nightie waiting for four hours before we were told.
A SHEFFIELD hospital has postponed 10 operations today as it continues to deal with an influx of emergency patients.
It is the second day running that managers at the Northern General Hospital have needed to put off non-urgent operations. In total 36 operations have been postponed so far.
Repeated cancellations of heart operations owing to a chronic shortage of intensive-care unit (ICU) beds at Christchurch Hospital has raised concerns at the highest level.
David Hogberg at The National Center nails health care charlatan Matthew Holt:
Over at the inaptly named Health Care Blog ("Socialized Medicine Blog" would be more accurate), Matthew Holt gives a mini-seminar on the dangers of only reading a press release and not reading the actual study on which the press release is based.
[...]
Holt states: "There's been lots of BS about how the price reductions in those ads for LASIK 'prove' that cash based consumer payment works in health care." And what is that alleged bovine fecal matter regarding LASIK surgery? In a nutshell, it is inconsistent bundling of services, misleading advertising, and lack of information on quality.
However, if you dig into the study, which Holt clearly didn't, LASIK surgery performs very well on two crucial market factors: price and customer satisfaction. As market advocates have argued, when people pay for a service directly, providers compete on price, thereby driving prices down.
Women who have opted to have their ovaries and womb removed in an effort to prevent ovarian and breast cancer have been left waiting for a bed, according to a leading consultant oncologist.
Prof Peter Daly, consultant medical oncologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin said he has had "the unhappy situation" where a woman has had to come to terms with the prospect of surgery and make arrangements, only to be told that there is no bed for her when she arrives for surgery.
A WELSH businesswoman has chronicled the "inhumane" delays in treatment for breast cancer patients she witnessed at first hand.
In a blunt letter to a Welsh NHS Trust, she reveals how patients must first ring to see if a bed is available on their day of treatment, and are frequently left waiting for hours even when they are admitted.
Mother-of-three Angela Lloyd says her experiences show how a difficult situation is made even more traumatic by the lack of available beds.
In a letter sent to Hugh Ross, chief executive of the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, Mrs Lloyd outlines the delays she and other patients waiting to undergo breast cancer surgery at Llandough Hospital, Cardiff, experienced.
Mrs Lloyd, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in October, described how she rang on the day she was due to be admitted for a mastectomy, but was told there were no available beds.
The idea behind "Universal Health Care" is that insurance equals health care. National health insurance provided by the government is, of course, the preferred solution.
In the U.K., where medicine is socialized, everyone is in theory "covered" by the National Health Service (NHS) - except, possibly, some people.
Patients could be denied treatment because they smoke or are overweight, Patricia Hewitt said yesterday.
The Health Secretary insisted it was right for those whose lifestyle choices could make treatment ineffective to be refused care in some circumstances.
It is the first time a minister has explicitly endorsed the controversial policy, which has already been adopted by some health trusts.
Opposition MPs and some medical experts predict the move could encourage rationing of treatment for vulnerable groups, particularly when many NHS trusts are struggling to balance their books.
Health trusts in Suffolk were among the first to announce that obese people would be denied hip and knee replacements on the NHS.
The ruling was part of an attempt to save money locally.
The incomparable Walter Williams cuts through the single-payer rhetoric about our system:
There's a cure for our health-care problems. That cure is not to demand more government but less government. I challenge anyone to identify a problem with health care in America that is not caused or aggravated by federal, state and local governments. And, I challenge anyone to show me people dying on the streets because they don't have health insurance.
Single-payer advocates consistently defend the Canadian system by claiming that waiting lists in Canada are almost exclusively people waiting for hip and knee replacements. That's patently untrue. Here's a form letter given to patients whose operations were cancelled by desperate and fedup doctors at Kelowna General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada. This was given to me by a vascular surgeon who operates there.
With this morning's New York Times business pages featuring single-payer propaganda from one Robert H. Frank replete with lies about national life expectancy averages somehow having anything to do with the quality of a health care system, it's good to see John Stossel over ar Real Clear Politics explaining in plain English that the problems in our health care system begin and end with government
... the problems have their roots in existing government activity. More such activity is unlikely to make things better.
The root of the problem is that few people face the true cost of medical care. Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries don't because taxpayers pay their bills. People with employer-based medical insurance don't because insurance policies shield them from it. Since they pay only small co-pays when they see a doctor, they don't ask, "Do I really need that test?" but rather, "Does my insurance cover it?"
People who don't face the full cost of their choices don't act like cost-conscious consumers. Higher prices result.
I do not agree with argument for health care federalism at the end of the article - but on the whole: all true.
A bricklayer told he will have to wait more than five months for a hernia operation at an Oxford hospital has been sent a survey asking him to rate his experiences booking his appointment.
Derek Risby, 53, is angry that staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, have time to send out questionnaires, but cannot organise the surgery that will help him get back to work.
A WEST London councillor has been told he could wait six months for dental surgery after a bungled tooth extraction.
Councillor John Hensley (Con, Ickenham) is finding getting an appointment on the NHS like pulling teeth' and has slammed the bureaucratic processes for keeping him waiting.
Richard Ralston over at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine has written an excellent editorial on the dangers inherent in the Schwarzenegger health care proposal for California that contains the following paragraph - which I think sums up the attitudes of the advocates of government-run health care nicely:
Apparently, if people need health care, we must assume that is all that matters, and it must be seized and given to them with no regard for anything or anyone else. Give everyone all the health care they want, no matter what it costs or who must be forced to provide it. Take away everything else: individual rights, private property, privacy of medical records, personal choice. A need for health care must obliterate even the concept of freedom.
and this:
Drawing on an endless source of tax revenue and borrowing, government medical care does not bother about such things as cost control or fraud - and thus we have seen a geometric expansion in government medical spending for forty years. If the government is so much more efficient than corporations, why not eliminate all private commerce and have the government nationalize and run everything? Didn't somebody try that? Did it work?
Over on his wonky web site, health care bolshevik Matthew Holt publicly chastises a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) by publishing an email exchange that this person probably thought was private. Go read it for insight into the kind of bullies who want to ration health care in the U.S.
Here's part of Mr. Holt's email to the NFIB member:
I understand that you represent your members and that their policies are what you follow. I would also humbly ask how many of your members know what share of GDP is spent on health care here versus Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, France et al...you know the answer. Those countries spend virtually 50% the amount we do on health care.
In Mr. Holt's collectivist universe, how much "we" spend on health care is an overriding concern, regardless of the wishes and intentions of the individual. Certainly, there's a lot of waste in U.S. health care due to overreliance on health insurance and government intervention into the marketplace, however, there are also good reasons that the U.S. spends more. We're a wealthy country and health care is a premium good. As income rises, health care spending rises. When we're sick, we want a definitive diagnosis. We don't mind spending more money on diagnostic tests and specialists in order to rule out minor possibilities. There are good ways to reduce health care spending and weed out waste. Outlawing private health insurance and having government ration health care by physical force - as Mr. Holt and others advocate - is not one of them.
Waiting in Pain
Here's a perfect example of how other countries manage to spend "virtually 50% the amount we do" it. They deny care by imposing global health care budgets: From today's Northern Echo newspaper in the UK: You'll have to go home - we've run out of cash
A PATIENT in so much pain he was given morphine was told by doctors that his operation had been cancelled because the hospital had run out of money.
Matthew Fowler-Jones was told he must leave his hospital bed and go home, despite being told by a consultant the operation "needed doing".
The 26-year-old, who was on a no-solids diet for three days in readiness for the surgery, was given a supply of powerful painkillers and discharged.
He was told his routine gallstone operation had been cancelled because there was no money left in the NHS kitty this financial year to pay for it.
Mr Fowler-Jones, of Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was twice admitted and discharged from the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, after suffering agonising abdominal pains over the past fortnight.
After the operation was initially cancelled, he was again admitted to the hospital in agony days later.
He was again discharged, once his condition was stabalised.
