Posted on 09/11/2009 11:19:57 AM PDT by TheFreedomPoster
Only a dummy would believe some of the preposterous promises and claims, made by President Obama, during his hazy healthcare speech to Congress and the nation on Wednesday evening.
With con artist like confidence and arrogance, he makes the "something for nothing" promise that he can insure 46 million new people (correction: now he's mysteriously lowered it to 30 million) and pay for it by cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse"? What kind of gullible suckers does he take us for? I wonder if he'll keep this "waste, fraud, and abuse in the system if he doesn't get his bill (which, by the way, doesn't really exist, does it? Where is it? Can you send me the link? What happened to "transparency"?) passed.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfreedompost.com ...
Nancy Pelosi in an interview today stated that there would be cost savings “squeezed out of providers”. In other words, the doctors and hospitals are the ones that will suffer under Obamacare.
Until they quit.
SC DOC wrote:
Nancy Pelosi in an interview today stated that there would be cost savings “squeezed out of providers”. In other words, the doctors and hospitals are the ones that will suffer under Obamacare.
It’s a good time to get to know some good (conservative) veternarians. If you get sick, and you can’t get timely medical care from Obamacare, perhaps you can get some antibiotics or whatever medicine you need for your “sick dog or cat.”
Surely that population has decreased some. Sorta like the uninsureds falling from 46 million to 30 million.
Too bad we can't get a recount now of the 11-04-08 voting.
I have medicare and also pay for supplementary insurance, which entitled me to the best doctors in Seattle. In Naples, FL, however, I couldn’t find a single physician who would take medicare patients except those willing and able to put their doctors on retainer, paying them something like $25k annually just to remain in their practices. I even called the hospital asking for a list of physicians in Naples who took medicare plus supplementary insurance and they could only give me the name of a DO, not MD, and he was 20 miles away.
If obamacare goes through, look for a repeat of this in every city in America. Only the wealthy will be able to afford physicians, the rest of us can go to government clinics where who knows whether the docs will even have MDs or speak English.
Real and Workable Health Care Reform
I am a doctor and a disabled veteran. My wife is in remission from a life-threatening illness. She works as a consultant, a vocational rehabilitation counselor, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor, primarily with Native American support agencies. We are both lucky survivors of medical errors. We are familiar with the health care system from multiple, diverse experiences.
A cardinal principle in medicine is to treat the illnesses that are apparent and treatable, while identifying and developing a treatment plan for those conditions for which a direct and immediate solution is not available. The patient’s health will improve, while waiting for the definitive cure. Applying this principle to the health care system, eliminating waste, expanding both consumer rights and responsibilities, and providing direct comparison shopping in a free market should be implemented and then evaluated, before a major overhaul of the health care delivery system is attempted.
To improve medical service in the USA, I recommend the following initial steps:
1. Eliminate any anti-trust law exceptions for the insurance industry. Eliminate price fixing within the industry.
2. Allow consumers to comparison shop health insurance by creating 3 or 4 nationally standardized policies with ascending levels of coverage, with uniform terms and definitions, providing direct competition between health insurance companies nationwide on the same benefit levels. This would also create larger groups of insurance subscribers, which should lower premium rates.
3. Require all health insurance companies to use the same standardized forms, coding, and consumer submission software, reducing administrative waste.
4. Encourage consumers to carry major medical health insurance coverage, and self-insure for routine medical care. This should reduce administrative costs and consumer expenditures substantially, by reducing the mounds of paperwork created by insurance processing of low cost claims.
5. Stop insurance clerks from making treatment decisions. Only a licensed physician can legally determine diagnosis, treatment, and when an illness initiated. Anyone else making these decisions is practicing medicine without a license, a felony.
6. Individual responsibility is essential for successful health care outcomes. Require co-pays of some sort for any government funded, non-earned, health benefits. Surprisingly, this would reduce the number of no-shows for appointments, which cause substantial losses for health care providers treating government insured patients. Services that are free or do not require a responsible commitment from the beneficiaries, are taken for granted, abused, and wasted.
7. Require participation in substance abuse treatment programs for individuals with those medical issues, in order to maintain eligibility for any government funded health care benefit.
8. Change tort laws to cap awards for other than actual damages in medical malpractice. At the same time, pursue criminal prosecution of physicians who are guilty of gross negligence, sentencing them to provide free care to the state Medicaid and similar agencies, with revocation of license and imprisonment for severe cases or multiple offenses. State medical boards, police yourselves or someone else will do it for you!
9. Expand Medical/Legal Review Boards to reduce frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits.
10. Treatment provided for medical/legal reasons rather than purely medical reasons is extremely wasteful and probably creates more risk than it insures safety. I don’t have an easy answer for this problem, but it warrants serious discussion. What risk level is acceptable when determining what medical tests should be conducted?
11. Stop providing free medical care to illegal aliens, we can’t afford it. Instead, expand care for US citizens who are physically, mentally, or economically disabled. Don’t let your own neighbors suffer while someone who disregards our laws is rewarded.
12. Pre-existing condition coverage guarantees should only apply when the condition was already covered by another private or government insurance program, and replacement coverage is being purchased. Otherwise, people will wait until they are ill to buy health insurance. This would be unfair to consumers and the insurance industry.
Waste does not treat or cure anyone. No matter what assets are available to commit to health care, we cannot afford to expend resources in non-productive ways
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