OpEd: Real Healthcare Reform Should Focus On Care, Not Just Coverage

O-Care’s one-size-fits-all failure

By: Nancy Pfotenhauer  -  The Hill  -  May 8, 2016

Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that universal health insurance is the central goal of a successful health care reform. The left sold the Affordable Care Act to the American people on this promise; the right hopes to do the same with an alternative plan set to be unveiled later this year.

Both sides are trying to fix the wrong problem. Universal health insurance is profoundly different from better health care—and so long as reformers focus on the former, the latter will continue to deteriorate.

Real healthcare reform must improve the quality of America’s healthcare system. At its most fundamental level, healthcare exists to improve individuals’ health outcomes and overall well-being. Beneficial reforms will thus improve those outcomes, increase healthcare’s quality and lower its costs, with the ancillary effect of expanding its availability.

This is a more worthy goal than putting a health insurance card in everyone’s hand, a la ObamaCare and its Republican replacements. Universal health insurance is merely the provision of a service regardless of that service’s quality. This cannot be achieved without the assistance of a massive bureaucratic apparatus in Washington that stifles innovation, limits consumer choice and increases its costs. Thus, reforms that seek universal health insurance decrease healthcare’s quality, and they don’t deliver on their promise to make coverage universal.

Better healthcare will not be realized without unleashing market-driven innovation. Reformers can’t pretend that this existed prior to Obama-Care’s passage. Then, as now, federal regulations hemmed in consumers and innovators on every side. ObamaCare’s mandates only expand this restrictive regulatory regime.

Innovators and consumers should be unshackled from the reams of red tape. This starts by putting patients—not bureaucrats or insurance companies—at the center of health care. Patients must be free to choose a health plan that is tailored to their needs, not one with benefit mandates created by special interests. Patients need access to real-time health care provider data that doesn’t hide costs or quality behind an impenetrable wall of bureaucratic regulations. Patients should be empowered to improve their own health using breakthrough technologies and personalized treatments.

Thus free to choose, consumers will seek out products and services that actually fit their needs. Innovators will concurrently strive to develop treatments and health care options that consumers want—and at a price they can afford.

No one-size-fits-all federal policy can accomplish this goal.

For instance, several state and federal laws prevent innovators and consumers from working together. So, multiple policy proposals targeting these barriers should be considered and challenged. 

National Center for Policy Analysis President John Goodman’s ideas about improving the poor’s access to care can be coupled with Cato Institute Director of Health Policy Studies Michael Cannon’s ideas about getting prices closer to consumers. Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) idea about equalizing the tax treatment of insurance policies can be one of a number of policies, along with Rep. Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) and Rep. Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) slightly different approaches. Economist John Cochrane has proposals to help those with pre-existing conditions; Bob Graboyes, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, details how we can unleash healthcare innovation. And ideas by the likes of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), and many others all have promise.

Every proposal should be judged by whether it leads to better healthcare for individuals and families, not whether it gives them a health insurance plan they don’t want or can’t afford. Until this shift happens, the country’s healthcare system will continue to serve Washington’s whims rather than Americans’ well-being. 

Pfotenhauer is the president of MediaSpeak Strategies and a senior adviser with Freedom Partners, a nonprofit advocate for free-market policy.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Healthcare Reform,Health Insurance,Universal Healthcare,Wake-Up,Socialized Medicine,ObamaCare Surprises,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare

Dr. Ben Carson, family and friends target of IRS harassment for criticizing Obama

We knew this was coming…

Examiner.com: February 11, 2014

On Monday, Dr. Benjamin Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said he and his family were targeted by the IRS in retribution for comments critical of Barack Obama, Newsmax reported.

According to Carson, audits and other harassment began in May or June of 2013, just a few months after his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Gradually, he added, the harassment expanded to include family members, associates, and his charitable endeavors.

"I’ve been quite -- I would say astonished at the level of hostility that I have encountered," he told Newsmax TV's John Bachman.

"The IRS has investigated me. They said, ‘I want to look at your real estate holdings.’ There was nothing there. ‘Well, let’s expand to an entire [year], everything.’ There was nothing there. ‘Let’s do another year.’ Finally, after a few months, they went away. But they’ve come after my family, they’ve come after my friends, they’ve come after associates," he added.

Until now, Newsmax said, Dr. Carson has shied away from tying the IRS actions to his criticism of Obama, but now he says Americans live "in a Gestapo age" even though they may not realize it.

He also said Congress has to step up to the plate and do its job.

"The reason we have divided government is if one branch of the government gets out of control, starts thinking they’re too big for their britches, you need to be able to have control," he said.

Unfortunately, Congress as a whole has shown little interest in keeping the administration in check, but a handful of conservative Republicans have spoken out.

Carson told Newsmax this is the first time he's ever been audited by the IRS.

He also said the agency has targeted his children, but didn't go into much detail, expressing concern the agency would expand their probe even further.

Newsmax added:

He also said a charitable organization that aids inmates’ children was informed last year, for the first time in recent years, that they would no longer be receiving a $1 million annual grant from the Justice Department.

"This is solely because you were involved?" Bachman asked.

"Correct," Carson said.

He also told Newsmax these acts of retribution take place because Americans refuse to take action.

"We sit there and we say, ‘Oh this is horrible.’ But we don’t do anything. And see, that’s what I’m trying to get our congressional people, our lawmakers – they’ve got to get courage," he said. "Because why would anybody who has an agenda to fundamentally change this nation, why would they stop if no one is opposing them?"

Carson also believes the retribution will continue, but promises he will not be forced into silence.

"The only reason that I haven’t shut up is because in Romans 8 it says ‘If God be for you, who can be against you?’ And I believe in that protection that God gives you," he added.

Carson's experience is "not that different from what many others are experiencing," said GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell. "It’s quite, quite troublesome and disturbing."

"I have heard this same story over and over and over throughout the last year," she said. "I cannot tell you how many donors to conservative organizations, people who have become active, have said ‘I was never audited until I started giving money to X conservative candidate or cause.’"

Acording to Mitchell, the targeting includes donors to candidates like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and donors to conservative issue groups.

The IRS has not just limited itself to targeting conservative donors, Tea Party groups or well-known conservatives.

As we reported last November, a cancer patient critical of Obamacare was targeted by the IRS.

Lawmakers have also threatened to unleash the IRS on the NFL over the Washington Redskins team name and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested President Obama use the IRS to silence the Tea Party.

Mitchell said the situation is "pretty scary because the people who are supposed to be the neutral arbiter and law enforcement officials appear to me to be completely in the bag for the administration."

Related:

• Dr. Ben Carson Becomes Chairman of Save Our Healthcare
• Report: Cancer patient critical of Obamacare targeted by IRS for audit
• Dem. Sen. Chuck Schumer: Obama should use IRS to curtail Tea Party
• Jay Carney to Piers Morgan: Scandals involving IRS, Benghazi, AP 'don't exist'

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,IRS,Obamaland,Dr,Ben Carson,Big Brother Tactics,Scandals,Corruption

Suit: Roberts' ruling a poison pill for Obamacare

Calling mandate, penalties a 'tax' creates huge constitutional problem

WND:

The penalties Americans will be required to pay under Obamacare for going without health insurance were declared constitutional in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that hinged on Chief Justice John Roberts’ assertion that the assessments are taxes.

But a legal challenge to the federal government takeover of health-care decision-making says that’s a problem, because Harry Reid created the Obamacare legislation, with all of its new “taxes,” in the U.S. Senate.

The Constitution

any tax bills to begin in the House.

The demand for an explanation is being raised in an amended complaint filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing a man who believes the new bureaucracy isn’t legal.

“If the charge for not buying insurance is seen as a federal tax, then a new question must be asked,” said Paul J. Beard II, the principal attorney for the organization.

When lawmakers passed the Affordable Care Act, with all of its taxes, “Did they follow the Constitution’s procedures for revenue increases?” Beard asked.

The Supreme Court wasn’t asked and didn’t address this question, he noted.

“The question of whether the Constitution was obeyed needs to be litigated, and PLF is determined to see this important issue all the way through the courts,” he said.

PLF explained that under the Supreme Court’s decision in June, the Affordable Care Act now charges a “tax” on Americans who fail to buy health insurance.

But Reid introduced the tax plan in the Senate, not the House, as the Constitution’s Origination Clause requires for new revenue-raising bills, in Article I, Section 7, the legal team argued.

The plaintiff in the case is Iowa small business owner Matt Sissel, who chooses to pay for medical expenses on his own. He objects “on financial, philosophical, and constitutional grounds to be ordered by the federal government to purchase a health care plan he does not need or want, on pain of financial penalty.”

“I’m in this case to defend freedom and the Constitution,” said Sissel. “I strongly believe that I should be free – and all Americans should be free – to decide how to provide for our medical needs, and not be forced to purchase a federally dictated health care plan. I’m very concerned about Congress ignoring the constitutional roadmap for enacting taxes, because those procedures are there for a purpose – to protect our freedom.”

He served in the Army National Guard until 2008 and spent two years in Iraq as a combat medic. He received the Bronze Star and now owns an art business in Iowa City.

“It’s dispiriting to see our lawmakers treat the rules set out in the Constitution with disrespect, as if they’re just suggestions, or as if members of Congress are too important to follow them,” he said.

His lawsuit was filed before the Supreme Court opinion was released by Roberts, but it was on hold while that case from the National Federation of Independent Business and 26 states was pending.

The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case alleged that a mandate to buy insurance was a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, and the Supreme Court agreed. But Roberts’ opinion simply changed the “penalty” as it was enacted by Congress to a “tax” and deemed it constitutional for that reason.

Reid took a House-passed bill that helps veterans buy homes, eviscerated it and inserted the Obamacare language.

“When we focus on the Origination Clause, we’re not talking about dry formalities and this isn’t an academic issue,” said Beard. “The Founders understood that the power to tax, if misused, involves the power to destroy, as Chief Justice John Marshall put it. Therefore, they viewed the Origination Clause as a vital safeguard for liberty. They insisted that the power to initiate new taxes should be left with the lawmakers who are most directly accountable to voters – members of the House, who are elected every two years by local districts.”

The Sissel complaint is being amended to challenge the entire law on that basis.

The amended complaint explains that Roberts specifically approved the “shared responsibility payment,” which the Obama administration said was not a tax, as “a tax.”

“The chief justice explained the apparent inconsistency in concluding that the ‘shared responsibility payment’ is a tax for constitutional purposes, but not for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act.”

His logic was that while Congress did not have the power to require citizens to buy insurance, it could require them to pay a tax.

But Roberts’ holding that the payments are taxes “raises new questions about the tax’s conformity with other constitutional provisions,” which the court left unresolved, the legal filing said.

“Despite the fact the act raises considerable revenues, it originated in the Senate, not the House,” the brief argues. “The Affordable Care Act was not the result of a lawful amendment of H.R. 3590, because the subject matter of the one had nothing whatsoever to do with the other.”

The Obamacare law already was under attack in the courts for its “mandate” that employers pay for abortifacients for employees. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by Christian organizations that say the mandate violates freedom of religion.

In a Michigan pending case, the government insisted it has the authority to “substantially burden the exercise of religion” on two conditions.

If it is “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

Technorati Tags: abortifacients,ObamaCare,ObamaTax,repeal and replace ObamaCare,taxes,Chief Justice John Roberts,religious freedom,Supreme Court,U.S. Constitution,Constitution,Affordable Care Act taxes,Origination Clause,tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives,H.R. 3590,this version of the ObamaCare bill origiinated in the Senate

The Patient OPTION Act: True Patient-Centered Care

FreedomWorks

As we eagerly await the upcoming Supreme Court decision here at FreedomWorks, we’ve been reviewing our favorite bills to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

One of the most comprehensive “replace” bills we’ve seen so far is the Patient OPTION Act (H.R. 4224) introduced by Congressman Paul Broun, M.D. (R-GA). The Patient OPTION Act fully repeals and replaces ObamaCare with a system that puts more choice and freedom in the hands of the patient. Rather than focusing on “expanding coverage”—a goal that puts policymakers in a trap that inevitably leads to more centralized government control, a la ObamaCare—this plan focuses on two commonsense goals: (1) reduce costs through greater choice and competition, (2) expand individual liberty.

For more information about this bill, including a summary of its major provisions, you can view our guide to the Patient OPTION Act.

TAKE ACTION: Urge your Members of Congress to cosponsor the Patient OPTION Act!

Patient_OPTION_Act_Summary.pdf - 657.14 KB

 

Technorati Tags: Health Care Reform,Congressman Paul Broun,health care reform,ObamaCare,OPTION Act,Patient OPTION Act,C4,repeal and replace ObamaCare,FreedomWorks

Five Health Care Issues To Watch in 2012

Not to be a Grinch, but "Road to Reform" doesn't celebrate the 12 days of Christmas.

We do, however, cherish the 10 years of staggered Affordable Care Act implementation.

It's the gift that keeps on giving for health wonks -- and columnists on the health reform beat.

After a packed 2011, here are five issues springing out of last year's reform law that bear watching in 2012.

1. The Supreme Court battle over ACA

It's an open question: Are those 10 years of reforms even constitutional?

The high court is poised to give its answer next year.

Health wonks already have circled March 26-March 28 on their calendars, when the justices will devote a record five-and-a-half hours of oral argument to discuss the Affordable Care Act's legality.

The current schedule:

• Day 1: Whether the court can even rule on the ACA before 2014, when its major provisions take effect.
• Day 2: Whether the ACA's individual mandate is constitutional.
• Day 3: Whether striking down the mandate means striking down the law, and if the Medicaid expansion is permissible.

The case matches the Obama administration against the National Federation of Independent Business and 26 states. Based on split lower-court decisions and the current roster of justices, predictions about the high court's verdict -- whether the law will be upheld, partially struck or fully struck down -- are all over the map.

But veteran court watchers do offer one near-guarantee: A hearing in March means a ruling by June.

2. The payment reforms contained in ACA

Regardless of the law's long-term future, a bevy of ACA cost-control pilots and quality-improvement initiatives will formally debut in the coming weeks.

The sheer momentum of these initiatives could reshape how the industry pays for care.

"It should be a landmark year as several key programs -- the Pioneer ACO Model, the Shared Savings Program, the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative and the Health Care Innovation Challenge -- all launch across 2012," the Advisory Board Company's Rob Lazerow told California Healthline.

(The Advisory Board Company produces California Healthline for the California HealthCare Foundation.)

Notably, the Pioneer program -- which includes six California organizations among its 32 participants -- goes online on Jan. 1. The HHS initiative is designed to reward health systems that are already prepared to assume new risks as "accountable care organizations" -- for example, by taking on more population management responsibilities.

Meanwhile, the $1 billion Innovation Challenge is a grant-making program that incents new workforce and care delivery models. Provider applications are due next month.

Lazerow, who's spoken with dozens of hospitals and health systems, added that "leaders of progressive organizations are excited" to choose from the range of voluntary payment innovations.

3. The health insurance exchanges mandated by ACA

The Obama administration's final rule on health insurance exchanges is slated to be released in early 2012, about two years before the Jan. 1, 2014 deadline for states to have them up and running.

Critics are saying that might be too late.

Launching a health insurance exchange will require months of technical work and considerable financial investment. As Health Access details, California is moving quickly to get its exchange up and running. But many other legislatures continue to wrestle -- especially with the law facing unresolved court challenges --  between crafting their own insurance exchanges or defaulting to a yet-to-be-defined federal alternative.

HHS is expected to announce details of that fallback option by June. But the actual federal exchange may not be ready by 2014, either.

"It will be an enormous uphill battle to get this thing launched on time," health industry consultant Robert Laszewski told Kaiser Health News. "[Federal officials] have a Herculean task, even if everyone was cooperating."

4. The health IT needed to bring ACA to life

The insurance exchanges aren't alone in needing an injection of technical know-how.

Achieving the ACA's promise of affordable, quality care will require health care providers to adopt sophisticated technologies that monitor patients and enable effective data transmission.

At the center of this effort is the government's meaningful use incentive program to encourage electronic health record adoption. John Lynn, a blogger at Health IT Blog Network, predicted that next year would see more of the same; 2012 "will be all about Meaningful Use: Meaningful Use, ACOs, Meaningful Use ... and a little more Meaningful Use covered in Meaningful Use," according to Lynn. 

EHRs' rise also will allow providers to start combing through large health information sets. Writing in iHealthBeat -- California Healthline's sister publication -- Jane Sarasohn-Kahn notes that data analytics for addressing readmissions rates "should take off in 2012," given the ACA's financial incentives for controlling hospital readmission rates.

Meanwhile, health IT expert Brian Ahier flagged another pending development: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's pending rule on Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) governance.

The proposed rule -- which ONC is expected to publish in early 2012 -- will address a number of key health IT policy and governance questions, Ahier told California Healthline. For example, it will establish "rules of the road" for all NwHIN participants to be confident in the health information exchanges' security and confidentiality, he said.

5. The election to decide ACA's future

Austin Frakt -- a health economist and blogger at The Incidental Economist -- has spent weeks writing about the Medicare premium-support debate, health care cost controls and a range of other reform topics.

Yet Frakt knows that next November is already casting a long shadow over his policy debates.

"As a policy wonk it pains me," Frakt said, "[but] the election is more important to long-term health policy than anything else in 2012."

Simply put, if President Obama wins re-election -- and the Supreme Court upholds the law -- the ACA is probably here to stay.

(It’s not inconceivable that economic issues or a major backlash could force Obama to retreat from a Democratic law; President George H.W. Bush oversaw a repeal of President Reagan's Medicare Catastrophic Care Act.)

But if a Republican takes the White House, the ACA's future is immediately in flux. Although it would be very difficult for that president to roll back the law entirely, given the steady implementation of reforms and the health industry's own push to keep the law alive.

And more than the ACA is in the balance next year. A Republican victory might mean a turn toward premium support models after all, with the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan gaining favor among the GOP presidential candidates.

Publishing Break

"Road to Reform" will return in 2012 -- making predictions about what 2013 holds for health care, no doubt -- as California Healthline goes on a publishing break starting Friday.

And to help you have a very wonky holiday, here's one last national roundup of reform news for 2011.

Administration Actions

• HHS on Monday rejected Michigan's request for a waiver from the medical-loss ratio regulations under the federal health reform law (Baker, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/19). Under the rule, private insurers must spend at least 80% in the individual market or 85% in the group market of their premium dollars on direct medical costs (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 12/19). Officials said insurers that are unable to meet the MLR standards could stop providing coverage, resulting in higher costs and fewer options for consumers (Anstett, Detroit Free Press, 12/19).
• Last week, HHS rejected Florida's request for a waiver from the medical-loss ratio rule under the federal health reform law (Bandell, South Florida Business Journal, 12/15). Under the rule, private insurers must spend at least 80% in the individual market or 85% in the group market of their premium dollars on direct medical costs (Pecquet, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/15). Florida officials said the MLR rule it could disrupt the state's private health insurance market, which includes only a few companies but covers for about 840,000 individuals (Fineout, AP/Miami Herald, 12/15).
• This week, the Department of Justice said that the federal health reform law has helped the department recover about $2.4 billion in health care fraud cases in 2011. The federal government recovered about $1.8 billion from drugmakers, which led to states recovering another $421 million from the industry in cases involving illegal pricing, false claims and FDA violations (Baker, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/19). Tony West of DOJ's civil division said a joint DOJ-HHS task force created by the Obama administration "essentially raised health care fraud to a cabinet-level priority" (Pickler, AP/Miami Herald, 12/19).
• Last week, CMS released draft regulations that outline procedures for drugmakers and device makers to report payments to physicians, as required by the Physician Payment Sunshine Act under the federal health reform law (Yukhananov, Reuters, 12/14). Under the proposed rule, manufacturers covered by Medicare, Medicaid or CHIP must disclose all payments or transfers of items of value to physicians and teaching hospitals (CQ HealthBeat, 12/14). Manufacturers would face a fine of $150,000 for failing to report payments, and $1 million for knowingly failing to disclose the data (Reuters, 12/14). Public comments on the proposed rule will be accepted until Feb. 17 (CQ HealthBeat, 12/14).

Effects on States

• The federal government faces substantial technical, political and financial obstacles in developing a health insurance exchange on behalf of states that do not set up their own. Through the federal exchange, individuals and small businesses will be able to access a website comparing insurance policy offerings by price, coverage and quality. In addition, the federal exchange must be able to help applicants determine if they are eligible for Medicaid, federal subsidies or various tax credits. The exchange also will include a Federal Data Services Hub that will unite data from different agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service (Appleby, Kaiser Health News/Washington Post, 12/20).

In the States

• In a study released recently, the Colorado Health Institute reported that the number of primary care physicians in the state would need to increase by between 83 and 141 by 2016 to meet the health care needs for the estimated 510,000 residents who will gain health coverage under the federal health reform law. Researchers said that when the law's individual mandate takes effect in 2014, as many as 380,000 residents will obtain coverage through private plans and an additional 130,000 individuals will obtain coverage through Medicaid, resulting in between 256,010 and 432,420 additional annual visits to physicians (Sealover, Denver Business Journal, 12/12).

On the Campaign Trail

• Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's (Ga.) record on health care could put him at odds with many Republican voters. Interviews and records indicate that Gingrich that he supported the individual mandate in the federal health reform law, telling health care executives in a May 2009 conference call, "We believe there should be a must-carry; that is, everybody should have health insurance." He also has been active in promoting several recent programs that have given the federal government a larger role in the health care system, a prospect with which many Republicans disagree (Rutenberg/McIntire, New York Times, 12/16).

On the Hill

• Last week, House Republicans acknowledged that they would not be able to repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act before the end of the year but pledged to revive repeal efforts in 2012 (Pecquet [1], "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/13). The long-term health care program, which was created by the federal health reform law, was intended to provide coverage to workers if they become unable to care for themselves because of injury or illness. GOP lawmakers said the House Ways and Means Committee will begin markup on a CLASS repeal proposal early next year (Pecquet [2], "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/13).

Rolling Out Reform

• The Obama administration's efforts to ease some of the federal health reform law's requirements on insurers, employers, physicians and other groups has garnered "cautious praise" from some overhaul opponents. For example, the administration has exempted nearly 1,500 employers and health plans from measures that prohibit caps on benefit and granted waivers to exempt insurers from medical-loss ratio rules. Observers say the efforts could alleviate the possible political backlash during President Obama's re-election campaign, but many allies of his administration are frustrated with the strategy (Levey, Los Angeles Times, 12/14).
• In its first year, CMS' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation launched 12 initiatives -- from accountable care organizations to primary care projects -- that are reshaping how people think about the U.S. health care system, according to a recent Commonwealth Fund report. The report outlined CMMI's achievements over the past year, highlighting a dozen initiatives that have helped the health care industry move toward more coordinated, integrated care. The federal health reform law allotted $10 billion to CMMI, which was launched in November 2010 to help it test payment and service delivery models that aim to reduce spending and boost care quality (Fiegl, American Medical News, 12/15).

Studying Its Effects

• In a survey released last week, the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions reported that nearly 75% of physicians are concerned about physician shortages, longer wait times and crowded emergency departments as more people gain health coverage through the federal health reform law. Nine out of 10 respondents polled also believe that their insurance reimbursements will be lower because of the law. The poll of 501 physicians also found that about 44% believe the health reform law was "a good start," but another 44% said the law was "a step in the wrong direction" (Radnofsky, "Health Blog," Wall Street Journal, 12/13).
• Last week, CDC's National Center for Health Statistics reported that the number of uninsured young adults nationwide has dropped by 2.5 million since the federal health reform law took effect in 2010. A provision in the overhaul allows dependents up to age 26 to remain on their parents' health insurance plans. According to HHS policy analysts, about 10.5 million young adults ages 19 to 25 were uninsured when the provision took effect in the third quarter of 2010, but that figure dropped to about eight million by the second quarter of 2011 (Alonso-Zaldivar, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 12/14).
• In a study released last week, the UC-Berkley Center for Labor Research and Education reported that more than one million additional U.S. residents could gain health coverage if a provision in the federal health reform law is modified. The provision stipulates that if workers contribute more than 9.5% of their incomes toward employer-sponsored health benefits, they qualify for federal subsidies to purchase health plans through state insurance exchanges (Pecquet, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 12/13). The report recommended that the provision be modified to determine affordability based on the cost of a family plan (Bunis, CQ HealthBeat, 12/13).

by Dan Diamond, California Healthline Contributing Editor
Source: California Health LIne  -  h/t to MJ

Related:

Why Justice Clarence Thomas Should Not (Needn’t) Recuse Himself…  And Why Justice Elena Kagan Should (Must)

A Better Way to Reform Health Care

The critical problem is rising costs. The solution is more competition and greater individual control over health spending. Here's how.

By JOHN F. COGAN, GLENN HUBBARD, AND DANIEL KESSLER

Today, President Obama will host members of Congress from both political parties at the White House to discuss health reform. He has already put on the table an ambitious plan that takes elements from the bills already passed by the House and Senate and adds others, such as an agency to control health-insurance premiums.

The fundamental question participants must address is whether to use the president's plan as a starting point for negotiations, or to scrap it and start over.

Our recommendation: scrap it and start over. Its key elements—mandates, heavy-handed insurance regulation, and entitlement-based, middle-income subsidies—must go. None of them address health care's fundamental problem: high and rising costs. Instead, the various versions of health reform put forth by the president and his party are based on expanding health-insurance coverage. The inevitable consequence will be to exacerbate the cost problem. And the American public knows it.

To bring down costs, we need to change the incentives that govern spending. Right now, $5 out of every $6 of health-care spending is paid for by someone other than the person receiving care—insurance companies, employers, or the government. Individuals are insulated from the reality of what their decisions cost. This breeds overutilization of low-value health care and runaway spending.

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To reduce the growth of costs, individuals must take greater responsibility for their health care, and health insurers and health-care providers must face the competitive forces of the market. Three policy changes will go a long way to achieving these objectives: (1) eliminate the tax code's bias that favors health insurance over out-of-pocket spending; (2) remove state-government barriers to purchasing and providing health services; and (3) reform medical malpractice laws.

We estimate these three changes will reduce health-care costs by over $100 billion per year and permanently reduce the number of uninsured by up to 13 million.

The tax code's favorable treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance over out-of-pocket health-care payments means that, for most families, buying health care through an employer is 30%-40% cheaper than buying it directly. The best way to address this clear bias is by making all health spending—including out-of-pocket payments, purchases of individual insurance, and purchases of COBRA coverage—tax-deductible.

Such a policy would be especially helpful to individuals facing the high cost of chronic illness and the unemployed who have lost their employer coverage. It could be accomplished with a single, sweeping policy change. It could also be achieved by expanding Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts, which also level the tax playing field between insured and out-of-pocket spending. That is, they make the tax treatment of insured and out-of-pocket spending more similar.

Many health-policy analysts have argued that counting employer-sponsored insurance premiums as taxable income would be a more effective way to undo the current tax code's bias toward employer-sponsored health insurance. In theory, we agree.

But the fate of the so-called tax on Cadillac insurance plans only serves to underscore the wisdom of leveling the playing field by making all health-care spending tax deductible. The beneficiaries of these high-priced plans, such as labor unions and public-sector employees, lobbied intensely and largely against the tax, and the president's plan defers the tax until 2018. The end result is the essential elimination of the plan's only tangible improvement to incentives.

There are two additional steps to reforming private insurance markets. First, individuals must be allowed to buy health insurance offered in states other than those in which they live. The current approach of state-by-state regulation has raised costs by reducing competition among insurance companies. It has also allowed state legislatures to impose insurance mandates that raise prices, while preventing residents from getting policies more suitable for their needs.

Second, reasonable caps on damages for pain and suffering need to be established in medical malpractice cases. Caps on these kind of damages reduce costs and decrease unnecessary, defensive medicine.

These three policies offer advantages over the president's plan. Instead of raising health-care costs, they fundamentally change incentives among individuals, insurers, and providers to gradually slow the growth in costs by reducing inefficient demand without sacrificing quality and innovation. Instead of radically changing health care overnight, they take an incremental approach, respecting the tremendous uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of different approaches to rein in costs.

And instead of massively increasing government spending, our policies have only a negligible federal budget impact. We estimate that the three policies will reduce federal revenues by approximately $3 billion per year; a small amount of the government's $2.2 trillion revenue intake.

Why is the budget impact so small? Taken together, the policy changes outlined here will produce a substantial decline in health-insurance premiums. Premiums will fall as workers opt for health plans with higher copayments. Insurance companies will lower premiums in the face of stiffer competition. And doctors will practice less defensive medicine.

As tax-deductible, employer-sponsored health-insurance costs decline, workers' taxable wages will rise so as to leave total labor compensation unchanged. The increased tax revenue collected on higher wages nearly offsets the revenue loss from the new health care tax deduction.

It is also important to increase access to health care—but this should not be confused with increasing access to health insurance, and it cannot be achieved without getting costs under control. There are several ideas for improving access worth considering: removing artificial barriers to entry for physicians and within specialty groups, allowing states greater flexibility with Medicaid, providing tax credits for health spending, and expanding programs that provide services directly, such as Community Health Centers. The city of San Francisco has a promising alternative along these lines called Healthy San Francisco. It restructures the existing health-care safety net system (both public and nonprofit) into a coordinated, integrated system.

Despite the claims of some partisans to the contrary, the president's plan is failing because it does not speak to the concerns of the majority of Americans. Instead of addressing the high and rising costs of care, it proposes mandates, invasive regulation, and unaffordable new entitlements. This will not bring health-care costs down—it will only make this problem worse.

Mr. Cogan, a senior fellow at Sanford University's Hoover Institution, was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. Mr. Kessler is a professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

February 17, 2010

Petitions to Stop ObamaCare Delivered to Congressman Phil Gingrey: Second copy of petitions headed for Washington D.C. this week!

From Left to Right: Mark Turner, Congressman Phil Gingrey, and Brandon Vallorani. Mark and Brandon are holding nearly 150,000 names and addresses of Americans who want to stop the government takeover of our health care.

54% of the people want the ObamaCare Bill(s) scraped. 67% are tired of this entire one-sided charade. And only 43% want any form of HC (starting over from scratch) to be anywhere on the table this year.

Dr. Mercola: How Trillions of Dollars Were Stolen From U.S. Taxpayers

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
November 26 2009 | 1,656 views

An offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the U.S. economy -- by design. Could it be that a worldwide regime, controlled by an unelected corporate elite, is implementing a system that will dominate all human activity and establish a system of neo-feudal slavery?

Watch the Fall of the Republic, and decide for yourself.

You may ask yourself... why is this being posted on a health site?!? The answer is that it all ties together and that often not knowing causes more stress than knowing the enemy so we can fight back together!!

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The Fall of the Republic, another critical-eye documentary by Alex Jones, offers a sobering glimpse behind the curtain of American politics and the international banking system.

It is a shocking expose of how the US got into the mess we’re now in, and just how dire our situation may yet become if we don’t act swiftly and decisively to do the right thing for our nation.

I particularly enjoyed the former secretary of the treasury, Henry Paulson’s, testimony before Congress. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone more blatantly lying about something he was trying to cover up, using flimsy excuse after flimsy excuse to justify his behavior. Absolutely despicable behavior...

But the US financial system is not the only thing that needs to be carefully reviewed and overhauled.

Why Does a Health Site Comment on the Economy?

You might wonder why I am posting this information on a health site. Well some people simply fail to appreciate the obvious, so let me spell it out for those who believe it to be inappropriate for me to review this material.

Emotions are, without question, the single largest contributor to your health. One out of four people in the US are out of work and the financial future of many seems very bleak. Heck, 15 percent of the US population doesn’t even have enough money to buy enough processed (unhealthy) food to keep them out of hunger. This creates strong negative emotions in most that will inevitably deteriorate their health.

That is the obvious connection, but additionally many will not have the funds to purchase high quality foods, or pay for the invariable medical expenses that they encounter if they don’t.

It is also obvious that accidents happen. And when they do they can generate large medical bills, which are the number one reason for having to declare bankruptcy in the US.

So there are many ways in which political happenings can be related to health.

Did you know that according to a recent 60 Minutes story, the government run Medicare loses $60 billion of your tax dollars to fraud, every year. Just think what it will be if they run 1/6 of our economy and all medical decisions.

Health Care Reform

Additionally, we’re currently in the middle of heated debates about health care reform, which may end up making or breaking more than the health of American citizens. It will have enormous ramifications for the future of the US economy.

One of the major reasons for the support of a government run health care plan is due to the belief that government run programs, like Medicare, have lower administrative costs than private plans.

However, as Robert Samuelson with the Washington Post has noted, that is simply not true. On a per person basis, Medicare actually has higher administrative costs than the private sector.

More importantly, the private sector does a much better job rooting out fraud and waste than the government does. As a potent example, watch the 60 Minutes story (second video above), which details how Medicare fraud costs US taxpayers a staggering$60 billion a year!

For more examples, just use the search word “medicare” to search my site, and you’ll find a number of articles written throughout the years, highlighting the problem of widespread Medicare fraud.

Back in 2007, I posted a video of the US Comptroller General, who warned that funding shortfalls for the Medicare program were five times worse than Social Security, and that it would take $8 trillion to pay for what is promised to beneficiaries, of which we had, and still have, ZERO!

When Medicare was introduced by President Johnson in 1965, it was a classic example of the devastating complications that can result from well-intentioned government intervention in our health care system. Now, more than 40 years later, it has become clear that Medicare is a prescription for financial disaster.

What makes anyone think that adding more government run health care plans will change this situation for the better?

YOU Are the Solution

The majority of the American public is clueless when it comes to health. They have been effectively manipulated and deceived by the brilliant marketing scams of drug companies.

Offering government run health care programs that do absolutely nothing to change the current medical paradigm, by focusing solely on trying to figure out how to continue paying for unnecessary drugs and surgical procedures is not the answer.

It is time to stand up, and not only voice your own opinions to your elected representatives, but also take control of your own health.

Take Control of Your Health

Start engaging in behaviors that allow you to become independently healthy so you don't have to rely on whatever drug-company solutions may be offered.

If you can lead by example you can be a pillar of light out of this darkness we have progressed into.

All we need to do is convince 10 percent of the population, and this system will crumble.

You can start by following the principles I have outlined in my comprehensive nutrition program. This comprehensive program is divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced sections so you can step in wherever your current health level commitment is.

You can then engage in a comprehensive exercise program, which will further move you towards health and keep you protected from illness.

It is important to remember that no synthetic drug or chemical will ever address the underlying cause of your illness. By adopting healthy lifestyle changes you will be able to build resistance to just about every disease that might cause physical harm.

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?

The mother of Dontae Adams.

***

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?

***

June 19, 2009

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)

Watch "Hannity" weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!

Content and Programming Copyright 2009 FOX News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2009 CQ Transcriptions, LLC, which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material except for the user's personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be printed, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any fashion that may infringe upon FOX News Network, LLC'S and CQ Transcriptions, LLC's copyrights or other proprietary rights or interests in the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of litigation

Posted True Health Is True Wealth

Rebutting Obama’s Health Care Speech… After Slight Bump, Support for Health Care Plan Falls Back To Pre-Speech Levels

REBUTTING OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE SPEECH

In his hour long speech on health care, he failed to spend even a moment rebutting the central critique of his program: His inability to provide quality medical care for 30 million new patients without any additional doctors or nurses.

The shortage of medical personnel which will inevitably accompany the expansion of the patient population will leave some element - and perhaps all -- without adequate care. Like the man who sleeps with a blanket that is too small, either his neck or his feet will get cold unless he gets a bigger blanket.

The result of expanding the demand for medical services without augmenting the supply of doctors or nurses must be the rationing of medical care. And rationing will inevitably take its greatest toll among the elderly, forcing them to forgo elective surgery or, if their remaining quality years are likely to be limited, to do without vital life-prolonging treatment. Inevitably, we will all have to wait many more days, weeks, months or years for care we now receive on demand.

Obama will cut Medicare and that portion of Medicaid which serves the elderly in nursing homes (75 percent) in two ways:

(a) As he said in his speech, he will cut "hundreds of millions in waste and fraud and unwarranted subsidies in Medicare." To identify this "waste and fraud" he proposes to establish a commission within the Executive Branch to investigate the program and initiate cuts. Congress will have only sharply limited power to override these reductions or else they will automatically take effect.

Obama admits that these cuts will largely take the form of reducing reimbursement rates for hospitals and doctors. Paid less per office visit, doctors will spend less time on each patient. Reimbursed less for MRIs or CT Scans, they will order fewer of them. And getting less income, more doctors will retire and fewer will enter the profession aggravating the scarcity.

The president also plans to eliminate the Medicare Advantage program, an approach to managed care which permits the elderly a coherence and a coordination in their treatment that about one-third of them find valuable enough to sign up for.

(b) His newly established panel to cut Medicare will also "encourage the adoption of...common sense best practices by doctors and medical professionals...reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan."

These are code words for the rationing the imbalance in supply and demand will cause. The panel will "encourage" doctors to adopt the "best practices" the panel recommends by limiting reimbursement rates or even banning alternatives. Likely guidelines will govern who can get elective surgery like hip replacements or new knees based on the number of QARYs "quality adjusted remaining years" the patient has.

For example, in Canada, the drug Avastin is barred by just such a panel despite its proven track record as the most effective anti-colon cancer drug on the market. The ban is not because of any safety concerns, but solely due to its $50,000 annual cost. As a direct result, 41% of Canadians with colon cancer die as opposed to 32% of Americans. It is just these kinds of "best practices" that the panel will have to impose to pay for Obama's plan.

The panel will likely recommend limits on testing and screening, worsening rather than improving preventative care. In Canada, for example, there is an eight month wait for colonoscopies which leads to a 25% higher incidence of colon cancer.

Together, these cuts in Medicare will pay for more than half of the subsidies in Obama's program. And what will the money be used for? To pay for medical coverage for people who are too young for Medicare, too wealthy for Medicaid, and too old for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The president claims that this coverage will be "affordable" for those now uninsured. But the guidelines in the bill indicate that a person making about $30,000 a year will have to pay approximately 8% of his income in premiums before the subsidies kick in -- $2400 a year. Many of those now uninsured will find this expenditure both onerous and unnecessary in view of their current youth and good health.

Obama claims that "our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close." He's wrong. Medicare and Medicaid costs have risen by about 5% in the past year while the budget deficit has quadrupled. The deficit is caused by the massive overspending in the TARP program bailing out banks and the equally gargantuan stimulus package, throwing money - ineffectually - at the recession.
The president reports that "the reforms I'm proposing will not apply to those who are here illegally." This statement is also a half-truth. Illegal immigrants will be eligible to buy health insurance from the insurance exchange Obama creates, taking advantage of the lower rates he claims it will allow through bulk purchasing. And, without any effective provision for citizenship verification, will inevitably slip through the cracks and get subsidized coverage.

He boasts that "nothing in this plan will force you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have." But the rationing his program will force will make those insurance companies and doctors impotent in the face of federal mandates for reduced care.
The president's plan is, essentially, a program to take medical care away from the elderly and give it to those who are not younger, healthier, and - in the main - richer.

Dick Morris - Catastrophe

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Support for Health Care Plan Falls Back To Pre-Speech Levels

Following President Obama’s speech to Congress last week, support for his health care reform plan increased steadily to a peak of 51% yesterday. However, the bounce appears to be over. The latest daily tracking shows that support has fallen all the way back to pre-speech levels.

Forty-five percent (45%) of all voters nationwide now favor the plan while 52% are opposed. A week ago, 44% supported the proposal and 53% were opposed. (see day-by-day numbers).

The latest figures show that 23% Strongly Favor the plan and 41% are Strongly Opposed. In late August, 23% were strongly in favor of the plan and 43% were strongly opposed. Premium Members can see full demographic crosstabs for results released today, Monday, Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday and, for comparison, late August.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll is another indicator of the speech's impact, and there, too, the bounce in approval Obama has been getting since the Wednesday night speech appears to have ended. Job Approval ratings are updated each morning at 9:30 EDT.

Rasmussen Reports will continue tracking support for the proposals on a daily basis over the next several days and will release new updates each morning at 9 EDT. After this week, Rasmussen Reports will continue tracking the issue on a weekly basis.

Fifty-one percent (51%) now say that health care reform is at least somewhat likely to pass this year. That figure includes 18% who say passage is Very Likely. In a survey Sunday night, 55% said the plan was at least somewhat likely to pass this year. That was the highest total yet recorded.

If the plan passes, 27% of voters now say the quality of care will get better and 46% say it will get worse. In August, the numbers were 23% better and 50% worse.

Forty-seven percent (47%) say passage of the plan will make the cost of health care go up while 20% say it will make costs go down. In August, 52% thought the plan would lead to higher costs, and only 17% thought it would achieve the stated goal of lowering costs.

Prior to the president's speech, most people with insurance said it’s likely they would be forced to change coverage if the plan passes. As Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, explained in a recent Wall Street Journal column: “The most important fundamental is that 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent … Most of these voters approach the health care reform debate fearing that they have more to lose than to gain.”

Voters overwhelmingly believe that every American should be able to buy the same health insurance plan that Congress has. Most favor limits on jury awards for medical malpractice claims and think that tort reform will significantly reduce the cost of health care.

And a government-run co-op or a trigger is just a public option by another name or delayed, and Americans don’t want it. Do not be fooled and let you Congressman and Senators know… No Public Option, No Government-run Co-Op, No Trigger!!!!

Also no funding for abortions, not coverage for illegals, no free translation services for non-English speaking people.

Source: DickMorris.com/Rassussen Poll

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth