What To Expect From ObamaCare
Apr 19th, 2010 | By David | Category: Health, ObamaCare | Print This Article
Politicians have spent the last few weeks patting each other on the back, making self-aggrandizing speeches and generally acting like they have just finished writing the Constitution. The passing of Obama’s health care reform bill is being hailed as the hand that will save Americans. Unfortunately, there are several holes in the plan’s architecture and the entire concept. Here are a few things you can expect from this fiasco:
Reforming insurance as a means to universal health care is flawed from the start. Insurance in all forms promotes irresponsibility and kills attitudes of self reliance. People with hurricane insurance build homes in areas certain to lead to destruction, knowing that the rest of America will subsidize their rebuilding. Health insurance leads to an attitude that someone else is responsible for your health.
This leads to the next problem. Bernie Madoff couldn’t have invented a better scheme than government mandated insurance. Healthy, responsible people end up paying for the sick and irresponsible among us. Why should I have to pay the medical bills of someone who chooses to smoke or who is an alcoholic, knowing the ill effects these things have on our health? People should be allowed to make their own decisions, good or bad, but shouldn’t have to pay for others.
Since doctors and hospitals know there is money in the insurance cauldron, they are irresistibly tempted to overcharge for their services. When it comes to health care, there really is no competitive pricing. Since the insurance company foots the bill, hospitals often pull an arbitrary number out of the air, based on non-existent market standards. For example, within one city, the cost for an MRI can vary from a few hundred dollars to over $2000, without rhyme or reason.
High-tech medicine is great, in certain cases. However, it is not always necessary for proper treatment. Americans have been led to believe that high tech means better, and now they demand such care. As treatment costs rise, the result will not be more people receiving such treatment, but fewer. With nearly 350 million people demanding high-tech solutions to low-tech health problems, the bank will soon run dry.
Under Obamacare, it’s estimated that nearly 50 million people will be added to the
nation’s insurance plans. That’s fine, as long as premiums are adjusted accordingly and are paid by those receiving the benefits. Unfortunately this simply won’t be the case. Many of the newly insured citizens (or illegal aliens) will pay drastically lower premiums than are required to sustain the system. The government (i.e. the rest of the taxpayers) will foot the rest.
Countries with socialized medicine, such as the U.K., already provide examples of such a system. After years of propping it up with cash infusions, the current economic troubles in the U.K. have greatly reduced the government’s ability to continue doing so, and the system is on the verge of collapse.
As demand for unnecessary treatment surges due to the “free” care provided by insurance, waiting times will increase. Waiting lists for routine procedures will be the norm and complications will undoubtedly arise. The quality of care will also decrease as doctors rush through cases to meet the demand.
As treatment becomes less accessible and less reliable, self-care will become more necessary. Even our current health system doesn’t promote prevention, and with socialized medicine, many people will be even less inclined to do so. Medicine is big business and sick people pay the bills. Fewer sick people, fewer dollars. Many doctors have become drug peddlers for big pharmaceutical companies, and even if they know of a natural cure or prevention for a disease, they will likely choose the overpriced medicine from big pharma. Many of these drugs may alleviate some symptoms of a disease, but nearly all of them come with side effects that can often lead to worse conditions. ObamaCare will increase this dependence on treating symptoms with pharmaceuticals since there will be no time left for anything else.
If you don’t believe that drug companies are happy with this legislation, you need only to consider the fact that it passed at all. The majority of congressmen are up to their necks in pharmaceutical lobbyist incentives and can barely take a trip to the bathroom without consulting one of them. Had big pharma not wanted the legislation to pass, it likely wouldn’t have.
The American health care system is admittedly the most technologically advanced in the world. This is paid for by the millions of sick people in our country who are not encouraged to practice self care and preventive medicine. Diseases like diabetes and heart disease, two of America’s biggest killers, can be virtually eliminated through diet, exercise and lifestyle changes. ObamaCare will make it easier for people to get treatment for these conditions and therefore take away even more incentive to prevent them. This in turn will lead to an even more overburdened system, which in turn will lead to the rise of even more treatable diseases, due to poorer treatment. Technology will continue to improve, subsidized by the millions of middle-class Americans footing the ObamaCare bill, but it will be out of reach to all but the world’s wealthiest.
©2013 Off The Grid News
Loading ...
I’m a Canadian and we have the much vaunted “universal” medical system. I personally am very fortunate but only because my employer covers the cost of extended medical and dental care. But even that does not guarantee me the best care available.
First, every Canadian is supposed to pay premiums to the medical system each month based on their income. The government pays for those on Social Assistance. Sounds great in theory……….
But many Canadians cannot afford to pay the premiums even though the government formulas for assessing their income & ability says they can, so they simply have zero coverage. Now it is illegal to refuse a Canadian citizen medical care, but if you are not insured you will pay for every penny of it. One two hour trip to the hospital for an uninsured person can cost up to two grand or more depending on the tests and/or treatment they received. That debt will follow them everywhere and like all governments, when they owe YOU money it takes forever to get it back, but if you owe THEM money, they will actively hunt you down to the point of garnishing your wages if your employed.
Now here’s where it gets even more fun. We have a nation-wide doctor shortage. Nurses are always in short supply not because they aren’t available, but there is never enough funding in the hospitals to hire enough of them. Many things that used to be automatically provided for the patients during hospital stay are not any longer covered, such as really basic items that are…..how shall I say this politely…. Important personal care items that are absolutely essential if you have to deal with certain kinds of gross, embarrassing tests that cause some very painful side effects. (Think Crohn’s patient.) If the patients broke and has no-one to help, then their screwed. At both hospitals in my city, food is no longer cooked on-site, it’s contracted out the cheapest bidder, frozen and shipped in. Needless to say the bad food got even worse. Oh and they no longer separate men from women, special needs completely senile seniors from regular patients and even go as far as putting major burn patients in a four bed ward.
The cleaning staff is no longer union and has been contracted out to the cheapest bidder. Last time I had to stay for a recurring health issue I was there two weeks. The bathroom was revolting. I never once saw the cleaning staff, the nurses were unable to track down a bottle of cleaner for me and I had to call my husband to bring up cleaning supplies. He and my parents did some cleaning when they could get in, but in order to use it when they were not there, I had to wait for my shot of pain meds, grab my cleaning supplies and drag my IV pole along behind me – just so I could disinfect the areas I had to use several times a day!
My mom recently passed away from cancer and before being admitted to the Hospice center, she went through hell and much embarrassment with the mix of roomates she got stuck with. Had my father and I not been available to go up several times a day to change her sheets, help her wash and stuff like that it would have been far worse. Nurses don’t change sheets here anymore except in emergencies. There are simply too few of them.
As for me and my extended medical care, yes it’s true that without it there is no way in hell I could afford the medication I need. However, because our doctors make so little compared to their global counterparts, there has been a steady exodus of them leaving to practice in other countries for the last 29 years or more. The shortage is just getting worse because the current ones not near retirement age are so overloaded with the sheer number of patients on their case load. If you lose a good GP because yours has retired or simply closed his practice, you might be literally years trying to find a new one. In my case, I lost a great GP after 13 years because he simply could not afford to keep working 18 days with too many patients and the sub-standard fee assigned by the medical system for each visit. Most of the money went right back into to overhead fees like the outrageous rent for his office space, which in our city is through the roof every where and has forced many people out of business.
Now because of all these factors, the doctors we do have are getting very picky about who they keep on and because I have a very extensive medical history, I spent two years literally begging someone to take me on as a patient. The one I finally got stuck with has zero bedside manner, refuses to read any of my history because he doesn’t get paid for it and sticks to a strict 10 minute visit because that’s all he gets paid for. He spends most of those ten minutes telling me how I feel, not wanting or allowing me to get whole sentences out. His decisions about what medication I need are arbitrary and change with each visit. I never which side of Dr. Jeykl I’m going to get. He’s never once properly examined me to validate my claims. And to top it all off with his office is located in one of the seedier walk-in clinics where a lot of junkies come in with bogus claims looking for a quick fix. Because some of the medication I need to keep me physically mobile and not writhing in pain is a narcotic, he automatically tagged me with the junkies. It doesn’t seem to matter that the very file he’s holding when I try talking to him provides extensive records that PROVE I have never abused drugs – prescription or illegal ones – or ever had a drinking problem. One time I get a pat on the head for one prescription lasting me say five weeks and the next one might last seven weeks but I will get yelled at!
I’ve tried repeatedly to get another doctor, but once they hear even a short blurb about my history I don’t even usually get to the interview part. The most standard excuse is you are too much work and we don’t have time to care for someone in your position. A few were actually rude enough to tell me F*** O** – because again, they get a one page summary and assume I’m a junkie. When I offer records to prove otherwise they suddenly become polite again but tell me “they feel they can’t give you the care your deserve.”
I have a brother who is a junkie and has been for 35 years. I know every sick trick he has up his sleeve because he effectively destroyed my family with them. He does doctor shop, he does pharmacy hop, he does steal other peoples medication and buys it on the street. Hell, he’ll steal the shirt you’re wearing if you aren’t careful. I have been at the same pharmacy for 20 years. I don’t hop around to all the walk-in clinics with a new sob story. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own money, gotten deepen into debt doing so, while trying to find alternative treatments that actually worked. None did. I’ve done every damned thing every doctor has ever told me to do. So you can see why I am not only unhappy with my sub-standard care, but also being accused of being a junkie simply because someone doesn’t have the decency to actually read my records.
Getting into to see a specialist can take over a year. If they think your problem might be soon fatal, you might get in within a few months.
A documentary aired a couple of years ago when the doctor shortage hit critical, and there were several people in dire need of a physician. They all had their medical premiums paid up. All varied in age and some had cancer. The one thing they all had in common was that their orginal GP’s had either retired or closed their practice for some other reason. The people with cancer, one of whom was a very elderly lady with no family left, had to take the bus every down to her local ER, wait anywhere from a few minutes to hours to see a doctor who could then authorize the appropriate staff to give her the chemo treatment she needed.
As I said, despite all this, I am one of the lucky ones. Many people are in much worse shape than me when it comes to getting basic medical care. And if they are low income, paying for any prescriptions they might need is a real challenge to say the least.
Why am I sharing all this with strangers? Because universal healthcare is a great idea…in THEORY. The reality is altogether something different. By that same token, I wouldn’t want to have the health system those of you in the US have had until now. I have American relatives who are considered middle class. (Which is a rather subjective term if you ask me.) They have private insurance, but their medical expenses for premiums and ordinary stuff not covered is shocking to me. And now one of them has been diagnosed with cancer. I seriously doubt their insurance is going to cover even the majority of the expenses they will incur with her treatment.
I do not know what the answers are, and I’m not horribly well versed in US politics. But I can tell you from what I do watch and read about, I think you folks are in serious trouble.
There are alternatives and a good place to find out about some of them is sites like Earth Clinic.com,
Doctor yourself.com, the cancer tutor, cure zone, etc.
When you read little blurb reports like the one a couple of years ago, which essentially said a study found that immigrant blacks outlived our native born blacks and had a better quality of life than our native born even though they were likely to be poorer and see the doctor less often it makes you wonder why, and if it is even wise to see the doctor.
Another report released by federal authorities in Atlanta a couple of years ago bemoaned the fact that an increase in measles cases (current cases for 7 months of current year had already surpassed the full 12 months of the past year). The federal authority wasn’t named but the CDC’s headquarters is in Atlanta and
this sounds like their statistics. They were because slightly less than half of the new measles cases were among the unvaccinated children and they were concerned that more parents might opt not to vaccinate their children for fear of autism. Since reading that one, my greatest concern is that these authorities are making health decisions for you and me and our loved ones. If you haven’t already spotted what is wrong with this report – if slightly less than 1/2 of the new cases are among the unvaccinated, then
slightly more than 1/2 of them must be among the vaccinated children. If this is true then the unvacinated
childrens’ immune systems must be outperforming the vaccinated childrens’, even if only slightly. Instead
of repeatedly telling us that the vaccines are safe and do not cause autism, and other unwanted side effects, including death – why doesn’t someone investigate why the Amish who alledgedly do not vaccinate and reportedly do not have autistic children, while it keeps escalating in our vaccinated children. When someone proves to me this isn’t so, then maybe I can believe that the vaccines aren’t causing problems greater than most of the diseases they are given to prevent.
Me again. Please excuse any typos. I hit the wrong key while spell checking and it posted my rant before I realized it. Oops.
What the public fails to get is that our health care market is not a free market already. It is the most highly regulated market segment in our economy and subject to a great many regulatory limitations driving up costs and creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Additionally, Medicare and Medicaid are strictly government run programs. How are they doing? Both are broke and in the red. If they were not absconding public funds, both would already be out of business. And they are expected to get much worse as baby boomers age and enter retirement years.
In 2007, the August update from the GAO (Government Accountability Office) stated that our economy was unsustainable, meaning it cannot be sustained and cited the unfunded liabilities from Medicare as being the largest source of deficit growth.
If Medicare is already unsustainable, what do you think will happen when Obamacare kicks in and what is left of what once was a free market segment gets “governmentized” I think the Canadian commenter hit the nail on the head when she wrote: “I think you folks are in serious trouble”
One action step that can be taken to stop Obamacare is at the State level and that is to stand behind the 10th Amendment and nullify the legislation at the State level. 12 States have already begun to initiate such legislation. One- Idaho on February 18, 2011 has already passed it.
If you would like to contact your State Representative, please go to this link and use this service to send an e-mail you can easily modify to suit your taste:
http://www.votervoice.net/core.aspx?APP=GAC&AID=972&IssueID=21642&SiteID=-1
Unless your State representative knows your views on the topic, no action will be taken and we will all end up in the stew with no choice and a steadily declining system of health care with steadily rising costs.