Democrat Rallies to Defend Veterans Administration

Undaunted by recent revelations of veterans dying while waiting for treatment at VA Hospitals, Senator John Tester (D-Mont) insists that “the VA is doing a pretty darn good job.”

“What a lot of people, especially those hammering the VA, are overlooking is that while some vets died a majority lived,” Tester declared. “Obviously, and vets should know this, any operation as large as the VA is bound to have some casualties. Not everyone can be saved. Rather than become obsessed with those who aren’t saved why don’t we applaud those who are?”

if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you can find them at...

http://azconservative.org/2014/05/16/industry-group-warns-prescription-costs-will-rise-under-obamacare/

THE V.A. DEATH PANEL SCANDAL IS A PREVIEW OF THE COMMING OBAMACARE DEATH PANELS.

Obamacare: The Unimaginable Suffering That Awaits Us

Posted By John Perazzo On November 5, 2013 In Daily Mailer,FrontPage |

There is a vital reason for all Americans to take a close look at how, specifically, the various government-run, single-payer healthcare systems around the world have already affected the lives of the people living under them.

This is vital because Barack Obama and the Democrats actually have their sights set on creating precisely such a system here in the United States. For them, Obamacare is, and always has been, nothing more than a stepping stone toward their ultimate goal of a single-payer leviathan administered entirely by the federal government. Indeed, they’ve been quite clear about their intentions:

• In early August, Senator Harry Reid was asked whether his goal was to eventually use Obamacare as a springboard to a single-payer system. “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes,” he replied. “What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever.”

• In late October, Rep. John Conyers stated that Obamacare was just “a very small and modest bill,” and that Congressional Democrats were already contemplating ways to pass “universal healthcare for everybody, single payer.” “That’s what the new direction is,” Conyers affirmed, even as the supposedly “small and modest” Obamacare project was proving to be nothing more than a colossal lie administered with inexpressible incompetence.

• Nancy Pelosi, too, is on record stating: “I have supported single payer for longer than many of you have been—since you’ve been born, than you’ve lived on the face of the earth. So I think, I have always thought, that was the way to go.”

• Kathleen Sebelius, the chief architect of Obamacare’s pathetic rollout last month, has candidly declared herself to be “all for a single-payer [healthcare] system eventually.” On October 7, she told interviewer Jon Stewart that “if we could have perhaps figured out a pathway [to single-payer], that may have been a reasonable solution.”
And of course President Obama himself has been unambiguous about his own views on this matter:

• At an AFL-CIO conference in 2003, Obama said: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care plan…. ‘Everybody in. Nobody out.’ … That’s what I’d like to see, but as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.”

• At an SEIU Health Care Forum on March 24, 2007, Obama declared: “My commitment is to make sure that we’ve got universal healthcare for all Americans by the end of my first term as President…. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process. I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out …”

• On August 4, 2007, Obama announced that he planned to pass healthcare reform legislation and then “build off that system to … make it more rational.” “By the way,” he added, “Canada did not start off immediately with a single payer system. They had a similar transition step.”

• In the summer of 2008, Obama said: “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.”

• And in June 2009, Obama told an American Medical Association audience that “there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well.”
So, now that we know definitively what Obama and the Democrats ultimately want, let us look at the track record of single-payer systems around the world, so that we can see exactly what is in store for us if we follow the counsel of these masterminds. A monumentally important 2008 Cato Institute study offers keen insights into those systems:

Great Britain
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Norway
Greece
Cuba
Leftists revere Communist Cuba for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the government-run, universal healthcare system that was put in place by Fidel Castro. Many of these admirers—among the most notable of whom is the filmmaker Michael Moore—form their impressions of the Cuban healthcare system from its tourist hospitals, which are, by any standards, clean, well staffed, and of excellent quality. Indeed Cuba, in an effort to attract wealthy foreigners who are willing to spend their money on healthcare services, has pioneered the practice of so-called “health tourism” through agencies such as SERVIMED, which markets Cuban medical services abroad. Calling Cuba “the ideal destination for your health,”

SERVIMED frankly admits to being “a tourist subsystem.”
But after providing for the needs of affluent foreigners (and of the country’s top government officials), the Cuban healthcare system has little left for the general public. Hospitals for ordinary Cubans are typically unsanitary. Syringes are frequently used to inject multiple patients without any sterilization, and “disposable” gloves are likewise used and reused. Consequently, infectious diseases such an impetigo and hepatitis—and infestations such as scabies, lice and fungal diseases—are commonplace in the Cuban hospital population.

Moreover, Cuban hospitals have serious shortages of antibiotics, insulin, heart drugs, blood-pressure meters, disinfectants, and even clean water and soap.
It is noteworthy that in the pre-Castro years of the 1950s, the Cuban population as a whole had access to outstanding medical care through association clinics (clinicas mutualistas) which predated the American concept of health maintenance organizations by decades, as well as through private clinics. At that time the Cuban medical system ranked among the best in the world, as evidenced by the fact that it had Latin America’s lowest infant-mortality rate—comparable to Canada’s and better than those of France, Japan, and Italy.

So the evidence is crystal clear. As the Cato Institute puts it, “In countries weighted heavily toward government control, people are most likely to face waiting lists, rationing, restrictions on physician choice, and other obstacles to care.” By contrast, “those countries with national health care systems that work better, such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, are successful to the degree that they incorporate market mechanisms such as competition, cost-consciousness, market prices, and consumer choice, and eschew centralized government control. In other words, socialized medicine works—as long as it isn’t socialized medicine.”

Yet socialized medicine is precisely the direction in which Obama and Democrats wish, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to steer the United States of America. What, then, does this tell us about the judgment and the motivations of these men and women?

The full article

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/john-perazzo/obamacare-the-unimaginable-suffering-that-awaits-us/

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