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Nation’s ill-advised to follow Mass. plan [Health plan a failure]
Boston Herald ^
| September 17, 2009
| Michael Graham
Posted on 09/17/2009 4:28:01 AM PDT by suspects
The canary is dead.
Massachusetts, the model for the ObamaCare universal insurance plan, is the canary in the health care coal mine. Yesterday, its obit appeared on the front page of both The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe-Democrat.
Both papers reported that our Commonwealth Care reform isnt working as planned. A new law that was supposed to control costs and drive prices down (sound familiar?) has instead sent costs soaring.
Under the beta version of ObamaCare here in Massachusetts, premiums have jumped 7 to 12 percent just this year. Thats about twice the national average - and its bad news for Bay State families who were already paying the nations highest premiums. If the swine flu season turns ugly, our premiums could go even higher.
As Tim OBrien of Blue Cross Blue Shields Boston office put it, Reform has had some unexpected results.
I wonder if this guys covered for Chronic Understatement Syndrome.
And its not just premiums that are rising. Massachusetts has accomplished the presidents goal of insuring the uninsured. More than 400,000 have joined the ranks of the insured (half under free or subsidized plans), leaving merely 3 percent of our population uninsured. Thats the good news.
But the hair-on-fire bad news is how much this is costing taxpayers. A plan that in 2006 was projected to cost a small amount of new money in the first few years according to the Globe-Democrat (Chronic Understatement Syndrome strikes again!) is costing more than $1 billion today.
Why? Because as Massachusetts discovered, when you give people taxpayer-subsidized insurance, they buy it! And theyre going to do the same at the national level. Only it will be worse for ObamaCare because about 15 percent of the country is uninsured - a far higher percentage...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: dnc4romney; healthcare; liberals; msm4romney; obama; romney; romney2lose; romney4obama; romney4truthers; romneyantigop; romneyantipalin; romneycare; romneydeathpanel; romneystinks; stenchofromney
1
posted on
09/17/2009 4:28:01 AM PDT
by
suspects
To: suspects
someone should send barry’s lap dog, maxie baucus a copy of this.
2
posted on
09/17/2009 4:31:24 AM PDT
by
kingattax
(99 % of liberals give the rest a bad name)
To: suspects
A well-written article. The canary in the coalmine is right. This is NOT the path to remedy healthcare.
3
posted on
09/17/2009 4:37:23 AM PDT
by
SueRae
To: kingattax
someone should send barrys lap dog, maxie baucus a copy of this. Send a copy to Romney too. It will be as effective.
The same applies to the Rino Rheberg (R)
With luck, they will not vote for the Malarky energy tax bill.
4
posted on
09/17/2009 4:42:49 AM PDT
by
This_far
(Mandatory health insurance? I thought it was about health care!)
To: suspects
Let's all remember it was this pirck Mit Romney who signed this POS bill into law! Forcing people to buy insurance...forcing them too!
No More Rino's...Please get a clue Repubs!
5
posted on
09/17/2009 4:51:24 AM PDT
by
sirchtruth
(Gravity Of The Situation...)
To: suspects
You know, 21st century medicine in America is an expensive proposition. We have treatments and machines and experts that represent the absolute pinnacle of the medical sciences. Sure, there are lots of things that make it more expensive than it needs to be, but even if you do away with all of those you would still have the most expensive system of health care in the world. No law is going to change that without doing something that adversely affects the delivery of that care.
One of the biggest influences in the rising cost of medical care is government. It does all sorts of things that result in rising costs. It regulates this, it controls that, it prohibits this, it demands that, on and on.
It's absolute folly to think that increasing government's role in the delivery of medicine will somehow magically reverse the trend “this time”.
You generally get what you pay for in this old world, and medicine is no exception. Do away with all the expenses that have nothing to do with what we actually get in the way of health care and you would still have a very expensive system. OTOH, you still have the best medical system in the world. Those who tell you Cuba has it better are simply crazy in the head. Actually, they're liberals, what more can you expect from them?
6
posted on
09/17/2009 4:54:07 AM PDT
by
jwparkerjr
(God Bless America, and wake us up while you're about it!)
To: SueRae
Democrats approach to failed policy like that Aunt who insists on making liver for dinner. You tell her you’ve had it before, didn’t like it, but she insists that you haven’t had it made her way.
Dems will look at Taxachussetts as a success. If the program had failed to meet 95% of stated objectives, they will relentlessly praise the 5% accomplished. They will trot out teary eyed example of how socialized medicine allowed Grandma to have that operation... They will speak of learning opportunities to apply to acrosss the country, imcremental improvements, blah, blah, blah... The SEIU and Acorn thugs will pump their fists in the air saying not having a ‘public option’ is our right and failing to do so is a racist plot.
Not sure if it is too early in the a.m. for such cynicism, but when I see the Dem party in action; I don’t see evidence of critical thinking, of logic, of ideas rooted in practicality, reality, or of unintended consquence.
7
posted on
09/17/2009 4:56:48 AM PDT
by
Made In The USA
(Communists need not apply.)
To: suspects
MITT ROMNEY SIGNS HIS BABY, ROMNEYCARE, INTO THE LAW OF THE LAND, BACKED BY ALL DEMOCRATS, INCLUDING SENATOR KENNEDY.
8
posted on
09/17/2009 5:08:25 AM PDT
by
Leisler
(It's going to be a hard, long winter)
To: suspects
9
posted on
09/17/2009 5:08:39 AM PDT
by
Venturer
To: suspects
Mittbots are idiots.
10
posted on
09/17/2009 5:11:13 AM PDT
by
Manic_Episode
(Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps...)
To: Manic_Episode
rino supporters are fine people, they're not idiots. Most just lack the neccessary understanding of what it means to have conviction and principles.
This is a symptom of unmitigated disaster!
11
posted on
09/17/2009 5:17:22 AM PDT
by
sirchtruth
(Gravity Of The Situation...)
To: sirchtruth
Idiots can be fine people, but they still are idiots.
12
posted on
09/17/2009 5:23:38 AM PDT
by
Manic_Episode
(Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps...)
To: suspects
In TODAY’s Wall Street Journal is an editorial by Deval Patrick , Governor of Massachusetts, entitled “Massachusetts Is a Health-Reform Model”. The last sentence of the article states: “ But innovation can work for everyone if we give President Barack Obama and congressional leaders a chance to do what we have done in Massachusetts.”
The willingness of libs to do the wrong thing in spite of all evidence to the contrary leaves me just plain dumbfounded.
13
posted on
09/17/2009 5:24:36 AM PDT
by
johnandrhonda
(have you hugged your banjo today?)
To: Made In The USA
What a great analogy!! I’ll be borrowing that material for discussions with a few of my lib friends. Sigh, they just can’t help themselves. We have to keep trying to open their eyes. It is working.
14
posted on
09/17/2009 5:28:05 AM PDT
by
SueRae
To: suspects
Carpetbagger shapeshifter Romney imposing RomneyCARE:
"My Death Panel is the first.
Now, you Democrats will love me for long time. Right?"
"Patient with ulcer collapses and dies after paramedics tell her: 'Stop being a drama queen'
A retired teacher died of a burst stomach ulcer after a paramedic told her to stop being
such a drama queen and failed to take her to hospital, an inquest heard yesterday.
Mother-of-three Eileen Ellis-Whitfield, 63, died just hours after an ambulance
was called to her home when she fell seriously ill with chronic stomach pains."
"Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life
09/12/2009 Like all mothers, Sarah Capewell will never forget the first minutes she spent with her newborn baby.
She told her tiny son how much she loved him, gently kissed his face and took photos of
him wrapped in the pretty blanket she'd bought for his birth.
Then she held him tightly in her arms and watched helplessly as his body grew cold
and he finally stopped breathing.
Sarah pleaded for help from hospital staff from the moment he was born, but none came."
"British Death Panel IBD Editorials September 10, 2009
Single Payer: In Britain, where the public option is about all most patients get,
a newborn has died because national guidelines recommend that the baby not be treated."
"Obama health care plan projected to cost 5.2 million jobs
In an interview on Fox News on August 27th Mark Wilson of Applied Economic Strategies
made the economic case against the current plan for health care reform.
He said the current idea for mandating employers to insure employees or pay a fine in the form of a tax would cost employers
$49 billion dollars and cause the loss of 5.2 million jobs. In addition wages would be stunted for another 10.2 million wage earners."
"Is This The Obamacare Future? Overworked Doctors in Australia Worried They Are Killing Patients
Australia has a health care system which is similar in some aspects to what the Democrats are proposing.
In a short time (the system was set up in 1983) the country became divided into one group that gets good medical care
(private insurance) and the group whose insurance is not as good.
there are long waiting lists for orthopedic surgery (median wait for total hip replacement is 88 days;
10% of patients waited over 345 days in 1999 to 2000), and cataract surgery (median is 73 days; 10% waited more than 316 days)."
"Bay State Insurance Premiums Highest in Country - Boston Globe August 22, 2009
Massachusetts has the most expensive family health insurance premiums in the country,
according to a new analysis that highlights the states challenge in trying to rein in medical costs
after passage of a landmark 2006 law that mandated coverage for nearly everyone...
The report by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health care foundation,
showed that the average family premium for plans offered by employers in Massachusetts was $13,788 in 2008,
40 percent higher than in 2003. Over the same period, premiums nationwide rose an average of 33 percent..."
"Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets
Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds."
"Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Doctor-Assisted Suicide Instead of Medical Care
PORTLAND, Ore. Some terminally ill patients in Oregon who turned to their state for health care
were denied treatment and offered doctor-assisted suicide instead, a proposal some experts have called a "chilling" corruption of medical ethics.
"It dropped my chin to the floor," Stroup told FOX News. "[How could they] not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?"
"Sentenced to death on the NHS
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients,
they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
"Massachusetts: the laboratory for ObamaCare
Cato Institute looks a little farther down the coast to Massachusetts, where the state began its own health-care reform complete
with individual mandates and a government plan.
Cato calls it an almost perfect mirror of ObamaCare, complete with promises of reducing cost and extending care that failed in both respects:
Massachusetts shows that such a mandate would oust millions from their low-cost health plans and force them to pay higher premiums.
"Obama Health-Care Would Drive Up Inflation and Health-Care Costs
ObamaCare would shrink the economy, drive up health-care costs and inflation,
and increase the deficit,
Overall, total federal expenditures will be 5.6 percent higher than otherwise by 2019, adding $285.6 billion to the federal deficit in 2019.
An increase in national health care expenditures by an additional 8.9 percent by 2019.
An increase in medical price inflation by 5.2 percent above what it would have been otherwise by 2019.
A doctor shortage [4] is looming, but the AMA has successfully lobbied Congress to artificially restrict [3] the number of doctors in America,
ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions [9]
like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized [9] by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
"Pushing Veterans Toward the Grave
The Obama administration now seems to have our nation's veterans in the crosshairs.
Perhaps you've heard about the booklet Your Life Your Choices-also known as the Death Book for Veterans.
This book is particularly alarming, so I want to share some detail you may not have heard.
I have the book on my desk.
The "instructions" that follow sent a chill up my spine. If the veteran more than once checked the column called "worth living, but just barely,"
he or she is asked what combination of those would it take to make his or her life "not worth living"?
The Veterans Administration might as well abandon all subtleties, dig a grave and push our nation's heroes into it.
"NHS blunders allowed cannibal Peter Bryan to kill two
A catalogue of systemic failings and blunders allowed a schizophrenic killer,
Peter Bryan, to murder two more people, including eating parts of the brain of one, two inquiries have found.
It found a "systematic failure" because he was looked after by an inexperienced social worker and a psychiatrist who had never worked with a convicted killer.
"Massachusetts' Obama-like reforms increase health costs, wait times [RomneyCare]
"If you are curious about how President Barack Obama's health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts.
In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.
.... Premiums are growing 21 to 46 percent faster than the national average
in part because Massachusetts' individual mandate has effectively outlawed affordable health plans."
"Massachusetts' Obama-like reforms increase health costs, wait times [RomneyCare] "If you are curious about how President Barack Obama's health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts.
In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.
.... Premiums are growing 21 to 46 percent faster than the national average
in part because Massachusetts' individual mandate has effectively outlawed affordable health plans."
"Mass. Pushes Rationing to Control Universal Healthcare Costs (RomneyCare)
A 10-member Massachusetts state healthcare advisory board unanimously recommended
that the state begin rationing healthcare to keep the states marquee universal health care program afloat financially.
The July 16 recommendations, the Boston Globe explained, would result in a situation where patients could find it harder to get procedures they want but are of questionable benefit if doctors are operating within a budget.
And they might find it more difficult to get care wherever they want, if primary doctors push to keep patients within their accountable care organization.
The Globe stressed that the recommendations would dramatically change how doctors and hospitals are paid, essentially putting providers on a budget as a way to control exploding healthcare costs and improve the quality of care.
"Budget" is a more politically acceptable word for rationing.
The Globe also noted that consumer advocates said patients are going to have to be educated about the new system. Yes, apparently they will have to get used to having their healthcare rationed.
"1,000 cancer patients 'refused treatment'
0Charities warned that patients with less common forms of cancer were being discriminated against, while others condemned the system as a scandal.
Patients and their doctors can appeal for the NHS to pay for drugs not currently licensed for that type of the disease.
But one in three applications were turned down in the last three years, leaving patients having to pay up £20,000 for the medication themselves."
"Mass. Pushes Rationing to Control Universal Healthcare Costs (RomneyCare)
A 10-member Massachusetts state healthcare advisory board unanimously recommended
that the state begin rationing healthcare to keep the states marquee universal health care program afloat financially.
The July 16 recommendations, the Boston Globe explained, would result in a situation where patients could find it harder to get procedures they want but are of questionable benefit if doctors are operating within a budget.
And they might find it more difficult to get care wherever they want, if primary doctors push to keep patients within their accountable care organization.
The Globe stressed that the recommendations would dramatically change how doctors and hospitals are paid, essentially putting providers on a budget as a way to control exploding healthcare costs and improve the quality of care.
"Budget" is a more politically acceptable word for rationing.
The Globe also noted that consumer advocates said patients are going to have to be educated about the new system. Yes, apparently they will have to get used to having their healthcare rationed.
"Massachusetts Universal Healthcare System Breaking Down Already
When Governor Mitt Romney instituted a universal healthcare plan for Massachusetts in 2006 he proclaimed it a conservative idea.
But has it worked? Has it been successful?
For a time, many thought it might but cracks in the system are already being seen.
These cracks are instructive as a lesson on how Obamacare will crash and burn just like Romneycare is now in the process of doing.
One of the early claims that helped push Romneycare through to law was the insistence by its supporters that Emergency Room visits would fall as more and more citizens became covered under healthcare insurance.
Since ER care is far more expensive than a doctor's care, it was thought that more people with insurance would ease the overcrowding of ERs as well as lower the overall costs of healthcare.
However, a flaw in this logic has been seen throughout the state. As more people became insured, more people demanded the care of doctors. These doctors became overloaded with patients and waiting lists for doctors got longer and longer.
As a result, ERs in Massachusetts have not seen a downturn in visits. On the contrary, it seems that ER visits are actually on the upswing in the Bay State. In fact, in 2007 they were higher than the national average by 20 percent...
"Hospital patients 'left in agony'"
"Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain and drinking from flower vases on a nightmare hospital ward.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a damning Healthcare Commission report said.
The watchdog's investigation found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.
Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said there had been a "gross and terrible breach" of patients' trust and a "complete failure of leadership".
The Healthcare Commission's chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said the investigation followed concerns about a higher than normal death rate at the Trust, which senior managers could not explain.
He said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients. These are words I have not previously used in any report.
"There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients. There was no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result."
Julie Bailey, 47, was so concerned about the care being given to her 86-year-old mother Bella at Stafford Hospital that she and her relatives slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks.
She said: "We saw patients drinking out of..."
"Paramedics told: 'Let accident victims die if they want to' in new row over patient rights (UK)"
Health Service paramedics have been told not to resuscitate terminally-ill patients who register on a controversial new database to say they want to die.
It has been set up by the ambulance service in London for hundreds of people who have only a few months to live so that they may register their 'death wishes' in advance.
It is believed to be the first in the country, but other trusts around the country are expected to follow suit to comply with Government guidelines which state that patients' wishes should be taken into account, even at the point of death.
Patients' groups and doctors have welcomed the scheme, but it has met opposition from pro-life groups who say it violates the sanctity of life.
The system would come into play if a cancer patient, for example, was in serious pain and rang 999 for help to alleviate the suffering.
But if the paramedics arrived and the patient was close to death, he or she would not be resuscitated if such a request was registered on the database.
This would also be the case if a patient on the database was being transferred between hospitals, and had a heart attack.
Dominica Roberts from the Pro-Life Alliance said: 'This is very sad and very dangerous. It's another step along the slippery slope, at the bottom of which is euthanasia as we see in Holland. 'Paramedics should be there to save lives. They should not be there to let patients die. The medical profession should not agree with someone's belief that their life is worthless.'"
"National Health Preview - The Massachusetts debacle, coming soon to your neighborhood."
"Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country.
It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else.
In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls.
As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.
They're trying to manage the huge costs of the subsidized middle-class insurance program that is gradually swallowing the state budget.
The program provides low- or no-cost coverage to about 165,000 residents, or three-fifths of the newly insured, and is budgeted at $880 million for 2010, a 7.3% single-year increase that is likely to be optimistic.
The state's overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.
0What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered.
But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues.
Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional.
Only 21,000 people have used the "connector" that was supposed to link individuals to private insurers."
A Very Sick Health Plan; Bay States Grand Experiment Fails [RomneyCare]
"The Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, Va. - 2009-03-31 "
"For folks increasingly leery of President Obamas plan to radically overhaul Americas health-care system,
or 17 percent of the nations economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time
that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romneys brainchild, Massachusetts grand experiment in universal health care."
"Initiated on Mr. Romneys gubernatorial watch in 2006, this experiment has fallen on hard times, and predictably so.
Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide,
RomneyCare is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million,
or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents,
has caused Massachusetts overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.
So what does Mr. Romneys successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, propose as a remedy for these skyrocketing costs?
Well, whaddya think? The standard litany of prescriptions (no pun intended) price controls and spending caps, for a start, and then, again predictably, waiting periods and limitations on coverage.
As in Europe and Canada, so too in Massachusetts. And, we feel certain, everyone from Mr. Romney to Mr. Patrick said, It would never happen here.
But then, such things are inevitable when best-laid plans, with all their monstrous costs, run smack-dab into fiscal reality.
"Dem Congresswoman Admits Obama Health Care Plan Will Destroy Private Health Insurance Industry"
"Romneys mistreatments a sick man, as Gov. Mitt Romney meets a medical marijuana patient"
Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.
The Government's rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is expected to confirm guidance in the next few weeks that will effectively ban their use.
The move comes despite a pledge by Nice to be more flexible in giving life-extending drugs
to terminally-ill cancer patients after a public outcry last year over 'death sentence' decisions."
"Patients Forced To Wait Hours In Ambulances Parked Outside A&E Departments
"An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors in some cases for more than five hours before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.
Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients or are diverting them to different sites
in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them."
"Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait (UK Socialized Medicine)
WAITING times for cancer treatment need to be cut, the Scottish Government was told yesterday.
..Cancer experts later said that patients elsewhere in Europe would be "outraged" by having to wait two months to start treatment, with most being seen within two weeks.
The current target of 62 days from urgent referral by a doctor to starting treatment has still not been met in Scotland, despite that originally being the target figure for 2005."
"Hospital patient so shocked at dirty ward she climbed out of bed to clean it herself
After 12 years cleaning care homes and private houses, no one is better qualified than Tereza Tosbell to say whether a room is spotless.
So hospital bosses should take heed of her opinion after she spent four days on a 'filthy' ward.
The mother-of-one said during her stay there was a single, brief visit from a cleaner who left dusty curtains, dirty bedframes and a messy floor.
Disgusted at the conditions, she grabbed the antibacterial fluid dispenser at the end of her bed and some hand towels from the bathroom.
She then set about cleaning her four-bed ward, at one point dropping to her hands and knees to sanitise the floor as she dragged her drip trolley behind her.
'It was shameful to see how sloppy the cleaners were while I was there. I was not prepared to put up with such conditions,'
said Miss Tosbell, a 48-year-old divorcee who was admitted to Colchester General Hospital in Essex with an abscess in her neck.."
"Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE (UK Socialized Medicine)
Thousands of kidney cancer patients are likely to lose out on life-prolonging drugs.
The NHS rationing body, NICE, has confirmed a ban on three out of four new treatments.
.. 'Families will be denied time together and doctors will be unable to give patients the best treatment.'."
"Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage (UK Socialized Medicine)
A three-year-old girl awaiting heart surgery has had her operation cancelled three times this month because of a shortage of beds.
... A hospital spokesman said that procedures would be reviewed, but the case highlights a growing problem of cancelled operations in the NHS.
More than 57,000 surgeries were postponed for non-clinical reasons, including a lack of beds, last year 10 per cent more than the previous year."
15
posted on
09/17/2009 5:34:11 AM PDT
by
Diogenesis
("Those who go below the surface do so at their peril" - Oscar Wilde)
To: suspects
The Senator Snowe story highlights some data that is missing - at least to me - in the coverage of health care. Four states have some type of Public Option or state mandated programs, they are Maine, Oregan, Mass and Tenn. What are the results of these programs? In Maine insurance is 3 times higher than in it's neighbor NH. Mass is almost bankrupt from their program, Tenncare was a disaster and Oregan's is on life support. Maybe we should see a working model, ONE THAT WORKS WELL and maybe we should be holding up signs about these four states and their results +++ Medicare, Medicaid and the VA.
Someone tell the Republicans to get new talking points.
16
posted on
09/17/2009 6:05:38 AM PDT
by
q_an_a
To: Leisler
I'm sure that both Hannity and Hewitt will be asking their good buddy Mitt about this the next time they interview him.
Not.
17
posted on
09/17/2009 7:17:05 AM PDT
by
FlyVet
To: suspects
18
posted on
09/17/2009 7:36:47 AM PDT
by
flowerplough
( Pennsylvania today - New New Jersey meets North West Virginia.)
To: FlyVet
I heard the last few weeks both Hannity and Laura, voice read pimp commericals for GM.
F’em.
They make plenty. I could see GM during their slots as I am sure they have no say, but actually reading the pitch?
Bought and sold.
19
posted on
09/17/2009 7:41:44 AM PDT
by
Leisler
(It's going to be a hard, long winter)
To: socialismisinsidious
Socialized Medicine aka Universal Health Care daily digest PING LIST
FReepmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this daily digest ping list (one ping per day of links to pertinent articles).
20
posted on
09/17/2009 11:26:29 AM PDT
by
socialismisinsidious
( The socialist income tax system turns US citizens into beggars or quitters!)
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