The Right Brothers Rock!
Click Here to Listen!
Posted by Stuart Browning
30 Apr 2007 @ 11:45am
Student Deindoctrination
 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.
Read it all.
Posted by Stuart Browning
27 Apr 2007 @ 8:06am
Announcement
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.
And now ... back to movie making.
Posted by Stuart Browning
26 Apr 2007 @ 9:45am
HillaryCare Installment Plan
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
24 Apr 2007 @ 4:57pm
Interview with On The Fence Films' Evan Maloney
 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.
Check it out.
Posted by Stuart Browning
24 Apr 2007 @ 4:46pm
"Elective" Surgery in Public Systems
Health Care
Rationing
Advocate HoltDefenders 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"!
Posted by Stuart Browning
23 Apr 2007 @ 5:26am
Health Care Is a Business - or Should Be
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
19 Apr 2007 @ 9:39am
Health Care Welfare
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 DetoxerToday'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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
17 Apr 2007 @ 4:23am
A Moral Disgrace
Single-Payer
Advocate KleinSingle-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:
Bed shortage nixes teen's life-saving heart surgery
Julie Zeeuw
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.
Patient's patience runs out
Peter Horne
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.
Couple lodge complaint over cancelled op
The Harris Family
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
13 Apr 2007 @ 9:36am
Anatomy of a Health Care Queue (Part II)
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
12 Apr 2007 @ 6:25am
Should the V.A. Take Over All Health Care?
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
10 Apr 2007 @ 12:58pm
Waiting in the United States?
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?
Didn't think so.
Posted by Stuart Browning
9 Apr 2007 @ 9:01am
The Health Care Emperor Has No Clothes
 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."
Posted by Stuart Browning
6 Apr 2007 @ 11:07am
Krugman's Dependable Mendacity
 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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
6 Apr 2007 @ 10:26am
Anatomy of a Health Care Queue
 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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
5 Apr 2007 @ 3:58am
Socialism: Do it for the Children (Part II)
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.
(Hat tip: David Hogberg)
Posted by Stuart Browning
3 Apr 2007 @ 12:13pm
Socialism: Do it for the Children
 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:
Kyle waits a year for surgery:
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
2 Apr 2007 @ 8:49am
Is health care a right?
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.
Posted by Stuart Browning
1 Apr 2007 @ 3:59pm
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