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Showing posts with label Government run healthcare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Government run healthcare. Show all posts
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Obamacare to Herd Disabled Seniors to Bare-Bones Medicaid Plans
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Bush administration, warns that under Obamacare disabled seniors who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid will receive inferior care, according to a report by the New York Post.
Gottlieb, an American Enterprise Institute resident fellow, says these low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities will be uprooted from the tried-and-true Medicare fold and “herded” into state-run Medicaid plans as another phase of Obamacare grips the nation.
“It’s hard to see how they’ll be better off in bare-bones, and sometimes poorly-run state Medicaid plans than by getting access to Medicare options they were entitled to before Obamacare,” Dr. Gottlieb lamented on Friday.
A so-called Obamacare “demonstration” program kicking-off in January will turn over management of such “dual-eligibles,” along with the money that the federal government was spending on their medical care to any state that wants to climb aboard the latest federal money wagon.
Some cash-strapped states are jumping at the chance to capture federal Medicare dollars for their Medicaid programs, according to Gottlieb.
Indeed, some anxious states have already committed to automatically placing these folks in existing Medicaid plans. Big problem lurking here, says Gottlieb: Such plans often aren’t equipped to serve an older, sicker group of patients. “That will mean big savings for the state and worse care for the vulnerable,” he concludes.
The doctor cites significant examples:
- New York is looking to shift 700,000 “dual-eligibles” into a capitated managed-care model or HMO-style care. The target: Corral most of the elderly poor and disabled by 2015.
- California plans to move up to 1.1 million duals into its state-run Medicaid managed-care system.
These examples are but the tip of a huge green iceberg of big cash.
According to the Post report, Wall Street figures the entire “dual eligible” market at $350 billion a year.
While this is good news on The Street where the stocks of Medicaid HMOs are being bid skyward, Gottlieb is not consoled. “Care is likely to suffer. Many of these elderly poor also suffer from a lot of chronic ailments like diabetes and lung disease. [T]hese people have diverse medical problems, and have been most successfully served by Medicare programs that tailored services to their specific needs.”
Gottlieb’s bottom line: The Obamacare demonstration looks like an effort to shore up Medicaid by subsidizing it with Medicare dollars. “It’s another case of how Obamacare is designed to serve the existing health-care system, rather than transforming it to meet the needs of individual patients.”
Source: Newsmax.com: Expert: Obamacare to Herd Disabled Seniors to Bare-Bones Medicaid Plans
Wow… two ObamaCare death panel target groups rolled into one, the disabled and seniors. Time for some major apologies to Sarah Palin who was soooo right!
Related:
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Day Two of Supreme Court ObamaCare Hearing: ObamaCare Could Be on Life Support
People Are Saying That Obama's Healthcare Law Got Massacred At The Supreme Court Yesterday
Business Insider ^ | March 27, 2012 | Grace Wyler
The Supreme Court just wrapped up the second day of oral arguments in the landmark case against President Obama's healthcare overhaul, and reports from inside the courtroom indicate that the controversial law took quite a beating. Today's arguments focused around the central constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to force Americans to either pay for health insurance or pay a penalty. According to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were "a train wreck for the Obama administration."
The Supreme Court just wrapped up the second day of oral arguments in the landmark case against President Obama's healthcare overhaul, and reports from inside the courtroom indicate that the controversial law took quite a beating.
Today's arguments focused around the central constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to force Americans to either pay for health insurance or pay a penalty.
According to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were "a train wreck for the Obama administration."
"This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN.
Toobin added that that the Obama administration's lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, was unprepared for the attacks against the individual mandate.
"I don't know why he had a bad day," he said. "He is a good lawyer, he was a perfectly fine lawyer in the really sort of tangential argument yesterday. He was not ready for the answers for the conservative justices."
In the aftermath of today's arguments, Toobin and many other legal reporters agree that the Obamacare decision will come down to a fight between the nine Supreme Court justices.
According to reports from the courtroom, the four liberal justices seem inclined to uphold the law. But it is still unclear if the Obama administration's legal team will be able to get a fifth vote.
The WSJ reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is considered the swing vote in the case, reportedly pushed Verrilli hard on his defense of the individual mandate, telling him that the government has a "very heavy burden of justification" to show where the Constitution gives Congress the power to force people to buy healthcare.
Tom Goldstein of SCOTUS blog sums up the end of the arguments:
Towards the end of the argument the most important question was Justice Kennedy’s. After pressing the government with great questions Kennedy raised the possibility that the plaintiffs were right that the mandate was a unique effort to force people into commerce to subsidize health insurance but the insurance market may be unique enough to justify that unusual treatment. But he didn’t overtly embrace that. It will be close. Very close.
Listen below to Solicitor General Verrilli nervously starting his opening argument on individual mandate (around 25 sec mark): HERE
Video: "This Is A Train Wreck For The Obama Administration!" Jeff Toobin On Healthcare Supreme Court
Revealed: Inside Obama’s Individual Mandate Memo and Why He Changed His Mind
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Leaving America behind
James Cameron has announced he is leaving America and moving to New Zealand. His motive? He likes New Zealand.
Someone else is planning to leave America too. His motives are much different.
Who is it?
It is me.
That may come as a huge shock to many people, but I have begun planning an exit strategy from America. I’m not doing it yet.
You might ask yourself why I would do such a thing?
One word. Obamacare.
Anyone who is a baby boomer or older who is not now looking at this option is being foolish. As Obamacare kicks in, care for seniors is going to go. Sarah Palin railed against “death panels” and people laughed. They may want to stop laughing because those death panels are being set up.
As of now, the magic age is 72.
If you are rushed to the hospital with a serious illness, you have a big problem. Let’s say you have a stroke. If you are over 72, the presumption is going to be that the American medical system is now only going to give you comfort care. We will not treat your serious illness only make you comfortable.
Serious medical conditions can be treated if an ethics board meets and decides it is appropriate to treat you. Imagine you are rushed to the hospital and you are over 72 years old. Right now, if they get you to the hospital quickly, there are treatments that can be given that will stop a stroke and even prevent some of the massive damage a stroke can do. But you cannot get that treatment, if you are over 72 unless the medical ethics board meets and agrees that you should.
Think about this for a second. Seconds count in these kinds of emergencies. How the hell are you going to get a board together to vote when you only have minutes to act? How are you going to do it if it is at 3 AM?
Obamacare represents the final step from freedom to tyranny. In a free society, the society does everything it can to protect life. The citizens own the government. In a tyranny, the government owns the citizens and they are treated just like any other commodity. Their value is calculated and if the cost of the treatment, at least according to a bureaucrat, exceeds the value of the person then there is no treatment.
I’m 52 and I am now waiting. I am hoping the Supreme Court totally strikes down Obamacare. If not, Obama will veto any attempt to repeal it. The Republicans have not shown any willingness to even try to repeal it. We can only hope that the next president vetoes it if the GOP candidate is elected. But I wonder if some of them might just adjust it instead of vetoing it completely, leaving the door open and perhaps the rationing part in tact?
If the Supremes do not save America, I am working on my exit strategy. Fortunately, at least for the moment, I have twenty years to figure it out.
The good news is there are countries that will be willing to accept wealthy American retirees and offer the kind of medical care we have grown accustomed to. Unfortunately, there will be many Americans who will not be able to escape and will be killed by the same government that is now killed the best health care system in the world.
Let’s hope we can all grow our income before we need it.
By Judson Philips – Tea Party Nation
Monday, November 28, 2011
FYI: Every American Concerned With Health Care Needs To Read This Conversation
Every American concerned with health care needs to read this conversation
This should be sent to as many people as you can possibly think of. I heard this caller LIVE on the Mark Levin show last week. He was thoroughly vetted by Mark's producers. He's a genuine neurosurgeon, and his report is 100% accurate.
Recall Bill Ayres: "We may have to kill 25 million Americans in order for the socialist revolution to succeed....….." ............and Rahm Emanuel's physician brother who said in a speech that American citizens over 'a certain age' should simply be ‘comforted’ by telling them that they've lived a good life already....... (therefore it's their obligation to 'die with dignity?' Yes. That's what it means......... Joe-the-Mouth-Biden would call it 'being patriotic' and 'having skin in the game.' Dead skin & dead bones, I guess.)
directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/11/full-transcript-neurosurgeon-briefed-by.html
Full Transcript: Neurosurgeon Briefed by HHS Reveals Obamacare's Death Panels (Hint: Patients Are Called 'Units')
A caller -- "Jeff" from Chicago, Illinois -- spoke with Mark Levin on November 22nd regarding advanced neurological care under the auspices of the new health care law.
Junior Cub Reporter Biff Spackle transcribed the entire conversation (only excerpts had been published before).
Every American concerned with health care needs to read this conversation.
I heard you talk earlier about the government not knowing how to make pencils and you talked about brain surgeons. And I happen to be a brain surgeon, so I found your topic quite interesting.
I just returned from Washington, DC, where we were reading over what the Obama health care plan would be for advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70, which we all found quite disturbing. As our population gets older, the majority of our patients are getting over 70. They'll require stroke therapy, aneurysm therapy, and basically what the document stated is that if you're over 70 and you come into an emergency room... if you're on government-supported health care, you'll get "comfort care".
ML: Wait a minute... what’s the source for this?
Jeff: This is Obama’s new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care.
ML: And who issued this? HHS?
Jeff: Yes. And basically they don’t call them patients, they call them units. And instead of, they call it “ethics panels” or “ethics committees”, would get together and meet and decide where the money would go for hospitals, and basically for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated.
ML: So it’s generally going to be denied?
Jeff: Yes, absolutely... If someone comes in at 70 years of age with a bleed in their brain, I can promise you I’m not going to get a bunch of administrators together on an ethics panel at 2 in the morning to decide that I’m OK to do surgery.
ML: Is this published somewhere where the general public could get a hold of it?
Jeff: Not yet.
ML: So this was just discussed with your community of neurosurgeons?
Jeff: Yes, the AANS [Ed: the American Association of Neurological Surgeons] and the Congress of Neurosurgeons, because everybody knows that cuts are coming in Medicare and medical reimbursement. And we're the most expensive out of all the fields in medicine. And we're the smallest field.
But at two, three, four in the morning, we're the ones in the operating room. And we have to wait for an ethics panel to convene, which are not made of physicians -- they're made of administrators. To decide whether a patient should receive our care.
ML: So Sarah Palin was right. We're going to have these "death panels", aren't we?
Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I'm German by heritage, and I've read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and -- basically, they don't call them patients, they call them units. And if you're a unit above a certain age, you get comfort care instead of advanced neurosurgical intervention.
ML: You went to a seminar in Washington, DC?
Jeff: Yes. Where a few of my former partners, two of them, have gone to work... one for the Veteran's Administration and one for the Congress of Neurosurgeons out of DC.
ML: And this information is based, you're certain, on representations and information provided by HHS and other government officials?
Jeff: Yep.
ML: And when will the rest of us become aware of it? After the [presidential] election?
Jeff: Probably. I mean, there's so many things that the government keeps under control that are used -- things called H.U.D. devices -- humanitarian use devices that we're allowed to use now because they haven't undergone full FDA approval. And they're used in surgery because people know it's the right thing to do. But the government can step in at any time, like they did two months ago with a device, and say, 'this device hasn't met what we want' and there's no exact criteria, and can therefore take it away from us.
ML: And the people telling you what to do -- they don't know how to make a pencil, do they?Jeff: Exactly. That's what I'm saying. You know, we always joke around -- 'it's not brain surgery' -- but I did nine years after medical school, I've been in training ten years, and now I have people who don't know a thing about what I'm doing telling me when I can and can't operate.
The unintentionally satirical "Politifact" website hardest hit.
Source: Before Its News
Friday, October 14, 2011
We did it! We killed the CLASS Act, a key component of ObamaCare
We did it! We took down CLASS!
Today the White House officially pulled the plug on the CLASS Act, a key component of ObamaCare.
This is a huge development in the health care debate.
CLASS -- a Great Society style nursing home care entitlement authored by liberal lion Ted Kennedy -- was enacted in 2010 as part of ObamaCare.
But CLASS was poorly designed and actuarially unsound, and represented a massive taxpayer bailout risk.
And the folks in President Obama's HHS knew it.
But they gagged their own internal experts in 2009 and 2010, to keep the risk from being known publicly.
Had Congress and the American people known about the bailout risk, ObamaCare would very likely not have become law.
Last month, a congressional investigation finally exposed the internal warnings, and the White House's stone wall began to crumble.
Even the socialized-medicine zealots in the Obama Administration could no longer deny the truth.
With the president's poll numbers in the tank, and his reelection in serious doubt, they decided to cut their losses. The new nursing home entitlement had to go.
Today, they put out the announcement. They will not proceed with implementing this turkey. CLASS is dead.
This is a sweet victory for the many Americans who fought long and hard to stop ObamaCare from passing -- and one tinged with bitter irony, because of CLASS's key role in the law's enactment.
The new entitlement had been added to ObamaCare as a budget gimmick. It had been purposely crafted to look like a revenue-generator during its first 5 years of operation, when the government would be collecting premiums from participants but not yet paying out benefits. This would make the federal books look better by some $70 billion during the period, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And this in turn enabled congressional Democrats and the President to mask ObamaCare's true costs. By appending CLASS to ObamaCare, they could crow that the controversial legislation "wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime."
Well, their own actuaries knew otherwise, but couldn't say so publicly. CLASS would have cost taxpayers trillions of dimes.
If not repealed, ObamaCare will cost us even more than that: trillions of dollar, and more important, our freedom to control our own health care.
Meanwhile, the President's egregious mishandling of the health care issue is already costing the nation terribly, with health plan premiums rising and some economists blaming the new law, which doesn't take full effect for another two years, for continuing economic uncertainty and poor job growth.
Folks, the fall of CLASS is just the start.
In jettisoning this one flawed piece, the president's advisors may think they've made the law easier to preserve. But instead, they've confirmed their own cynicism, dishonesty, and wrongheadedness, and thus given momentum to the movement to fully repeal the law -- and replace it with a truly patient-centered system.
Congress should hold immediate hearings on this fiasco. What did the White House know, and when did they know it?
Meanwhile, we should savor this victory -- it's a taste of more to come.
(For more information, read our report on the CLASS Act coverup.)
Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks' Legislative Counsel and VP Health Care Policy.
Friday, September 23, 2011
SHOCK CLAIM: New rule would give government everybody's health records...
New Rule Would Give Government Everybody’s Health Records
Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
By: Rep. Tim Huelskamp | 09/23/11 3:29 PM - OpEd Contributor
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has proposed that medical records of all Americans be turned over to the federal government by private health insurers.
It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.
This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us.
In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.
(See Proposed Rule: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Standards Related to Reinsurance, Risk Corridors and Risk Adjustment, Volume 76, page 41930. Proposed rule docket ID is HHS-OS-2011-0022 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-15/pdf/2011-17609.pdf)
The HHS has proposed the federal government pursue one of three paths to obtain this sensitive information: A “centralized approach” wherein insurers’ data go directly to Washington; an “intermediate state-level approach” in which insurers give the information to the 50 states; or a “distributed approach” in which health insurance companies crunch the numbers according to federal bureaucrat edict.
It’s par for the course with the federal government, but abstract terms are used to distract from the real objectives of this idea: no matter which “option” is chosen, government bureaucrats would have access to the health records of every American - including you.
There are major problems with any one of these three “options.” First is the obvious breach of patient confidentiality. The federal government does not exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to managing private information about its citizens.
Why should we trust that the federal government would somehow keep all patient records confidential? In one case, a government employee’s laptop containing information about 26.5 million veterans and their spouses was stolen from the employee’s home.
There's also the HHS contractor who lost a laptop containing medical information about nearly 50,000 Medicare beneficiaries. And, we cannot forget when the USDA's computer system was compromised and information and photos of 26,000 employees, contractors, and retirees potentially accessed.
The second concern is the government compulsion to seize details about private business practices. Certainly many health insurance companies defended and advocated for the president’s health care law, but they likely did not know this was part of the bargain.
They are being asked to provide proprietary information to governments for purposes that will undermine their competitiveness. Obama and Sebelius made such a big deal about Americans being able to keep the coverage they have under ObamaCare; with these provisions, such private insurance may cease to exist if insurers are required to divulge their business models.
Certainly businesses have lost confidential data like the federal government has, but the power of the market can punish the private sector. A victim can fire a health insurance company; he cannot fire a bureaucrat.
What happens to the federal government if it loses a laptop full of patient data or business information? What recourse do individual citizens have against an inept bureaucrat who leaves the computer unlocked? Imagine a Wikileaks-sized disclosure of every Americans’ health histories. The results could be devastating - embarrassing - even Orwellian.
With its extensive rule-making decrees, ObamaCare has been an exercise in creating authority out of thin air at the expense of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and liberties.
The ability of the federal government to spy on, review, and approve individuals’ private patient-doctor interactions is an excessive power-grab.
Like other discoveries that have occurred since the law’s passage, this one leaves us scratching our heads as to the necessity not just of this provision, but the entire law.
The HHS attempts to justify its proposal on the grounds that it has to be able to compare performance. No matter what the explanation is, however, this type of data collection is an egregious violation of patient-doctor confidentiality and business privacy. It is like J. Edgar Hoover in a lab coat.
And, no matter what assurances Obama, Sebelius and their unelected and unaccountable HHS bureaucrats make about protections and safeguards of data, too many people already know what can result when their confidential information gets into the wrong hands, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Republican Tim Huelskamp represents the first congressional district of Kansas.
Source: the Washington Examiner
*This is exactly the type of thing that GOP Candidate and Congressman Ron Paul warned about in the GOP Orlando debate. Massive data bases for medical records and National ID Cards in the hands of the U.S. Government will ultimately be used to spy on “We the People” and then against us.
Just look at the situation with GM (Government Motors’) OnStar Tracking Systems that continue to track you… even after cancellation of the service.
Monday, May 2, 2011
"Dhimmitude" on Page 107 of ObamaCare Bill - What Does It Mean?
New Word For The Day - "Dhimmitude" - What Does It Mean?
Obama used it in the health care bill.
Now isn't this interesting?
Dhimmitude -- I had never heard the word until now, nor did barely anyone unless they read the ObamaCare Bill. Type it into Google and start reading. Pretty interesting. It's on page 107 of the healthcare bill. I looked this up on Google and yep, it exists. It is a REAL word.
Word of the Day: Dhimmitude
Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-Muslim populations conquered through jihad. Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-Muslims in exchange for tolerating their presence AND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to Islam.
ObamaCare allows the establishment of Dhimmitude and Sharia Muslim diktat in the United States. Does anyone find that odd… and frightening? Folks, this is exclusively an Islamic concept under Sharia Law. So exclusive they had to make up an English word to define the concept. Why would our government start interjecting Sharia Law concepts into new broad and sweeping legislation like health care reform that would control the US population? ....Anyone?
Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance, and also from the penalty tax for being uninsured. Islam considers insurance to be "gambling", "risk-taking", and "usury" and is thus banned. Muslims are specifically granted exemption based on this.
How convenient. So a Christian (Jew, Buddhist, Aethiest, etc) , will have crippling IRS liens placed against all of their assets, including real estate, cattle, and even accounts receivables, and will face hard prison time because they refuse to buy health insurance or pay the penalty tax. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan and all other U.S. Muslims will have no such penalty and will have 100% of their health needs paid for by the de facto government insurance. Non-Muslims paying a tax to subsidize Muslims. This is Sharia Law definition of... Dhimmitude. This is not a Western Civilization concept.
Dhimmit has two purposes: To enrich Muslims AND to drive conversions to Islam. "Sure, I'll be a Muslim if it means free health insurance and no taxes. Where do I sign, bro?" (not for me, I will suffer first). So… are you asking yourself, why would our president and the people who wrote the healthcare bill put this in there???
I recommend sending this post to your contacts. This is desperately important and people need to know about it -- quickly!
This really is happening in your country. A fraction at a time.
Wake up America ! They're coming in the back door.
To check it out on Snopes click here: Health Insurance Exemptions.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Drug Companies Shift Emphasis to Vaccines
The extent to which the recession has cut into high-value research and development jobs in the pharmaceutical industry will be apparent soon as job losses in the industry climb to an additional 12,000.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British drugs group, will announce plans for further restructuring with the loss of 4,000 jobs, nearly half in the research and development departments.
The job attrition reflects widespread unease among drug companies about the loss of revenues from a small number of blockbuster medicines.
For example, this year GSK will lose patent protection for Seretide, an asthma treatment worth $4 billion.
GSK started reshaping its business in 2007 by focusing on three areas: vaccines, over-the-counter medicines and non-medical products, and emerging markets. GSK diverted investment away from pure research and toward products that enabled the company to catch a greater share of the consumer dollar.
However, GSK is not the first drug company to announce job cutbacks and realignment of their target markets, with a path toward vaccines. Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, Novartis, and Sanofi Pasteur are just a few of the Big Pharma members that have done this within the past two years.
And while the recession definitely played a part in this, the truth is, plans to switch to the vaccine market were already in place, long before the recession began.
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
Sources:
The Times Online February 1, 2010
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
If nothing else, this announcement proves what I’ve been saying all along – that, contrary to what they’d like you to believe, vaccine makers are not philanthropists just looking to do benevolent philanthropy for the world with their products.They are businesses, first and foremost, whose primary goal is to earn profits for their stockholders.
It has become clear to me that there is a major shift occurring. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find new blockbuster drugs so the new emphasis will be on introducing more and more mandated vaccines which provide nearly unending annuities to continue to increase their revenues
You will see more and more vaccines introduced as time goes on.
The Big Picture
Please remember that collectively the drug cartels make over half a TRILLION dollars every year by selling their product. That amount of money yields enormous power and leverage and they are focused on earning even more.
And how do they do that?
By finding a product they can manufacture in massive quantities and sell to infinite numbers of people at whatever price they want to charge. For a long time, psychotropic drugs and therapeutic medicines were the yellow brick road to that Wall Street goal.
Just a few years ago drug giants like Merck, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Astra Zeneca were dancing in the land of Oz with blockbusters like Vioxx, Zyprexa, Paxil, and Seroquel. But when the Emerald cities they’d built with these drugs became blighted with a cyclone of lawsuits, their profits quickly began to melt.
Add in pending expirations of patents on key products, and accusations by the European Commission that they purposely delay generic medicines by offering payments to rival manufacturers, and these companies knew they had to change the road they were on, even before the recession hit.
It’s All about the Money
The line up of Big Pharma companies that have been announcing job cutbacks and realignment of their product lines over the past two or three years is impressive:
Novartis announced in December 2007 that it planned to cut 2,500 jobs worldwide by 2010 in an attempt to save $1.6 billion. Citing expiring patents, generic competition, and increased industry costs, Novartis said that poor US pharmaceutical sales had forced this reorganization.
Noting that it had experienced “strong growth” in its vaccines and diagnostics division, Novartis said it planned to expand its presence in emerging markets in Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
Merck announced job cuts in its US sales force a month ago, saying that the cutbacks were part of its merger with Schering-Plough. In all, the newly married company plans to reduce its global workforce by 15 percent, for a savings of nearly $3.5 billion.
But even before Merck and Schering-Plough became a couple, Merck had already begun making job cutbacks, as part of its 2005 restructuring plan.
A major focus of that plan, Merck told its stockholders in 2005, would be to enter, and become a leader in, emerging markets, which “provide enormous opportunity” for Merck’s medicines and vaccines.
Saying that the company planned to rely less on US markets and more on global initiatives, Merck told Nasdaq in December 2009 that 40 percent of its job cuts would be in the US, as the company moved its market focus to worldwide ventures.
But Merck and GSK aren’t the only ones totake this route: Johnson & Johnson announced in November 2009 that it was cutting 8,000 jobs.
Pfizer said it was cutting 20,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its workforce, as part of its merger with Wyeth; Eli Lilly said it was making a 13 percent reduction totaling 5,000 jobs; Astra Zeneca it was cutting 7,000 jobs, or about 10 percent of its workforce.
But simultaneously with job cut announcements, they all have alluded to, or plainly said, emerging markets are where their new focus lies.
Of course, it’s all about the money and the bottom line – which isn’t a bad thing, since these companies are for-profit entities. But what is this thing, “emerging markets,” anyway, and how do drug companies’ desires to follow emerging markets affect the rest of the world?
Emerging Market ‘Inoculations’
The Wall Street Journal probably said it best when it called this new pharma marketing strategy emerging market inoculations.Referring to Novartis’ purchase of an 85 percent stake in a Chinese vaccine maker, and a similar investment by Sanofi Aventis, the WSJ used this term to describe the drug companies’ plans to expand production and sales in vaccines.
Emerging markets are areas of the world that are beginning to show promise as a profitable venture for many products, including vaccines. And emerging markets – primarily in developing countries in Southeast and Central Asia, and Africa – have been on vaccine makers’ radar for quite some time.
One reason that vaccine makers are interested in these parts of the world is that that’s where most of the world’s deaths from major infectious diseases occur.
World health leaders have long believed that most, if not all, of these diseases could be prevented by vaccines.
The only problem has been that, until recently, making vaccines for undeveloped countries with no money to pay for them, was not exactly a profitable goal for vaccine makers.
In 2001, an article in Tropical Medicine & International Health chastised the pharmaceutical industry for thinking too much about the bottom line, and not investing more in neglected diseases. Accusing them of being more interested on return in investment than in global health needs, the article’s author urged drug companies to re-evaluate their priorities.
It also urged national and international reorientation of public health policies:
“New and creative strategies involving both the public and the private sector are needed to ensure that affordable medicines for today's neglected diseases are developed,” the article said.
The article made several suggestions as to how these new policies could come about, from a legal and regulatory standpoint, as well as from research-and-development and distribution of needed drugs for mainly third-world countries.
And Then Something Changed
Fast-forward to February 10, 2010. Suddenly, third-world countries are exactly where the previously maligned drug companies want to be. In a market study released this month, these companies said that vaccines are the new bottom line.
“The developed world has been the initial focus of vaccine makers due to the better healthcare and higher price levels,” the report said. “However, facing increasingly saturated markets in the West, companies are looking to expand into new geographies, such as Asia's emerging markets.”
You have to purchase it to see the complete study on emerging markets. But GSK has its May 2009 emerging market planposted, free, on the Internet. Listing the top 10 countries that are “big and growing fast,” GSK said these countries represent 85 percent of emerging market potential.
Emerging markets will soon outgrow developed markets by hundreds of billions of dollars, the GSK report says. One way to make that happen will be to “build and capture” the vaccine market, the report explains.
And the way to do that, it goes on to say, is through growing government attention to the public health agenda, capitalizing on birth cohorts for pediatric vaccines, and by concentrating on new vaccine products.
Say ‘Hello’ to Advance Market Commitments
So what happened between 2001, when world health leaders were criticizing drug makers for not making exactly this kind of investment, and the past couple years, when vaccine makers suddenly started beating a path to third-world countries?
I can assure you it wasn’t because the 2001 chastisement shamed them in to it. Rather, I can just about bet next week’s paycheck that it had more to do with the promise of a new bottom line – sales of vaccines through something called Advance Market Commitments – than anything else.
Between 2001 and 2005, several vaccine researchers and market developers responded to the 2001 chastisement by writing numerous articles about why drug companies were getting out of the vaccine business. Declining markets, increased costs, and regulatory issues were the top three reasons.
Fix those problems, and everybody would be happy to concentrate on vaccines for developing countries, the responses all said.
Concerned that developed countries would have little or no resources for addressing serious infectious diseases if vaccine makers continued their pull-out, the World Health Organization and the G8 – the top developed countries in the world – responded with a plan for inducing vaccine companies to stay in the business.
That plan was called Advance Market Commitments. Under AMCs, developed countries make legal, binding agreements to purchase vaccines that are needed in low-income countries. The purchase guarantees a bottom line for the manufacturers. In return, the manufacturers promise to sell those vaccines at reduced prices in the countries where they are most needed.
Dozens of New Vaccines in the Pipeline
Do an Internet search on Advance Market Commitments and you will find a whole new vaccine world you most likely didn’t know existed. Start by going to the WHO website, and by reading its August 2007 draft global policy on AMCs. The document focuses on financing and funding health research and development of drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for neglected diseases.
The WHO acknowledges in this document that private, public and not-for-profit donations and investments have helped fight neglected diseases – infections that are prevalent in mostly low-income, third-world countries. But those investments are not enough, the WHO says. And that is why AMCs are necessary, the WHO says.
It sounds like a good plan: Establish a market that heretofore was considered not profitable and, therefore, not worthy of investing in. Promise incentives to lure vaccine makers in to the research and development of new vaccines. And then, stimulate market competition through increased sales and reduction of costs in vaccine programs.
To show how well it could work, a pilot Advance Market Commitment was launched in February 2007 for pnuemococcal vaccines. In June 2009, the WHO and the GAVI announced that that plan had finally come to fruition. Now, thanks to AMCs, a $70 pneumococcal vaccine can be distributed in desperately poor countries for just $3.50.
Sounds like a win-win situation – at least for vaccine makers and the countries where the vaccine’s going.
Serious Concerns about this Program
The reason I’m wary of this plan is that legally binding, advance market commitments to purchase vaccines that are mostly needed in third world countries could backfire on developed countries that don’t need – or want – certain vaccines.
Think about it: The top neglected diseases that world health leaders want to address with AMCs besides pneumonia are HIV-AIDS, malaria, human papilloma virus (HPV), rotavirus, and tuberculosis.
And what do you see?
Standing out big and clear are HPV and rotavirus – two diseases that are relatively rare in the US and other developed countries. (There are over 100 HPVs; the new vaccines address four HPVs that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer and genital warts. In developed countries, death from cervical cancer is very rare, while in third world countries, it is a leading cause of death in women.)
Yet, these are diseases with new vaccines that, for some reason or other in the past few years, have been recommended by the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for babies (rotavirus) and adolescents (HPV).
While the ACIP only recommends vaccines, states are free to do what they choose, and we all know where that leads: to mandates of vaccines that more and more people are beginning to question the need for.
And that’s why I am leery of vaccine makers who announce they’re on their way to third world countries in an effort to boost their bottom line. I don’t fault any profit-driven business for wanting to do things that will make share holders happy.
But I do question where these ventures are headed.
Many scientific journal reports have already revealed that a malaria vaccine is on the verge of being marketable. It only leaves me wondering if that will be the next one on the ACIP’s list.
So stay tuned.
Dozens of other vaccines are in the pipeline, from one for strep throat to another for simple ear infections. I promise this won’t be the last you hear of AMCs and mandated vaccines in the US – what better way is there to “guarantee” a vaccine market than through mandates to help pay for it?
If ObamaCare is forced through against the will of the American people, medical care and the dangers of uncertainty and profit first will come to the forefront for every patient and their family.
More vaccines that people don’t need or are even harmful; more questionable medications; centralized medical records that will me monitored and controlled by the government with unbelievable powers and loss of freedoms for Americans; and progressive John McCain just introduced an bill for more government regulation of natural remedies and supplements that will only help Big Pharma and reduce options for the average person.
McCain Proposes Natural Supplement Regulation Bill
Avandia Recall… Finally After Senate Report – Just Wait Until the Gov’t really controls healthcare and drugs. Avandia is suspected in the cause of 300,000 heart attacks
Related Links:
Anthrax and War: the Marketing of Disaster
Media Helps Generate Fear Among Public to Demand West Nile Virus Vaccine
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Citizen Outreach: ObamaCare Can Still Be Defeated – Keep Up the Pressure
ALERT: DON’T GIVE UP!
Government Health Care Can Still Be Stopped!
That’s the message from Congressman John Shadegg, a leading voice in the fight against Harry Reid and Nancy’s Pelosi’s efforts to shove ObamaCare up the nation’s wazoo.
“Washington liberals are on the brink of making our health care system worse, not better, and putting you, your family and your friends at risk,” Rep. Shadegg wrote this week. “Their legislation will increase your premiums and raise your taxes.”
Just what the doctor ordered? I don’t think so.
Shadegg notes that the Senate version of ObamaCare now being debated in the Senate “contains $400 billion in tax increases, many of which start in 2010.”
That’s billion….with a capital “B”!
And it flies in the face of the unambiguous promise Barack Obama made to the people of America when he was running for president last year.
“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”
Then again, technically that’s true.
ObamaCare won’t increase your taxes one single dime. It will, however, as the Wall Street Journal notes, increase “taxes on the middle class by stacks and stacks of dimes.”
“A Senate Finance Committee minority staff report finds that by 2019 more than 42 million individuals and families will on average see their taxes go up because of the Senate bill,” the Journal reports. “And that’s after government subsidies.”
Bend over and cough, Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer.
And that doesn’t even include the health care premium increases you’re gonna get socked with. Even Congress’ only self-proclaimed Socialist admits it.
“Can I sit up here or stand here with a straight face and say…that if you’re an ordinary person who has employer-based health care that your premiums are not going to go up in the next eight years based on what’s in this bill?” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said on the Senate floor this week. “I can’t say that. It’s just not accurate.”
WE CAN STILL DEFEAT THIS BILL!
And yet, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama will fight to the death (panel) to force this bill on the American people before Christmas.
Why?
- Because they see the writing on the wall.
- They know that the longer it takes to pass this 2,000-plus(!) page bill, the more the American people will learn about it.
- And the more the American people learn about this effort to do for health care what the government has done for mail delivery, retirement and education….the less they like it.
- And the less they like ObamaCare, the less they like Obama himself, and Democrats in general.
THAT’S WHY THEY HAVE TO PASS THE BILL NOW….
....and are pulling out all the stops to do so.
Indeed, they are stopping at NOTHING to cram this down our throats….including legal bribery….and extortion.
We all know about the now-infamous “Louisiana Purchase” in which Sen. Mary Landrieu sold her vote for ObamaCare to Harry Reid in exchange for $300 million in special benefits for her state.
But blogger Michelle Malkin is reporting this week that Sen. Ben Nelson has now been offered $500 million for his vote….or else.
As Examiner.com reports, Sen. John Ensign said in a radio interview on Wednesday that Harry Reid “is so desperate to get the 60 votes he needs to pass the bill, that opposition Democrats are being threatened with the loss of key programs in their states if they do not support the bill.”
That reportedly includes a threat to close down a key Air Force base in Sen. Nelson’s home state of Nebraska.
Tony Soprano, call your office!
“Issues before Congress should be decided on their merits, not based on bribes and threats,” declares Congressman Shadegg who rightly characterizes Harry Reid’s actions as “Chicago-style thuggery.”
But probably the worst thing about this plan to nationalize our health care system is the plain, undeniable fact that it will result in health care rationing – like what we’re seeing today with the swine flu vaccine – and unnecessary deaths.
“My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine,” Sen. Tom Coburn writes this week. “Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely.”
So this really is a life or death fight….literally.
Indeed, columnist Dan Henninger wrote on Thursday that “This is probably the final death struggle for universal health care” and “Anyone remotely opposed to this idea had better step forward.”
And that’s where you come in.
IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER!
If you haven’t stepped forward and engaged in this fight yet…it’s not too late.
NOW is the time….because it may be the last chance we’ll have to kill this bill.
TAKE ACTION: Today, tomorrow, this weekend….without fail….please pick up the phone and make just three phone calls to these three senators who remain uncommitted on this bill….
Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA)
(202) 224-4024
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
(308) 631-7614
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
(501) 375-2993
Odds are you’ll get a voice-mail recording. That’s OK.
Senate offices keep a running track of all pro and con calls. The key is to FLOOD their offices with calls and messages in opposition to this bill.
So just leave your name and a short message saying you oppose the national heath care bill. That’s all you need to do.
If the lines are busy (and we hope they are!)….don’t give up. Call back until you get through.
EACH OF THESE THREE SENATORS NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU….NOW!
Frankly, your calls now are all that stands between us and a DMV-like government-run health care bureaucracy….which will raise both your taxes and your premiums….while driving down the quality of our health care system….and ushering in the same kind of government rationing we’ve seen with swine flu vaccinations this winter.
So please, stop what you’re doing RIGHT NOW….pick up the phone….and make those three phone calls before it’s too late.
Yours in Liberty, 
Chuck Muth, President
Citizen Outreach
P.S. We beat HillaryCare in 1993.
And we can beat ObamaCare in 2009.
This fight CAN BE WON!
Please call Sens. Webb, Nelson and Lincoln TODAY!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
ObamaCare… Watch Snowe and Lincoln
Watch how Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln vote in the Senate Finance Committee on the Baucus version of the Obama healthcare plan. As Snowe and Lincoln go, so will the Congress.
The Democrats need Snowe's vote desperately, to convince wavering moderate Democrats that they can offer a veneer, however thin, of bipartisanship to the health proposal. If Snowe, their last chance at a Republican vote, opposes the Obama/Baucus proposal, there is no hope of a bipartisan fig leaf for the package.
On the other hand, if Snowe backs the bill, it will send a signal to moderate Democrats that it's OK to join in and the bill will probably attract the 60 votes it needs for Senate passage.
Lincoln's vote becomes critical if Snowe votes no. Lincoln is probably the single most vulnerable Democrat running for reelection in 2010. She is the proverbial canary in the coalmine. If she makes it, so will all the Democrats. Hailing from a conservative Southern state, her poll numbers suggest that she would be in a heap of trouble with a stiff challenger.
If Lincoln defects and joins the Republicans in voting no (as she has done on a number of amendments), she will do a lot to cement her chances to remain a senator, but will open a wound in the Democratic Party. A domino effect will likely set in.
Her Arkansas colleague, Democrat Mark Pryor, will feel exposed by her defection and will probably consider voting no as well. It will be very hard for the son of moderate David Pryor to explain why Lincoln jumped ship but he chose to stay on board.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska, encouraged by Lincoln's vote, will probably vote no as well. These negative votes will bring huge pressure on Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat. Nor can the president count on the support of Joe Lieberman (I) of Connecticut, who has warned that, despite his basic support for the concept of the bill, it would be hard for him to back it given the current economic and fiscal crisis.
Once Obama's plan fails to attract 60 votes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will fall back on reconciliation as a strategy and hope for 50 votes. But if the Democrats pass the bill with 50 votes, it will set a precedent they may come to rue. It would basically eliminate the filibuster as a parliamentary tactic and would condemn any future minority party (Democrats in 2011?) to the same irrelevance as afflicts their House colleagues. To be in the minority in a chamber run by a bare majority is not a fun task.
However, if Lincoln votes yes, it will send a signal to all moderates that even the most endangered of their species is willing to risk backing the program and will do a great deal to shore up the president's defenses.
All this means that if the elderly citizens of Arkansas and Maine -- and their families -- want to avoid the evisceration of the Medicare program contemplated in the Baucus/Obama bill, they had better get busy. They need to deluge both senators with urgent pleas to vote against the $500 billion cut in the Medicare program. Neither senator can afford to alienate her elderly constituents, but what do they expect when they vote to take the hatchet to Medicare?
Newt Gingrich found out that cutting Medicare is a ticket to political oblivion. Barack Obama will learn the same lesson. The question is: Will Olympia Snowe and Blanche Lincoln join him?
PLEASE NOTE: I have persuaded the League of American Voters to run ten second advertisements in key states that show an elderly person saying: "Senator _________: Please don't cut my Medicare by $500 billion. I need my Medicare." We need to get these ads on in the key states.
We need to focus attention on the cuts in Medicare. It is slashing services to the elderly that is the key point!
Please click here to donate and give generously. This is the key moment and you can make all the difference in the world. With pressure such as the elderly are bringing to bear, the Senate would not dare pass this benighted plan!
Please keep up the pressure on your own Congressman and Senators as well as on Olympia Snowe and Blanche Lincoln.
United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121
Senators from your State. as well and Snowe and Lincoln
DFA “senior adviser” Jacob Hacker (above) is an Obamacare architect who laughed at criticism of the plan being a Trojan Horse for single payer coverage. “It’s not a Trojan Horse, right” he retorted at a far Left Tides Foundation conference on health care. “It’s just right there! I’m telling you. We’re going to get there.”
Related Recourses:
Obama Holds “Staged” Doctors’ Summit in Effort to Promote Health Care Overhaul
3 out of 4 Doctors Flanking Obama at His Staged Event Donated to His Campaign
Guess Who Denies the Most Medical Claims? 
The Health Care Bill: What they DON’T want you to know! – Video – Please Watch…
Congressional Leaders (Nancy and Harry) Fight Against Posting Bills Online
Overweight People Smokers Face Fine Under Health Bill
What Will the Year 2109 America Be Like for Babies Living to 100?
ObamaCare: Cut the Elderly and Give to AARP
AARP Series – A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing! – Part II
Are the elderly cost effective?
Source: Knowledge Creates Power - Cross-posted: Daily Thought Pad
Posted: True Health is True Wealth – Cross-Posted: Marion’s Place
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Healthcare Twist… First Lady Linked to Patient-Dumping & Hannity HC Special Review
One woman Michelle Obama will not mention
By Michelle Malkin • (Updated) September 18, 2009 05:52 PM
Yes, First Lady Michelle Obama is now aggressively crusading for her husband’s health care takeover under the guise of championing woman who have been “crushed” by the system.
One woman Mrs. Obama won’t be spotlighting?
***
I’m re-printing my June 19, 2009 blog post and column again here in its entirety to get the message out about Michelle Obama’s role in creating a health care horror story she won’t be publicizing. I repeat: What have you done for Dontae Adams, lately, Mr. and Mrs. O?
***
I blogged about Michelle Obama’s role in creating a patient-dumping scheme for the University of Chicago Medical Center back in March. With her husband and the Democrats unleashing health care horror story anecdotes to gin up public fear and build support for the beleaguered Obamacare plan, my syndicated column today revisits the kind of “reform” the Obamas and their Chicago cronies champion — and who benefits.
Here’s a challenge to the ABC News Obamacare infomercial producers. I dare you to ask President Obama this question: What have you done for Dontae Adams, lately?
***
The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
The White House, Democrats, and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there’s one health care policy nightmare you won’t hear the Obamas hyping. It’s a tale of poor, minority patient-dumping in Chicago — with First Lady Michelle Obama’s fingerprints all over it.
Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago have raised red flags about the outsourcing program, run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has non-profit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care. Yet, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor in fiscal 2007 when Mrs. Obama was employed there—1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the non-partisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.
Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: “Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds.”
Don’t expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an “Urban Health Initiative,” Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents.” The program guaranteed “free” shuttle rides to and from the outside clinics.
In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming “RAAAAAAAAACISM!” at the top of their lungs.
Joe Stephens of the Washington Post wrote: “To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Axelrod’s firm recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign—appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party ‘validators.’ They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications.”
Some health care experts saw through Mrs. Obama and her public relations man, David Axelrod—yes, the same David Axelrod who is now Mr. Obama’s senior adviser at the White House. The University of Chicago Medical Center hired Axelrod’s public relations firm, ASK Public Strategies, to promote Mrs. Obama’s Urban Health Initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett – now White House senior adviser.
Axelrod’s great contribution: Re-branding! His firm recommended re-naming the initiative after “[i]nternal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word ‘urban’ is code for ‘black’ or ‘black and poor’….Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative.” Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.
In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas’ community exploded after a young boy covered by Medicaid was turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams’ mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama’s hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics, and Tylenol andshoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.
I’ll guarantee you this: You’ll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the First Lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the health care system.
Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Mr. Axelrod’s grand plan. The group released a statement expressing “grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA)” – signed by President Reagan, by the way – “and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”
Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.
***
You can [order] Culture of Corruption now at Amazon.
***
Related reading: David Catron on Michelle O’s “Urban Health Initiative” (now run by Obama longtime crony Dr. Eric Whitaker) and see also registered nurse Carol Peracchio on ACORN General Hospital.
Sources: FNC/MichelleMalkin.con
-----------
COLUMN ARCHIVE
Friday, July 24, 2009
FNC
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," July 23, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The president is urging Congress to rush a universal health care bill through Congress before the American people have a chance to give it a good look.
Now we here at "Hannity," we're not going to let that happen. Tonight, we're going to show what happens when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands.
We're going to show you what government rationing looks like in the countries where it exists, and we'll even going to take you to the state of Hawaii which implemented a universal health care program for seven short months.
Welcome to tonight's special, "Universal Nightmare."
Now tonight, you will also hear from Ainsley Earhardt who reports on two patients whose stories we're going to follow throughout the show. Now the American health care system did in fact save their lives, but would they have been so lucky if the government had rationed their care?
You can stay tuned to find out, but first let's meet the patients.
• Video: Watch the 'Hannity' investigation
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AINSLEY EARHARDT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Major General William Davies retired from the military as a two-star general in 2002. One year later he went to the emergency room complaining of chest pains.
MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM DAVIES, U.S. ARMY (RET): I was there for many hours. They took blood and the whole works, and they came up with the conclusion that well, we really don't know what caused this. And it could be indigestion.
EARHARDT: Not buying that explanation, General Davies went to Carlisle, Pennsylvania cardiologist David Kahn for a stress test.
DAVIES: I was probably on the treadmill no more than four minutes, and he says, I guess you know you've got a little bit of a problem here.
DR. DAVID KAHN, CARDIOLOGIST: It was markedly abnormal, and I was concerned enough to not want to wait several days to have the patient studied.
DAVIES: I was thinking OK, well, how many weeks away is this going to be to set up this appointment for, and he says are you ready? I said for what? He says I'm going to take you to the hospital.
KAHN: The quickest way to get him studied was to take him to the hospital, so I did. I saw no upside to waiting several days.
EARHARDT: So Dr. Kahn wasted no time.
DAVIES: He personally drove me to the hospital.
EARHARDT (on camera): That's a good doctor.
DAVIES: And had his staff get a hold of the hospital.
KAHN: Did a diagnostic catherization that confirmed my belief that he had pretty significant disease and then we arranged to have his arteries fixed in a tertiary care center about 25 miles from here.
EARHARDT: How are you feeling today? How do you feel now?
DAVIES: Well, this procedure was about four years ago. I did not have a heart attack, I did not have any damage to my heart, I had four stints put in to my arteries, and I'm living a normal life.
EARHARDT (voice-over): 1,700 miles southwest of Carlisle lives Katherine Hale. Ten years ago she was facing major health problems of her own.
KATHERINE HALE, CANCER SURVIVOR: I was diagnosed with — they said a walk-in-the-park cancer, had surgery by a gynecologic oncologist, and after the surgery he says no, it's much worse than we thought. You have no more than six weeks left to live. Don't even try chemo, you'll die from the treatment of chemo. The chemo won't even touch the cancer, and that was it.
Actually he told me not to go to anyplace else, that he was positive. Quote, unquote, he said, "If you don't die in a car wreck or get shot by a gun, you'll be dead from the cancer in six weeks."
EARHARDT: But like General Davies, Katherine didn't accept that answer. She went to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for a second opinion.
DR. DIANE BODURKA, GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGIST: These are just little blood vessels in your lung and your liver. The original doctor had recommended chemotherapy only. When this type of cancer is advanced, it is never ever cured by chemotherapy alone.
So what we did here was we tailored a specific plan with her. We combined one type of chemotherapy with radiation because we knew the original chemo wasn't working, and then we added chemotherapy after the radiation was done.
HALE: I was told not to give up, let's try this. And if this doesn't work, there's other things we can try.
BODURKA: We take advantage of what we call multi-modality care, so — and somebody that has this advanced disease, and we know that one regimen is not going to work, we integrate several regimens, and that worked for her.
HALE: I had special teams of doctors that all met on my case, and here I am today, seven years, getting ready to eight years next month.
EARHARDT: For Katherine, those eight years had meant seeing her children grow up and the birth of her two grandchildren, something she could never put a price on.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: Socialized medicine is by no means a new idea. In fact, the citizens of Canada and the United Kingdom are living through what can only be described as a "Universal Nightmare."
Now take a look at what could soon become a reality right here in America.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The very first promise I made on this campaign was that as president I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office.
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Folks, reform is coming. It is on track, it is coming.
HANNITY (voice-over): It's coming all right, and if the Obama administration has its way, millions of Americans are staring at another massive government tax hike.
DR. STEPHEN SIEGEL, GASTROENTEROLOGICAL SURGEON: The current proposals for reform of health care are very worrisome to me. I think they represent a slippery slope. For health care reform to be successful, they have to reduce costs, and the only way in fact to reduce cost is to reduce services and ration care.
HANNITY: Canada and the UK have government-run health care systems and many opponents say be careful for what you wish for.
SIEGEL: I think that once the American people realize that this is where the plan will lead us, they will not accept it.
HANNITY: Shona Holmes is a native of Ontario, Canada, and she knows all too well the struggles of being a patient in a government-operated health care system.
SHONA HOLMES, TRAVELED TO U.S. FOR TREATMENT: Before I went to the doctors in Canada, I started coming down with some symptoms, and I had to go and find out what was wrong with me, and at that point I was told that my vision was going and that we needed to see an endocrinologist and a neurologist immediately.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get an appointment with either one of them for up to four to six months for either one. I realized that I was in trouble, and at that point I decided that I better go down to the states and get a diagnosis and at least find out whether or not there was something serious to worry about, and that's when I traveled down to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
HANNITY: Within one week, Shona received the frightening news. She had a life-threatening brain tumor and with a full diagnosis in hand she headed back to Canada to fight for her life.
HOLMES: The people wouldn't even look at the diagnosis that I brought back from the States and I basically got thrown back into the system for testing, and I had been told that I needed to have this surgery in order to save my eyesight within four to six weeks.
HANNITY: With little health from her own health care system Shona and her husband returned to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Within weeks she had surgery that changed her life.
HOLMES: The U.S. health care absolutely saved my life.
HANNITY: Earlier this month Shona testified on Capitol Hill about the horrific experience.
HOLMES: What started many years ago as a seemingly compassionate move in our government to treat all equally and fairly by providing the same medical coverage has in fact turned into a nightmare of everyone suffering equally. And I'm here to say, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
HANNITY: Recently a Pajamas TV reporter went undercover in a Canadian hospital to get a firsthand look at what the American people could experience.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But it's hard to get a family doctor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE DOCTOR: Yes, I know. The only thing you can do is just call the phone number.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I did that like three months ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE DOCTOR: Yes. But maybe it's like two or three years.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Three — to get a doctor?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE DOCTOR: Yes, but you're young, so you have the time.
HANNITY: Stories like this are common across Europe. Katie Brickel of London, England was another victim of a government-controlled system.
KATIE BRICKEL, CANCER SURVIVOR: When I was 19 everybody around me seemed to be getting smear tests, and I went to the doctors and asked if I could have one, and they told me that I was too young, that the age limit in England to have a smear test was 20, and so I went back when I was 20 years old. And they said the same thing, but this time the age limit had been raised to 25.
And I didn't need one until then. But when I was 23 I had symptoms I was worried about, and I went to the doctors, and we eventually found out that I had cervical cancer.
SIEGEL: When you have a x number of doctors for triple x number of patients, this results in waiting and waiting delays diagnosis, waiting delays treatment, waiting results in poor health and bad endings.
BRICKEL: I didn't get the care that I should have got. I didn't get it when I asked for it, and it ended up leading me to having an incurable cancer all because of one simple test that is too expensive for the government to have allowed me.
HANNITY: So if patients lose out and doctors predict disaster and all we hear are stories of long lines and wait lists that stretch for years, well, we have to wonder why this president is pushing for a system where poor quality health care is the norm?
SIEGEL: I have difficulty understanding why we as a country are trying to move towards systems that are not successful. I don't recall hearing of anyone flying to Canada or to the United Kingdom for second opinions in specialized care. They all come here.
HOLMES: In the United States I felt like a patient, and I felt like I was cared for, and in Canada I'm nothing but a number.
OBAMA: For those naysayers, cynics that think that this is not going to happen, don't bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: Unbelievable. Now let's check back in with Ainsley Earhardt and the two patients she profiled.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EARHARDT (voice-over): So how would our two patients have fared under the socialized medical system of Canada or Europe?
DAVIES: I can only suppose that given, you know, the circumstances that I was facing, if that happened in Canada or the United Kingdom, that perhaps I could have died. That's the conclusion I can draw.
EARHARDT: Remember General William Davies?
DAVIES: I went into ER, and the result was that I probably had indigestion because there's nothing else that we can determine.
EARHARDT: But when he went for a second opinion, his cardiologist put him in his own car and drove him to the hospital for immediate heart surgery.
(On camera): You were on an operating table getting stints put in to save your life.
DAVIES: The same day. It happened so fast.
EARHARDT (voice-over): General Davies has a daughter in law enforcement and a son currently fighting in Iraq. He worries that the long waits for care in other countries could one day be a reality here.
DAVIES: Everyone has a health problem one time or the other. Given that, my concern is how is my daughter or my son going to be taken care of when they have a health problem that has to be dealt with immediately?
Are they going to have to wait in line, have an appointment that's six months out or six weeks out? It wouldn't make any difference if you're going to die tomorrow.
EARHARDT: And what about Katherine Hale, the cancer patient in Texas.
BODURKA: I do know that they have gynecologists in Canada. I don't know how easy it is to access those physicians or how easy it is to get second opinions there, and the second opinion's really what saved Katherine's life.
HALE: If I were living in a country where you don't have a choice to go to a specialist, I would have done whatever it would have taken to come to the United States of America, to come to (INAUDIBLE) to seek out the specialist that gave me the best opportunity to have a life.
BODURKA: I was born in Canada, so I'm pretty familiar with the health care system there because my relatives still live there, and it is my impression that there is a long wait in terms of seeing a physician, getting the appropriate imaging, and then getting the appropriate treatment.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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