Free Republic

Legislature approves health care coverage as constitutional right By Jennifer Peter, Associated Press, 16:25 BOSTON (AP) Comprehensive and affordable health care coverage would become a constitutionally-protected right for all Massachusetts citizens under an amendment overwhelming approved Wednesday by a joint session of the House and Senate. If approved by lawmakers again during the 2005-2006 session, the question would go before voters in November 2006. If successful, the state would then develop a specific plan for providing and paying for health care. Under a change approved Wednesday, which made the amendment more palatable to some lawmakers, the payment and coverage plan...

Ex-Gov. Lamm says 'retiring the baby boomers' will force care system to adaptFormer Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm has been one of the sharpest critics of the U.S. health-care system for more than 20 years, and in his new book, The Brave New World of Health Care, he lays out his critique in its most complete form yet. For all its technological marvels, he says, American health care is "unsustainable, unaffordable, and inequitable, and needs to be substantially amended and revised." Lamm was interviewed by Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages. The interview has been edited for length and clarity....

Ever since the Clinton administration's proposal to direct America's health-care system from Washington, D.C., went down in ignominious defeat a decade ago, its chief architect, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has shied away from "comprehensive health care reform." That is, until now. Breaking what must have been a difficult ten-year silence, Sen. Clinton (D., N.Y.) recently asked on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, "Now Can We Talk About Health Care?" Without waiting for an answer, she called for "a new social contract for a new century premised on joint responsibility to prevent disease and provide those who need...

Free Market Medicine Last week the congressional Joint Economic committee on which I serve held a hearing featuring two courageous medical doctors. I had the pleasure of meeting with one of the witnesses, Dr. Robert Berry, who opened a low-cost health clinic in rural Tennessee. His clinic does not accept insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid, which allows Dr. Berry to treat patients without interference from third-party government bureaucrats or HMO administrators. In other words, Dr. Berry practices medicine as most doctors did 40 years ago, when patients paid cash for ordinary services and had inexpensive catastrophic insurance for serious injuries or...

The latest obsession of politicians enamored with the Canadian health-care system has been the availability of cheaper prescription drugs north of the border. But calls for a nationalized health-care system like Canada's have quieted down of late, and no wonder. A Wall Street Journal article last week examined the wait times for everything from appointments with a specialist to cardiac surgery. And they aren't pretty. Health outcomes as a whole in Canada are in league with those of the United States and a Canadian's life expectancy is actually slightly longer (79.4 years versus 76.8 years). That likely has more to...

Fake blood gets woman hernia op A woman mixed cranberry juice with crumbled biscuits to simulate her own blood and get herself admitted to hospital. Trizka Litton phoned 999 and called an ambulance, claiming to have vomited blood. She was admitted to Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, where she underwent surgery to correct a serious hiatus hernia. Mrs Litton said she had no choice as she had been waiting seven months for an operation. I still don't know what came over me or how I could have even thought of cooking up such a preposterous plot. Trizka Litton She told The...

OCA RATON, Fla. — It is lunchtime, and the door to Boca Urology's office is locked. But outside, patients are milling about, calling the office on their cellphones, hoping the receptionist will let them in. To say they are eager hardly does them justice. "We never used to lock the door at lunch, but they came in an hour early," said Ellie Fertel, the office manager. "It's like they're waiting for a concert. Sometimes we forget to lock the door and they come in and sit in the dark." Yet few have serious medical problems, let alone emergencies. "It's the...

Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak Medical mischief http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Why do human beings co-operate in their own destruction? The question has been asked many times, about many human disasters - from great republics whose citizens surrendered their liberties - to innocents who walked into gas chambers. Many answers have been adduced: inability to resist, fatalism, the belief that some emergencies require stern but "temporary" measures. But perhaps the most common reason why people choose slavery is the belief that - despite all the evidence of history and all the force of logic and common sense - they're...

Britain shamed by NHS death rates Waiting lists and shortage of doctors blamed for grim mortality figures Jo Revill, health editorSunday September 7, 2003The Observer Patients who have major surgery in Britain are four times more likely to die than those in America, according to a major new study. The comparison of care, which reveals a sevenfold difference in mortality rates in one set of patients, concludes that hospital waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds are to blame. Fresh evidence of a stark contrast between the fate of patients on either side of the...

Britain shamed by NHS death rates Waiting lists and shortage of doctors blamed for grim mortality figures Jo Revill, health editor Sunday September 7, 2003 The Observer Patients who have major surgery in Britain are four times more likely to die than those in America, according to a major new study. The comparison of care, which reveals a sevenfold difference in mortality rates in one set of patients, concludes that hospital waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds are to blame. Fresh evidence of a stark contrast between the fate of patients on either side...

Young Americans: Pay Attention, Or Pay The Bills by Derek Hunter August 19, 2003 | | If you’re in your 20s or 30s, one of the biggest decisions affecting your life likely will be made this fall. It’s not whether to get married. Or to buy a house. Or even to have and educate children. But it’s a decision that could affect your ability to afford any or all of those things. That decision, which will be made by Congress, is whether or not to give senior citizens, regardless of income or need, a prescription-drug entitlement in Medicare. The House...

Health care's hidden costs Pierre Lemieux Financial Post Thursday, August 28, 2003 Socialist systems are especially efficient at hiding costs. Workers and producers are underpaid by the state. Economist Mancur Olson has demonstrated Stalin's genius at devising remuneration systems that encouraged people to work hard for mere subsistence wages. Also, in a socialist system, consumers spend much time in queues, sacrificing valued leisure or income, which is a real cost. What does this have to do with Canada? An article in last week's New England Journal of Medicine by a group of American and Canadian health experts (Woolhandler et al.)...

Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article stating that administrative costs of health care in the United States are higher than those in Canada: $1,059 (U.S.) in the United States versus $307 (U.S.) in Canada. The lead author, professor Steffi Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School, has written similar articles over the years, all with the conclusion that the United States should embrace government-monopoly health insurance like we have in Canada.As the authors note, American patients, doctors, and hospitals have to deal with multiple insurers, each of which has different policies and paperwork.In Canada, patients only have...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- There is broad agreement that the Medicare system is inadequate for its purpose. The current population of seniors and rapidly aging baby boomers constitute more people living longer than the program's designers contemplated when it first went online in 1965. Before leaving town for the summer recess, the U.S. Congress made considerable progress toward legislation changing this almost 40-year-old program. The Medicare reform package is currently in the hands of a congressional conference committee that must synthesize the bills already passed by the House and Senate into one proposal. What the conferees have are a...

Newt Gingrich urged Congress on Tuesday to use negotiations over a Medicare prescription drug benefit as a step toward transforming the nation's entire health care system. Since a federal plan to help seniors pay for prescription drugs is ``the largest single domestic program change since Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' of 1965,'' the former House Speaker said, ``anything less than this effort will lead to a politically and financially unsustainable outcome.'' With Congress in recess, House and Senate staffers are hammering out differences in versions of the Medicare prescription benefit. President Bush has urged Congress to pass such a measure and...

LONDON -- Remember Pushme-Pullyu? That was the llama with a head at both ends, from the "Dr. Dolittle" stories by the British-born Hugh Lofting. The creature could get along just fine in the 1967 and 1998 movies starring Rex Harrison and Eddie Murphy, but in the real world, of course, such an absurd critter has never existed -- unless one counts the forward-backward creature known as socialism, in which things are free but are often not available. Alas, the pushme-pullyu paradox of socialism is not confined to faraway areas. Practical-minded Americans, for example, might consider themselves to be immune to...

This Could Cost You an Arm and a Leg Exclusive commentary by Beverly B. Nuckols, MD Aug 19, 2003 Once again, a very small minority is pushing universal health care, after the style of the Canadian Medicare System, as reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in their August 13, 2003 issue. Everyone who does not want to receive the "benefits" of one size fits all medicine and healthcare must speak up, now. We’d better, because the leaders of medical organizations other than the AMA and the small group mentioned above are also pushing for “universal access,”...

ASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — President Bush and Congress have agreed to spend $400 billion on prescription drugs for the elderly over 10 years. But they rarely address a basic question: Where does the money come from?It will be borrowed from the public, officials say. In practice, economists say, workers of the future — children and grandchildren of today's Medicare beneficiaries — will have to pay much of the cost through higher taxes.The federal government has no budget surplus to pay for the new benefits, which are the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965. A law that required...

IRRESPONSIBLY, Congress is treating the lack of prescription-drug insurance among some seniors as if it were as common to old age as gray hair. In reality, 76 percent of seniors currently have pharmaceutical coverage. Rather than target assistance to the remaining 24 percent of seniors, the GOP Congress is crafting a Medicare reform package that President Bush is desperate to sign. This brand-new entitlement — estimated 10-year cost: $400 billion — looks frighteningly like something hammered together by Lyndon Johnson. All Americans over 65 could participate, even multi-millionaires who already have drug coverage. To prevent Bush from using this surgical-strength...

<p>Why can't Americans have the same health care coverage as Congress?</p> <p>Our solons are just now scattered around the country far from the Beltway conventional wisdom, so they may be in an educable mood. If you have the opportunity, dear reader, sidle up to a Congressperson and ask: On this health care business, why not give the rest of us the same choices you've given yourself?</p>