tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81251252024-03-08T14:31:34.318+12:00SOCIALIZED MEDICINEThe focus of this blog is on the wonders of government-run health-care everywhere but I also note the damage done to private medicine by a legal system that supports predatory litigation. <br><br>
The long-established socialized medicine systems in Britain and Australia are a particularly relevant warning about where such systems end up.<br>
<br>Posts by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.comBlogger2062125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-52060616176171772182011-07-01T22:37:00.005+11:302011-07-01T23:18:08.504+11:30<b>Doctors ask: did Great Ormond Street boss cover up hospital's role in Baby P affair?</b><br /><br /><i>Hospital management ignored strenuous warnings about deficiencies in care that led to the death of a toddler (below)</i><br /><br /><img src="http://bbnappy.fr/blog/imgs/1.jpg"><br /><br />Senior doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital have called for an independent investigation into their chief executive, following claims she helped cover up its role in the Baby P affair.<br /><br />The consultants have written to The Lancet saying it is now "impossible" to raise questions over the conduct of Jane Collins internally.<br /><br />They imply the matter has not been "properly or impartially investigated" within the hospital, and warn that this makes the famous children's hospital appear to be "an organisation that buries its mistakes".<br /><br />Their letter comes three weeks after Lynne Featherstone, the Equalities Minister and MP for Haringey in north London, said Dr Collins "deliberately withheld" important information regarding the children's clinic where Baby P was seen two days before his death.<br /><br />Ms Featherstone told the BBC that it appeared Dr Collins "attempted to cover up the fact that the situation" at the clinic, St Ann's Hospital, had been deemed "clinically risky" in an independent report.<br /><br />Clinical staff at St Ann's, including the consultant paediatrician was saw Baby P and missed that he had a broken back, were employed and managed by Great Ormond Street at the time of his death in August 2007.<br /><br />While Great Ormond Street passed on the full report to police, only a summary went to the author of the serious case review looking into the death of the child, whose name was Peter Connelly.<br /><br />Calling for an "independent investigation", the doctors wrote: "We want the matter properly and impartially investigated, not because error is inexcusable, but because we do not wish GOSH to be seen as an organisation that buries its mistakes."<br /><br />A spokesman for Great Ormond Street Hospital claimed the consultants were motivated by other concerns.<br /><br />He said: "There are a minority of consultants who are unhappy at some of the changes that the trust is introducing to improve patient care.<br /><br />"We are sorry that they have chosen to express their views through the media, when there are plenty of avenues through which to raise concerns within the trust. The vast majority of staff are clearly comfortable to use these."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8608723/Doctors-ask-did-Great-Ormond-Street-boss-cover-up-hospitals-role-in-Baby-P-affair.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-27132907044694859712011-07-01T22:37:00.001+11:302011-07-01T22:37:23.394+11:30<b>100,000 terminally ill Britons 'do not get proper palliative care'</b><br /><br />Almost 100,000 terminally ill people do not get proper care, according to a Government review which concluded that a new funding system would save millions of pounds and better serve individuals. A national payment structure would cut variation around the country in what the state pays for and what it does not, and support far more people to be cared for in their own homes, it said.<br /><br />Experts behind the report say the move could reduce deaths in hospital by up to 60,000 a year by 2021, translating into savings of £180 million annually.<br /><br />At the moment, the amount primary care trusts (PCTs) in England spend on end-of-life care varies widely, from £186 per patient in one area to £6,213 in another.<br /><br />Access to services, including round-the-clock nursing care, also depends on where people live.<br /><br />Far more people die in hospital than wish to, and experts estimate that more than 90,000 people are not having their palliative care needs met.<br /><br />The Palliative Care Funding Review, ordered by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, last summer, proposes a "fair and transparent" funding system where the money is linked to the individual patient.<br /><br />Under the scheme, people would receive an initial assessment of their needs, which would then be combined with other factors such as their age and capabilities.<br /><br />This "needs classification system" would have 25 separate classes (13 for adults and 12 for children), each with its own pot of funding.<br /><br />The funding would take account of things such as personal care needs, including help with washing and eating, the provision of 24/7 nursing care to support people at home and a co-ordinator to help patients work out their state entitlements as well as access to local charitable services.<br /><br />At present, some end-of-life care providers are paid regardless of how much work they do, offering poor value for money across the service, the review said.<br /><br />Meanwhile, 97% of hospices do not receive all the funding they need for the NHS services they provide, and some patients are victims of "rationing" towards the end of the NHS financial year.<br /><br />These latest proposals would guarantee funding regardless of where patients live and whether they are in a care home, hospital or in their own home.<br /><br />Thomas Hughes-Hallett, chair of the review and chief executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care, said: "No other country in the world has introduced such a system for both adults and children, so the step is both a bold and necessary one."<br /><br />Professor Sir Alan Craft, adviser to the review, said: "The Government must act on the recommendations contained in the review because evidence shows us that incentivising the provision of palliative care leads to better outcomes for patients, supports choice and is the most cost effective way of using NHS resources.<br /><br />"We need to remove the barriers within the current system to enable this to happen."<br /><br />Between 56% and 65% of adults would like to die at home but only 20% do so, with 55% dying in hospital.<br /><br />The ageing population and the increased complexity of needs towards the end of life mean 90,000 more people than at present could be dying in institutions by 2030, the review said.<br /><br />Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said people wanted a choice over where to die.<br /><br />"Twenty-four hour community nursing services are crucial to the delivery of choice and to the realisation of these ambitious recommendations. "It will be up to the Government to ensure that these services are standard across the country. "We need to see a massive improvement on the 56% of PCTs who currently provide 24-hour community nursing."<br /><br />Simon Chapman, director of policy and parliamentary affairs at the National Council for Palliative Care, said: "It is vital that the Government acts on the review's recommendations and creates a fair funding mechanism that will ensure people get high quality end of life care where and when they need it.<br /><br />"We only get one chance to get it right for dying people, which is why it must be a priority to ensure everyone who needs it can access palliative care round the clock."<br /><br />Susan Munroe, Marie Curie Cancer Care's director of nursing and patient services, said: "Far too many people at the end of their lives are still not getting the care and support they need nor do they know what they are entitled to.<br /><br />"We welcome the recommendations of the review as the next big step. "We now want to see these recommendations implemented by the Government as a matter of urgency."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8610266/100000-terminally-ill-do-not-get-proper-palliative-care.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-72994693778385723792011-07-01T22:36:00.001+11:302011-07-01T22:36:09.874+11:30<b>You can't join NHS post-natal depression support group, you're too sad: What mother was told by mental health nurse</b><br /><br />A young mother suffering from post-natal depression was told she would 'bring down' other mothers if she joined an NHS support group. Rachael Dobson was told that she was too unhappy to be allowed to join other mothers in the same situation in a bid to regain full health.<br /><br />The 22-year-old was shocked when a health visitor refused to refer her to the group while a mental health nurse also refused to help her, saying she should 'work through' her problems on her own.<br /><br />Mrs Dobson, who suffered severe post-natal depression following the birth of her son Andreas, is now setting up her own charity to help other sufferers.<br /><br />She said: 'The health visitor told me there was a support group where women suffering from post-natal depression would meet up but she said to me: 'You're two pegs above them and you'll bring them all down.' 'It was like being told I was too unhappy to go to the group but that was the whole point of the group. 'It would hardly be full of women joking around - all these women were suffering post-natal depression. 'I genuinely felt like I had been slapped round the face.<br /><br />'Post-natal depression is very misunderstood but it had a devastating effect on me. 'Some days I couldn't physically get up and my husband would have to take the day off and drag me out of bed. 'I've always been very active and sociable but post-natal depression knocked me sideways.'<br /><br />Mrs Dobson was struck down with post-natal depression just minutes after giving birth to her son Andreas on February 8 last year. She said: 'The birth wasn't exactly plain sailing. I had an emergency caesarean and I felt as if I was being attacked. 'When Andreas was delivered I was put in a side room on my own and looking over into the cot I was not met with love or joy, just nothing.'<br /><br />Her fragile state got rapidly worse when she and husband Stuart, 26, took Andreas back to their home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. She said: 'For the first few weeks I would cry when my husband walked through the door and would launch into rageful fits of anger.<br /><br />'I wouldn't do anything with my son and when he cried at night I would bury my head in the pillow and Stuart would get up to help him. 'One morning I was overwhelmed with tremendous anger and I wanted him [Andreas] gone. 'I was then met with a sadness and horror because I couldn't believe I felt like this towards a baby.<br /><br />'I rang my health visitor and collapsed into tears on the phone. She came round and I poured everything out. 'After that I was contacted by a community practice nurse from the mental health team but she just told me I had to 'work through it' on my own.'<br /><br />Rachael and Stuart, who both work for Severn Trent Water, moved to a new house in Shrewsbury under the care of a different health visitor.<br /><br />Social Services got involved and Rachael was banned from being on her own with Andreas for four months until her condition improved and she was deemed safe. She has now set up her own support group called the Pandas Foundation for other mums suffering post-natal depression.<br /><br />She said: 'I feel like I was left on my own by the health visitor. 'I was lucky that I had my family to fall back on for help and I feel like I'm coming out the other end of the post-natal depression now which is why I want to help others. 'I want to create a support network and one-to-one sessions for women and men who are suffering like I did. 'Post-natal depression is a terrible thing to happen to anyone and it almost sent me over the edge.<br /><br />'I feel let down by the health visitor who refused to help me and almost led me to lose my family.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2009710/Mother-suffering-post-natal-depression-banned-joining-NHS-support-group--unhappy.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-9230350515014308782011-07-01T22:33:00.001+11:302011-07-01T22:33:51.382+11:30<b>Hospitals leaking patient data to 'no win no fee' firms, claims MEP</b><br /><br />Confidential patient data is being leaked from hospitals to 'no win no fee' accident claims firms, an MEP claimed on Tuesday night. Paul Nuttall, the UK Independence Party MP for the North West, has called for an inquiry into the alleged practice, saying if true it was "an outrage".<br /><br />He made the claim after being contacted by members of the public upset at being "harassed" by such firms after receiving treatment at hospitals in Liverpool and The Wirral. Both hospital trusts have denied the claims.<br /><br />Mr Nuttall said: "I have been approached by constituents who are angry that have been bombarded with text messages to their mobile phones after hospital treatment. "The only way the claims firms can have got the information that they had been a patient and also got their mobile phone numbers is from the hospital itself," he said.<br /><br />"I don't know if that is being done with the connivance of the hospital trusts concerned - Wirral and the Royal Liverpool Hospital - or whether some staff are doing this off their own bat.<br /><br />"But I want to know and this must be stopped. I know that hospital trusts everywhere are having to make budget cuts but if they are selling this highly private information to boost their coffers it is an outrage and must contravene the Data Protection Act." He went on: "People are being harassed by these claim firms, who apparently sell or pass on the information to other similar firms when they get no response."<br /><br />However, both the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have denied any wrongdoing.<br /><br />A spokesman for the Royal Liverpool said the allegations were "completely false". She said: "We have not had any incidents where members of staff have sold patient information to claims firms. If we are made aware that any members of staff are not abiding by the Data Protection Act then they will be disciplined appropriately.<br /><br />"If Mr Nuttall has been approached by patients who have concerns, then we urge those patients to contact us so that we can investigate this further."<br /><br />A spokesman for Wirral hospitals said it could "categorically deny that is has supplied confidential patient information to accident claim firms".<br /><br />Data on users - such as phone numbers of those who have been involved in accidents - are sold to claims firms by so-called "claims farmers". The collection and selling of such information is a grey legal area, but the subject must have given their explicit consent for their details to be passed on.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8604257/Hospitals-leaking-patient-data-to-no-win-no-fee-firms-claims-MEP.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-80022145229818620912011-07-01T22:31:00.003+11:302011-07-01T22:31:59.554+11:30<b>Rules on foreign doctors 'put patient safety at risk'</b><br /><br />British patients are at risk from foreign doctors who are unfit to practise because EU laws put freedom of movement ahead of the safety of patients, leading clinicians have claimed.<br /><br />Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) council, said that European employment law and other countries' refusal to share information from their medical registers meant British medical regulators were sometimes powerless to guarantee foreign doctors' capability.<br /><br />It raises the prospect that a doctor banned from practising in one country could be registered in Britain without the General Medical Council being aware of their prior record for incompetence.<br /><br />EU laws mean the General Medical Council (GMC) can not test the clinical capability or language skills of European-qualified doctors as they can with those from other parts of the world.<br /><br />Unlike the GMC, many European countries refuse to reveal information about malpractice hearings.<br /><br />At a BMA meeting in Cardiff yesterday, Dr Meldrum said: "If a doctor was struck off and the GMC knew about it then I think the likelihood of them being able to practice is probably quite low, but the problem is whether the GMC always knows about it and also knows the reasons as to why it happened.<br /><br />"We are aware of several cases where doctors have been removed from the medical register in this country because of fitness to practice problems, but are still practicing elsewhere in the EU. I am afraid EU law seems to put freedom of movement rather higher than protection of patients."<br /><br />Daniel Ubani, a German-qualified cosmetic surgeon, was working as a locum out-of-hours GP in Cambridgeshire when he accidentally killed 70-year-old David Gray with a tenfold overdose of painkillers in 2008.<br /><br />The GMC had been unable to verify whether Ubani had ever worked as a GP in Germany because his license automatically gave him the right to work in Britian. He can still practise in Germany.<br /><br />Dr Meldrum added: "We saw with the Ubani case how he was found guilty in the UK and yet he is still practicing in Germany and that doesn't seem to be satisfactory."<br /><br />Dr John Fitton, a GP from Kettering, Northamptonshire, said: "It should be unacceptable that a doctor who is found to be incompetent or untrustworthy in one jurisdiction of the country might equally be able to find employers in another."<br /><br />The European Commission has launched a green paper consulting member nations on the prospect an international alert system when a doctor is found unfit to practise.<br /><br />Niall Dickson, GMC Chief Executive, said: "This is about patient safety. When we take action against a doctor we actively tell other regulators.<br /><br />"We want other regulators across Europe to do the same and have urged the European Commission to put a duty on them to do this. We believe all regulators must share this vital information in order to keep patients safe."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8604575/Rules-on-foreign-doctors-put-patient-safety-at-risk.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-85481041802766130122011-07-01T22:31:00.001+11:302011-07-01T22:31:16.874+11:30<b>Britain's age timebomb: Cost of 1.4m extra pensioners means NHS cannot stay free, says think tank</b><br /><br />Britain faces a bleak future of higher taxes and a rising deficit if ministers continue to increase spending on state pensions and the NHS, a hard-hitting report warns today.<br /><br />The country is facing a demographic timebomb with the number of over-65s set to increase by 1.4million over the next five years. The report by think tank Reform warns that this ageing population threatens to overwhelm the Coalition's attempts to bring down the UK's biggest ever peace-time deficit.<br /><br />The report calculates that the ageing population will impose an additional burden on the taxpayer of £32billion for pensions and nearly £40billion for healthcare by 2041, without allowing for inflation. This is set to force up both taxes and state borrowing during the next Parliament, 'swamping' Chancellor George Osborne's plans for deficit reduction.<br /><br />The authors accuse ministers of 'burying their heads in the sand' about the scale of the impending crisis and call on individuals to take responsibility for their own futures. They go on to urge the Government to face down the unions by holding firm on reforms to public sector pensions.<br /><br />The report also proposes a number of radical and controversial measures to prevent Britain from collapsing into a spiral of debt, including charging for the NHS.<br /><br />They also include scrapping popular 'gimmicks' such as the Winter Fuel Allowance and free bus passes – and forcing people to save for their retirement.<br /><br />The pro-market think tank also calls for the Coalition to reverse its decision to link the state pension with earnings and drop plans for a single tier pension – which has been estimated to cost an additional £11billion per year.<br /><br />It says: 'Decisions such as indexing the state pension to wage growth not price growth should be reversed. 'Shifting forward the increase in the retirement age has not made this change affordable. It will only save money until 2021 after which the age will be back on its earlier trajectory.'<br /><br />The report, called Old and Broke, says that between 2011 and 2016, the number of people aged 65 and over will increase by 1.4million while the working age population below 50 will decrease. There are currently 10.1million people aged 65 or over in the UK.<br /><br />Population ageing will continue so that the ratio of workers to pensioners will fall from 3.9 in 2011, to 3.2 in 2021, and then to 2.5 in 2041.<br /><br />The report adds: 'Change has to take place. Government programmes are largely funded on a pay as you go basis. 'With the ageing of the population ... younger people will face the prospect of paying more for less while the elderly population enjoys a heavily subsidised lifestyle and unearned windfall gains.'<br /><br />The report continues: 'Research has shown that the UK has the largest pensions gap in Europe. Too many people “play chicken with the State” and assume that taxpayers will always be there to bail them out in periods of need.'<br /><br />Pointing out that people in the UK make one of the smallest contributions to healthcare in Europe, the report calls for more charging in the NHS. It says: 'The service cannot remain free at the point of care. As well as increasing revenue for the services, charging will moderate demand and engage patients more in how they consume health services and how they manage their own health.'<br /><br />The report's lead author, Dr Patrick Nolan, added: 'Starting long-term reform will give people time to make alternative plans for their future.'<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009269/Cost-1-4m-extra-pensioners-means-NHS-stay-free.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-27851009637727246832011-07-01T22:28:00.001+11:302011-07-01T22:28:24.099+11:30<b>British GP bonuses 'lead to poor patient care' as financial incentives boost some treatments... but caused a decline in others</b><br /><br />Bonus payments for GPs mean some patients are missing out on improved care, say researchers. <br /><br />The financial incentives have led to better measuring of high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, a study shows. But in other areas of patient care which are not in the scheme improvements were ‘significantly below’ what was expected. These included measurements involving people suffering from arthritis, dementia and back pain.<br /><br />Pay-for-performance targets were introduced in 2004 as part of a new contract for GPs to reward them for taking better care of patients. The scheme had an annual price tag of £1.8billion at the time and is now worth around £1billion. Around a quarter of GPs’ average income – currently £105,000 a year – is linked to achieving the targets.<br /><br />But the study says there may be ‘unintended consequences’ to the scheme, which is known as the Quality and Outcomes Framework. The study, published last night in the British Medical Journal, looked at data from 500 UK general practices and trends in quality of care for 42 activities.<br /><br />Of these, 23 measurements or treatments attracted a bonus payment including measuring blood pressure and smoking habits. A further 19 activities did not lead to extra money, including measurement of thyroid function or blood sugar levels in certain categories of patients.<br /><br />For all activities, there was a general improvement in quality before incentives were introduced.<br /><br />When bonuses were attached to some measurements, there was a significant increase in quality during the first year after the scheme came in. This levelled off after three years to a 4 per cent rise above what would have been expected without incentives. <br /><br />For measurements that did not attract extra money, quality was ‘significantly worse’ after three years, with a 5 per cent drop compared with the improvement that would have been expected without incentives.<br /><br />Dr Tim Doran, who led the research team, said financial incentives resulted in a quicker rate of improvement in some activities. But it was questionable whether this lasted, and whether patients whose conditions did not attract bonuses were being neglected. <br /><br />Dr Doran, a clinical research fellow at Manchester University, said: ‘It’s not possible to incentivise everything. It does improve quality in the short to medium term but it has a small detrimental effect on activities that do not attract financial targets. ‘In the medium term these may have been slightly neglected.’<br /><br />Dr Doran said there were limitations to ‘bonus’ schemes because they set priorities for care that might result in other areas such as depression receiving less attention, partly because it was harder to measure improvements. Earlier this year research found that targets set to improve high blood pressure and cut heart attacks and strokes ‘had no impact’.<br /><br />Researchers, led by Dr Brian Serumaga, a Harvard Medical School fellow working at Nottingham University, investigated 470,000 patients with high blood pressure. They found ‘little evidence’ of effectiveness of pay for performance targets.<br /><br />The Government has pledged to reform the way GPs are paid for targets in the face of criticism. <br /><br />The British Medical Association says the Quality and Outcomes Framework was designed to ensure that patients received uniform high-quality care no matter where they lived in the country, and, by doing that, to improve public health over the long term. <br /><br />A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Quality and Outcomes Framework and other incentives for GPs are insufficiently focused on outcomes, including patient experience. ‘We therefore intend to reform the payment system so that GPs are rewarded appropriately for improving patient outcomes.’<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2009272/GP-bonuses-lead-poor-patient-care.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-53715357181357363472010-03-24T23:59:00.002+11:302010-08-01T18:15:56.061+11:30<br><br /><b>Blog suspended</b><br /><br />Now that the battle against socialized medicine in America is largely over, I have decided to suspend publication of this blog. I will of course still be posting on the issue when matters of particular interest arise but I will do so on <a href="http://dissectleft.blogspot.com">DISSECTING LEFTISM</a> from now on -- as you will see in most weeks. <br /><br />My <a href="http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/">AUSTRALIAN POLITICS</a> blog will also continue to cover the disasters of socialized medicine in Australia.<br /><br />And <a href="http://eyeuk.wordpress.com/">EYE ON BRITAIN</a> has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine there. For a long time now, not a day has gone by without a fresh horror story from Britain's "NHS" leading the posts on that blog.<br /><br>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-3051693296845214582010-03-24T00:48:00.000+11:302010-03-24T00:50:11.751+11:30<br><br /><b>Barack Obama signs health care bill amid warnings of Pyrrhic victory</b><br /><br />President Barack Obama will sign into law the historic reform of the American health care system that has eluded his predecessors for a century on Tuesday. The 219 to 212 vote in the House of Representatives, in which 34 Democrats sided with a united Republican opposition, was a significant victory for Mr Obama. But critics warned it would be a Pyrrhic one that could lead to electoral disaster for his party in November's midterm elections. Mr Obama's poll ratings have fallen steadily to just under 50 per cent over the 14 months in which he has pushed relentlessly for health care reform.<br /><br />The legislation, due to be signed by Mr Obama in a South Lawn ceremony, will expand health insurance coverage to 32 million currently uninsured Americans at a cost of $938 billion (£622 billion) over 10 years.<br /><br />It will mandate that almost every American carry health insurance-a provision that opponents are set to challenge in the courts. The legislation expands Medicaid, the state health programme for the poor, while those earning more than $200,000 (£133,000) will face higher taxes.<br /><br />A package of changes to an earlier bill passed by the Senate was still to be considered by the body but Democrats were confident that they had the votes to secure easy passage and Republicans conceded that their only options were future repeal and fighting provisions in the courts.<br /><br />Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, responded jubilantly to the Capitol Hill vote late on Sunday with an email that played on Mr Obama's hope-laden campaign slogan: "Yes we can became yes we did."<br /><br />Mr Obama himself proclaimed: "We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. We didn't give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things. This isn't radical reform but it is major reform.<br /><br />Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and the architect of the successful plan to pass the bill, described it as a "great act of patriotism" that honoured the vows of our Founders for us to be a land of opportunity, all the way back to before we were a country, in the Declaration of Independence talking about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".<br /><br />However, critics warned that voters would have their revenge. Senator John McCain denounced the “euphoria” and “inside-the-Beltway champagne toasting” and predicted that Democrats would be punished by voters in the mid-term congressional elections. “We are going to have a very spirited campaign coming up between now and November. And there will be a very heavy price to pay for it,” he said.<br /><br />Republicans said the bill would burden the nation with unaffordable levels of debt at a time of economic crisis, leave individual states with expensive new obligations and give an inefficient and overweening government an unacceptably enlarged role in the health care system.<br /><br />The deal in the House of Representatives was sealed on Sunday afternoon when a handful of anti-abortion Democrats led by Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan agreed to vote yes in return for a White House executive order stating that federal funds would not be used to pay for abortions.<br /><br />There was a feverish atmosphere on Capitol Hill, where large numbers of conservative protesters gathered to chant "Kill the bill" and wave signs that said "Don't Tread on Me" and "Doctors Not Dictators". John Boehner, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, said: "The American people are angry. This body moves forward against their will. Shame on us."<br /><br />Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a rising star in the Republican party, denounced the bill as "a fiscal Frankenstein" while his colleague Virginia Foxx described it as "one of the most offensive pieces of social engineering legislation in the history of the United States".<br /><br />Rush Limbaugh, the Right-wing radio host, spoke for many American conservatives when he railed: "We're not a representative republic. The will of the people was spat upon."<br /><br />The legislation will still leave 23 million uninsured in 2019, a third of those illegal immigrants. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the cost of the bill will be offset by savings in Medicare, the state health system for the elderly, and by new taxes and fees, including a tax on some employer schemes and on wealthy Americans. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7499647/Barack-Obama-signs-health-care-bill-amid-warnings-of-Pyrrhic-victory.html">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>A Point of No Return?</b><br /><br />by Thomas Sowell<br /><br />With the passage of the legislation allowing the federal government to take control of the medical care system of the United States, a major turning point has been reached in the dismantling of the values and institutions of America. Even the massive transfer of crucial decisions from millions of doctors and patients to Washington bureaucrats and advisory panels-- as momentous as that is-- does not measure the full impact of this largely unread and certainly unscrutinized legislation.<br /><br />If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an Executive Order of the President, to do that. With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, and having the power of granting or withholding medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?<br /><br />Despite whatever "firewalls" or "lockboxes" there may be to shield our medical records from prying political eyes, nothing is as inevitable as leaks in Washington. Does anyone still remember the hundreds of confidential FBI files that were "accidentally" delivered to the White House during Bill Clinton's administration? Even before that, J. Edgar Hoover's extensive confidential FBI files on numerous Washington power holders made him someone who could not be fired by any President of the United States, much less by any Attorney General, who was nominally his boss.<br /><br />The corrupt manner in which this massive legislation was rammed through Congress, without any of the committee hearings or extended debates that most landmark legislation has had, has provided a roadmap for pushing through more such sweeping legislation in utter defiance of what the public wants.<br /><br />Too many critics of the Obama administration have assumed that its arrogant disregard of the voting public will spell political suicide for Congressional Democrats and for the President himself. But that is far from certain. True, President Obama's approval numbers in the polls have fallen below 50 percent, and that of Congress is down around 10 percent. But nobody votes for Congress as a whole, and the President will not be on the ballot until 2012.<br /><br />They say that, in politics, overnight is a lifetime. Just last month, it was said that the election of Scott Brown to the Senate from Massachusetts doomed the health care bill. Now some of the same people are saying that passing the health care bill will doom the administration and the Democrats' control of Congress. As an old song said, "It ain't necessarily so."<br /><br />The voters will have had no experience with the actual, concrete effect of the government takeover of medical care at the time of either the 2010 Congressional elections or the 2012 Presidential elections. All they will have will be conflicting rhetoric-- and you can depend on the mainstream media to go along with the rhetoric of those who passed this medical care bill.<br /><br />The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other "historic" changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.<br /><br />What will it matter if Obama's current approval rating is below 50 percent among the current voting public, if he can ram through new legislation to create millions of new voters by granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? That can be enough to make him a two-term President, who can appoint enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp further extensions of his power.<br /><br />When all these newly minted citizens are rounded up on election night by ethnic organization activists and labor union supporters of the administration, that may be enough to salvage the Democrats' control of Congress as well.<br /><br />The last opportunity that current American citizens may have to determine who will control Congress may well be the election in November of this year. Off-year elections don't usually bring out as many voters as Presidential election years. But the 2010 election may be the last chance to halt the dismantling of America. It can be the point of no return.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/03/23/a_point_of_no_return">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>THE DOCTORS OF THE HOUSE</b><br /><br />House Democrats last night passed President Obama's federal takeover of the U.S. health-care system, and the ticker tape media parade is already underway. So this hour of liberal political victory is a good time to adapt the "Pottery Barn" rule that Colin Powell once invoked on Iraq: You break it, you own it.<br /><br />This week's votes don't end our health-care debates. By making medical care a subsidiary of Washington, they guarantee such debates will never end. And by ramming the vote through Congress on a narrow partisan majority, and against so much popular opposition, Democrats have taken responsibility for what comes next—to insurance premiums, government spending, doctor shortages and the quality of care. They are now the rulers of American medicine.<br /><br />Mr. Obama and the Democrats have sold this takeover by promising that multiple benefits will follow: huge new subsidies for the middle class; lower insurance premiums for consumers, especially those in the individual market; vast reductions in the federal budget deficit and in overall health-care spending; a more competitive U.S. economy as business health-care costs decline; no reductions in Medicare benefits; and above all, in Mr. Obama's words, that "if you like your health-care plan, you keep your health-care plan."<br /><br />We think all of this except the subsidies will turn out to be illusory, as most of the American public seems intuitively to understand. As recently as Friday, Caterpillar Inc. announced that ObamaCare will increase its health-care costs by $100 million in the first year alone, due to a stray provision about the tax treatment of retiree benefits. This will not be the only such unhappy surprise.<br /><br />While the subsidies don't start until 2014, many of the new taxes and insurance mandates will take effect within six months. The first result will be turmoil in the insurance industry, as small insurers in particular find it impossible to make money under the new rules. A wave of consolidation is likely, and so are higher premiums as insurers absorb the cost of new benefits and the mandate to take all comers.<br /><br />Liberals will try to blame insurers once again, but the public shouldn't be fooled. WellPoint, Aetna and the rest are from now on going to be public utilities, essentially creatures of Congress and the Health and Human Services Department. When prices rise and quality and choice suffer, the fault will lie with ObamaCare.<br /><br />While liberal Democrats are fulfilling their dream of a cradle-to-grave entitlement, their swing-district colleagues will pay the electoral price. Those on the fence fell in line out of party loyalty or in response to some bribe, and to show the party could govern. But even then Speaker Nancy Pelosi could only get 85% of her caucus and had to make promises that are sure to prove ephemeral.<br /><br />Most prominently, she won over Michigan's Bart Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats with an executive order from Mr. Obama that will supposedly prevent public funds from subsidizing abortions. The wording of the order seems to do nothing more than the language of the Senate bill that Mr. Stupak had previously said he couldn't support, and of course such an order can be revoked whenever it is politically convenient to do so.<br /><br />We have never understood why pro-lifers consider abortion funding more morally significant than the rationing of care for cancer patients or at the end of life that will inevitably result from this bill. But in any case Democratic pro-lifers sold themselves for a song, as they usually do.<br /><br />Then there are the self-styled "deficit hawks" like Jim Cooper of Tennessee. These alleged scourges of government debt faced the most important fiscal vote of their careers and chose to endorse a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement. They did so knowing that the White House has already promised to restore some $250 billion in reimbursement cuts for doctors that were included in yesterday's bill to make the deficit numbers look good. Watch for these Democrats to pivot immediately and again demand "tough choices" on spending—and especially tax increases—but this vote has squandered whatever credibility they had left.<br /><br />Mrs. Pelosi did at least abandon, albeit under pressure, the "deem and pass" strategy that would have passed the legislation without a vote on the actual Senate language. We and many others criticized that ruse early last week, and the House decision to drop it exposes the likes of Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and other analysts who are always willing to defend the indefensible when Democrats are doing it.<br /><br />All of this means the Senate's Christmas Eve bill is ready for Mr. Obama's signature, though only because rank-and-file House Members also passed a bill of amendments that will now go back to the Senate under "reconciliation" rules that require only 50 votes. Those amendments almost certainly contravene the plain rules of reconciliation, and the goal for Senate Republicans should be to defeat this second "fix-it" bill. It's notable that Democrats didn't show yesterday for a meeting with the Senate parliamentarian to consider GOP challenges, no doubt because they fear some of them might be upheld.<br /><br />Though it's hard to believe, the original Senate bill is marginally less harmful than the "fixed" version, not least because the middle-class insurance subsidies are less costly and it would avert the giant new payroll tax. That's the White House increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax to 3.8% that Democrats cooked up at the last minute and would apply to the investment income of taxpayers making more than $200,000.<br /><br />If the reconciliation bill goes down, Big Labor and its Democratic clients would be forced to swallow a larger excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, and it would also forestall the private student-loan takeover that Democrats included as a sweetener. In other words, they'd be forced to eat the sausage they themselves made as they have abused Congressional procedure to push ObamaCare into law.<br /><br />We also can't mark this day without noting that it couldn't have happened without the complicity of America's biggest health-care lobbies, including Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Business Roundtable and such individual companies as Wal-Mart. They hope to get more customers, or to reduce their own costs, but in the end they have merely made themselves more vulnerable to the gilded clutches of the political class.<br /><br />While the passage of ObamaCare marks a liberal triumph, its impact will play out over many years. We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care. As for the politics, the first verdict arrives in November<br /><br /><a href="http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2126">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Health care reform: We’re being fooled again</b><br /><br />The medical system does need reforming — radical reforming. It’s more expensive than it ought to be, and powerful interests prosper at the expense of the rest of us. The status quo has little about it to be admired, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.<br /><br />Thus, the American people should be fed up with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid for insulting our intelligence with their so-called heath-care reform. It is nothing of the sort. What they call progressive reform is little more than reinforcement of the exploitative system we suffer today.<br /><br />Whether intentionally or not, Obama & Co. have misdiagnosed the problem with the current system and therefore have issued a toxic prescription as an alleged cure. They essentially say that the problem is too free a market in medical care and insurance; thus for them the solution is a less-free market, that is, more government direction of our health-care-related activities.<br /><br />Yet if the diagnosis is wrong — which it is — the prescription will also be wrong.<br /><br />Note that the attention of nearly all the “reformers” is on the insurance industry. What ostensibly started out as “health-care reform” quickly became health-insurance regulation. A common theme of all of the leading proposals is that insurance companies have too few restrictions on them. So under Obamacare, government will issue more commands: preexisting conditions must be covered; policy renewal must be guaranteed; premiums may not reflect the health status or sex of policyholders; the difference between premiums charged young and old must be within government specs; lifetime caps on benefits are prohibited, et cetera.<br /><br />In return for these new federal rules, insurance companies are to have a guaranteed market through a mandate that will require every person to have insurance. So what looks like onerous new regulations on the insurance companies turns out to be a bargain they are happy to accept. Instead of having to innovatively and competitively attract young healthy people to buy their products, the companies will count on the government to compel them to do so. Playing the populist role, Obama & Co. bash the insurance companies, but in fact the “reform” compels everyone to do business with them.<br /><br />What about this would the insurance companies dislike? Health insurance is not the most profitable business you can be in; the profit margin is 3-4 cents on the dollar. So a guaranteed clientele is an attractive prospect. The people who will be forced to buy policies are the healthy, who will pay premiums and make few claims. The only thing the companies don’t like is that that penalty for not complying with the mandate is too small. Many young people may choose to pay the penalty rather than buy the insurance because it will be cheaper. But that presents a problem: when the uninsured get sick and apply for coverage, they won’t be turned down because that would be against the law. So look for harsher penalties in the future to prevent this gaming of the system. The insurance companies win again.<br /><br />What’s missed is that the “reformers” leave untouched every aspect of the uncompetitive medical and insurance cartels that exists entirely by virtue of government privilege. Most of this privilege is extended by state governments through monopolistic licensing, but Congress could repeal the prohibition on interstate insurance sales and the tax favoritism for employer-provided medical coverage. The ruling party has refused to consider those sensible moves.<br /><br />The upshot is that this reform is a fraud. It leaves in place the government-created cartels and throws a few crumbs to people who are struggling — but mostly by bolstering the insurance monopoly.<br /><br />Two myths must be shattered. First, the choice is not between this phony reform and the status quo. The “reform” merely puts makeup on the status quo. The free market is the real alternative.<br /><br />Second, the free market couldn’t have created the medical mess because there has been no free market in medicine. For generations government has colluded with the medical profession and the insurance industry to force-feed us the system we have today.<br /><br />The Who was wrong: We are being fooled again.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com1003h.asp">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Our future under Obamacare</b><br /><br />The bill will cost more than advertised. It won't be long before Congress is shocked — shocked! — to discover that health-care reform is going to cost a lot more than expected. It's not just the budgetary gimmicks that Democrats have been employing to hide the bill's true cost. It's also that government programs — and government health-care programs in particular — almost always end up exceeding their cost estimates.<br /><br />For example, when Medicare was instituted in 1965, it was estimated that the cost of Medicare Part A would be $9 billion by 1990. In actuality, it was seven times higher — $67 billion. Similarly, in 1987, Medicaid's special hospitals subsidy was projected to cost $100 million annually by 1992, just five years later; it actually cost $11 billion, more than 100 times as much. And in 1988, when Medicare's home-care benefit was established, the projected cost for 1993 was $4 billion, but the actual cost in 1993 was $10 billion.<br /><br />Insurance premiums will keep rising. The president has tried to convince people that health-care reform will cut their insurance costs. They are in for a surprise. According to the Congressional Budget Office, insurance premiums will double in the next few years. The bill will do nothing to diminish that increase. In fact, for the millions of Americans who get their insurance through the individual market, rather than from an employer, this bill will raise premiums by 10–13 percent more than if we do nothing. Young and healthy people can expect their premiums to go up even more.<br /><br />The quality of care will be worse. Doctors' reimbursements for providing care will be squeezed, making it harder to find a doctor. A new survey in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that 46 percent of doctors may give up their practice in the wake of this bill. While that is probably exaggerated, many doctors will likely decide to reduce their patient loads or retire. At the same time, increased demand will create additional problems.<br /><br />In Massachusetts, after the passage of Romneycare, the wait to see a primary-care physician increased from 33 to 52 days. Research and development will also be cut back, meaning there will be fewer new drugs and other medical breakthroughs. And the government will increasingly intervene in medical decision making, micromanaging medical decisions and deciding what treatments are most effective or, frighteningly, most cost-effective.<br /><br />The Left will keep pushing for more. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's inner censor was clearly on the fritz this week when she said, "Once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow." Faced with rising costs and higher premiums, not to mention millions still uninsured, Democrats will blame the "evil" insurance companies and demand further reform. They will argue that we tried "moderate" reform and failed. Pelosi could no longer keep a lid on what the hard Left has been restraining itself from saying all along: It sees this legislation as the perfect first step in the long march to universal single-payer health care.<br /><br />Republicans won't really try to repeal it. Republicans will run this fall on a promise to repeal this deeply unpopular bill, and will likely reap the political advantages of that promise. But in reality there is little chance of their following through. Even if Republicans were to take both houses of Congress, they would still face a presidential veto and a Democratic filibuster.<br /><br />But more important, once an entitlement is in place, it becomes virtually impossible to take away. The fact that Republicans have been criticizing Obamacare for cutting Medicare shows that they are not really willing to take the heat for cutting people's benefits once they have them — no matter how unaffordable those benefits are. Paul Ryan put forth a serious plan for entitlement reform — and attracted just six co-sponsors at last count. Enough said.<br /><br />As Scrooge asked in A Christmas Carol, "Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11596">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>A View from Britain </b><br /><br />A British friend who has been following the health-care debate writes in:<br /><br />In Britain the introduction of the NHS was passionately supported by both parties. Tory opposition to the legislation accepted the principle of medical care free at the point of consumption and concentrated instead on secondary questions. It could hardly have done otherwise since Churchill's wartime coalition government had developed its own plans for a single-payer system of universal health insurance—along with other statist social welfare measures.<br /><br />At the time of its passage the cost-benefit structure of the new British system was radically opposite to that of Obamacare. Its benefits—mainly the extension of free medical care from the poor to the middle class—came at once; its costs were delayed for a decade and a half as almost all budgetary health allocations went to current spending and almost none to capital investment. Not until 1962 did a British government embark on a hospital building program; until then—and for many years afterwards—the national health service lived off the fixed capital invested by private Victorian philanthropy. (Even a few years ago you could tell this from the appearance of the buildings.) The advance of medical science today makes a repeat of this performance quite impossible. So the money to meet the increasing demand for medical services will have to come from somewhere other than the capital budget. Where?<br /><br />Rationing is implicit in both Obamacare and the NHS. But the customers of both systems are very different. Most modern Americans get good health care. They have learned to expect it. They will complain if they don't get it. And they have their present care as a method of comparison to any new system. Brits in 1948 had just survived a terrible war. Rationing was part of their everyday lives. They were a deferential people to begin with in a much more hierarchical society. Brits of today would be much much harder to convince—if they had not got used to getting free but inadequate health care.<br /><br />And the ratio of winners to losers in both cases is very different. As the previous paragraph suggests, there were no real losers in the Britain of 1948. Only a tiny handful of very rich people had any experience of great medical care—and they were rich enough to pay higher taxes AND private insurance premiums. Everyone else got roughly the same medical care; but now the middle class got it for nothing as most of the poor had done before. Nobody lost—not for another fifteen years when the quality of medical care began to decline noticeably. And by then they were hooked. By contrast almost every insured Ameerican is a potential loser under Obamacare. And some of those considered to be winners—i.e., the currently non-insured—will feel like losers if they are forced to insure and then remain inconveniently healthy.<br /><br />So, for all sorts of reasons, opponents of this bill should not feel deterred from hope of repeal by the British experience. At the very least they have a window of opportunity to reverse the legislation of about eight to ten years. It's doable if you think it's doable—not if not.<br /><br />Finally the wise words of . . . John Maynard Keynes: "The unexpected always happens; the inevitable never."<br /><br /><a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODlkNmVkYmVjMDUxODRjYmUxZjA5ZGVlZGU0NGM4MmQ=">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-19538714089367894432010-03-23T00:46:00.000+11:302010-03-23T00:47:02.133+11:30<br><br /><b>Landmark health care plan passes</b><br /><br />House Democrats rallied late Sunday night to pass President Obama's landmark health care overhaul plan and send to the president's desk the politically risky initiative, which Republicans vow to wield against the Democrats in November's mid-term elections. A companion package of repairs to the bill now heads to a Senate fight. But regardless of the outcome there, Mr. Obama's yearlong struggle for his signature initiative is just a stroke of his pen away from becoming law.<br /><br />The Senate's health care bill squeaked through the House in a 219-212 vote, with 34 Democrats joining all 178 Republicans in opposition after a last-minute White House executive order convinced a small group of pro-life Democrats that the bill wouldn't fund abortions. The companion "fixes" bill passed 220 to 211, with 33 Democrats joining all 178 Republicans in opposition.<br /><br />Democrats hailed the vote as one of the most significant change in American social policy since the creation of Medicare in 1965 or Social Security in 1935. "This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, adding that access to health care is in the same league as the Declaration of Independence's claims about the inalienable rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."<br /><br />The 10-year, $940 billion overhaul plan aims to reshape the nation's health system by imposing new reforms on the insurance industry and guaranteeing insurance coverage to nearly all Americans with hopes of reducing health care costs and the federal deficit. "This is what change looks like," Mr. Obama said at the White House shortly after the vote, which he watched in the Roosevelt Room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.<br /><br />Outside the Capitol, a few hundred protesters shouted "Kill the bill." Walking from a House office building to the Capitol on Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Pelosi linked arms with Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who walked in the civil rights marches in Selma, Ala., in the 1960s and who said he was called a racial epithet by health care protesters on Saturday. Republicans called it an isolated incident and maintained their opposition to the health reform plan.<br /><br />They argue that cuts to Medicare would undoubtedly hurt seniors' coverage, that insurance premiums for all Americans would spike, and that Democrats won't be able to make good on Mr. Obama's often-repeated promise that "if you like your plan, you can keep it." "The decisions we make will affect every man, woman and child in this nation for generations to come," Minority Leader John A. Boehner said. "This bill is not what the American people need." Mr. Boehner and Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, separately promised to introduce legislation to try to repeal the plan.<br /><br />Mr. Obama, in his pitch to Democrats on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, said that much of his presidency is on the line with passage of his overhaul plan. It marks the most significant legislative accomplish of his presidency. But it would be a victory with a large asterisk. The Senate promised House members that it will be able to pass a companion bill to "repair" controversial provisions in the bill, such as a tax on high-cost insurance plans and state-specific deals that critics say were meant to buy votes. Mr. Obama could sign the Senate bill into law immediately. But doing so without the Senate repair bill would likely anger House members.<br /><br />The debate over how to reform the $2.5 trillion health care industry has taken on a deeply partisan tone for more than a year. Many of the moderate Democrats who won Republican-leaning districts on Mr. Obama's coattails in 2008 acknowledged that their support may cost them their jobs this November as the overhaul hasn't polled well.<br /><br />Democrats say that support will shift once Americans see the plan's benefits -- the poor will get tax credits to help them meet the requirement to buy insurance coverage; their insurance company won't be able to impose lifetime or annual caps on coverage or deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions; young adults can stay on their parents' plan until age 26; and Medicare's gap in drug coverage will be filled. It's paid for through cuts to Medicare funding, which Democrats say will only cut waste and fraud, and a new Medicare tax on unearned income, such as investment profits, of couples making over $250,000 and individuals making over $200,000.<br /><br />Abortion threatened to hold up the vote until almost the last minute. A group of about 10 pro-life Democrats said they wouldn't vote for the Senate plan unless they had a guarantee that it wouldn't allow for federal funding of abortions. They were concerned the bill would allow federal tax subsidies to fund insurance policies that cover the procedure and that funding for community health centers would not come with a prohibition on covering abortions. But their objections were met with an executive order Mr. Obama issued on Sunday affirming that the bill wouldn't do so.<br /><br />Catholic groups have been divided over whether the Senate bill would authorize the federal funding of abortions, with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops staunchly opposed to the Senate plan; but others, such as a group of hundreds of nuns, endorsed the plan last week. Catholic Advocate, a 501(c)(3) lobbying group, said Sunday that passing the Senate bill would account for one of the greatest expansions of abortion since the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling and promised to contest House members who supported it.<br /><br />But the executive order was thought to be enough to push Democrats over the 216 mark required for passage. The companion reconciliation bill would remove the Senate's tax on high-cost insurance plans, federal funding for Nebraska's Medicaid costs and other problems House members had with the Senate plan. The Senate is expected to start work on the bill on Tuesday.<br /><br />Over the weekend, Democrats decided against using a controversial procedure, called "deem and pass," that would have allowed both bills to pass with one vote. Republicans had called it a parliamentary trick. The vote required House members to take a bit of a leap of faith that the Senate was going to be able to deliver on the companion bill. They now have no leverage left since the Senate bill can go to Mr. Obama's desk and become law despite their grave misgivings about it. Senate Democratic leaders are expected to easily come up with the 51 votes they need. "There's a strong desire to do what's in that bill," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, told reporters last week.<br /><br />But it's a potentially difficult climb for the Senate as reconciliation rules allow Republicans to introduce an unlimited number of amendments and require each provision of the bill to affect the budget or be struck by the Senate's nonpartisan parliamentarian. If the bill is changed at all, in the form of amendments or budget strikes, it will have to go back to the House for another vote, throwing another wrench into the process.<br /><br />Republicans have promised a fight, warning they plan to put up every procedural obstacle they can. They've already eyed parts of the bill that they contend are not related to the budget and can be brought up as a violation of the so-called "Byrd" rule.<br /><br />Mrs. Pelosi said Friday that she doesn't foresee any Byrd-rule violations surviving. "We tried to have a 'Byrd' scrub," she said, but "the parliamentarian would not necessarily give us definitive answers on anything."<br /><br />Republicans said Sunday they like their chances on an objection that the bill affects Social Security, which would be a violation of budget rules. If the parliamentarian agrees and the presiding officer of the Senate upholds the decision, Democrats would need 60 votes to override the decision. All 41 Republicans recently signed a letter saying they will object to overriding the parliamentarian. "We've informed our colleagues in the House that we believe the bill they're now considering violates the clear language of Section 310g of the Congressional Budget Act, and the entire reconciliation bill is subject to a point of order and rejection in the Senate should it pass the House," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/22/landmark-health-care-plan-poised-to-pass">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Democrats' death by suicide</b><br /><br />The government takeover of health care will go down in history as the worst piece of legislation to emerge from a Congress held in general disdain by the American people. The only bipartisanship on the health bill was in the opposition.<br /><br />Usually autopsies are reserved for after the patient has died, but in this case it is useful to get ahead of the matter. The malformed health legislation is not the only reason Democrats are facing political extinction in November, but it is one of the most dramatic. The legislative process in this country has never been so unseemly. Arm twisting, backroom deals, special privileges and potentially criminal "government jobs for votes" agreements became a normal way of doing business. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fixated on the mantra that the Democrats' health plan is "historic," but so was the Black Plague.<br /><br />President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Saturday to give a final pep talk to Democrats, where he absurdly called his socialist health care measure "one of the biggest deficit reduction measures in history." This contradicts the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who says his staff currently has no idea what the impact of the plan is "due to the complexity of the legislation." Democrats have been hoodwinked into believing they won't pay a political price for their actions, but they will soon discover they miscalculated.<br /><br />The new system will suffer a tsunami of bad publicity when states sue the federal government over unfunded mandates, when the IRS begins enforcing the aspects of the bill that voters never knew existed, when small businesses start firing employees because they cannot afford the higher costs of the new system, when new and unforeseen costs blow out the already record federal budget deficit, and when seniors begin to feel the impact of Medicare cuts. All of this is what Mr. Obama euphemistically calls "bending the curve" but which seniors will find out is better termed "denial of care." Whether the formal "death panels" will convene before the November elections is still to be determined.<br /><br />Many members of Congress probably don't know exactly what is in the bill. The 2,300 pages of "fixes" to the Senate bill presented last week were only a draft, and no member can be certain what has been slipped in. A frantic Democratic Party memo sent out Thursday instructed members -- twice, in italics -- not to "get into a discussion of details of the [Congressional Budget Office] scores and the textual narrative" with the bill's opponents. But the devil was in those details. Mrs. Pelosi's offhand statement that members would learn what was in the bill after it was passed should have been a warning.<br /><br />The majority party was even having problems over the weekend determining if they could vote to amend a law before it was signed by the president. It is a sad day for America when senior members of Congress either dont understand the Constitution or no longer think it applies.<br /><br />Democrats in Congress refuse to believe the contempt with which the American people hold them. Gallup shows congressional approval ratings in the teens and headed downward. Gallup also found that "more Americans believe the new legislation will make things worse rather than better for the U.S. as a whole, as well as for them personally."<br /><br />Democrats are in much worse shape than in 1994 when they lost power, and the opposition is far more energized. Once voters have a chance to tell the most irresponsible government in American history that enough is enough, the Democrats' brief reign will expire, and be deemed death by suicide.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/21/editorial-democrats-death-suicide/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Burned girl 'turned away' from British hospital</b><br /><br />A five-year-old girl with severe burns was turned away from hospital and her parents forced to drive 25 miles before doctors would treat her. Madison Healy was turned away from Coventry's University Hospital after her clothes caught fire in a freak accident at home. Her mother Alana Regan, 27, took her to A&E, expecting her daughter's injuries to be treated swiftly.<br /><br />Instead, she says a doctor merely "poked at her leg" before telling her and her partner John Austin, 33, they would have to drive Madison to a specialist burns unit 25 miles away themselves. The Coventry couple, who had no money for petrol and did not know the way drove for an hour before doctors at Birmingham Children's Hospital were able to treat her. There it was discovered Madison had third degree burns requiring a skin graft plus years of treatment and physiotherapy in the future.<br /><br />Now, Ms Regan has filed an official complaint against University Hospital, saying they let down her seriously injured child. Ms Regan said: "She is only a five-year-old girl and she should have been treated with more priority. "She suffered long term, life-changing injuries and they should have treated her with more compassion and urgency."<br /><br />A spokesman for University Hospital said Madison had been seen by triage staff within four minutes of arriving at A&E and given painkillers. He added within 50 minutes she went on to be reviewed again by a doctor. "In line with our pediatric pathway relating to burns and scalds Madison was referred to Birmingham Children's Hospital who were advised to expect her arrival and provide ongoing specialist service.<br /><br />"As the burn was categorised as a small burn covering less than one per cent of the total body surface it is considered safe and within guidelines to transfer by car with a written referral and full directions. "The Trust do apologise if the family felt distressed, however Madison did not require resuscitation or treatment during her transfer." <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7493981/Burned-girl-turned-away-from-hospital.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-10449696590161328852010-03-22T00:41:00.001+11:302010-03-22T00:41:40.440+11:30<br><br /><B>MORE INSPIRATION FROM BRITAIN</b><br /><br /><i>Four articles below from ONE DAY show what Americans can expect under Obamacare</i><br /><br /><b>The NHS bungles never stop</b><br /><br /><i>Man left infertile after wrong testicle disabled</i><br /><br />A man was left infertile when he had part of the wrong testicle removed by surgeons. Doctors were supposed to cut away the patient's right epididymis - one of two narrow tubes connected to the testes which is used to store mature sperm. But the patient's left epididymis was removed by mistake at the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds. Surgeons had to operate on his again to take out his other epididymis after the blunder was discovered and the man was left infertile.<br /><br />Officials at the NHS hospital have refused to identify the man or confirm if he was paid compensation.<br /><br />A major investigation was launched into the error and the hospital has now introduced more stringent procedures to stop it happening again. Nigel Kee, the hospital's interim chief operating officer, said: "The safety of our patients is our number one priority. "As such, we take any incidents which compromise safety extremely seriously.<br /><br />"A thorough investigation into this case was carried out by an independent consultant, who advised us to introduce an additional hospital-wide policy giving clearer instructions on marking and verifying sites prior to surgery. "We implemented this recommendation immediately." <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7479610/Man-left-infertile-after-wrong-testicle-removed.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>British TV star's death was 'unnecessary and preventable': Her doctor launches attack on NHS</b><br /><br />Jade Goody's death was preventable and a result of 'incompetence and neglect' by the NHS, a leading doctor and Harley Street consultant claimed today. One year after the 27-year-old died on March 22, Dr Ann Coxon said Goody's symptoms - which included heavy and irregular bleeding, pain and abnormal smear tests - were 'glaringly obvious'.<br /><br />The former NHS doctor claimed the reality television star had a tangerine-sized tumour which medical experts failed to spot. 'There should have been alarm bells ringing,' she told The Sun. 'Jade's death was completely unnecessary and preventable. She died of neglect and incompetence.'<br /><br />Despite strong evidence of cervical cancer, Jade did not suspect anything serious was wrong due to her medical history. 'She'd had abnormal smear tests since she was 16 so by the time she was 27 it didn't worry her much, because she didn't really know what it meant,' Coxon said. 'It had never been properly explained to her.<br /><br />'After she was diagnosed she said to me, in that typically Jade way, "I'm not daft. If I'd known it was to do with cancer, I'd have been checked out every three months". She added: 'Jade realised she had been let down. She simply said, "Sometimes people make mistakes".'<br /><br />The mother-of-two, who became a star as a contestant on Big Brother, refused to attend scheduled smear tests after being told she could not have any more children, Coxon alleged. This was nine months prior to her diagnosis.<br /><br />Jade was given an ultrasound at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, in August 2008. She then flew to India to appear in a reality television show after doctors had confirmed she could travel. However, results of a smear test - only performed because a nurse noticed she had skipped appointments - revealed cancerous cells. Goody received the news she had cervical cancer on camera and flew back to the UK where she was treated by Coxon.<br /><br />The doctor said: 'An ultrasound should be able to pick up lesions just 1.2mm wide, and Jade had a tumour the size of a tangerine. It should have been blindingly obvious.'<br /><br />Jade underwent an emergency hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy - but it was too late to save the star. 'She probably had cancer for at least a year before her diagnosis. The abnormal smear tests were signs that she was high-risk,' said Coxon. 'She was only diagnosed because of one nurse bothering to do her job.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1259378/Jade-Goodys-death-unnecessary-preventable-Reality-stars-doctor-launches-attack-NHS.html">SOURCE</a> <br /> <br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Girl, 9, saved by optician after NHS doctors fail to spot plum-sized brain tumour SIX times</b><br /><br /><i>For money reasons, diagnostic scans are avoided </i><br /><br />A nine-year-old girl whose brain tumour was missed by doctors six times was saved by opticians after her worried mother took her for an eye test. Shanice Bailey could have been left paralysed by a rare plum-sized 'schwannoma' tumour growing out of a nerve and pressing on her brain stem. She visited GPs six times between September 2009 and January this year complaining of headaches and sickness but was repeatedly diagnosed with asthma and sent away.<br /><br />Only when Shanice developed a squint in her left eye did her mother Laura, 27, decide to take her for an eye test - where Specsavers optician Nadia Ahmed immediately spotted the growth. Ms Ahmen told Ms Bailey to take her daughter straight to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, Norfolk, where a scan revealed the two inch tumour. Eleven days later surgeons removed the tumour in a nine-hour operation.<br /><br />Despite spending a month in hospital with side-effects Shanice is now at home recovering with her family. Ms Bailey, from Wisbech, Cambs., said she would be forever grateful to the optician. ‘It's so lucky we went to Specsavers when we did, otherwise the effects could have been devastating. ‘I kept taking Shanice back to the doctor as her symptoms got worse and more frequent. ‘Originally they said her symptoms could mean anything but then they thought it was asthma because she was coughing when she was sick. ‘She has been so brave it was unbelievable - she hasn't cried once.<br /><br />‘If they hadn't have found the tumour she could have died because it was blocking fluid at the top of her spine. ‘I don't necessarily blame the doctors but they should be given more training to check for problems in these areas. Just because it's rare doesn't mean they should ignore it.’ <br /><br />Laura took Shanice to the Clarkson Surgery in Wisbech over five months where she was seen three times by one GP and by a different doctor on every other occasion. On their last visit, the doctor referred Shanice for an appointment with a paediatrician on January 20 to work out why her mystery symptoms were persisting.<br /><br />But she had the eye appointment on January 3 where optician Ms Ahmen used a magnifying light that picked up swelling on the optic nerves.<br /><br />The schwannoma tumour is usually only found in elderly women but the benign growth was coming out of Shanice's hyoglossal nerve and blocking fluid at the top of her spine. A week after her surgery the youngster also suffered from a vasospasm, where blood gets into the brain, and needed a second operation to drain cerebrospinal fluid.<br /><br />Shanice said she felt great after her ordeal. ‘I feel so much better now. I can do things I couldn't do before like my favourite street dancing classes,’ she said.<br /><br />Trevor Lawson, a spokesman for Brain Tumour UK, said Shanice's type of tumour was extremely rare in such a young child. ‘To my knowledge in the last five years no children were reported to have suffered that from type of tumour, which was responsible for only six per cent of all adult cases,’ he said. ‘The challenge for doctors is that brain tumours can present with common symptoms and we regularly support people who were diagnosed after an eye test.’<br /><br />Paul Eagling, manager of Specsavers in Wisbech, said he was ‘extremely pleased’ they had been able to spot the growth. ‘Benign tumours can leave people with long term problems and we believe every brain tumour case should be given the same level of attention as cancer. ‘People tend to only go to the opticians when they have problems with their eyesight but regular visits to the optician are vital for checking general eye health.’<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1259164/Girl-9-saved-optician-doctors-fail-spot-plum-sized-brain-tumour-SIX-times.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Hundreds may have died in British ambulance blunder</b><br /><br />An inquiry is being demanded into ambulance services after a Sunday Telegraph investigation uncovered a major flaw in the 999 [emergency number] system that may have left hundreds dead. Doctors, politicians and charities have called for the inquiry to examine how a mistake by ambulance chiefs led to delays in despatching paramedics.<br /><br />The scandal is exposed by the death of a woman who was left for 38 minutes after an emergency call was received despite the fact that she was unconscious and breathing abnormally, having fallen 12ft. Call handlers following automated advice provided by a computer program categorised the case of Bonnie Mason, who died last May, as a lower priority than that of a drunk woman who had fallen on the pavement. By the time paramedics reached Mrs Mason, 58, she could not be saved.<br /><br />An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered a critical danger placed in the software used by most ambulance services. It meant that for a decade, 999 calls in which a patient lay unconscious and struggled to breathe after a fall of 6ft or more were “downgraded”, with call handlers told not to send the most urgent response. Some services told operatives to “override” the flaw, but The Sunday Telegraph has established that five out of 12 of England’s ambulance trusts told call handlers not to diverge from the automated advice.<br /><br />Last night experts demanded an inquiry to establish how many patients had suffered because of the blunders. John Heyworth, of the College of Emergency Medicine, said the potential risks were devastating. He said: “Any system which isn’t prioritising accurately needs review because the consequences are so catastrophic.”<br /><br />Peter Walsh, of the charity Action Against Medical Accidents last night expressed horror at the dangers. He said: “Who knows how many people this could have harmed and how many may have died? Given the volumes of 999 calls involving people who have fallen and are unconscious, there is a risk that thousands were affected. Who knows how many might have died – it could be hundreds, but even if it’s just one needless death, we need a full review.”<br /><br />The problem occurred when a government committee which governs the use of computerised 999 software allocated a lower priority to falls of 6ft or more than had been recommended by the system’s makers. As a result, the automated system instructed call handlers to class such calls as category B even if the person was also unconscious or breathing abnormally – life-threatening conditions which should have had the most urgent response. The Department of Health said the risk had been eliminated from the latest version of the software, introduced last year. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7489663/Hundreds-may-have-died-in-999-ambulance-blunder.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-84735896452635130882010-03-21T02:44:00.002+11:302010-03-22T23:59:59.511+11:30<br><br /><b>Paging Doctor Kildare</b><br /><br />If Obamacare becomes law, about 30 percent of the primary care doctors in America will consider leaving the medical profession. That bit of brightness comes from a survey by The Medicus Firm, the results of which were posted by The New England Journal of Medicine. Medicus interviewed more than a thousand American physicians, and 55 percent of them believe the quality of medical care in America will decline if the Democrats pass the current health care reform proposals. Apparently, many of them want no part of it.<br /><br />Although the media largely ignored the Medicus study, the story is huge. Perhaps as many as 30 million more Americans may have access to health insurance. The question is: Who will treat them? The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 22 percent increase in practicing physicians over the next decade. But that will not be enough to treat the universal health care crush, especially if a bunch of doctors now on the job pack it in.<br /><br />There are essentially two reasons why Obamacare nauseates some doctors. First, control. Medical people simply do not want federal pinheads telling them how to treat their patients. The medical profession attracts intelligent, assertive people who are motivated to help others. This is not a docile crowd.<br /><br />Second, money. Right now, many doctors are already seeing too many patients in order to pay the bills and provide a decent living for their families. Obamacare does nothing to bring down the outrageous expense of medical malpractice insurance, and it is likely to cut Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Doctors can do the math. Their expenses remain high; their incomes decline. Again, these are smart people who could make good money doing something else.<br /><br />In Canada and Great Britain, where socialized medicine is practiced, it is difficult to actually see a doctor in some places. Instead, nurses, physician assistants and other medical personnel fill the need. That is what could happen in the United States if the feds begin calling the health care shots.<br /><br />Not since the Iraq war has America been so divided on an issue. Yes, ideology is playing a part. Conservatives despise government intrusion in the marketplace, but liberals love it. Right now, however, most polls show that the majority has turned on Obamacare. The latest Wall Street Journal poll, for example, found 48 percent opposing and just 36 percent supporting.<br /><br />Here's my question: What would Marcus Welby, M.D., and Dr. Kildare say? These guys usually had the answers, back when wise doctors were the subjects of TV programs and health care seemed to be a glamorous profession. Would Ben Casey support Obamacare? We know the "M*A*S*H" guys would. Dr. Jekyll might like it, but Mr. Hyde? I don't know. What I do know is that many Americans are sick of the whole health care thing. And no prescription on earth will change that.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/BillOReilly/2010/03/20/paging_doctor_kildare?page=full&comments=true">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>16,500 more IRS agents needed to enforce Obamacare</b><br /><br />New tax mandates and penalties included in Obamacare will cause the greatest expansion of the Internal Revenue Service since World War II, according to a release from Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.<br /><br />A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff estimates up to 16,500 new IRS personnel will be needed to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the ‘reconciliation’ bill being taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend. ...<br /><br />Scores of new federal mandates and fifteen different tax increases totaling $400 billion are imposed under the Democratic House bill. In addition to more complicated tax returns, families and small businesses will be forced to reveal further tax information to the IRS, provide proof of ‘government approved’ health care and submit detailed sales information to comply with new excise taxes.<br /><br />Americans for Tax Reform has a good breakdown of the bill by the numbers. Isn't it reassuring that at a time of recession, government will do what's necessary to ensure its growth?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/16500-more-IRS-agents-needed-to-enforce-Obamacare-88458137.html">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The corruption never stops</b><br /><br />Health-vote ally Nelson to get new VA hospital for Nebraska<br /><br />The Obama administration has delivered another budget plum to Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and the state of Nebraska, adding more than a half-billion dollars for a new veterans hospital in Omaha.<br /><br />The move reverses a decision by Mr. Obama's own Veterans Administration of a year ago, which called for repairing an existing hospital.<br /><br />The Veterans Administration made the budget switch during internal deliberations in 2009 at a time when the White House was wooing the moderate Democrat to vote for President Obama's health care overhaul bill.<br /><br />Mr. Nelson was among the last of the Senate Democrats to sign on to the health bill, deciding to vote "yes" after securing special Medicaid payments for Nebraska in a deal known as the "Cornhusker Kickback." Health care reform opponents have widely panned that deal.<br /><br />At the time that deal was being made, Mr. Nelson was getting another boost from the VA as it formulated its next budget.<br /><br />Jake Thompson, a spokesman for Mr. Nelson, rejected the idea the new hospital was awarded in exchange for the senator's health care vote.<br /><br />"It was never discussed," Mr. Thompson said. "He wasn't discussing the Omaha VA hospital in any relation to health care. The answer is no."<br /><br />The spokesman added that Mr. Nelson "has been advocating [a new hospital] with this administration, with the previous secretary of the VA and the current secretary of the VA. But in relation to health care, it wasn't discussed at all. I think the VA's own study was the principal reason it was moved up" on the construction priority list.<br /><br />But Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, ranking Republican on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, said, "This one doesn't smell right or feel right."<br /><br />Mr. Buyer said testimony by VA officials to the Senate last August showed managers recommended renovation and some expansion of the existing Omaha site -- not an entirely new hospital at a much higher cost.<br /><br />More <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/18/nebraska-scores-again-health-care-endgame/">here</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Study Shows ‘ObamaCare’ Could Cost 700K Jobs</b><br /><br />As many as 698,000 jobs could be lost if the health care reform plan (a.k.a., “ObamaCare”) being pushed hard by liberal Democrats is passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, according to a study released today that was the subject of a blogger conference call this morning.<br /><br />The executive summary for the study, conducted by the Beacon Hill Institute in conjunction with Americans for Tax Reform, boils down the findings in a nutshell:<br /><br />Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has urged passage of the massive health reform plan moving through Congress as a way to create up to 400,000 jobs. Speaker Pelosi bases her claim on a report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in which the Center estimates that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) would create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs per year over 10 years.<br /><br />This estimate by CAP amounts to a hurried effort to add academic heft to the claim that national health care reform offers a collateral benefit in the form of an economic “stimulus.” It turns out, however, that its methodology, stripped of unsupportable claims about savings in health care costs, shows just the opposite of what CAP intended. PPACA is a job killer, not a job creator.<br /><br /><a href="http://bobmccarty.com/2010/03/17/study-shows-obamacare-could-cost-700k-jobs/">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>MORE OF WHAT OBAMACARE HAS IN STORE FOR AMERICANS</b><br /><br /><i>Three new reports from just ONE DAY about Britain's NHS below</i><br /><br /><b>Life-saving cancer scans delayed in NHS funding crisis </b><br /><br />Vital scans for patients who may have cancer are being postponed by up to six weeks as the NHS grapples with a major funding crisis. GPs have also been ordered not send elderly people for osteoporosis scans, to refer children with tonsillitis to specialists - or even allow men to have vasectomies. In addition, wards are threatened with closure and thousands of key staff have been told to work shorter hours or take unpaid 'career breaks'.<br /><br />Charities and patient groups said the delays could have disastrous consequences if early signs for potentially fatal conditions go undetected. The drastic cutbacks illustrate a funding nightmare threatening to overwhelm the NHS within months, as trusts battle to save millions of pounds in the wake of the credit crunch. <br /><br />Last night the Royal College of Physicians warned ministers and NHS managers against 'slash and burn' cuts. In a strongly-worded pre-budget briefing to MPs, they said: 'Following a decade of growth, the NHS is being asked to deliver considerable efficiencies. 'There is a risk that without careful management, a supportive rather than confrontational culture and a high degree of medical engagement, any effort to reduce productivity could easily subside into a process where services and posts are indiscriminately slashed and burnt. 'Over-hasty decisions now to cut back on the medical workforce, biomedical research, and audit programmes could have implications for generations.'<br /><br />Ministers say the NHS needs to save 20billion pounds over the next five years. Although both Labour and the Tories have pledged not to cut NHS funding, rising demand and an ageing population means the money will not go as far as in the past, necessitating cuts.<br /><br />Dozens of hospitals are already considering closures of A&E departments and maternity wards, while others are asking staff to consider voluntary redundancy and early retirement. The respected King's Fund think tank says it may be necessary to freeze NHS pay until 2014.<br /><br />One NHS trust under pressure is North East Essex primary care trust, which last month asked its GPs not to refer patients for MRI scans - used to diagnose possible tumours and kidney disease - and other tests until April 1.<br /><br />Sarah Woolnough of Cancer Research UK said delays in MRI scans could run the risk of early signs of cancer being missed. She said: 'Speedy access to diagnostic tests and quick referral can help to diagnose cancer as early as possible which can ultimately lead to better treatment for patients and improved survival.'<br /><br />Matt Bushell, director of commissioning at the trust, said: 'As part of the procedures to ensure budgets are balanced at the end of the current financial year, we have, just for the month of March, asked GPs to defer referrals for a very small number of non-urgent, therapeutic services: heel scans, vasectomies, ENT and nonurgent MRI scans. 'We have maintained priority for urgent MRI scans. These arrangements will remain in place only until April 1 2010.'<br /><br />Other examples of cuts across the NHS include:<br /><br /> * GPs in Hertfordshire being told to get 'approval' before referring patients for hysterectomies, tooth extraction and removal of skin 'lumps and bumps';<br /><br /> * Planned closures of A&E wards at Whittington Hospital in North London, Queen Mary's in Sidcup, Chase Farm in Enfield and others;<br /> <br /> * Almost 4,000 workers at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, and 2,000 at Scunthorpe general hospital, being asked to consider early retirement, voluntary job cuts or shorter hours. <br /><br />Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'This will be very worrying for patients. The NHS has had increased funding this year, so just where has the money gone?'<br /><br />Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'It's infuriating that despite billions of pounds being poured into the NHS, patients are having treatment delayed thanks to a failure to plan properly.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1259364/Cancer-scans-delayed-NHS-funding-crisis-doctors-fear-slash-burn-cuts.html">SOURCE</a><br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Blundering NHS surgeon in £10m lawsuit after 100 women patients take him to court</b><br /><br /><i>Bungling surgeon George Rowland was allowed to operate for almost FOUR YEARS after the first alarm was raised</i><br /><br />More than 100 women suffered botched bladder surgery at the hands of a gynaecologist who continued to work for four years after the alarm was raised. Patients of George Rowland suffered chronic pain or worsening bladder symptoms after he operated on them. But it was only after doctors expressed concern about his behaviour that the scale of his mistakes was realised and he was told to stop carrying out procedures.<br /><br />Yesterday, as a report criticised managers for not picking up on the problem sooner, it emerged that more than 100 of his patients are taking legal action - leaving the NHS facing a compensation payout of as much as £10million.<br /><br />Ian Cohen, of Goodmans solicitors which is representing most of the women, said: 'There have been devastating, life-changing outcomes for many patients. We have a substantial number of women who should never have had that surgery, who have been left worse following the surgery. Some have been left in a bad state, with chronic pain. 'Some women have complete difficulty passing urine. 'The trust's board appears to have allowed an obsession with targets and anxiety about potential damage to its reputation - and that of the consultant - to bar earlier action to prevent patient harm.' <br /><br />Mr Rowland, aged in his 50s, was a respected urogynaecologist performing hundreds of operations a year at Aintree Centre for Women's Health in Liverpool.<br /><br />In 2004 concerns were raised that he was carrying out more surgery than colleagues, often 'bundling' different procedures into single operations, such as hysterectomies with surgery for incontinence. But it was not until colleagues began expressing concern in 2007 that an investigation was launched. Mr Rowland was not suspended until the following year. <br /><br />Last year the General Medical Council barred him from performing urogynaecological procedures until further notice, and hundreds of his patients were recalled to the hospital for a further consultation. Some complained they had been left in chronic pain and that their incontinence had not improved. Lawyers representing others say the surgery was simply inappropriate for their conditions.<br /><br />The highly regarded Liverpool Women's Hospital, which runs the Aintree centre, commissioned an independent report into the affair, and yesterday criticised bosses for not noticing the mistakes earlier. It pointed out that Mr Rowland was responsible for picking up such problems as the clinical governance lead - a clear conflict of interest, the women's lawyers say.<br /><br />Its report found warning signs dating back to 2004 were not acted upon, criticised the 'cultural divide' between staff at the Aintree centre and the main hospital, and said more needed to be done to stop doctors from working in isolation from their departments. Jonathan Herod, clinical director of gynaecology, admitted Mr Rowland often worked alone. If the case was repeated, 'it would be picked up on straightaway', he added.<br /><br />Trust chief executive Kathryn Thomson said: 'We decided it was important to look at governance practices more widely to ensure we learnt as much as possible.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259229/Dozens-women-claim-10m-surgeon-George-Rowland-botched-bladder-operations.html">SOURCE</a><br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>£250,000 victory for war vet who sold home to pay care bill that NHS should never have charged him</b><br /><br /><i>NHS bureaucrats don't care about people at all. Saving money is their no.1 priority</i><br /><br />The family of a war veteran suffering from Alzheimer's has won more than £250,000 from the NHS for nursing home fees he should never have been charged. The payout, which is believed to be the biggest of its kind, was awarded to relatives of Leslie Terry, 86, whose home was sold to pay for his £3,500-a-month care. Despite being totally immobile - he has not been out of bed for four years - and in need of constant nursing, Mr Terry was denied funding under the NHS's ' Continuing Care' scheme.<br /><br />The scheme is meant to fully fund patients with health needs resulting from conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. It applies mainly to those who are in nursing homes, or long-term hospital or home care.<br /><br />Mr Terry's nephew, Bryan Talbot, 71, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, who mounted a legal challenge to recover the backdated fees covering eight years, said: 'My uncle has been unable to get out of bed for four years, he is at risk of choking, has to be fed, and is unable to communicate verbally. 'I felt it was clear that his health needs meant he should be the responsibility of the Health Service. I am amazed that, despite him having annual assessments, the NHS did not inform me about possible available funding. It's important people take advice. 'We've had a rough ride to get to this point but I want other people to know you don't have to sell your home to get the care you need. He has received first class care from very professional staff at Gloucester House Nursing Home.'<br /><br />The payout comes after three families last year won a total of £350,000 - with the family home sold in two cases - after being wrongly denied Continuing Care. So far, more than £9million has been recovered by solicitors representing 2,000 families who claim they have been wrongly charged nursing home fees. Under English law, the elderly must pay for residential care unless their needs are health-related, when the whole cost is met.<br /><br />However, Department of Health criteria on who qualifies for health needs are subject to interpretation by individual NHS trusts. The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign has repeatedly highlighted the unfairness of the system, which means many families of Alzheimer's sufferers are being charged for long-term nursing care. Many are denied funding by Primary Care Trusts, which have to foot the bill, because the disease does not automatically make the patient eligible for NHS 'continuing care'.<br /><br />Mr Terry, who joined the Army in 1942 and fought in India and Burma, retired from his job as a porter at Sevenoaks Hospital in Kent, in 1983 before succumbing to dementia in his 70s. He never married. Mr Terry also suffers from a severe skin disease, which needs monitoring.<br /><br />Solicitor Lisa Morgan, of Welsh law firm Hugh James, who acted for him, said: 'Under current government policy, there should be a full assessment on health needs, which determines whether patients pay for their nursing care fees. 'That is not happening in many cases. With the cost of nursing homes averaging £675 per week, families are still being left with huge fees to pay. There is a clear disparity across the country and, despite national guidance, Primary Care Trusts still apply their own judgment.'<br /><br />Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help The Aged, said: 'The system for deciding where the line is drawn between free NHS Continuing Care, and paid for social care has been a mess for years. 'We are still very concerned older people may wrongly be forced to pay for their care when it should be free. We strongly encourage anyone who believes they are unfairly missing out to fight for their rights.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1259314/250-000-victory-war-vet-sold-home-pay-care-NHS-charged-him.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-76995297056279081262010-03-20T00:17:00.001+11:302010-03-20T00:17:45.759+11:30<br><br /><b>Democrats offer a new budget of lies</b><br /><br /><img src="http://media.sfexaminer.com/images/100319beelertoon_c.jpg"><br /><br />In the final push to pass a health care overhaul, Democratic leaders on Thursday sought to sway anxious party members with a new $940 billion plan that cuts the deficit, raises Medicare revenue with a new tax on the investment income on wealthier Americans and placates unions by slashing the tax on high-end insurance plans.<br /><br />The concept, backed by President Obama, is designed to build positive momentum ahead of a Sunday vote on the landmark health care overhaul, which would extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans, fill the Medicare prescription drug "doughnut" hole of limited coverage and curb insurance industry abuses. It swung two former "no" votes to the "yes" column.<br /><br />Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer called the plan "the biggest deficit reduction bill that any member of Congress is going to have an opportunity to vote on" with hopes of swaying fiscally minded Democrats to support it.<br /><br />Republicans remain steadfastly opposed to the plan, leaving Democrats to come up with all of the support themselves. "The reason House Democrats don't have the votes is because the American people know this is a government takeover of health care," said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.<br /><br />The 153-page bill released Thursday represents repairs that Mr. Obama and House leaders requested in exchange for voting for the Senate's health care plan. If passed, the "repair" bill would also have to pass the Senate through complicated reconciliation procedures that can circumvent a Republican filibuster.<br /><br />Critics of the plan already spotted two provisions that they say are tightly focused on specific states, possibly in exchange for support of the legislation similar to the now infamous "Cornhusker Kickback." They plan to rally against the bill as the final vote nears.<br /><br />White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that Mr. Obama would postpone his Asia trip, originally scheduled to start Sunday, to help corral votes for his chief domestic agenda item.<br /><br />The Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the plan would reduce the deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years - $20 billion more than the House's original plan - and continue to drive down the deficit in later years.<br /><br />More <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/19/democrats-make-final-reform-push/">here</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Slaughter House Rules</b><br /><br /><i>How Democrats may 'deem' ObamaCare into law, without voting</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.getliberty.org/content_images/slaughtersolutioncollateraldamage.JPG"><br /><br />We're not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely "deem" that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway.<br /><br />Under the "reconciliation" process that began yesterday afternoon, the House is supposed to approve the Senate's Christmas Eve bill and then use "sidecar" amendments to fix the things it doesn't like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process.<br /><br />But Mrs. Pelosi & Co. fear they lack the votes in the House to pass an identical Senate bill, even with the promise of these reconciliation fixes. House Members hate the thought of going on record voting for the Cornhusker kickback and other special-interest bribes that were added to get this mess through the Senate, as well as the new tax on high-cost insurance plans that Big Labor hates.<br /><br />So at the Speaker's command, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what's known as a "self-executing rule," also known as a "hereby rule." Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.<br /><br />Democrats would thus send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature even as they claimed to oppose the same Senate bill. They would be declaring themselves to be for and against the Senate bill in the same vote. Even John Kerry never went that far with his Iraq war machinations. As we went to press, the precise mechanics that Democrats will use remained unclear, though yesterday Mrs. Pelosi endorsed this "deem and pass" strategy in a meeting with left-wing bloggers.<br /><br />This two-votes-in-one gambit is a brazen affront to the plain language of the Constitution, which is intended to require democratic accountability. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution says that in order for a "Bill" to "become a Law," it "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate." This is why the House and Senate typically have a conference committee to work out differences in what each body passes. While sometimes one house cedes entirely to another, the expectation is that its Members must re-vote on the exact language of the other body's bill.<br /><br />As Stanford law professor Michael McConnell pointed out in these pages yesterday, "The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form." If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison's core checks and balances.<br /><br />Yes, self-executing rules have been used in the past, but as the Congressional Research Service put it in a 2006 paper, "Originally, this type of rule was used to expedite House action in disposing of Senate amendments to House-passed bills." They've also been used for amendments such as to a 1998 bill that "would have permitted the CIA to offer employees an early-out retirement program"—but never before to elide a vote on the entire fundamental legislation.<br /><br />We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. Mrs. Pelosi and the White House are resorting to these abuses because their bill is so unpopular that a majority even of their own party doesn't want to vote for it. Fence-sitting Members are being threatened with primary challengers, a withdrawal of union support and of course ostracism. Michigan's Bart Stupak is being pounded nightly by MSNBC for the high crime of refusing to vote for a bill that he believes will subsidize insurance for abortions.<br /><br />Democrats are, literally, consuming their own majority for the sake of imposing new taxes, regulations and entitlements that the public has roundly rejected but that they believe will be the crowning achievement of the welfare state. They are also leaving behind a procedural bloody trail that will fuel public fury and make such a vast change of law seem illegitimate to millions of Americans.<br /><br />The concoction has become so toxic that even Mrs. Pelosi isn't bothering to defend the merits anymore, saying instead last week that "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Or rather, "deeming" to have passed it.<br /><br /><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575123512773070080.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Landmark Legal Foundation readies constitutional suit if Obamacare passes with Slaughter Solution</b><br /><br />Landmark Legal Foundation president and Talk Radio powerhouse Mark Levin promised today that his foundation will file suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare if it is approved in the House using the Slaughter Solution. <br /><br />“Landmark has already prepared a lawsuit that will be filed in federal court the moment the House acts. Such a brazen violation of the core functions of Congress simply cannot be ignored. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution is clear respecting the manner in which a bill becomes law. Members are required to vote on this bill, not claim they did when they didn’t. The Speaker of the House and her lieutenants are temporary custodians of congressional authority. They are not empowered to do permanent violence to our Constitution," Levin said.<br /><br />Even if Landmark never does another good thing for the Republic, what it has been doing for more than a decade to expose the facts about the partisan political partnership between the National Education Association and the Democratic Party makes it an invaluable asset. You can check that out here. <br /><br />Landmark also has done superb work in exposing how federal bureaucrats at the EPA have funneled billions of tax dollars to radical environmental groups that lobby on behalf of more regulatory power, bigger budgets and expanded staffing for ... EPA. Check that out here.<br /><br />Levin may be best known for his New York Times best-seller, "Liberty and Tyranny: A conservative manifesto." I knew something remarkable was bubbling "out there" among the American people last year when Levin's book zoomed to the top of the best-seller's list and people lined up for blocks in places like Fairfax County, Va., to buy signed copies of the book and to meet him.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Landmark-Legal-Foundation-readies-constitutional-suit-if-Obamacare-passes-with-Slaughter-Solution-88261347.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Into the twilight zone</b><br /><br />Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote for Sunday, maybe to vote by not voting. The president has canceled his trip to Asia and the atmosphere in Washington grows surreal and surrealer. The speaker yearns to be a suicide bomber, blowing up her party's November prospects, or at least the leader of the Democratic squadron of kamikaze pilots.<br /><br />No one can quite remember when a party in power has been so determined to self-destruct, with the speaker as provocateur, egging everyone on. Rep. Mike Honda, a Californian of Japanese descent, objects to some of the metaphors applied to Mzz Pelosi's mission of death by obsession, but to neutral observers - assuming any are left - her execution of the president's obsession looks like the Bataan death march, or at least a ride to the gallows in a Toyota.<br /><br />Everything the Democrats are doing is turning to mud, or maybe even the smelly stuff wives accuse husbands of tracking into the house. Barack Obama even chose this week to pick an unnecessary fight with Israel, our only true friend in the Middle East. When Joe Biden quickly wore out his welcome in Jerusalem, he was brought back to Washington to employ his considerable Irish charm to entertain the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, who dropped in for a St. Patrick's Day visit to the White House. Nobody could mess up such a jovial occasion, even with beer dyed green for the occasion.<br /><br />Good old Joe, ever the bumbling uncle we've come to love (so far the president hasn't consigned him to the attic where crazy aunts and uncles usually live), nevertheless pronounced obsequies on the prime minister's ailing mother: "God rest her soul." Good old Joe quickly learned that the elderly Mrs. Cowen's soul is still among us. Never mind. He rewrote his benediction to "God bless her soul," and recalled the Irish proverb that "a silent mouth is sweet to hear." To the relief of all he turned the podium over to the president's teleprompter, and no further harm was done. No need for the media's Gaffe Patrol even to fire up the engines on their ancient Jennies.<br /><br />But what other explanation for Mr. Obama's damn-the-torpedoes strategy could there be other than a suicide wish? The only outcome worse for him than losing the health care vote would be winning the health care vote. The debacle in Massachusetts has taught him nothing, but it has surely taught the public a lot. Gallup now puts the president's approval rating at 46 percent, the lowest yet, and his disapproval at 47 percent. These are dreadful numbers for any president, and particularly for a messiah who arrived at the White House little more than a year ago with approval ratings in the high 70s.<br /><br />The debacle in Massachusetts will be small stuff if Mzz Pelosi proceeds with the aptly named "Slaughter solution," the bright idea of Rep. Louise M. Slaughter of New York, to dispense with actually voting for the Senate bill and declaring that the House "deems" the Senate measure enacted. This would avoid a voice vote and guilty congressmen could go home to tell credulous constituents that they should deem them as having voted against the monstrosity that almost nobody wants. Such a solution is so nutty that only Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would have imagined using it. But if they succeed Congress will have opened up vast new avenues of chicanery, deceit and dishonesty. A husband caught staying out all night can tell his angry wife that she should "deem" him to have slept on the sofa discarded in the garage; a schoolboy who wouldn't dare claim the dog ate his homework can now tell a teacher that she should "deem" the homework done.<br /><br />Mr. Obama, who long ago perfected the verbal sleight of hand that has served him well until now, got particularly flustered and visibly irritated when he sat down for an interview with Fox News and learned for the first time how uncomfortable a real interview can be. The more interviewer Bret Baier pressed the more the president wiggled and the more the interviewer persisted. Soon it descended into presidential argle-bargle. The president doesn't have an opinion on "deeming" because "I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are." He's not concerned about "the Louisiana Purchase" or the "Cornhusker Kickback" - special deals for Louisiana and Nebraska to buy Senate votes - because special deals "also affect Hawaii, which just went through an earthquake." It did?<br /><br />But maybe it was a slip of the tongue and he meant Haiti. But surely he doesn't think Haiti is one of the 57 states. We can't be sure.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/19/the-democrats-descend-into-the-twilight-zone">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Hiding the true cost of Obamacare</b><br /><br />President Obama keeps saying America needs the Democrats' health care bill to reduce costs. In reality, the government takeover of health care will raise costs and cause a large number of people to lose their health insurance.<br /><br />"Well, if [the health care bill] doesn't pass, I'm more concerned about what it does to families out there who right now are getting crushed by rising health care costs and small businesses who were having to make a decision, 'Do I hire or do I fix health care?' " Mr. Obama claimed to Fox News on Wednesday.<br /><br />Saying his bill will reduce costs doesn't make it true. Take the legislation's huge $500 billion cuts in Medicare. The government already reimburses hospitals and doctors less than their costs. Further cuts mean even more cost shifting to privately insured patients to cover deeper Medicare losses. Private insurance won't cover all of these exorbitant losses, which will force many doctors and hospitals out of business.<br /><br />This week, the New England Journal of Medicine released a survey of doctors showing that 46.3 percent of "primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine." Not only will doctors leave medicine, but "27 percent [of physicians] would recommend medicine as a career but not if health reform passes." The survey is merely suggestive, but if the real reduction in the number of doctors is even 5 percent or 10 percent, medical costs will rise significantly. A lower supply of doctors amid rising demand for care means higher medical prices.<br /><br />Another example is the ban on insurance companies charging different premiums based on pre-existing health conditions. Imagine what would happen if motorists could buy auto insurance after an accident and were allowed to drop it once a car was fixed. People would wait until they were in an accident to buy insurance, and insurance premiums would skyrocket. The same will happen if insurance companies can't charge higher premiums for sick people.<br /><br />Even the few purported cost-reducing measures in the Senate bill are being gutted by the president's proposal. The reconciliation bill delays a tax on high-quality insurance, dubbed Cadillac plans. The idea was if the cost of insurance was raised, fewer people would want such extensive medical coverage and thus would not seek medical care as often. Reduced demand therefore would reduce the price of medical care. But after striking a deal with unions, Mr. Obama decided to delay the tax for eight years, until he's out of office.<br /><br />The Democrats' plan will destroy American health care. Obamacare will dramatically raise the cost of medical care, forcing many Americans to drop their insurance. Responsible members of Congress have to vote this down.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/19/hiding-the-true-cost-of-obamacare/">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The unbelievable NHS again</b><br /><br /><i>Bungling foreign nurse can KEEP his job... despite barely speaking English and 'worrying' lack of competence</i><br /><br />An Indian nurse who could barely understand English and refused to learn the language was told yesterday he could return to his hospital and carry on working. The decision by the Nursing and Midwifery Council came despite despite the watchdog commenting on his ‘worrying’ lack of competence.<br /><br />Biju John, 38, had insisted he was able to understand instructions and wrote to the council stating: ‘I never be confused at all.’ But staff felt they were ‘carrying’ him and did not feel safe leaving patients in his care, an NMC hearing was told.<br /><br />Mr John also had a limited knowledge of basic nursing skills and did nothing when a patient was struggling to breathe, it was claimed. The NMC heard Mr John should have started basic airway management as the man gasped for breath after coming round from an operation. But instead he had to be helped by a colleague who rushed over when she heard the man’s wheezing from the other side of the anaesthetic unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary.<br /><br />On another occasion Mr John almost caused a patient to go into shock when he wore latex gloves to treat him despite being told he was allergic to the material. The hospital then devised a set of objectives for the nurse, including meeting the required standard of English so he could effectively communicate with staff and colleagues. But he failed to reach the targets and was kept on supervised practice.<br /><br />A further incident on October 20, 2004 led to Mr John being suspended and a disciplinary meeting was scheduled for January 20, 2005, but he quit seven days before. He was later reported to his regulating body. Mr John, from Cambridge, was found guilty of seven charges relating to his lack of competency when he worked at the hospital between July 2003 and December 2004. These include failing to complete basic skills required of a nurse, not demonstrating his English was sufficient to communicate with colleagues effectively – which gave rise to the incident with the latex gloves – and failing to take appropriate action when a patient’s oxygen levels dropped. He was cleared of mistaking the Surgical Assessment Unit for the Surgical Acute Care Unit.<br /><br />NMC chairman David Kyle said his lack of competence was ‘worrying’ but ‘not irremediable’. He added: ‘Although the registrant was a caring nurse, he lacked confidence, was reluctant to act on his own initiative and could not be trusted to work unsupervised. ‘Other nurses felt they were carrying him. ‘Anaesthetists were nervous about leaving their patients in his care and adopted a practice of returning to check on their patients because they were concerned about them.<br /><br />‘The panel has heard evidence of a worrying lack of competence demonstrated over a considerable period of time and that lack of competence, in some basic areas of practice for any registered nurse, particularly in communication, is still present.’ <br /><br />But the panel ruled Mr John could return to work subject to conditions. Mr John must tell the NMC where he is working, remain supervised, complete a personal development plan and an English language test he complies with the conditions he will be allowed to return to normal practice after 18 months.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258858/Bungling-foreign-nurse-Biju-John-barely-speak-English-refused-learn.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-9944047578025720252010-03-19T00:47:00.001+11:302010-03-19T00:47:50.115+11:30<br><br /><b>SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IN PRACTICE</b><br /><br /><i>Below are five reports from just ONE DAY in Britain</i><br /><br /><b>Terrifyingly inept foreign doctors are a symptom of a sickness in the NHS - not the cause</b><br /><br />By Professor Karol Sikora<br /><br />When a supposed cure has instead become a new kind of sickness, then surely something is badly wrong. Yet that is what has happened in the modern NHS. The target culture brought in to benefit patients is having fatal consequences. A system that originally aimed to improve performance and efficiency is now threatening patients' lives, distorting clinical priorities and encouraging the use of foreign doctors, who may be too inexperienced or unqualified for the jobs they have been given.<br /><br />The tragic case of 94-year-old Ena Dickinson is a heart-rending example of what can go wrong in a health service that puts compliance with political requirements above the real needs of patients. Mrs Dickinson, a Lincolnshire grandmother, died in 2008, soon after she underwent a hip replacement operation which was carried out at Grantham Hospital by a German locum surgeon, Dr Werner Kolb. In an appalling series of errors, Dr Kolb cut through the wrong muscle, severed an artery and used the wrong cutting tool, with the result that Mrs Dickinson lost almost half her blood in an operation that should have been routine. One witness, another doctor from the hospital, said he was 'horrified by what I saw', while an expert surgical witness, Professor Angus Wallace, told the inquest on Tuesday that he 'could not believe the level of neglect in the operation'.<br /><br />The episode raises troubling questions about the NHS's increasing reliance on foreign doctors, both from the European Union and from further overseas, a practice that has been driven partly by the Government's fixation with meeting targets and partly by an inadequate supply in the number of domestic trained doctors.<br /><br />We do not, of course, live in an insular world and overseas doctors have long been an integral part of the NHS. Indeed, when I first worked in the NHS in the early Seventies, I saw that the service would not have been able to function without the support of doctors from Asia. And, whether we like it or not, Britain is part of the European Union, one of whose guiding principles is the free movement of labour throughout the member states. So, without drastic political changes to the very nature of our society, we would not be able to adopt a siege mentality when it comes to employment in the NHS.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the disastrously botched operation that Mrs Dickinson suffered highlights a worrying trend, where too often foreign doctors have been imported to provide cover in the NHS, without any proper checks on their background, their ability to speak English, their experience or their competence.<br /><br />According to reports about Dr Werner Kolb, he had actually performed few hip operations during his career and had spent most of his recent years giving lectures, hardly a record to inspire confidence in the operating theatre. Dr Kolb's negligence may be particularly graphic, because of the way he sawed through the wrong muscle, like some grotesquely inept carpenter.<br /><br />Some might argue, therefore, that it is particularly dangerous to let foreign doctors carry out surgery without rigorous monitoring. But this would be a fallacy. Every branch of medicine, from general practice to pathology, has the potential to do mortal harm because of its intimate connection with the delicate structure of the human body. In my own field of cancer care, disasters can occur because of a misdiagnosis or the administration of the wrong dosage of drug.<br /><br />The calamitous risks of incompetence by GP locums were illustrated in early 2008 by Dr Daniel Ubani, who flew in from Germany to Cambridgeshire to provide weekend cover for a local practice, only to end up killing one pensioner, David Gray, by accidentally giving him ten times the maximum dosage of diamorphine. The coroner then said Mr Gray's death had been caused by 'gross negligence', words that carry a chilling echo in the Dickinson case.<br /><br />One of the key problems is that, under an EU directive of 2004, doctors who qualify in any EU country can move to work in any other EU state without even the most limited examination of their skills, aptitude or language. In contrast, foreign doctors (ie from outside the EU) must pass a skills and English language test - yes, even the Australians and Americans.<br /><br />EU countries are also not forced to provide information on their doctors' professional histories - for example, whether they have been struck off for committing a criminal offence or killing a patient through negligence.<br /><br />There are estimated to be around 20,000 EU doctors registered to work in the NHS, a quarter of them from the former Eastern Bloc countries.<br /><br />Now the vast majority of them are certainly perfectly competent, but, even so, difficulties will inevitably arise over language and culture. Every nation, for instance, has its own medical hierarchies, differing relationships between doctors and nurses, or unique approaches to patient care.<br /><br />Moreover, foreign doctors without a sound grasp of English will not understand what their patients are telling them, something that is a particular concern in GP services.<br /><br />It is telling that EU doctors are twice as likely to face disciplinary hearings before the General Medical Council as their British counterparts, in which foreign doctors from outside the EU are three times as likely to be struck off the medical register - statistics that point to the laxity of checks.<br /><br />We cannot blame foreign doctors for wanting to work in the NHS. Britain has one of the best-rewarded medical professions in the world, with GPs earning on average over £100,000-a-year and leading consultants far more. These are incredible riches for doctors from the old Soviet sphere of influence. In Poland, where my family has some of its roots, a doctor is likely to earn around £500 a month or £6,000-a-year, a sum that can be made with a few weekend or holiday stints in Britain. As a consequence, one in six of Poland's doctors now works abroad.<br /><br />Nor is the NHS management entirely to blame for the catalogue of controversies that has arisen from the employment of foreign staff. NHS bosses are under tremendous pressure to meet waiting lists targets set by the Government, so they will take any action, bear almost any cost, to achieve this. So rather than postpone operations during periods when staff are on leave, they bring in foreign doctors to keep the conveyor belt moving.<br /><br />In Ena Dickinson's case, it would not have mattered if her hip replacement operation had been delayed by a week or two, but no doubt the management of Grantham Hospital was appalled at the idea of slipping behind the Government's arbitrary 18-week deadline for such routine surgery. So, in a disastrous misjudgment, Dr Kolb was brought in so the needs of bureaucracy, if not the patient, could be met.<br /><br />The problem has been compounded by the Government's failure to assess correctly the needs of the NHS for doctors, with the result that foreign doctors have been brought in to cover gaps in supply. It must be admitted that the demands on the NHS have grown enormously in recent years as a consequence of increasing numbers of elderly patients, a growth in the British population and advances in medical care. Twenty years ago, the idea of carrying out a hip replacement operation on a 94-year-old grandmother would have been unthinkable.<br /><br />Moreover, the EU working time directive drastically reduced the number of hours that any doctor could be on duty, which meant that more staff had to be made available. But the need to increase the supply of doctors only emphasises the need to scrutinise their competence more vigorously. What we need, therefore, is an assessment of their skills by practical and verbal demonstration, accompanied by checks on their background and a basic language test. We're doing it for our own graduates, after all. That is what our NHS patients deserve. We cannot allow any more tragedies like that of Ena Dickinson.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1258782/KAROL-SIKORA-Terrifyingly-inept-foreign-doctors-symptom-sickness-NHS--cause.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Killer Muslim doctor with repeated disregard for patients is suspended for just FOUR MONTHS by British regulators</b><br /><br />A doctor with a 'disregard' for patient safety was suspended for just four months today for sending home a baby girl who died the next day from blood poisoning. Dr Salawati Abdul-Salam failed to spot little Aleesha Evans' deadly condition and sent her home saying she had a viral infection that needed only Calpol and Nurofen. She died the next day. <br /><br />A year before the baby's death, another of Abdul-Salam's patients died after a wrong diagnosis, while a pensioner suffered a collapsed lung under the trainee's care. GMC panel chairman Professor Denis McDevitt said the doctor's actions demonstrated a 'total lack of attention to detail' and a 'serious degree of carelessness.' <br /><br />Colin Perriam, 66, had died after Abdul-Salam analysed six-month old blood samples, then wrongly diagnosed a ruptured ulcer as constipation. Mr Perriam was discharged from Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales on December 15, 2004 with a prescription of laxatives. <br /><br />Widow Pamela Perriam had told the hearing: 'She said that he was suffering from constipation. 'We were given some powders that you mix with water for mild constipation and we were not given any other instructions. 'We were not given anything else except to say that it was mild constipation and mild laxatives should deal with the problem.' <br /><br />But the next day Mr Parriam could not get out of bed and when his stomach appeared swollen and blotchy the following evening, his wife called an ambulance. By the time it arrived her husband was unconscious. Mr Parriam underwent emergency surgery but never recovered and died the next day on February 5, 2005.<br /><br />A month earlier, Abdul-Salam gave a 79-year-old woman an unnecessary chest drain after reading the wrong x-ray. She had to apologise after the elderly woman's lung collapsed.<br /><br />On August 9, 2006, Aleesha Evans was rushed to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, Wales, vomiting with a rash and a temperature of 37 degrees. But the trainee specialist registrar did not even examine the baby and discharged her two hours later after noting her condition was 'unremarkable.' The doctor had seen the patient by this stage and noted she appeared to be better than she had been and that she was playing. But her heart rate was still high and her temperature had risen to 39 degrees, the hearing was told. The baby was discharged at 11pm with a diagnosis of viral illness. <br /><br />But she was suffering from meningococcal septicaemia - blood poisoning - and died the following day. Abdul-Salam was placed under supervision at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend after Aleesha's death. She was only allowed to perform three hours of clinical work a day and had to sign every patient off with a supervisor. But within three weeks Abdul-Salam had broken the terms of her training and more than a third of her patients had been discharged without her superior's consent. <br /><br />One of these patients was a 10-year-old girl with a broken wrist who attended A&E on 22 September 2008. The child required treatment under anaesthetic but Abdul-Salam discharged her to the outpatient fracture clinic. <br /><br />Prof McDevitt told Abdul-Salam: 'The panel has concluded that you have not yet fully appreciated the magnitude of your deficient performance and misconduct. 'You demonstrated poor judgment when under pressure. Your lack of careful clinical method resulted in the inadequate assessment and management of patients and you failed to appreciate fully the discordance between the patients' clinical condition and the results of investigations. 'The panel considers there remains of risk of you repeating errors and exercising poor judgment, particularly if you were to return to work in a more pressures environment than you are currently exposed to.' <br /><br />Prof McDevitt said the panel had considered imposing conditions on Abdul-Salam's practice but concluded her actions involving baby Aleesha Evans were too serious: 'Taking all the factors into account, the panel concluded that your registration should be suspended for a period of four months. 'Your misconduct was sufficiently serious to undermine public confidence in the profession. It is also important that you, and the medical profession, are left in no doubt that such behaviour, which clearly had consequences for patient safety, is unacceptable.'<br /><br />The doctor had been working as a locum at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, Kent for the last five months, but she will now be unable to keep her job. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258696/Doctor-disregard-patients-sent-baby-girl-home-die-suspended-just-FOUR-months.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>British doctors who wouldn't listen allow little girl to die</b><br /><br />An eight-year-old girl with an acute fear of dentists who starved to death after her milk teeth were taken out under anaesthetic died because of a “lack of communication” between health agencies, an investigation has concluded.<br /><br />Sophie Waller refused to open her mouth even to eat after the operation. She had developed her phobia at the age of four when her tongue was scratched during a routine check-up. When she refused treatment after cracking a tooth on a boiled sweet her parents became so concerned they took her to their GP who referred her to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.<br /><br />Surgeons decided to remove eight remaining milk teeth under anaesthetic to avoid problems in future. But she was left so traumatised by it she refused to open her mouth to eat or drink.<br /><br />A report by the Local Safeguarding Children Board has now found there was a “lack of clarity” from the agencies responsible for Sophie’s care after her discharge from hospital. She was sent home despite her condition and her parents did not know who to turn to when her health deteriorated.<br /><br />By the time of her death in December 2005 Sophie, from St Dennis in Cornwall, was severely malnourished and weighed just 22kg. Her parents had been feeding her a diet of yoghurt and mashed fruit and tried to get help from their GP and the hospital but were instead referred to a child psychologist.<br /><br />She was found dead in bed by her mother four weeks after her discharge and the cause of death was given as kidney failure as a result of starvation and dehydration. An inquest in February 2009 found there was no blame attached to her parents who had tried to get help for their daughter.<br /><br />The serious case review found of a lack of communication between all the health agencies involved in her care. The report says: “No clear written plan was made on discharge and there was lack of clarity about responsibility for medical review following discharge.<br /><br />“The clinical psychologist made telephone contact with the child’s parents in the week after discharge but did not see her again. “There was a lack of clarity over the open door arrangement which was intended to allow the child’s parents to bring her back in the week following discharge. When they phoned for advice on the seventh day, they were referred back to the psychologist for support.”<br /><br />Her mother Janet Waller, a nursery school teacher who has two other children, said the report highlighted how their pleas should have been heard. She said: “All we’ve wanted all along is for people to listen to us. People ask me how many children I have, I say three, but technically I haven’t any more. I’ve got to live with this for the rest of my life.”<br /><br />At Sophie’s inquest in February last year the Cornwall coroner, Dr Emma Carlyon, said that the Royal Cornwall Hospital was guilty of a number of failings which led to Sophie’s death. She said: “The severity of her malnutrition and dehydration was not recognised. This prevented her from receiving the medical support that could have prevented her death.”<br /><br />Dr Ellen Wilkinson, Medical Director of Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, said: “We would like to apologise to the family of Sophie Waller. Everyone involved in her care was saddened by her tragic death. This was a very unusual case. “There were shortcomings in the communication between the health organisation and Sophie’s parents.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7066326.ece">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>'Blood-spattered walls and mouldy equipment': How a quarter of British government hospitals fail to meet basic hygiene tests</b><br /><br />A quarter of NHS hospital trusts are failing to meet basic hygiene standards, with some treating patients on blood-spattered wards or with dirty equipment, a damning report has found. A third of ambulance trusts have also missed the targets set, according to the Care Quality Commission. The watchdog's report follows the introduction of tough new hygiene standards after a series of scandals at hospitals in Maidstone, Basildon and Stafford.<br /><br />It also came as a survey of NHS employees found many are too overstretched to do their jobs properly because of staff shortages.<br /><br />On hygiene, the CQC found 42 out of the 167 NHS trusts inspected were in 'breach' of registration requirements by failing to meet standards, with some hospitals being warned over blood-spattered wards and dirty equipment. In Basildon, where at least 70 patients died as a result of poor hygiene last year, investigators found a commode soiled under the seat and 'procedure trays, used by staff to carry equipment when they take blood samples or give injections, had blood spattered on them'.<br /><br />At children's hospital Alder Hey, in Liverpool, the inspection revealed dirty toys, hair stuck to medical equipment and 'nappy changing mats stored on the floor next to a toilet'. Water 'ran brown' from taps in patient areas.<br /><br />A total of 36 trusts did not provide areas to decontaminate instruments, three trusts failed to flush unused water regularly to control legionella outbreaks, and a dozen failed to keep clinical areas clean. The situation was so bad at four ambulance trusts that they were given written warnings about the state of their vehicles and stations.<br /><br />Nigel Ellis, the CQC's head of inspection, said: 'We have on rare occasions found evidence of a direct risk to patients and have intervened using our enforcement powers to ensure swift improvements were made. 'In over half of trusts we have made some suggestions or requirements for improvements to ensure their practices are the best they can be.'<br /><br />A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'There's no doubt that the trusts rose to the challenge --we've seen swift and tangible improvements in their performance, and on follow-up meetings all met the required standards.' <br /><br />Meanwhile, half of NHS workers claim that staff shortages are stopping them doing their jobs properly. Of the 160,000 workers questioned by the CQC, 46 per cent said they were unable to do a proper job.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258510/Quarter-NHS-trusts-failing-hygiene-standards-health-watchdog-finds.html">SOURCE</a> <br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>One in ten doctors in Britain is foreign and untested</b><br /><br />Almost one in ten doctors on the medical register comes from the EU and has not had to take any language or competence tests before working in Britain. The shocking figure exposes the lax controls over European locums taking up hospital posts in the NHS and providing out-of-hours GP cover. Unlike doctors from elsewhere in the world - who are forced to prove language skills and medical knowledge before being registered - such testing is forbidden for doctors qualified in Europe and Switzerland.<br /><br />Campaigners want a complete overhaul of the system after the death of a grandmother following appalling blunders by a German surgeon flown in by the NHS. Ena Dickinson, 94, lost nearly half the blood in her body during what was meant to be a routine hip operation at Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire. Werner Kolb, who had been working in the NHS for three weeks, severed an artery and became so flustered he started speaking German in the operating theatre.<br /><br />An expert witness described it as the worst case of negligence he had come across - yet Dr Kolb, pictured today for the first time, <font color="#ff0000">was left free to work in the UK for a further eight months before being suspended by the General Medical Council.</font><br /><br />Dr Kolb, who had been mainly lecturing for four years before the tragedy, refused to attend the inquest and denied his conduct had anything to do with Mrs Dickinson's death eight weeks later from pneumonia. Last night a colleague at Bethesda Hospital in Stuttgart insisted: 'I find it hard to reconcile the words said against him in Britain with the precise surgeon I know.'<br /><br />But Mrs Dickinson's daughter Kathy Ingram, 57, said: 'The system is disgraceful and clearly isn't working. NHS trusts have to assume that locum doctors' qualifications from Europe are reliable without doing their own checks. 'You trust your doctor because he's in authority but if he hasn't been verified and isn't monitored, you never know what standard of treatment you'll get. The law has to be changed so that there is closer monitoring.'<br /><br />Figures show there are more than 230,000 doctors on the GMC register of which 21,451 - almost 10 per cent - gained their qualifications in other EU countries. The ban on checks comes from a European directive ordering member states to allow workers free movement. This means the GMC is forced to accept qualifications at 'face value', according to its chief executive Niall Dickson.<br /><br />The GMC has protested about the rights of doctors to work freely across Europe being put ahead of a patient's right to safe treatment. In a presentation to the EU's Green Paper on the European Workforce for Health, it said: 'Legislation must be amended to allow healthcare regulators across Europe to establish that a doctor has the level of language proficiency necessary to practise safely. 'We are also prevented from adopting a general requirement to prove competence and cannot specify the standard of acceptable competence. 'The current situation is profoundly at odds with the pursuit of safe and high quality health care.'<br /><br />Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said: 'Whilst it is essential doctors are able to communicate with their patients and the regulatory authorities are able to assess fitness to practise, it is also important we don't make it impossible for those that do have the appropriate skills to work in the UK.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258762/One-doctors-Britain-foreign-untested.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-56626367244036374152010-03-18T01:18:00.000+11:302010-03-18T01:19:10.214+11:30<br><br /><b>Health care bill can be beaten</b><br /><br />House passage of the Democrats' health care bill is not a foregone conclusion despite their 75-seat majority in the chamber. While party leaders such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House spinmeister David Axelrod bravely express confidence, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the House majority whip, conceded on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Democrats don't have enough votes yet.<br /><br />The all-out effort to ram through the legislation before Easter recess is telling. If members of Congress merely risked being confronted by Potemkin crowds that don't represent the majority of voters, there would be nothing to fear. However, Democratic strategists know these crowds are very real and very mad, and the mobs will rattle wavering congressional votes, especially in vulnerable districts. The latest Rasmussen poll shows that independents oppose the mass of new regulations and taxes by a wide margin of 64 percent to 32 percent.<br /><br />Despite the barrage of political attacks on insurance companies over the past year, 76 percent of Americans with insurance still rate their coverage as "excellent" or "good." Rasmussen Reports notes that this group has "proven to be a major obstacle for advocates of reform." Last year, Mr. Obama repeatedly promised he wouldn't interfere with the insurance of those who liked their current policies, but that vow has been broken. It's no wonder a constant trickle of Democrats is expressing concern about the party's policy agenda.<br /><br />According to the latest vote count, released early Tuesday morning by the Hill newspaper, 37 Democrats are either firm "no" votes or "leaning no." Add a wavering Rep. Timothy H. Bishop, New York Democrat, and the number is 38. That is the exact number needed to defeat the bill, and it is up from the 25 firm "no" or "leaning no" votes on Thursday. Of the 38, 28 voted against the bill in November. In total, 55 Democrats reportedly are undecided. If the nays hold and just two of those undecided votes switch, the bill will be defeated.<br /><br />According to Rep. Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat, special deals were offered recently to peel off one or two of the 11 Democrats who stood with him against government-funded abortions. He accused his party's leadership of never having had any intention of fixing the abortion language, a posture he attributed to the leaders' belief that the votes of the 12 pro-life Democrats wouldn't be needed. "We'll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this," Mr. Stupak told National Review, almost sounding wistful for that day.<br /><br />Democrats are full of a lot of false bravado. Through July, August and October, they kept claiming the votes to pass the health care takeover were imminent. They were wrong.<br /><br />Democrats still may be able to cobble together enough backroom payoffs or use various tricks and pressure for passage. On Intrade, the largest prediction market, the betting is swinging in favor of the health care takeover, with the latest odds giving Democrats a 70 percent chance of passing it. Stopping this travesty depends on voters expressing their outrage to Democrats on Capitol Hill.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/16/the-health-care-bill-can-be-defeated">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>With Medicaid Cuts, Doctors and Patients Drop Out</b><br /><br /><i>If America can't afford to pay for Medicare, how can it afford Obamacare?</i><br /><br />Carol Y. Vliet began chemotherapy to treat her cancer, but lost her doctor because he stopped seeing Medicaid patients. As she began a punishing regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, Mrs. Vliet found a measure of comfort in her monthly appointments with her primary care physician, Dr. Saed J. Sahouri, who had been monitoring her health for nearly two years. She was devastated, therefore, when Dr. Sahouri informed her a few months later that he could no longer see her because, like a growing number of doctors, he had stopped taking patients with Medicaid.<br /><br />Dr. Sahouri said that his reimbursements from Medicaid were so low — often no more than $25 per office visit — that he was losing money every time a patient walked in his exam room. The final insult, he said, came when Michigan cut those payments by 8 percent last year to help close a gaping budget shortfall. “My office manager was telling me to do this for a long time, and I resisted,” Dr. Sahouri said. “But after a while you realize that we’re really losing money on seeing those patients, not even breaking even. We were starting to lose more and more money, month after month.”<br /><br />It has not taken long for communities like Flint to feel the downstream effects of a nationwide torrent of state cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and disabled. With states squeezing payments to providers even as the economy fuels explosive growth in enrollment, patients are finding it increasingly difficult to locate doctors and dentists who will accept their coverage. Inevitably, many defer care or wind up in hospital emergency rooms, which are required to take anyone in an urgent condition.<br /><br />Mrs. Vliet, 53, who lives just outside Flint, has yet to find a replacement for Dr. Sahouri. “When you build a relationship, you want to stay with that doctor,” she said recently, her face gaunt from disease, and her head wrapped in a floral bandanna. “You don’t want to go from doctor to doctor to doctor and have strangers looking at you that don’t have a clue who you are.”<br /><br />The inadequacy of Medicaid payments is severe enough that it has become a rare point of agreement in the health care debate between President Obama and Congressional Republicans. In a letter to Congress after their February health care meeting, Mr. Obama wrote that rates might need to rise if Democrats achieved their goal of extending Medicaid eligibility to 15 million uninsured Americans.<br /><br />In 2008, Medicaid reimbursements averaged only 72 percent of the rates paid by Medicare, which are themselves typically well below those of commercial insurers, according to the Urban Institute, a research group. At 63 percent, Michigan had the sixth-lowest rate in the country, even before the recent cuts.<br /><br />In Flint, Dr. Nita M. Kulkarni, an obstetrician, receives $29.42 from Medicaid for a visit that would bill $69.63 from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. She receives $842.16 from Medicaid for a Caesarean delivery, compared with $1,393.31 from Blue Cross.<br /><br />If she takes too many Medicaid patients, she said, she cannot afford overhead expenses like staff salaries, the office mortgage and malpractice insurance that will run $42,800 this year. She also said she feared being sued by Medicaid patients because they might be at higher risk for problem pregnancies, because of underlying health problems.<br /><br />As a result, she takes new Medicaid patients only if they are relatives or friends of existing patients. But her guilt is assuaged somewhat, she said, because her husband, who is also her office mate, Dr. Bobby B. Mukkamala, an ear, nose and throat specialist, is able to take Medicaid. She said he is able to do so because only a modest share of his patients have it.<br /><br />The states and the federal government share the cost of Medicaid, which saw a record enrollment increase of 3.3 million people last year. The program now benefits 47 million people, primarily children, pregnant women, disabled adults and nursing home residents. It falls to the states to control spending by setting limits on eligibility, benefits and provider payments within broad federal guidelines.<br /><br />Michigan, like many other states, did just that last year, packaging the 8 percent reimbursement cut with the elimination of dental, vision, podiatry, hearing and chiropractic services for adults.<br /><br />When Randy C. Smith showed up recently at a Hamilton Community Health Network clinic near Flint, complaining of a throbbing molar, Dr. Miriam L. Parker had to inform him that Medicaid no longer covered the root canal and crown he needed.<br /><br />A landscaper who has been without work for 15 months, Mr. Smith, 46, said he could not afford the $2,000 cost. “I guess I’ll just take Tylenol or Motrin,” he said before leaving.<br /><br />This year, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, has revived a proposal to impose a 3 percent tax on physician revenues. Without the tax, she has warned, the state may have to reduce payments to health care providers by 11 percent.<br /><br />In Flint, the birthplace of General Motors, the collapse of automobile manufacturing has melded with the recession to drive unemployment to a staggering 27 percent. About one in four non-elderly residents of Genesee County are uninsured, and one in five depends on Medicaid. The county’s Medicaid rolls have grown by 37 percent since 2001, and the program now pays for half of all childbirths.<br /><br />More <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/policy/16medicaid.html">here</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Not So Fast! Will Medical “Reform” Cut Real Costs?</b><br /><br />by William L. Anderson<br /><br />It seems that the so-called health care “reform” bill will become law soon enough. (President Barack Obama has told recalcitrant Democrats in the House of Representatives that he won’t campaign for them if they vote no. Most will give into the President.)<br /><br />Therefore, I am more interested in what will occur after the bill is passed, not the sordid politics behind it. Specifically, I want to take a hard look at the president’s claim (echoed by economists like Paul Krugman) that the new law will reduce costs.<br /><br />According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s plan will produce “savings” in medical procedures. Not surprisingly, much of the media (and especially the New York Times), has been echoing the same chorus.<br /><br />However, I think this claim truly falls into the “Not So Fast” category. In my view there is no possibility that the President’s plan will even remotely cut real costs. The true legacy of this bill will be to add costs in ways we hardly can imagine.<br /><br />Given that the bill imposes new mandates, further subsidizes the consumption of medical services, and orders insurance companies to cover applicants no matter their health status, one is hard-pressed to find the “cost savings.” Medicare will supposedly cost half a trillion dollars less because the government will order such a state of being into existence. The “waste, fraud, and abuse” that every preceding administration promised to root out will finally meet their match with the Obama administration.<br /><br />Since the plan won’t really cut costs, medical price controls could be in our future. Without going into the various economic dislocations created by price controls, let me deal with an even more fundamental issue: the nature of costs. It is telling that economists who support the bill because of its alleged “costs savings” are exposing their own ignorance about costs. To them, a “cost” is nothing more than a monetary outlay that is paid for a certain good or service. If government orders the prices paid in those transactions to be lower, then — voila! — costs are lower.<br /><br />Opportunity Costs<br /><br />At best, this is a childish view of costs and certainly not a view that any serious economist would hold. Costs, according to basic economic theory, are opportunity costs, or the value to an individual of the closest forgone activity. By imposing lower prices, the government would be raising the opportunity costs to individuals taking part in the exchange. Far from lowering costs, the proposed measures ultimately would result in higher real costs.<br /><br />For example, if the government forces down the price of a medical procedure below the level at which all service providers can be adequately compensated, then the procedure won’t be done at all. While that would mean no money outlays, “officially” lowering costs, the person for whom the procedure is denied would bear a real cost by having to suffer the malady that drove him or her to the doctor in the first place.<br /><br />Supporters of ObamaCare claim that Canada and Great Britain have lower medical costs with their government-run systems than America does. However, many of those “savings” come about because people are denied care, or must make do with cheaper but inferior alternatives.<br /><br />In other words, the “savings” come at the expense of individuals who wish to receive care. It might be possible, through accounting trickery, to show that the new medical “system” has lowered the federal deficit, but it cannot and will not lower the real costs we will pay.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/not-so-fast/medical-reform-costs/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The truth about health insurance premiums and profits</b><br /><br />In a recent Fox News debate about health insurance, Democratic political strategist Bob Beckel explained that, "The president needed an enemy, and the insurance companies are it." Proving that point in a Pennsylvania stump speech, President Obama asked, "How much higher do premiums have to go before we do something about it? We can't have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people."<br /><br />On February 20, President Obama used his weekly radio show to express outrage that a fraction of Californians buying individual Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) plans "are likely (sic) to see their rates go up anywhere from 35 to 39 percent." He used those figures to justify preempting state regulation "by ensuring that, if a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified, health insurers must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable."<br /><br />There was always something peculiar about this desperate effort to demonize certain health insurers. Individual plans account for only 4 percent of the insurance market. So why do they account for 100 percent of the president's fulminations about insurance premiums? Could it be because insurance premiums for the other 96percent have not been rising much?<br /><br />Nonprofit BCBS plans account for a third of the private health insurance market. Michigan's nonprofit asked for 56 percent premium hike without the national media taking that Hail Mary pass too seriously. But even Obama finds it difficult to accuse nonprofits of being too profitable, so he needed to pin his enemy badge on a for-profit firm – one of Wellpoint's "Anthem" BCBS plans.<br /><br />Anthem of California's requested rate increase on individual policies was actually 20-35 percent. The only way it could get to 39percent would be if a policyholder insisted on a gold-plated Cadillac plan and also happened to move up into a higher age group. Besides, requesting a rate hike means nothing. Even Obama's radio address mentioned two requests that had been cut in half. Many are denied.<br /><br />So, how many Californians have actually been faced with a 39 percent increase in their premiums? Exactly zero.<br /><br />How many are really "likely" to be faced with even a 35 percent increase after state insurance regulators have their say? My forecast: Zero.<br /><br />The president highlighted the "likely" increases of "35 to 39 percent" to suggest insurance companies in general were asking for huge premium increases just to boost their lavish profits. He complained that in the $1.2 trillion health insurance industry, "the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion." But that puny sum includes WellPoint's sale of its pharmacy benefits management company NextRX to Express Scripts for $4.7 billion last April. Adding that $4.7 billion to WellPoint profits is like saying a family's income rose by $1 million because they sold a million-dollar home.<br /><br />University of Michigan economist Mark Perry calculated that without the sale of NextRX, "WellPoint's profit margin would have been only 3.9 percent, the industry average profit margin would have been closer to 3percent"— $100 per policy. Yet Obama concluded that, "The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America."<br /><br />The media echoed the president words endlessly, and wrote as though one company's hypothetical request for increases of 35 percent-39 percent were a nationwide threat—even to those with group insurance—rather than an unique and highly unlikely request that might (if magically approved) touch a miniscule number in a hostile state for health insurers.<br /><br />"It doesn't take too many 39 percent increases, like the recent one proposed in California that has garnished so much attention, to put insurance out of reach," exclaimed a New York Times report. That same paper's editorial added, "The recently announced plan by Anthem Blue Cross in California to raise annual premiums by 35 to 39 percent for nearly a quarter of its individual subscribers is a chilling harbinger of what is to come if reform fails." Really?<br /><br />Grasping for confirmation of the 39 percent figure, some reporters cited a Feb. 24 memo about Wellpoint written by journalist Scott Paltrow for The Center for American Progress Action Fund. Paltrow gathered news clippings suggesting premiums are "expected to" increase by "up to" some scary number in various states. For California, however, Paltrow's source was the president's speech. This Action Fund is a is no "liberal think tank," as the Wall Street Journal put it, but a 501(c)4 lobby which can participate in campaigns and elections. Founded by Bill Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta, it's a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.<br /><br />A Wall Street Journal story about Wellpoint's wish list for higher premiums cites the Department of Health and Human Services as its source. That means a shoddy four-page polemic at HealthReform.gov, "Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer." That pamphlet, like another from the Commonwealth Fund, cites Duke Helfand, an L.A. Times reporter who wrote on Feb. 4 that, "brokers who sell these policies say they are fielding numerous calls from customers incensed over premium increases of 30percent to 39 percent."<br /><br />So, the president's 39 percent figure came from Duke Helfand, who heard it from insurance brokers who, in turn, said they heard it from customers. The 39 percent figure referred to one person named Mary. After rounding Helfand's 30 percent up to 35 percent, however, that was good enough for the president's purposes.<br /><br />Like Obama, the "Insurance Companies Prosper" pamphlet repeatedly confuses asking with getting. "Anthem Blue Cross isn't alone in insisting on premium hikes," it says; "Anthem of Connecticut requested an increase of 24 percent last year, which was rejected by the state." So what? If you went to your boss and insisted on a 24 percent raise, would that constitute proof that wages are rising too fast?<br /><br />If Obama has been reduced to basing the redistribution of health care on the cost of health insurance premiums, he will need much better facts. Fortunately, credible statistics on health insurance premiums are readily available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Bureau of Labor Statistics.<br /><br />CMS statistics (Table 12) reveal that the net cost of private health insurance – premiums minus benefits – fell by 2.8percent in 2008. Furthermore, CMS Health Spending Projections predict that spending on private health insurance will rise 2.5percent in 2010, while prices of medical goods and services rise by 2.8percent.<br /><br />Consumers' cost of health premiums is also part of the detailed consumer price index. After all the overheated rhetoric about "requested" or "expected" increases of "up to" 39 percent, who would have imagined that the average consumer cost of health insurance premiums fell by 3.5 percent in 2008 and fell by another 3.2 percent in 2009?<br /><br />The president's health insurance proposals hoped to use stern command-and-control techniques to run the health insurance system. It was all about minimizing free choice and maximizing brute force—forcing people to buy certain kinds of politically-designed insurance, forcing insurers to cover services many consumers do not want to pay for, and forcing insurers to curb or roll back premiums even as medical costs go up. The whole shaky apparatus was built upon even shakier statistics—including the purely hypothetical 39 percent increase in premiums that Mary's insurance agent reported to Duke Helfand.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11447">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>British hospital trusts warned over poor infection control</b><br /><br />Five health trusts were issued with warnings about serious breaches in hospital infection control by the health regulator last year.<br /><br />An assessment of hospital infection standards resulted in the five warnings from the Care Quality Commission but the trusts responded quickly to all five warnings, which are no longer in a “red flag” category on the issue, the regulator said.<br /><br />In last year's infection assessment 42 of 167 trusts were found by the CQC to be in "breach" of NHS registration requirements, although the regulator said all but five were minor breaches.<br /><br />Ambulance services in the north-west, east of England and east Midlands were the worst offenders, and received formal warnings for the state of vehicles and stations. The regulator said all had responded and now met the requirements in follow-up assessments.<br /><br />The CQC carried out the assessment as part of preparations for a new licensing regime beginning on April 1. Several trusts are expected to receive conditions in the registration process because of concerns about some core care standards.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7064898.ece">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Incompetent butcher doctors free to work in the NHS</b><br /><br />An elderly woman died after a German locum doctor carried out one of the “worst botched operations” seen in a British hospital, an inquest heard yesterday. Ena Dickinson, a former NHS volunteer, was left unable to walk after the locum made a series of errors during a routine hip operation at Grantham & District Hospital. Werner Kolb removed bone that should have remained intact and severed a major artery during the operation.<br /><br />Mrs Dickinson, a 94-year-old former nurse and Red Cross volunteer from Barrowby, Lincolnshire, was left bleeding to death on the operating table. It was only when a consultant at the hospital stepped in that her life was saved. However, two months after the August 2008 operation Mrs Dickinson died. Kathy Ingram, her daughter, said that after dedicating her life to the NHS it had “let her down” when she needed it most.<br /><br />Orthopaedic specialist Professor Angus Wallace told the inquest it was “the worst botched operation” he had seen. The professor, who is based at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre, was so concerned about the case that he reported the doctor to the General Medical Council.<br /><br />Last week MPs heard how a “gaping hole” in the rules on foreign doctors working in Britain is putting patients at risk. The Health Select Committee is currently investigating out-of-hours-care following the death of David Gray in Cambridgeshire in 2008. He was killed by another German doctor, Daniel Ubani, who administered 10 times the normal dose of diamorphine. Dr Ubani had flown to Britain to provide out of hours care under a contract from the local health authority.<br /><br />In 2004, ministers gave GPs a controversial new contract that allowed them to give up responsibility for out-of-hours care. The General Medical Council said it is prevented from testing the qualifications of European locums who are brought in as cover.<br /><br />Dr Kolb, 51, who is based in Stuttgart, was given an interim suspension by the GMC for 18 months last year. Giving a narrative verdict, coroner Stuart Fisher described it as a “most disturbing case”.<br /><br />Mrs Ingram said: “We feel let down. We don’t quite understand how he got to operate on my mother. “My mother was somebody who was involved in the NHS and supported it even into her retirement working on the tea bar at her local hospital. After all those years the NHS let her down.”<br /><br />A spokesman for United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust said: “The Trust has apologised to Mrs Dickinson’s family for mistakes made during her operation. “Errors were made by the surgeon concerned which were rectified immediately by a senior member of staff. After the operation Mrs Dickinson was recovering well and assessed to be medically fit for discharge by 25 September 2008.<br /><br />“The Trust has done everything possible to learn from this incident and to prevent it happening to another patient. Changes have been made to the recruitment of medical staff, including the appointment of locums, and a new surgical safety checklist produced by the World Health Organisation has now been implemented throughout the Trust.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7064662.ece">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-75607454398180294252010-03-17T00:59:00.001+11:302010-03-17T00:59:47.277+11:30<br><br /><b>Obama hones final health care pitch</b><br /><br />Fighting to overcome the impression of high spending and backroom deals, President Obama has honed his health care message to highlight his bill's benefits to consumers — from better Medicare prescription-drug coverage for seniors to guaranteeing insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions.<br /><br />Supporters say the White House's public relations offensive has breathed new life into Democrats' last-ditch effort to pass the legislation by next week. "So much of his activity in the last few weeks has been around health care," said Karen Davenport, director of health policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. "And I think the power of the presidency drives the stories and makes a huge difference."<br /><br />After months of drift, with the House and Senate arguing over competing bills, Mr. Obama has taken control of the debate, combining the two bills into a grand compromise, adding Republican ideas and dubbing it bipartisan. On Monday, both he and Democratic leaders said they were very optimistic it would become law.<br /><br />Mr. Obama took his health care pitch on the road Monday for the third time in one week, traveling to Ohio to again make his case that Congress should ignore the political implications of supporting his bill and vote for it because it's the right thing to do. "The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for these interests, for their future," Mr. Obama told a crowd in Strongsville. "So what they're looking for is some courage. They're waiting for us to act. They're waiting for us to lead. They don't want us putting our finger out to the wind. They don't want us reading polls."<br /><br />Democrats don't yet have the 216 votes required to pass the bills, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed Monday that they will collect them, dismissing the concerns of some House Democrats about federal funding of abortion, Medicaid funding, Medicare reimbursement rates and the exclusion of protections for illegal immigrants. She called them unfounded. "When we bring a bill to the floor, we will have the votes," she said at a press conference while surrounded by more than a dozen babies and representatives of children's groups that support the health care reform plan.<br /><br />The yearlong push for health care has seen a series of starts and missteps, culminating with Republican Sen. Scott Brown's surprise victory in a special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat. That victory denied Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and gave backers in both chambers pause. <br /><br />More <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/16/obama-hones-final-health-care-pitch/">here</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Talking Points vs. Realty</b><br /><br />by Thomas Sowell<br /><br />In a swindle that would make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur, Barack Obama has gotten a substantial segment of the population to believe that he can add millions of people to the government-insured rolls without increasing the already record-breaking federal deficit.<br /><br />Those who think in terms of talking points, instead of realities, can point to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has concurred with budget numbers that the Obama administration has presented. Anyone who is so old-fashioned as to stop and think, instead of being swept along by rhetoric, can understand that a budget-- any budget-- is not a record of hard facts but a projection of future financial plans. A budget tells us what will happen if everything works out according to plan.<br /><br />The Congressional Budget Office can only deal with the numbers that Congress supplies. Those numbers may well be consistent with each other, even if they are wholly inconsistent with anything that is likely to happen in the real world.<br /><br />The Obama health care plan can be financed without increasing the federal deficit-- if the administration takes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare. But Medicare itself does not have enough money to pay its own way over time.<br /><br />However money is juggled in the short run, the government's financial liabilities are increased by adding this huge new entitlement of government-provided insurance. The fact that these new financial liabilities can be kept out of the official federal deficit projection, by claiming that they will be paid for with money taken from Medicare, changes nothing in the real world.<br /><br />I can say that I can afford to buy a Rolls Royce, without going into debt, by using my inheritance from a rich uncle. But, in the real world, the question would arise immediately whether I in fact have a rich uncle, not to mention whether this hypothetical rich uncle would be likely to leave me enough money to buy a Rolls Royce.<br /><br />In politics, however, you can say all sorts of things that have no relationship with reality. If you have a mainstream media that sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil-- when it comes to Barack Obama-- you can say that you will pay for a vast expansion of government-provided insurance by taking money from the Medicare budget and using other gimmicks.<br /><br />Whether this administration, or any future administration, will in fact take enough money from Medicare to pay for this new massive entitlement is a question that only the future can answer, regardless of what today's budget projection says. On paper, you can treat Medicare like the hypothetical rich uncle who is going to leave me enough money to buy a Rolls Royce. But only on paper. In real life, you can't get blood from a turnip, and you can't keep on getting money from a Medicare program that is itself running out of money.<br /><br />An even more transparent gimmick is collecting money for the new Obama health care program for the first ten years but delaying the payments of its benefits for four years. By collecting money for 10 years and spending it for only 6 years, you can make the program look self-supporting, but only on paper and only in the short run. This is a game you can play just once, during the first decade. After that, you are going to be collecting money for 10 years and paying out money for 10 years. That is when you discover that your uncle doesn't have enough money to support himself, much less leave you an inheritance to pay for a Rolls Royce.<br /><br />But a postponed revelation is not part of the official federal deficit today. And that provides a talking point, in order to soothe people who take talking points seriously.<br /><br />Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized-- or even recognized-- before it becomes a fait accompli and "the law of the land." Would you buy a used car under these conditions, even if it was a Rolls Royce?<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/03/16/talking_points_vs_realty">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The Slaughter Rule: Yet Another Reason Obamacare Would Be Unconstitutional</b><br /><br />As written, the current health care bill before Congress already is guaranteed to face serious constitutional challenges on enumerated powers, 5th Amendment, racial discrimination, and unequal state treatment. Now the White House seems determined to add a whole new reason courts will throw out Obamacare on sight. Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and former-federal judge Michael McConnell explains:<br /><blockquote> To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.<br /><br /> To be sure, each House of Congress has power to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” Each house can thus determine how much debate to permit, whether to allow amendments from the floor, and even to require supermajority votes for some types of proceeding. But House and Senate rules cannot dispense with the bare-bones requirements of the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.<br /><br /> The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the “exact text” must be approved by one house; the other house must approve “precisely the same text.”<br /><br /> These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism. They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives. Under Section 7, no bill can become law unless it is put up for public vote by both houses of Congress, and under Section 5 “the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question . . . shall be entered on the Journal.” These requirements enable the people to evaluate whether their representatives are promoting their interests and the public good. Democratic leaders have not announced whether they will pursue the Slaughter solution. But the very purpose of it is to enable members of the House to vote for something without appearing to do so. The Constitution was drafted to prevent that.</blockquote><br /><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/15/the-slaughter-rule-yet-another-reason-obamacare-will-be-unconstitutional/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Obama's Health Care 'Victim' Exposed</b><br /><br />At his health care pep rally today, President Obama was introduced by Connie Anderson, sister of Natoma Canfield. The president said it was a touching letter written to him from Canfield that brought him to Ohio. (I'm sure the decision had nothing to do with rustbelt America being the source of Democrats' vote deficit at this point...)<br /><br />In her letter, Canfield described her battle with cancer how she was forced to give up her health insurance after it became too costly--a sad story, to be sure. But, as Gateway Pundit reports, not likely an entirely true story:<br /><blockquote> Natoma Canfield is 50 years old. She was diagnosed with cancer 16 years ago. She quit her job or was laid off 12 years ago. She has reportedly held odd jobs cleaning homes the last few years. Natoma was paying $5,000 a year for her insurance but dropped it after it went up to $8,000. She wrote president Obama in December to tell him about it. She was worried she might lose her home. Some people might say she’s lucky to still have a home after losing her job 12 years ago.<br /><br /> Barack Obama came to Ohio today to prop Natoma up on stage with him. But, Natoma Canfield couldn’t make it. She is back in the hospital. (Our prayers for a quick recovery) She is getting cared for despite the fact that she has no insurance. She’s not out on the street. She’s not a statistic like Rep Alan Grayson would have you believe. Natoma is getting the care she needs.</blockquote><br />And if Canfield were in favor of real reform, she should encourage President Obama to change the tax code to help insurers properly pool risks instead of additional taxation and government subsidies. <br /><br />In addition, if the president really wanted to help people like Ms. Canfield, he would encourage the individual ownership rights over health care plans so the American people can maintain control over their health insurance, not employers or the government.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/blog/g/d149287b-1f9f-4bde-8a28-2eca17790b6f">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The Health Care Plan You are Going to Get</b><br /><br />The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout and apparently bit the Speaker of the House. Ms. Pelosi had a delusional moment the other day, but she was clear on one thing. She never intended to listen to any Republican suggestions regarding the health care bill.<br /><br />Close observation of the Bipartisan Health Care Summit provided clarity within the first half hour that there was not much bipartisan here. After listening to President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, it was obvious that there was no way that they were going to overhaul their 2,400 page (or is it 2,600) health care bill.<br /><br />I recently enlisted expert advice on the issue. My source was Dr. Bill Cassidy, who doubles as the Congressman from the sixth district of Louisiana and is part of the growing breed of medical professionals that refuse to leave the administration of our country to interests hostile to a cost-effective, patient-oriented, health care system. Dr. Cassidy was elected to Congress in 2008 after spending 20 years serving the uninsured in Louisiana’s public hospital system and teaching at LSU’s outstanding medical school. His specialty is gastroenterology and like many other elected physicians, he still sees patients when he’s back in his district. He is one of the very few people in Congress who truly has first-hand knowledge of those that the omnibus health care bill supposedly seeks to help.<br /><br />Dr. Cassidy reminded me of an interesting exchange that confirmed President Obama’s utter ignorance of how markets function. Republicans pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis stated that premiums would rise under the existing proposals. The President initially insisted that this was not true, but then backtracked, arguing that premiums would go up because the new policies would have additional benefits. What the President doesn’t understand is that for each additional mandate – every one of which increases premiums – more and more consumers would no longer be able to afford the policy. Dr. Cassidy pointed out that the price of health care insurance is not inelastic.<br /><br />Dr. Cassidy cited Senator Max Baucus as a prime example of the problem with the proposals. Other than the fact that Senator Baucus had to be tone deaf when he stated that the two sides were not really that far apart – a stunning statement unto itself – he shockingly misstated the reality of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Dr. Cassidy knew that a Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that because the HSA program provides an affordable health insurance alternative, 27% of new HSA participants were previously uninsured. Just think what might happen if HSAs were widely known and encouraged by the government.<br /><br />But what seems to upset Dr. Cassidy the most is that the legislation does not address the largest problem with the health care system. He believes the system needs to be changed from a volume-based to a value-based system. The system has come to this gradually over the last 45 years as government has become more in involved in health care decisions. Doctors today need to treat huge numbers of patients to generate enough revenue to cover their costs. They often don’t have the ability to properly focus on their patients’ needs and may prematurely kick their patient to a specialist or order costly tests. The value-based system that Dr. Cassidy envisions would create greater synergy between doctor and patient, reduce malpractice costs, and provide higher quality service. Unfortunately, Obamacare will force doctors to see even more patients – thereby reducing individual attention even further – because it cuts physician reimbursements to the bone.<br /><br />The largest single challenge centers on how to pay for the plan. The Democrats propose that everyone be required to carry insurance. They blithely assume that everyone will happily buy expensive insurance to subsidize those who have pre-existing conditions. Welcome to Dreamland; there’s no way that healthy young Americans will incur these huge costs, even with the threat of harsh (but obviously unenforceable) penalties.<br /><br />Republicans have offered a far more palatable solution. Instead of arm-twisting middle-class Americans, Republicans propose to focus subsidizes on the limited market of individuals with medical challenges, and allow everyone else to buy competitively-priced products.<br /><br />Dr. Cassidy is one of less than 20 health professionals in Congress able to offer realistic solutions based on their first-hand experience within the health system, but unfortunately, their sensible solutions have fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps the spider that Ms. Pelosi was speaking about had a venomous bite that has driven her to push these disastrous policies. God willing, her colleagues will listen to Dr. Cassidy and the American people. <br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/BruceBialosky/2010/03/15/the_health_care_plan_you_are_going_to_get">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Big rise in complaints about NHS nursing care</b><br /><br /><i>But complaints are usually responded to by bureaucratic coverups and there are no apparent changes</i><br /><br />For 12 months, while her son Kane underwent treatment for cancer, Rita Cronin sat by her youngest child's bedside. She fed him, gave him drinks, washed him and ensured he had a bedpan. And if Rita was unable to be there, husband Peter, daughter Emma or other son Matthew would take over the nursing duties.<br /><br />'We'd learnt, quickly, that if we didn't carry out his basic care then we couldn't rely on the nurses to do so,' says Rita, 50, a civil servant from Balham, South-West London. 'It wasn't just Kane who was affected. We saw buzzers being left out of reach and patients missing meals, as no one had the time to feed them. 'The attitude was that patients had to wait. That nurses had other, more important, things to do. The more you asked for things, the more irritated they seemed to become. The night nurses were the worst - they were always "too busy" even to bring a bedpan. But the day ones were often unhelpful, too.'<br /><br />St George's hospital, in Tooting, where Kane was a patient, 'is an award-winning hospital, yet we may as well have been in a third-world country for the nursing care my son got,' says Rita.<br /><br />Strong words, but Rita is, tragically, qualified to say them. For three days after being admitted to the hospital for a hip replacement, her 22-year-old son was dead from dehydration. Kane had suffered brain cancer - while treatment was successful, the chemotherapy and radiotherapy had weakened his bones, causing him to the need the surgery. The cancer had affected his pituitary gland, which regulates the body's mechanisms, such as hydration. So, Kane was on desmopressin, medication to control the flow of fluid in his body. We later discovered that the day Kane was admitted in to hospital was the last time he took desmopressin,' says Rita.<br /><br />Following his hip operation, a routine test showed Kane's sodium levels were high; his fluid levels were out of balance. A ward nurse was told this by the hospital lab, but she went off duty without sorting out treatment. He began begging for water. When his requests were turned down he became - understandably - aggressive. Inexplicably, instead of reading his notes which would have indicated the problem, nurses called security staff who restrained him.<br /><br />An increasingly desperate Kane then rang the police and begged for help to get a drink. The police turned up, but were sent away by nurses who reassured them Kane was confused.<br /><br />By the time Rita went to see him before work the next day, it was clear her son was very ill. 'The night nurse was standing outside the room handing over to the day nurse and I said I thought Kane was really ill,' she says. 'It was clear she thought I was being neurotic and said he was fine.'<br /><br />It wasn't until the ward doctor appeared on his rounds, nearly 15 minutes later, that suddenly everything changed. He took one look at Kane and quickly called for help.'<br /><br />The post mortem revealed Kane had died from dehydration. Rita has other ideas, and so, it seems, does the coroner who adjourned the inquest, calling the police in to investigate.<br /><br />'Kane died because of sheer incompetence of the nurses who failed to do their job,' says Rita. 'I found out later that the nurses were offered counselling. They should have been in another job.'<br /><br />Over the past few years there have been far too many similar accounts. Despite all the money poured into the NHS, and the proliferation of training, job titles and initiatives, it seems patient experience is not improving. Poor nursing care was a key factor in the 400 deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, according to the recent official investigation. Staff numbers were allowed to fall 'dangerously low', causing nurses to neglect the most basic care. While many staff did their best, others showed a disturbing lack of compassion to patients, said Robert Francis QC, heading the inquiry.<br /><br />Basic nursing care and lack of hygiene have also been blamed for 70 deaths at Basildon University Hospital, where the Care Quality Commission, the health service regulator, found, among other basic failings, blood-splattered equipment and patients lying on stained and soiled mattresses.<br /><br />And statistics would suggest they are not one-offs. Complaints about nurses have risen by 18.9per cent in the past year, according to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) , the profession's regulatory body. Although the organisation points out that this figure represents just 0.2 per cent of their total membership, the fact is complaints investigated by them have risen by 30 per cent since 2005.<br /><br />Experts think the problem is actually far more endemic than even these figures suggest, as many people don't know about the NMC - and instead complain through the hospital system. 'Even then, many incidents are not investigated properly,' says Vanessa Bourne, of the Patients' Association. 'Answers to complaints generally fall into one of two categories; either the letter will say: "You haven't been able to name the nurses responsible so we can't investigate". Or, "you have named the nurses responsible, but they deny any wrong-doing, so we can't take the investigation further".<br /><br />'The NHS managers and nursing bodies like to say this poor treatment is from a minority of nurses, but it is more about a fundamental lack of decent nursing leadership and a refusal to admit that mistakes are being made. 'When the Staffordshire scandal broke last year, we were inundated with a deluge of heartbreaking cases where people had received careless, sloppy or even rude and cruel treatment at hospitals up and down the country, and where no investigation had ever been carried out. 'The Department of Health bring out endless guidelines and initiatives on patient satisfaction and safety, but our complaint rate doesn't drop.'<br /><br />Nurses themselves are also concerned about levels of care. A recent survey for the Nursing Times found that only a third of nurses were confident the poor standards at Mid Staffordshire weren't being repeated to some degree in their own hospitals.<br /><br />Last week, the government published the first comprehensive report on the profession in 40 years. The Commission into the future of nursing and midwifery made some recommendations on how nursing could be improved for the 'new challenges ahead'.<br /><br />While it was initiated before the recent scandals broke, there's no doubt those events were key to its proposals. 'Events like Mid Staffs do tend to focus the mind,' says Heather Lawrence, a former nurse, now chief executive of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and a member of the commission. 'And I would agree that in some areas of the country - not all - patient trust has been eroded. As a result there has now been an acceptance within the NHS that the way some wards have been managed has not always been in the patients' best interests.'<br /><br />In order to help restore patient trust, the Commission wants all nurses to pledge their "commitment to society and service users... to give high-quality care to all and tackle unacceptable variations in standards". 'The Commission is clear that high-quality, safe and compassionate care must rise to the top of the agenda for a 21st-century worldclass NHS,' said health minister and commission chair Ann Keen.<br /><br />It begs the question: if high-quality, safe and compassionate care is not a priority for some nurses, why are they nursing at all? 'We welcome the pledge, but it is a sad indictment that there is a need for one in the first place,' says Vanessa Bourne. 'Patients should expect compassion.'<br /><br />'The bottom line is that in Mid Staffs - - and we believe in many other hospitals, still - - there was a culture of nurses saying "its not my job". But if everyone says that, then the job - whether it's feeding a patient, or getting them a bed pan simply doesn't get done. 'Nursing is about rolling up your sleeves and caring and too many nurses seem to forget that. 'Our response would be that if you don't want to do the nitty-gritty of spoon-feeding an elderly patient or changing soiled sheets, then don't go into nursing.<br /><br />'Employers also have to accept that not everyone who comes into nursing will be cut out for the job. I was told by a university nursing tutor that some trainees on her course who were clearly not suited to nursing and not interested in caring, but it was impossible to remove them because of funding complications.<br /><br />So what is the solution? The official response is that we need better leadership - giving ward sisters more authority. 'One of the things we found was that on many wards there was no one figure who had the authority to properly lead the ward,' says Heather Lawrence. 'In the Mid Staffs inquiry it was discovered that one nursing sister was in charge for three wards - an impossible task.'<br /><br />Nurses acknowledge leadership is part of the problem; and the solution. The Nursing Standard magazine (the nurse's own trade magazine) is campaigning to boost the authority and status of ward sisters. 'All these NHS scandals have a common theme,' says editor Graham Scott. 'There was not a clear, identifiable person in charge of the ward. 'We have ward sisters, specialist nurses and nurse specialists, nurse consultants and modern-day matrons. No wonder people get confused about who is in charge.'<br /><br />But will such a simple solution make the wards a better and safer place for patients? According to Graham Scott, it will. 'Research shows that on a ward where there is an identifiable - and, most importantly, accountable - person in charge, patients have a much better experience,' he says.<br /><br />The finger of blame is also being pointed at healthcare assistants, who do the basic caring jobs, such as washing, feeding and changing bedpans. 'Some NHS Trusts do train nursing assistants properly,' explains Graham Scott. Others don't. Cleaning, washing and feeding a patient are actually quite complex tasks.'<br /><br />The Commission recommended these staff need some form of regulation to ensure high-quality care. 'We have to be careful about blaming the healthcare assistants,' says Bourne. 'After all, they are supposed to be supervised by the nurses.'<br /><br />But will any of this make a real --difference? It seems there will be no legal recommendations to abide by the regulations. 'We do tend to raise our eyebrows at these recommendations,' notes Bourne. 'There is a big noise about them, and then everything goes back to how it was. We still get horror stories like poor Kane's. We are told things will change and they don't.'<br /><br />Indeed St George's has told Rita Cronin they've made changes to ensure what happened to her son can never happen again. 'But what exactly are these changes?' she asks. 'My son suffered a needless death. How I do know that the same thing isn't happening to someone else?'<br /><br />A spokesman for the hospital said: "We are extremely sorry about the death of Kane Gorny. 'From the investigation it was clear that there had been failures in communication between clinical staff. Disciplinary action did result from our findings and a number of important changes have been introduced to help prevent such a tragic incident from happening again.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1258209/Nurses-As-neglect-cases-fuel-30-rise-complaints-ask-caring-profession.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-25880594550299903842010-03-16T01:06:00.000+11:302010-03-16T01:07:03.260+11:30<br><br /><b>Democratic leaders say health bill will pass</b><br /><br />Democratic leaders scrambled Sunday to pull together enough support in the House for a make-or-break decision on health-care reform later this week, expressing optimism that a package will soon be signed into law by President Obama despite a lack of firm votes for passage.<br /><br />The rosy predictions of success, combined with the difficult realities of mustering votes, underscore the gamble that the White House and congressional Democrats are poised to make in an attempt to push Obama's health-care plans across the finish line. The urgency of the effort illustrates growing agreement among Democratic leaders that passing the legislation is key to limiting damage to the party during this year's perilous midterm elections.<br /><br />But House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pledged to do "everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill." He also joined other Republicans Sunday in warning that Democrats would pay for the legislation by losing even more seats than expected in November.<br /><br />The most optimistic talk on Sunday came from the White House. Obama senior adviser David Axelrod predicted that Democrats "will have the votes to pass this," and press secretary Robert Gibbs declared that "this is the climactic week for health-care reform."<br /><br />But Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the Democrats' chief head-counter in the House, cautioned that the party has not yet found the 216 votes needed to win approval of the health-care bill passed by the Senate in December. "We don't have them as of this morning, but we've been working this thing all weekend," Clyburn said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I'm also very confident that we'll get this done."<br /><br />Democratic leaders are struggling to assemble support amid opposition to the Senate legislation from conservative Democrats, who object to abortion-related language in the bill, and from liberals, who are disappointed about the lack of a public insurance option and other measures. Obama has postponed a trip to Indonesia and Australia to help whip up support for the package.<br /><br />Republicans pressed ahead Sunday with a battery of arguments against the Democratic plans, saying that polls show firm public opposition to the legislation and that Senate leaders are using parliamentary gimmicks in an attempt to win final passage. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has signaled a willingness to work with the administration on immigration and detention issues, said Obama's "arrogant" push for health-care reform has divided the country and threatens bipartisan cooperation.<br /><br />"When it comes to health care, he's been tone-deaf, he's been arrogant and they're pushing a legislative proposal and a way to that legislative proposal that's going to destroy the ability of this country to work together for a very long time," Graham said on ABC's "This Week."<br /><br />The Democrats' strategy calls for the House to pass the Senate version of reform, followed by consideration of a package of fixes to that legislation known as a reconciliation bill. The fixes must meet specific budget requirements allowing it to be approved in the Senate with a simple majority vote. The approach avoids having to muster 60 votes to overcome a threatened GOP filibuster; Democrats control 59 seats.<br /><br />House Democrats expect to receive a final cost estimate by Monday afternoon, when the House Budget Committee is scheduled to vote on the reconciliation package. It would then go to the House Rules Committee, where Chairman Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) could package it with the $875 billion measure the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. The package is also expected to include Obama's proposed overhaul of the student-loan system.<br /><br />The full House is expected to vote on both measures by week's end, with the climactic moment coming as soon as Thursday but, more likely, Friday or Saturday, aides said.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031402793.html?hpid=topnews">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>An undead corpse</b><br /><br />Almost nobody is happy with what Sarah Palin dismisses as President Obama's "hopey-changy stuff," but the worst outbreak of hopey-changy just won't stay dead. The president's health care "reform," regarded as road kill only a month ago, is headed for a close vote in the House that he might still win.<br /><br />There's abundant evidence that Mr. Obama's toxic agenda seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes. Democrats with a bad case of nerves (this includes most of them) finally admit that Obamacare has "problems," and several Democratic office-holders in Missouri suddenly had business elsewhere when the president showed up for a rally in St. Louis this week. Robin Carnahan, the Missouri secretary of state who is the leading Democratic candidate in pursuit of the Senate seat that Kit Bond, a Republican, is relinquishing, wanted ever so to be there but she had to wash her hair, or buy a stamp, or couldn't find a taxi to get to the airport for a flight home. Or whatever.<br /><br />Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, got roughed up at a tea party and is running now against the Democratic Party. "I don't answer to my party," she says. "I answer to Arkansas." Actually, she slavishly answered to her party until she stumbled into the tea party, and, as they say down on the farm, "got a little religion." Her free fall in the public-opinion polls continues.<br /><br />The president no doubt feels her pain, since it's similar to his own. A new Gallup Poll finds that the president's approval rating has fallen to 46 percent, against a 45 percent disapproval. Some polls find bad news worse than that. Some Democrats ask bluntly whether Mr. Obama is losing his base. Indeed, the only people more contemptuous of the president than the conservatives are the liberals on the president's left-most flank. A growing number of them, even those who insist on calling themselves progressives, warn - or boast - that they've had it with the messiah of Hyde Park and intend to pay him back in November with the handiest club they can find, i.e., sacrificial congressional candidates.<br /><br />"The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now in shock," Chris Bowland of Santa Rosa, Calif., once a community activist like Barack Obama, tells USA Today. "It's very clear that the party hates us and has no respect for [the] base. ... Obama has broken his campaign promises and now, 'We've had it. I'm done.' "<br /><br />The conventional rap on the president is that he has been aloof and disengaged, reluctant to impose discipline and leadership, and allowed his radical agenda to drift into the congressional swamp presided over by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.<br /><br />But wait. Maybe he hasn't been so disengaged as the conventional wisdom supposes. His strategy of imposing no discipline on Congress may be a deliberate act of leadership. Barack Obama came to Washington with an agenda from his community-organizing days. He made his bones with Saul Alinsky, the evangelist of radical politics who put down the blueprint for making America over into a European-style welfare state, with commissars empowered to supervise every detail of how Americans would live lives regimented for their own good. The debate over health care reform has been messy and often chaotic, but here we are a year later and Barack Obama and his radical agenda might yet win. If it does, he will have put in place the structure for taking over everything else.<br /><br />His remark several months ago that he was willing to be a one-term president if that's what it takes to reorder America was dismissed as an irrelevancy, an aside from a man having a bad hair day. But the remark revealed an insight into the man and his mission. Karl Rove, "the architect" of George W. Bush's two successful campaigns, thinks an Obama victory over Obamacare would be a pyrrhic victory, that it might insure a Republican takeover of both House and Senate. Perhaps. But it might be a price that the president is willing to pay to get his structure in place.<br /><br />The Republicans could come to office determined to repeal the monstrous "reform," but that would be easier said than done. A new Republican Congress wouldn't have the numbers to override a presidential veto. Besides, boldness is not a Republican virtue. The Republican takeover of '94 is not a reassuring omen. Killing the corpse graveyard-dead is easier now.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/12/pruden-tis-better-to-kill-the-health-care-corpse-n">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b> If the Democrats break it, they bought it</b><br /><br />If Obamacare passes this week, every American will rightly blame every problem they have with American medicine in the future on the Democrats.<br /><br />Every inability to get an appointment with a specialist or even a general practitioner. Every increase in insurance rates. Every incomprehensible bill received. Every pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription without charge or with the drug called for with the pill actually prescribed by the doctor. And especially every inability to actually get insurance or treatment.<br /><br />Democrats from the president and the House speaker on down have told us over and over again that Obamacare is the salvation of American medicine. When it turns out not to be, and premiums skyrocket and the supply of doctors dwindles, the ownership of the scheme and the method of its passage -- by partisan trickery after clear expressions of voter will in polling and at polls in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey -- will embed in every voter.<br /><br />"You break it, you bought it" is a phrase familiar to and accepted by most Americans. Democrats are about to break American health care -- which is extraordinary in the cures it delivers and works quite well for hundreds of millions of Americans -- and they are doing so for partisan reasons.<br /><br />The consequences of the jam-down, if it succeeds, will reshape American politics. Five Ohio Democratic members of Congress, for example, face a choice this week between the demands of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president, and the desires of their constituents. <br /><br />Zack Space, Charles Wilson, Marcy Kaptur, Steve Driehaus and John Boccieri have districts that range across the Buckeye State, but each of those districts could easily turn red this fall and punish the members who voted for the deeply unpopular Obamacare. Space, Wilson, Kaptur, Driehaus and Boccieri are being asked to vote for the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase and special deals for Florida's elderly, but not Ohio's. Are they that deeply in Pelosi's pocket?<br /><br />At least 50 House Democrats, from Tim Bishop on Long Island, N.Y., to Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., are in the same bind, but the Ohio representatives come from a state that is reeling from job loss and is seeing a sharp turn back to common sense, led by the campaigns of John Kasich for governor and Rob Portman for senator. A wave is building in Ohio, and a vote for Obamacare will only increase the exposure of these incumbents.<br /><br />Rank-and-file Democrats in office all across the country have to be asking themselves, why this rush to self-destruct? Not only will a "triumph" on Obamacare cost the party its huge majorities in both houses in 2010, it will saddle the party with the legacy of damaging American health care that will define it for generations.<br /><br />This is the sort of risk that has brought other major legislative overhauls forward under bipartisan banners. In recent decades, the prescription drug benefit, No Child Left Behind and welfare reform advanced major change with bipartisan backing from Congress, thus immunizing either party from the political costs of major change.<br /><br />But those programs were small compared with the massive assault on American medicine reaching its crucial vote this week. If enough congressional arms are twisted and the savaging of American medicine proceeds, it has "Democrat" written all over it. And from that day forward, every tragedy that isn't averted because a doctor wasn't there or a medicine hadn't been developed or a hospital had been obliged to close will be the fault of Democrats who gambled with the lives of Americans even as the country fairly screamed, "Don't do it."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/If-the-Democrats-break-it_-they-bought-it-87619767.html">SOURCE</a> <br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Obama's sick obsession</b><br /><br />Nationalized health care is the progressives' Golden Fleece. It is their obsession, the ultimate prize that was denied to previous administrations but is closer than it ever has been. As the ability of government to take over the health care system draws tantalizingly near, the president and leaders of the majority party have become infected with a kind of mania. President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders seem determined to ram through a severely flawed piece of legislation by any means necessary, heedless of the desires of the American people or the negative impact on the system they mistakenly say needs to be saved.<br /><br />A large majority of Americans are satisfied with their current health care plans, though most also think the system could be improved. Yet proponents of the Democrats' radical health care overhaul brazenly claim the system is irretrievably broken and only radical surgery will save it. According to the latest Gallup poll numbers, less than a fifth of even those who favor health reform agree with that position. The majority of Americans are divided between those who want a scaled-back health care measure and those who want the current project dropped entirely. If any system is broken, it is the legislative process.<br /><br />Long-time Democratic pollsters Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen warned last week that "the battle for public opinion has been lost" on heath care. Democrats have backed themselves into a corner. If the bill fails, they suffer a defeat. But if they win, they also lose because Democrats "will face a far greater calamitous reaction" in November. "Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes," they caution.<br /><br />But the glittering prize is too near for such sage counsel. The liberal leadership is infused with a sense of mission. They are the midwives to history, shepherding landmark legislation that will revise the American social contract and usher in a new era, or some such foolishness. All they need to do is pass the bill, and the poor, frightened, deluded American people will see the wisdom of their decisions. Hence House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's memorable (and revealing) comment, "We have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it." In her imagination, once the bill is signed, voters won't remember the struggle, just the glow of the accomplishment. Rip off the bandage; you'll feel better after the sting.<br /><br />The Democrats' headlong drive is leading to bouts of political insanity, such as the aptly named Slaughter rule, which potentially could allow the House of Representatives to "deem" the health bill passed without a final vote. That the Democratic leadership would consider resorting to such a stunt betrays a high degree of contempt for the electorate, whom they presumably think will not remember or care that their representatives would not go on the record on such a major piece of legislation.<br /><br />Disaffected voters, however, will recognize cowardice for what it is. Add to this the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the backroom dealing, special-interest loopholes and fundamental unsoundness of placing government at the center of the health care system, and November will be a slaughter indeed.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/13/obamas-sick-obsession/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Betrayal of 20,000 cancer patients: British rationing body rejects ten drugs (allowed in Europe) that could have extended lives</b><br /><br />Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday. The rationing body NICE has failed to keep a promise to make more life-extending drugs available. Treatments used widely in the U.S. and Europe have been rejected on grounds of cost-effectiveness, yet patients and their loved ones have seen the NHS waste astronomical sums. Last week it emerged that £21billion - a fifth of the entire annual budget - was spent on failed schemes to tackle inequality. <br /><br />NICE, the National Institute of health and Clinical Excellence, promised a year ago to make it easier for drugs for rarer cancers to be approved. But since then four drugs which could have benefited 16,000 people have been turned down outright and a further six which could have helped 4,000 more have been provisionally rejected. Just five drugs have been accepted - benefiting 8,500 people - says a damning report by the Rarer Cancers Forum. Drugs for rarer forms of cancer are often much more expensive than those for common tumours because pharmaceutical companies cannot make economies of scale.<br /><br />NICE's promise to approve more drugs was in response to widespread anger over its rejection of sunitinib, also known as Sutent, for advanced kidney cancer - even though it had been proved to double the life expectancy of patients compared to standard treatments.<br /><br />Andrew Wilson, chief executive of the Rarer Cancers Forum, said: 'Although progress has been made, there is still more to do. 'It is unacceptable that thousands of patients are still missing out on the treatment they need, and their doctors want to give them, because NICE has decided that their treatment does not meet some arbitrary criteria. 'The changes introduced by NICE should be benefiting more patients than they are. An urgent review of NICE's processes is needed.'<br /><br />The RCF also says NICE works so slowly that it takes 21 months to decide on a drug, during which time many patients die. This is despite promises from NICE bosses to get the decision time down to six months by the end of this year. Mike Hobday, head of campaigns at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: 'The system is failing people with rarer cancers. It's time for a more flexible approach.'<br /><br />NICE's treatment of rarer cancer drugs contrasts sharply with its breast cancer drug herceptin, which has received far more funding following successful campaigns. If a patient is refused a drug, they are allowed in many cases to appeal to their primary care trust. But the RCF report uncovered a huge postcode lottery, with some trusts much more likely to back down on appeal. Of 62 PCTs, 11 approved all drugs and two approved none. And while 26 per cent of English patients have their 'exceptional case' requests rejected, the figure in Scotland is just 11 per cent.<br /><br />The RCF says appeals are so expensive in terms of staff time that it would be cheaper just to give everyone the drugs they want. Its report also warns: 'PCTs are frequently using inappropriate processes to determine funding applications and a small minority of commissioners may be breaking the law by operating a blanket ban on the funding of treatments outside their licensed indication.'<br /><br />In Bromley, for example, cancer treatments were less likely to be funded than cosmetic procedures. Another difference between PCTs is that some reimburse the cost of any private treatment but others do not.<br /><br />NICE said last night: 'We have introduced significant additional latitude in appraisal of treatments for cancer, particularly where they are designed to extend life. 'Our End of Life Treatments protocol, introduced at the beginning of 2009, has already made it possible for very expensive cancer treatments to be recommended when our standard approach would have resulted in more cautious guidance.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1257944/NICE-rejects-cancer-drugs-extended-patients-lives.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>British retirees died after 'hospital staff ignored warnings over their conditions'</b><br /><br />Two patients died after hospital staff repeatedly ignored warnings over their conditions, including one who choked on his false teeth, nursing chiefs admitted. Staff at Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, East Sussex, “could have done better” to prevent the deaths of two pensioners last year after failing to follow basic procedures, officials admitted.<br /><br />After a corner’s damning ruling that staff at the hospital were guilty of repeated mismanagement and miscommunication, officials have made "major changes" <i>[major bulldust, more likely]</i> to nursing care and apologised to the patients' families.<br /><br />An inquest at Hove Crown Court had heard that Brian Waller, 72, died after falling out of bed in April last year while a month later Edward Warneford, 66, died in the same ward after choking on his false teeth. In her ruling Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, the local coroner, strongly criticised the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, and said changes needed to be urgently made.<br /><br />The inquest last month heard that Mr Waller, who was being treated for heart problems, fell out of his hospital bed despite wearing a wrist band with "risk of falls" written on it. He had landed on his head, broke his neck and suffered a massive bleed on his brain, which led to his death six days later. It was later discovered one of the guard rails on his bed had been left down. A doctor had also allegedly missed the fracture in his neck and cleared him to return to his ward, the inquest heard.<br /><br />Mr Warneford, a former engineer, from Hove, East Sussex, died because staff did not even realise he was wearing dentures, his sister claimed. April Moss, 62, from Gosport, Hampshire, claimed her brother, who had alcohol problems, then choked on them as he ate, causing him to have a fatal heart attack.<br /><br />Sherree Fagge, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals’ chief nurse, admitted on Friday that staff could have done better. "We are however profoundly aware that for both Mr Waller and Mr Warneford we could have done better and we have met with both their families to apologise, listen to their concerns and assure them that lessons have been learned,” she said. "We have introduced some major changes focused completely on the quality of our nursing care. Every week all of our most senior nurses, including myself, are working on the wards undertaking direct patient care alongside front line nursing staff. "What I see … is that the majority of our nurses are working hard and carrying out their duties with the kindness and compassion we would want for our own families.” <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/7429713/Pensioners-died-after-hospital-staff-ignored-warnings-over-their-conditions.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-82079400488435937892010-03-15T01:39:00.000+11:302010-03-15T01:40:00.888+11:30<br><br /><b>Why the Health Bill Makes No Sense</b><br /><br />So it's come down to this -- desperate Democratic leaders strong-arming members on the worst bill ever before they go home to explain to constituents why they decided to commit political suicide. We've said just about all we've had to say on this issue -- actually dating back to 1993-94, when we wrote nearly 100 editorials in opposition to HillaryCare. Since January of last year, we've weighed in 150 more times against the latest version of socialized medicine. But to review, here are just 15 reasons why a government takeover of the finest medical system in the world makes no sense at all:<br /><br />1. The people don't want it! This, we would think, should have some bearing on decision-making. Yet the Democrats forge ahead without consent of the governed. In the latest Rasmussen poll, 53% opposed the Democrats' reform while 42% were in favor. More than four in 10 "strongly" opposed; just two in 10 "strongly" favored. This jibes with other surveys, including our own IBD/TIPP Poll, taken since last year.<br /><br />2. Doctors don't want it! A survey we took last summer of 1,376 practicing physicians found that 45% would consider leaving their practices or taking early retirements if the Democrats' reform became law. In December, the results were validated by a Medicus poll in which 25% of doctors said they'd retire early if a public option is implemented and another 21% would stop practicing even though they were far from their retirement years. Even if the bill doesn't have a "public option," nearly 30% said they'd quit the profession under the plans being considered.<br /><br />3. Half the Congress doesn't want it! Not a single Republican backed the health care bill that cleared the Senate on Christmas Eve 60-39. House passage was by a slim 220 to 215, and the lone Republican "aye" has since switched to "no." Columnist Michael Barone says other changes would put the House vote today at 216-215 in favor, and he has doubts Democrats can even muster 216.<br /><br />House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her job of securing yes votes even more difficult last week when she told a meeting of county officials that "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it." Members of Congress aren't waiting: They've already exempted themselves from whatever they inflict on us.<br /><br />4. People are happy with the health care they've got! Polls show that 84% of Americans have health insurance and that few are displeased with what they've got. Last month, the St. Petersburg Times looked at eight polls and reported that satisfaction rates averaged 87%.<br /><br />5. It doesn't even cover the people they set out to cover! Supporters of government-run health care say there are as many as 47 million Americans 9 million to 10 million of them illegal aliens without medical insurance. The Democrats' plans, however, will put only 31 million of the uninsured under coverage.<br /><br />6. Costs will go up, not down! Democrats say their plans will cost less than $1 trillion over the first decade. But analyst Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute puts the cost at $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years. Even if we go with the government's lower estimates, the cost is already on the rise. A new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts the cost of the Senate bill at $875 billion over 10 years, $4 billion more than its original projection. Imagine how fast costs would soar if one of the bills became public policy.<br /><br />7. Real cost controls are nowhere to be found! The Democrats are offering no meaningful tort reform that will help push down the high malpractice insurance premiums that are a burden to doctors and their patients. Nor are they considering any other cost-saving provisions, such as allowing the sale of individual health plans across state lines or easing health insurance mandates.<br /><br />8. Insurance premiums will rise, not fall! One goal of nationalizing health care is to lower costs, to bend the spending curve downward. Yet, as Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin acknowledged Wednesday, that won't be the case.<br /><br />"Anyone who would stand before you and say, 'Well, if you pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are going down,' I don't think is telling the truth," he said from the Senate floor. "I think it is likely they would go up."<br /><br />An analysis completed by the CBO at the request of Sen. Evan Bayh confirms Durbin's suspicions. Insurance coverage in the individual market will "be about 10% to 13% higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law," it concluded.<br /><br />9. Medicare is already bankrupting us! The Medicare trust fund, which has unfunded obligations of $37.8 trillion, will be insolvent in 2017. How can lawmakers justify another entitlement that will cost trillions when they can't pay for existing liabilities?<br /><br />10. There aren't enough doctors now! Last month, 26% of physicians responding to a Web poll on Sermo.com, which calls itself "the largest online physician community," said they had been forced to close, or were considering closing, their solo practices. Providing coverage for an additional 31 million Americans when the number of doctors is shrinking won't improve our health care.<br /><br />11. The doctor-patient relationship will be wrecked! The latest IBD/TIPP Poll, taken just last week, found that Americans, by a wide 48%-26% margin, believe the doctor-patient relationship will decline if the Democrats' plan is passed.<br /><br />12. Medical care will also deteriorate! IBD/TIPP has also found that 51% of Americans believe care would get worse under government control. Only 10.5% said they felt it would improve. In our doctor poll, 72% disagreed with administration claims that the government could cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.<br /><br />13. Rationing of care is inevitable! Health care is not an unlimited resource and must be rationed, either by the individual, providers or government. In Britain and Canada, where the government does the rationing, medical treatment waiting lists are sometimes deadly and quite often excessively long.<br /><br />For instance, late cancer diagnoses in an overcrowded public health care system cause up to 10,000 needless deaths a year in Britain. The reasons cited for the late diagnoses include doctor delay, delay in primary care, system delay and delay in secondary care.<br /><br />14. Private health insurers will be destroyed! Added mandates and price controls will force many insurers to simply get out of the health plan business because it will no longer be profitable.<br /><br />15. It's probably unconstitutional! One way to help bring down the number of uninsured is to demand that those without coverage buy health plans. But the government has never passed a law requiring Americans to buy any good or service. Constitutional scholars say any such mandate would likely draw a legal challenge.<br /><br /><a href="http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=NzQ4NTQ5NA==">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Top Democrat Implies Obama Not ‘Telling the Truth’ about Health Care Premiums</b><br /><br /> Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday contradicted President Barack Obama on whether the health care reform bill will lead to a decrease in health care premiums. Durbin claimed that rates would go up, while the president said the rates would go down. “Anyone who would stand before you and say well, if you pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are going down, I don't think is telling the truth. I think it is likely they would go up, but what we are trying to do is slow the rate of increase,” Durbin said, speaking on the Senate floor.<br /> <br />Compare Durbin’s remarks to what President Barack Obama said during a speech at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., on Monday: “Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people’s premiums and brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next decade because we’re spending our health care dollars more wisely,” the president said. “Those aren’t my numbers. Those aren’t my numbers --they are the savings determined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress for what things cost,” Obama added.<br /> <br />But as CNSNews.com reported, the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate health care bill indicates that it would impose a mandatory $15,000 annual fee on middle-class families that earn greater than 400 percent annually of the federal poverty level. That means $88,200 for a family of four.<br /> <br />Among the five basic facts that the CBO analysis cites about the bill is that “Your family insurance plan – if your employer drops your coverage and you are forced to buy it on your own – will cost about $15,000 per year when the legislation is in full force in 2016.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=62587">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Dems seek agreement, quick vote on health care</b><br /><br /> Under White House pressure to act swiftly, House and Senate Democratic leaders reached for agreement Friday on President Barack Obama's health care bill, sweetened suddenly by fresh billions for student aid and a sense that breakthroughs are at hand. "It won't be long," before lawmakers vote, predicted Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She said neither liberals' disappointment over the lack of a government health care option nor a traditional mistrust of the Senate would prevent passage in the House.<br /><br />At the White House, officials worked to maximize Obama's influence over lawmakers who control the fate of legislation that has spawned a yearlong struggle. They announced he would make a campaign-style appearance in Ohio next week to pitch his health care proposals, as well as delay his departure for an Asian trip later in the month.<br /><br />With Democrats deciding to incorporate changes in student aid into the bill, Republicans suddenly had a new reason to oppose legislation they have long sought to scuttle. "Well of course it's a very bad idea," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "We now have the government running banks, insurance companies, car companies, and they do want to take over the student loan business." He said it was symptomatic of Democrats' determination to have the government expand its tentacles into absolutely everything."<br /><br />At its core, the health care bill is designed to provide health care to tens of millions who lack it and ban insurance companies from denying medical coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Obama also wants the measure to begin to slow the rate of growth in medical costs nationwide. Most people would have to get insurance by law, and families earning up to $88,000 would receive subsidies.<br /><br />Whatever the outcome, there was no doubt the issue would reverberate into this fall's elections, with control of Congress at stake. The health care bill appeared on the cusp of passage in early January, but was derailed when Senate Republicans won a Senate seat in Massachusetts, and with it, the strength needed to sustain a filibuster and block a final vote.<br /><br />In the weeks since, the White House and Democrats have embarked on a two-part rescue strategy. It calls for the House to pass legislation that cleared the Senate in December, despite numerous objections, and for both houses to follow immediately with a second bill that makes changes to the first. The second, fix-it bill would be drafted under rules that strip Senate Republicans of the ability to require Democrats produce a 60-vote majority.<br /><br />Obama outlined numerous requested changes several weeks ago, many of them designed to satisfy the concerns of House Democrats. They would increase subsidies for lower income families who cannot afford insurance; give additional money to states that provide higher-than-average benefits under Medicaid, and gradually close a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug program used by millions of seniors.<br /><br />Congressional officials said all three issued would be addressed in the fix-it bill, although other administration requests remained in doubt. The president wants creation of a commission with authority to force savings in Medicare and Medicaid, for example, and is seeking the deletion of items sought by individual senators. Those were among the issues still in dispute after days of secretive talks involving the White House and House and Senate leaders.<br /><br />The decision to add far-reaching student aid changes to the bill had its roots in obscure parliamentary rules governing the Senate's debate of the legislation. But House Democrats and the White House quickly seized on it as a way to advance a top administration priority that lacks the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate otherwise. The measure would require the government to originate student loans, closing out a role for banks and other private lenders who charge a fee. Obama proposed taking the savings and plowing it into higher Pell Grants that go to needy college students. Officials said that under current estimates, the change would free as much as $66 billion over a decade, although Pelosi indicated she wanted it spread beyond Pell Grants to other education programs.<br /><br />At a news conference, the speaker confessed to being disappointed that the legislation would not include a government-run health care option, but said other parts of the legislation would hold insurance companies accountable. The tussle over a public option roiled Democrats for months, but has subsided in recent weeks. "We've crossed that bridge," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. "Those people who were saying 'public option' are muted right now. That's done. It's not going to happen. They've hit the mute button."<br /><br />At a closed-door meeting of the rank-and-file, House Democratic leaders sought to allay concerns that Senate Democrats might simply refuse to pass the fix-it bill after the House swallows the measure it doesn't like. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., said party leaders told the House caucus they have "a firm commitment" from the Senate to do its part.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EDAO7G1&show_article=1">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Dereliction of Duty</b><br /><br />How many flavors of crazy is it for President Obama and Democrat leaders to continue the forced march toward a vote on a health care bill despised by the majority of Americans? The New York Times lays out what's happening: "Leaving a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, lawmakers said they had received few details about what would be in the [health care] legislation, on which they may be asked to vote in the next week or two".<br /><br />Got that? This is legislation that would remake fully 1/6 of the US economy, and the House members who are being pushed to vote on it aren't even sure about what's in its final version. How, under any circumstances, can voting in favor of this -- given the rush, the uncertainty about the bill's contents, not to mention its effects (and including the widespread, fierce opposition to it) -- be anything other than a dereliction of duty?<br /><br />Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn that passing the legislation will be a political disaster for the Democrats. Frankly, the point is so obvious that it's frightening that it needs to be made.<br /><br />But the bigger problem now, for Democrats, is that their interests and President Obama's diverge. Many Blue Dogs can save themselves (and their party) if they take a principled stand against ObamaCare. But the President needs this victory -- in a sense, just to stay in the game. Without it, he's revealed as politically impotent. With it, he can at least comfort himself with his "historic" expansion of the welfare state.<br /><br />Overall, though, the President's in trouble either way this goes. Even if he wins, he's paid a heavy price. First, he's lost the trust of the American people by his willingness to say anythign to get the bill passed; second, he's shown himself willing to ignore the expressed wishes of those he governs; and third, he's revealed himself as arrogant enough to believe that opponents are too stupid to understand what's in the bill -- but once ObamaCare is foisted upon them by the "platonic guardians" in The White House and on Capitol Hill, the ignorant rubes will love it.<br /><br />A President can come back from political defeat. Recovering after losing the trust of the people is much more difficult.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/blog/g/5083a128-b013-48a6-b6df-d211fb204e02">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Health-Care Hell</b><br /><br />by Jonah Goldberg<br /><br />The time for talk is over. So proclaimed the most talkative president in modern memory. I can't remember when Barack Obama said that. Maybe it was during the first "final showdown" on health care. Or maybe it was the third. The fifth? It's so hard to tell when pretty much every week since the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid has proclaimed that it is now Go Time for health-care reform. So you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat skeptical about the possibility that the health-care reform debate is about to come to an end.<br /><br />The president recently said, "Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it." But wait. If everything, pro and con, has been said about the subject, by everybody, that means someone isn't telling the truth, right? I mean, if you've said X and not-X, that means you've probably said something that isn't true.<br /><br />That, at least, is the impression I got this week listening to Obama make his closing arguments for health care at rallies in Pennsylvania and Missouri. It's telling that the president -- long in favor of a single-payer system -- is selling his health-care plan on the grounds that it will increase "choice" and "competition," reduce "government control" and "give you, the American people, more control over your own health insurance."<br /><br />You know your sales pitch for a government takeover of health care hasn't worked when you have to crib rhetoric from free-market Republicans. And that's after you've already tried to pin your plan's unpopularity on the ignorance of the American people.<br /><br />Obama's talking points track reality about as well as the screenplay for "Avatar." Indeed, the same week he was hawking competition, choice and less government, Obama backed a new Health Insurance Rate Authority that would do even more to cement big health insurance companies into their new role as government-run utilities.<br /><br />This latest gambit is of a piece with the White House's demonization of the health-insurance industry. I have no love for that industry myself, but let's get some perspective. As of August, the health-insurance industry ranked 86th in terms of profit margins -- behind anemic industries such as book publishing (38th) specialty eateries (71st) and home furnishing stores (84th), according to data compiled by Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.<br /><br />Insurance companies account for less than 5 percent of American health-care spending -- less than hospitals (31 percent), doctors (21 percent) and medicine (10 percent). But because health-insurance companies are unpopular, Democrats are beating up on them, even though if Democrats are serious about containing costs, the cuts will have to come from those other slices of the pie.<br /><br />But enough with the substance. The health-care debate ceased being about substance a long, long time ago. Fair or not, the Democrats' plan is unpopular, period. There is simply nothing Obama can say that will change that fact before Democrats vote for it. That hasn't stopped him from talking out of every side of his mouth. But outside the Obama bunker, no serious pollster, pundit or pol in Washington disputes this basic point: Obama cannot take the stink off this thing.<br /><br />And that's why the Democrats are contorting themselves like a yoga swami in a hatbox trying to figure out how to pass it. (Note: If it were simply popular among Democrats, it would have passed months ago.) The latest idea involves the "Slaughter Solution" -- named after House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter -- which would allow the House to fix-and-pass the Senate version of the bill without ever voting on the senate version, or something like that.<br /><br />But here's the thing: There is no "over" to this debate. Obama, Pelosi & Co. have demonstrated time and again that no deadline is final if it means losing. Meanwhile, if ObamaCare passes, Republicans will run on a promise to repeal it, and that means we'll be debating health-care reform at least through 2010. Then, depending on how the election goes, the repeal debate will become part of the legislative process. That will in all likelihood carry the debate into the 2012 presidential election. In other words, there will be time for talk as far as the eye can see.<br /><br />Now, part of me thinks this is too cruel a future to contemplate. I can't remember whether it was pederasts or mattress-tag removers, but I'm pretty sure someone in Dante's Inferno is condemned to spend eternity listening to a C-SPAN panel on community rating, preexisting conditions and rate pools. But it's a better prospect than losing. That's one point that has bipartisan support.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2010/03/12/health-care_hell">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Baby twins put in NHS hospitals 50 miles apart</b><br /><br /><i>Because of very limited facilities for premature births</i><br /><br />The parents of two-month-old twins have criticised the NHS for placing their poorly daughters in separate hospitals, 50 miles apart. Stephanie Dawson, 25, and her partner Martin Collins, 38, have to take a 121-mile trip to visit Ruby and Krystal Dawson-Collins, which they said leaves them with just 10 minutes with each daughter. <br /><br />The twins were born at just 26 weeks in Maidstone Hospital, Kent, weighing 1lb 9oz and 2lb 4oz respectively. They were suffering from Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, where one twin gets more blood in the womb than the other. Following their birth by Caesarean section on January 18 they were transferred to a specialist neonatal unit at St Peter's Hospital in Chertsey, Surrey. After a few days Krystal was deemed well enough to be transferred to Pembury Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and split up from her sister.<br /><br />Her parents, who do not have a car, said they were struggling to visit each baby while still caring for their two other children Mitchel, 10, and Kym. They said that even with the help of friends and family the distance means they can only see their frail daughters twice a week as they cannot leave their Maidstone home until they have collected Mitchel from school. Mr Collins said: "We only get about 10 minutes with each of them, a quick update and a stroke of their heads, before we have to get going. <br /><br />"It is so awkward getting up through Pembury then into Surrey. "I would have thought it was better for them to be together and it would be easier for us if they were in one place, even if that was in Surrey. "It's like no one realises we are miles away and don't have a car. It is a real struggle, but for the sake of our family, we cannot lose it."<br /><br />A spokesman for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said the girls needed very specialist care only provided in a handful of hospitals in the South East. He said: "We recognise this is a tough time for Stephanie and Martin and are helping them in any way we can."<br /><br />Dr Paul Crawshaw, clinical director for paediatrics at the Ashford and St Peter's NHS Trust, Surrey, said the separation was a short-term situation. He said: "We always regret the separation of twins and are well aware of the difficulties it is causing the family. "We hope to get them reunited in the very near future."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7436728/Baby-twins-put-in-hospitals-50-miles-apart.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-27453152346238487372010-03-14T00:49:00.000+11:302010-03-14T00:50:43.313+11:30<br><br /><b>Obamacare’s Two Americas</b><br /><br />Here’s the worst thing you probably haven’t heard about President Barack Obama’s health care plan, which he and his allies are about to force through the Congress despite enormous opposition from the American people: it makes everything onetime vice presidential nominee John Edwards once said about the class divide of “two Americas” come true.<br /><br />The dirty little secret of this plan—which wouldn’t be a secret if opponents of this legislative package weren’t distracted by a dozen other wrongheaded policies in it—is that it will bring a major and irreversible upheaval to America’s labor markets. In a time of economic tension, this plan will displace millions of workers and push more people into becoming contract employees, resulting in increased instability for working families.<br /><br />One of the many original stated goals of the White House’s health care reforms was the promise that you can keep your health plan if you like it. However, the White House wanted to give businesses much-needed relief from burdensome health costs. Like the desire to create a new entitlement while reducing the budget deficit, these aims are nearly impossible to reconcile, so Obama chose a path that accomplishes neither.<br /><br />The president’s plan penalizes an employer for not providing insurance, but the government will subsidize the health care of workers without employer-provided insurance. This effectively allows workers to receive the same compensation package they get today, but with government footing the health-benefits part of the bill, so employers have no need to make up the difference in cash.<br /><br />The economic benefits of that subsidy far outweigh the penalties—for low income workers, it can result in an enormous difference of over $17,000 per year.<br /><br />It’s obvious what will happen under this plan: it will not make economic sense for any small business which employs lower-income workers to offer health insurance. And any small business which does so will almost certainly fail, burdened by higher costs than their competitors.<br /><br />This dilemma could be solved by making the penalties more draconian, but that too would cause business failures, and as with the individual insurance mandate, too steep a penalty would make the plan even more coercive and unpopular.<br /><br />As John Goodman of the nonpartisan National Center for Policy Analysis recently described it, “High-paid workers with employer-paid insurance will cluster in some firms, while average- and below-average-wage workers will cluster in others. Overall, ObamaCare will create irresistible economic pressure to restructure the entire labor market.”<br /><br />The only likely outcome of this plan will be for companies to drop coverage entirely. Younger, lower-income workers will be eligible for a subsidy and forced into the health exchanges. That will compel them to do something that doesn’t make economic sense. Most young workers don’t use health care much—unless you give them an incentive to over-consume care by paying for it up front for them.<br /><br />There’s a final step here, though, that’s critical to understand: once those younger and lower-income workers are forced into a system that eliminates rational decision-making, they are made beholden to these taxpayer funded subsidies, and face massive penalties if their income rises such that they lose the subsidies. The marginal tax penalty for an individual moving up from to $40,000 a year to $45,000 is massive, as also for families earning $95,000 versus $90,000, creating an artificial cliff that dramatically penalizes success.<br /><br />Thus a new picture of Obamacare emerges: it will force people to pay for what they don’t want and purchase what they don’t need, in a massive expansion of the size and power of government. The entire proposal functions not as a method of improving care or lowering premiums but as a massive regressive tax falling disproportionately on the young and those on the lower end of the income scale. And once in place, it will trap its supposed beneficiaries in ways that cannot be undone.<br /><br />Combine this regressive tax with a massive increase in spending via a government entitlement which will only grow, and you have a recipe for long-term economic stagnation and the permanent enshrinement of two Americas into our national social policy.<br /><br /><a href="http://newledger.com/2010/03/obamacares-two-americas/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>ObamaCare Nuclear Option Deal Close</b><br /><br />Behind closed doors, the Obama Administration, House and Senate Democrat leaders are cutting a secret deal on ObamaCare. They have come up with a way to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House without any House members having to vote directly on the bill. Now The Hill is reporting that the House and Senate Parliamentarians are helping to advise Democrats on how to pass ObamaCare. When will the self proclaimed most ethical Congress in history start acting ethical and honest? This 111th Congress has proven, to date, to be the most secretive, non-transparent and devious Congress in recent history.<br /><br />I explained in a blog on The Foundry yesterday the unethical procedure being used to pass ObamaCare:<br /><blockquote> House members have come up with a unique way to structure a vote that attempts to avoid the House voting on legislation before it goes to the President. First, the House Budget Committee will report out a reconciliation bill. It is unclear as to whether the Stupak Amendment will be added. This reconciliation measure would be reported for consideration by the House of Representatives as a whole. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would then package the Senate passed Obamacare bill and the House reconciliation measure into one measure. The House rules committee will report out a rule that will allow the Senate passed Obamacare bill to pass the House without a vote. </blockquote><br />This seems to be a violation of the constitutional requirement of Article 1, Section 7. The Constitution states in part “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States.” The House will avoid a direct vote on the Senate passed ObamaCare by passing a self-executing rule that deems ObamaCare to be passed, if the House approves the rule setting up debate on ObamaCare. Under the rule if the reconciliation measure passes, then the Senate passed ObamaCare bill will be deemed to have passed the House without a vote.<br /><br />There is precedent in the House for self-executing rules. In 2007, the House to pass a self-executing rule during the debate on a War Supplemental. Also, during the budget process over the past few years, the House has inserted language into the annual budget resolutions that ”deems” as passed a debt limit increase. This type of rule allows the debt limit to pass the House without a vote and as similar rule would allow teh Senate version of ObamaCare to pass without a vote. <br /><br />Late last night, The Hill reported that “Democrats Nearing Deal on Reconciliation”:<br /><blockquote> House and Senate Democratic leaders and White House officials were optimistic Wednesday evening that they were nearing a deal on a reconciliation package that would smooth the way for them to finally complete health care reform. Congressional leaders and senior administration officials met in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office late in the day to hammer out a deal on reconciliation, meant to act as a sidecar of adjustments to the original $871 billion Senate-passed health care reform bill.</blockquote><br />This meeting was not transparent and not open to the public. Pelosi was behind closed doors in order to cut a deal on a reconciliation measure that the House may consider in the next week or two. Yet again, Democrat leaders have used a closed door secret procedure to craft legislation to impose on Americans.<br /><blockquote> House Democratic leaders will walk their rank and file through portions of the package in a Thursday morning meeting, a leadership aide said.</blockquote><br />This means that only Democrat elites have been part of this negotiation. Not until later today will the House Democrat caucus be allowed to see the reconciliation measure. Republicans need not apply, because they will not be allowed to see the reconciliation measure, until Democrats say so. And for your average American who will have to live under this new health care government run regime, you are not allowed to participate in the legislative process at all.<br /><blockquote> Reid declined to talk specifics as he exited the meeting. But he sounded optimistic that Democratic leaders were on the verge of a deal on the reconciliation package. “We are making progress. A lot of decisions were made,” Reid said. “I really do believe that the goal we’ve been seeking for such a long time — health care reform — is going to be done. We don’t have it all worked out, but we made a lot of progress.” Reid refused to speculate on a deadline for reaching a deal. President Barack Obama has said he’d like Congress to get health care done this month, and lawmakers are set to head out on a two-week recess beginning March 26.</blockquote><br />This story in The Hill indicates that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is involved in the negotiations. We know that no Republican Senators were allowed to participate in this negotiation. There is a big shocker at the end of this story in The Hill.<br /><blockquote> Sources said the House and Senate Parliamentarians also attended the meeting to advise on reconciliation rules.</blockquote><br />Stop the press! If this report is true, this could be a major scandal for the House and Senate Parliamentarians. They are supposed to be dispassionate umpires. Any appearance of the Parliamentarian gaming the system to aid one side to beat the rules should be denounced by all sides. <br /><br />This was a very political and partisan strategy meeting with representatives of the White House, Democrat Speaker Pelosi and Democrat Leader Reid. Even if these Parliamentarians were not cheating the system by giving Democrats tips on how to bend the rules, the secrecy of the meeting should have been reason enough for the Senate Parliamentarian and his House counterpart to run for the exit. If Republicans lose every procedural objection during the reconcilation debate, they have a strong argument that the parliamentarians should recuse themselves from this proceeding because of a strong appearance of impropriety. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.redstate.com/brian_d/2010/03/11/obamacare-nuclear-option-deal-close/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b> The Slaughter solution?</b><br /><br />I've been dubious that Nancy Pelosi lacks the juice to muscle Obamacare through the House, but her enforcers must be running into a wall. Minority Leader John Boehner's blog introduces us to the aptly named Slaughter solution via this Congress Daily report (PDF). Boehner's blog reports:<br /><blockquote> The twisted scheme by which Democratic leaders plan to bend the rules to ram President Obama's massive health care legislation through Congress now has a name: the Slaughter Solution.<br /><br /> The Slaughter Solution is a plan by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Democratic chair of the powerful House Rules Committee and a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to get the health care legislation through the House without an actual vote on the Senate-passed health care bill. You see, Democratic leaders currently lack the votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill through the House. Under Slaughter's scheme, Democratic leaders will overcome this problem by simply "deeming" the Senate bill passed in the House - without an actual vote by members of the House.</blockquote><br />Is this some kind of a joke? At NRO, Daniel Foster explains that the joke may be on us. This must be one of the cases described by Brecht in which it is time for the government to dissolve the people and elect another.<br /><br />JOHN adds: What we're seeing in Washington is appalling, but there is a bright side--the craziness is proof that the Democrats don't have the votes for Obamacare in the House. They've pulled out all the stops, pushed every chip they have into the center of the table, and they still don't have the votes. Will they get them? I don't think anyone knows. Normally I would take the cynical view and say, Sure, if they twist enough arms, in the House they can ultimately do what they want. But they've done pretty much everything they can think of, and they don't have the votes yet. So what reason is there to assume that one more stratagem will put them over the top?<br /><br />If the Dems do try the Slaughter solution, I think we can deem Congress to be Republican after November.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025793.php">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The Nuclear Option A Neutron Bomb Aimed at the Democratic Majority</b><br /><br /><i>What they do today will be used against them in the future -- but they are now so fanatical that they have cast caution to the winds. The GOP backed off a nuclear option over GWB's judicial appointments. They probably won't do likewise in future if Pelosi has her way now. But it's typically Leftist to have no thought for the future. Like children, they must have what they want now</i><br /><br />It’s looking more and more likely that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will trigger the so called nuclear option to push through their health care legislation for the benefit of the American people; the very same people whom overwhelmingly have rejected it and its big government solutions to rising medical costs.<br /><br />Her fanatical desire to pass this legislation has overwhelmed her ability to reason critically, as is evidenced by recent interviews in which she is quoted as saying, “Representatives are not in Washington to self perpetuate their political careers.” While Mrs. Pelosi may inhabit a very safe district, her words have probably come as quite a surprise to a number of her less safe Democratic colleagues. Hopefully she will give them enough advanced warning to begin in earnest the search for a new career.<br /><br />It has become something of an urban legend among the Democrats that it was their inability to pass health care reform in the first Clinton administration that was responsible for their loss of the Majority in the House. In other words, the American people were deeply upset by the Democrats’ inability to deliver on legislation that would greatly increase their taxes and add mountains of new regulations to an already over regulated health care industry.<br /><br />This is simply a major misread of history on their part. A more plausible reason for their rebuke and loss of Majority in the following Midterm elections were the Clinton tax increases and the arrogance of their members, as exemplified by the check kiting scandals of the house. This same arrogance was last displayed by members of the Republican party shortly before they lost their Majority status in the midterms in 2006.<br /><br />Their fall back reasoning to vote for this legislation is no better. The idea that voters will seek retribution against the legislators who first cast a yes vote for the bill, and then once it became clear that nobody wanted it voted against it, is just silly. Do they really believe that if you vote for a bill that is hated by the majority of the public twice somehow you are safe? Have they never heard the old saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right?”<br /><br />Before the Democrats trigger their Nuclear option, they should review their college physics text books one last time and realize that at it’s essence the Nuclear option, like the bomb it is named after, is an uncontrollable chain reaction. This Nuclear option has all the makings of a Political Neutron Bomb for their party; a tactical nuclear weapon designed to eliminate people but leave buildings intact. The Democratic Leadership should take a deep cleansing breath, remove their ideological 3D health care shades and have a look around. Somehow in the mass confusion that has been characteristic of this torturous process of producing health care legislation they have overlooked the Bright red rings outlining the bulls eye that this monstrosity has imprinted on their political careers.<br /><br /><a href="http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2102">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /> <br /><b>GOP's Ryan Dissects ObamaCare, Lays Out 'Roadmap' To Health</b><br /><br />Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., took the national stage last month as he cut down Democratic health care plans point by point. If the GOP should win back the House In November, Ryan will become chairman of the House Budget Committee. And he has lots of ideas. He recently updated his "Roadmap for America's Future" to address many issues, including the budget deficit, entitlement programs, the tax system and health care.<br /><br />IBD recently sat down with Ryan to discuss his ideas. In Part One he discusses ObamaCare's flaws and how his "Roadmap" would improve our health care system.<br /><br />IBD: President Obama said his overhaul will "bring greater competition, choice, savings and efficiencies to our health care system."<br /><br />Ryan: It will do the opposite of all three of those. It will mean less competition and less choice because it narrows the options consumers will have to get health insurance. It puts everybody on a glide path to go into an exchange where people will have three choices of policies — gold, silver and bronze. It standardizes health insurance and takes underwriting out of health insurance, which is how many insurers compete. At the end of the day you'll have a few big insurers selling different versions of the same color. With the kinds of mandates and rules they impose on insurers, the small and medium-sized insurance companies simply can't compete because they don't have the economies of scale. What you'll simply have are these handful of really large insurers simply becoming claims processors for federally run health insurance.<br /><br />One example. There is a medium-sized insurer in Milwaukee that has 2,200 employees, 1,600 in Milwaukee. They sell in the individual market and they have the biggest share of policies with health savings accounts. If this bill becomes law, they'll have to close because of the rules and regulations. That means they lay off the 1,600 people in Milwaukee and send out cancellation notices to their 1.3 million policyholders.<br /><br />The only ones that will survive are the really big companies. That will make prices go up. And what's so insidious from an entitlement standpoint is it's an open-ended entitlement that says to everyone who makes under $100,000, if your health care expenses exceed 2% to 9.8% (depending on income level), don't worry, taxpayers will pay the rest of it. That is an invitation of cost explosion.<br /><br />IBD: Let's move to your Roadmap. On health insurance, you want to replace the employer-tax exclusion with a refundable tax credit of $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families. They can use it to buy insurance and pocket the difference.<br /><br />Ryan: They should be able to pocket the difference because it is important to have a shopping incentive like that to put price pressure in the right place.<br /><br />IBD: People fear that they won't be able to keep their employer-based coverage under ObamaCare. Doesn't the tax credit have the same weakness — you give people with employer-based coverage a tax credit in place of the tax exclusion, but there is no guarantee that the employer will keep that coverage?<br /><br />Ryan: First, many employers who offered their employees health insurance 10 years ago don't anymore. More and more employers are dropping it anyway. So more and more people don't get health insurance from their jobs and they get no tax benefit. Let's end the discrimination against people who don't get health insurance through their jobs.<br /><br />Second, I'm just de-linking the tax deduction for employees from the job and reattaching it to the individual. The employers still have the same tax incentive to provide health insurance to their employees.<br /><br />I'm saying since more employers are dropping health insurance, since more people are changing jobs, losing jobs, going into business for themselves, make that tax benefit their property and not the property of employers.<br /><br />IBD: John McCain proposed a similar plan in the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama attacked him because eliminating the exclusion, in effect, raised taxes, though only on upper-income earners. How can you deal with similar attacks?<br /><br />Ryan: What's funny is Obama is doing it now under his bill. The president is proposing to take away the tax exclusion, at least for a certain segment of the market, and then use that money to spend on programs. That really is a tax increase. By contrast, I'm exchanging one tax benefit for another. You lose your exclusion, but you get it back as a tax credit.<br /><br />I would argue that the current tax exclusion doesn't make any sense because we are subsidizing the wrong people. The people in the highest tax bracket get the biggest tax break for health insurance.<br /><br />IBD: But how do you get around the political problem, that you're raising taxes?<br /><br />Ryan: I'm not worried about the political problem. Economists from the left and right will tell you that one of the greatest sources of health inflation is this tax-exclusion system. It creates this third-party payer system that divorces consumer — the patient — from prices. You have to deal with that.<br /><br />The vast majority of Americans will get a tax cut under my plan, on average about $1,400. If you don't have health care from your job, you'll get $5,700 more for your family for health care. Yes, people in the top tax bracket would not get as much from this system. But the people in the middle and lower brackets will get more, and they are the ones having a hard time buying health insurance. If we are trying to help get insurance to the uninsured and help middle-class families afford health insurance, the Roadmap is a far better way to do it.<br /><br />IBD: Explain the state health insurance exchanges that the Roadmap would create. Also, why would they have to offer a plan that meets "the same statutory standard used for the health benefits given to members of Congress"?<br /><br />Ryan: So, within the exchange, among the plans they have to offer is one like the standard Blue Cross option in the federal employee system. That way, people trapped in those states with extraordinarily high-cost plans can get basic insurance. If they want to buy more expensive insurance with all the bells and whistles, that cover acupuncture and hair plugs, they can still do so. It accomplishes much the same objective of interstate shopping, which I favor.<br /><br />IBD: What if some people think that even the basic congressional plan is still bells and whistles? What if they want even less coverage?<br /><br />Ryan: Then with interstate shopping they can go find a better plan. The point is not to create a floor, but to create an option that's not now available in many states.<br /><br />IBD: The Roadmap would also reform Medicare. Starting in 2022, it would give seniors $11,000 annually to purchase private insurance. But critics have suggested that seniors don't have the sophistication to find cost-effective insurance.<br /><br />Ryan: That's a paternalistic, arrogant and condescending notion. The seniors I represent sure analyze these things, they have children that look out for their best interests, and there are plenty of groups and service clubs that can help seniors.<br /><br />But Medicare has a $38 trillion hole right now. It is unsustainable. What my plan says, if you are retired or above age 55, we're not going to make any changes. You're going to get Medicare as it exists now. But we've got to face up to the fact that Medicare will not be there for later generations.<br /><br />For those under age 55, we put it on a path toward sustainability, and it works like the plan I get from the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. I get a list of plans that have been pre-certified by the Office of Personnel Management. I get a payment from my employer, the federal government— the taxpayers — and I apply that payment to the plan that works for me and my family.<br /><br />That's what I propose for Medicare, with three changes. More support for low-income people to cover their out-of-pocket costs with a medical savings account. Less support for the wealthy because they can afford more on their own. Risk-adjusting the payments so as people's health deteriorates, they get more money to get affordable coverage. And seniors can select among a list of pre-certified Medicare plans.<br /><br />That wipes out the unfunded liability and makes Medicare permanently solvent. That's been scored by Department of Health and Human Services actuaries and the Congressional Budget Office as achieving that.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=527230">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Australia: Senior Citizen waits months for 'urgent' brain surgery</b><br /><br /><i>They're letting this guy walk around with a time-bomb in his head</i><br /><br />A PENSIONER has been set a date for brain surgery after accusing Queensland Health of "playing God" and forcing him to wait more than 200 days longer than he should have for the urgent operation. The state opposition seized on the case of 70-year-old Hans Hagen, who understood himself to be on a category-one waiting list for more than seven months. That's despite him being listed as in need of surgery within 30 to 60 days.<br /><br />Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle tabled in parliament a copy of a letter from Mr Hagen to Health Minister Paul Lucas. It outlined the way his case had been handled since he was recommended for the aneurysm-correcting surgery in September last year. In it, Mr Hagen accuses Queensland Health of "playing God with my life". "My predicament is especially extreme as my life is threatened by two medical problems either of which could kill me without warning," Mr Hagen wrote. "Hence, I am at a loss to understand why my surgery has been delayed for such a long time."<br /><br />He said he'd been told by Queensland Health staff that the extended wait was because he'd been reclassified to category two.<br /><br />Mr McArdle demanded in question time that the health minister "explain to Mr Hagen in person why he has been waiting 267 days for urgent brain surgery".<br /><br />Queensland Health district executive Dr David Theile said Mr Hagen had on Monday been scheduled for surgery in April. "Princess Alexandra Hospital apologises to the patient for any confusion about the surgical category assigned to him," Dr Theile said. "However, the hospital does not agree that his surgical condition, as has been published, is high risk." It is understood Mr Hagen's GP believed he was a category one patient, when specialists had classified him as category two.<br /><br />Dr Theile said the hospital had been working with Mr Hagen since February to prepare him for surgery. "This has included consultations with specialist clinics in the hospital and privately as arranged by Mr Hagen's GP," Dr Theile said. "The hospital is sorry if this delay has caused concern for Mr Hagen, but he has expressed his satisfaction with his proposed surgery date with the hospital in communications today."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/pensioner-waits-months-for-urgent-brain-surgery/story-e6freon6-1225839688573">SOURCE</a> <br /><br>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-72921350579404980822010-03-13T09:29:00.001+11:302010-03-13T21:19:58.156+11:30<br><br /><b>Dear America, Admit That You’re Stupid! Love, Nancy</b><br /><br />The founding fathers debated bills for weeks. They then wrote them, referred them to committee’s of style and prose, brought them back to the floor, debated them again, wrote newspaper articles about them, went home to their districts to discuss them, and finally passed them — or not — after much deliberation.<br /><br />Today’s Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants us to just pass a bill so that later we can “find out what is in it.” Here’s what the zombie from San Francisco said about Obamacare yesterday:<br /><br /> “You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention–it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” <br /><br />Why can’t we know what’s in the bill before you pass it, Nancy? Or are you afraid that once people find out the horrors contained in this abortion of a bill they might not want it passed? In fact, by nearly every accounting the American people don’t want this communist take over of one-sixth of the economy to proceed.<br /><br />Of course, communists and socialists don’t care what the people have to say about anything. They, after all, know best, right? That’s why Nancy and her coven in D.C. just want us to shut up and let them pass this witch’s brew.<br /><br />So let this Congress lumber forward like the living dead to pass a bill that will materially alter the relationship that citizen has to government in these great United States. Let Nancy “Fright Night” Pelosi destroy the United States as we know it… On second thought, let’s not. Call your Congressman and Senator today and tell them you do not want this destructive bill passed in your name.<br /><br /><a href="http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20866">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Obama Wants to Exploit Physicians not Listen to Them</b><br /><br /><i>Doctors Treated to Abuse at White House and by Democrats in Congress</i><br /><br />Americans recall how Obama amazed the nation with his straw-man characterizations of doctors who perform unnecessary amputations and tonsillectomies out of greed. What people don’t know is how doctors have been mistreated behind closed doors by the White House and by Democrats in Congress.<br /><br />Here are two stories that show the kind of abuse doctors have been subjected to in Obama’s Washington. The first sordid tale was reported by Matt Latimer at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. I will follow excerpts of that story with an El Marco exclusive peek at how one group of doctors who support Obama was subjected to Rahm Emanuel’s beastly behavior in the White House. But first here’s Latimer’s account of doctors treated badly by congressional Democrats.<br /><blockquote>Attempting to enact his big-government health care scheme, President Obama and his supporters frequently claimed that a “majority” of doctors supported his health-care plans. When the American Medical Association – which had opposed HillaryCare – signed onto Obama’s plan last year, the organization seemed to make the President’s case. Most people assumed that the AMA represented most of the doctors in the country. But in fact, the AMA represents less than 20 percent of all physicians in the United States. And yet as the organization’s leadership moved more to the left, it held a near monopoly on media attention on issues pertaining to public health. No longer.<br /><br />As the AMA has become increasingly politicized in recent years – issuing a statement in support of climate change, for example, in 2008 – a new group of doctors has risen to challenge them.<br /><br />Docs4PaitientCare: Founded by Dr. Hal Scherz, a prominent Atlanta physician, the group of doctors expressed concern that like so many other professional groups, the AMA’s leadership have been thoroughly “Washingtonized” – caring more about the pleadings of other lobbyists on K Street, White House invitations and Capitol Hill committee appearances than the professions they are supposed to represent. As doctors have taken a battering over several decades from insurance companies, HMOS, and government agencies, Scherz says the AMA was a bystander. “As the insurance companies become more and more impossible and government intrusion keeps growing, we’ve seen our delivery of care to our patients compromised and our incomes decrease,” he said. But it was the AMA’s support for ObamaCare that really troubled Scherz and others in his field.<br /><br />Many doctors run small businesses and by nature are entrepreneurial. Why then, he wondered, would the AMA favor ObamaCare’s regulatory and taxation burden? Why would they want a multitude of government panels interfering with the decisions doctors usually make with their patients about care and treatment? Recognizing that the AMA was compromised, Scherz decided to organize his own group in opposition to the Obama plan.<br /><br />Wearing their scrubs and white jackets, the doctors drew attention as they walked the halls of congress and spoke at rallies on Capitol Hill. Often just showing up in the offices of members of the House and Senate, they would manage to get appointments with the members themselves or key staff members.<br /><br />Joyce Lovett MD, an African American female pediatrician, got the doctors into a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus. A debate opened up over the health care plan and soon the doctors were text-messaging their colleagues visiting other offices around the capitol for reinforcements. As the room began filling up, the doctors, doing well in the back and forth of debate, seemed to be changing some minds. At that point, a worried Black Caucus leader and diehard partisan, John Conyers, broke up the meeting, saying the doctors were more interested in embarrassing the first black president than in achieving real reform. Unused to this sort of political attack, the astonished doctors told other caucus members how they felt after taking time from their practices and patients to come all the way to Washington only to hear a member of Congress insinuate they were racists. One caucus member privately dismissed Conyers’ “old ways of thinking,” suggesting that the CBC might be ready for fresh, and more innovative, leadership.</blockquote><br />Playing the race card against any American, black or white, who criticizes Obama is part of a strategic Democrat/MSM assault on free speech and dissent. This has become a standard Democrat debating tactic, and is but one example of how liberals are unwilling to compete in the arena of ideas.<br /><br />With a flurry of recent headlines shedding light on Rahm “Dead Fish” Emanuel’s aggressive personality, a conversation I had last week with a doctor in New Jersey took on added relevance. The doctor, whom I have known since the late ’70s, related to me an incident told to him by a medical colleague who is a large financial supporter of Obama. A supporter, that is, until his recent invitation to the White House knocked the lenses out of his rose-colored glasses.<br /><br />He told how he was invited as part of a group of other Obama stalwarts in the medical profession for what he mistakenly believed was an opportunity to offer input to the President’s ongoing health care initiative.<br /><br />The colleague related how this group of doctors was seated in the White House and waited patiently as Obama’s TelePrompTers were assembled in front of them. When, after a long wait, Obama finally appeared, he delivered one of his trademark TelePrompTer performances lasting about five minutes. Obama thanked the doctors, via TelePrompTer, for their support, and then left the room. This is where it gets interesting.<br /><br />Rahm Emanuel was left behind to face the doctors. When the doctors related to Emanuel that they thought they had been invited not merely to support Obama, but to advocate for doctors and patients, <font color="#ff0000">Rahm exploded with a verbal tirade. He was described as rude and abusive</font> as he proclaimed that the doctors had been invited for one reason only, to show support for Obamacare. He made it clear that they were expected to be advocates for the administration’s policies.<br /><br />The entire experience was profoundly disturbing to the doctor who experienced Emanuel’s bullying outburst. When he returned to his home state, he no longer supported Obama, who he now saw in a new light. <font color="#ff0000">He now considers Obama to be a “complete phony”. As for Rahm Emanuel, he vehemently described him as “a very dangerous personality” and “a dangerous menace to our country”</font><br /><br />So doctors who oppose Obamacare run the risk of being called racists and docs who support Obamacare are told to shut-up and toe the line. Hows that hopey and changey thing going America?<br /><br />When the Obama White House stages a media event using doctors as props, the intent is to create the illusion of support from the medical profession as a whole. One has to wonder if the doctors story cited above gives us a glimpse of the AstroTurf process for vetting Docs to appear at Obama events.<br /><br />On Oct 5, 2009 one such Rose Garden event was staged and the NY Post published some embarrassing facts and photos:<br /><blockquote>President Obama rolled out the red carpet – and handed out doctors’ white coats as well, just so nobody missed his hard-sell health-care message.<br /><br />In a heavy-handed attempt at reviving support for health-care reform, the White House orchestrated a massive photo op to buttress its claim that front-line physicians support Obama.<br /><br />A sea of 150 white-coated doctors, all enthusiastically supportive of the president and representing all 50 states, looked as if they were at a costume party as they posed in the Rose Garden before hearing Obama’s pitch for the Democratic overhaul bills moving through Congress.<br /><br />The physicians, all invited guests, were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image. But some docs apparently forgot, failing to meet the White House dress code by showing up in business suits or dresses. So the White House rustled up white coats for them and handed them to suited physicians who had taken seats in the sun-splashed lawn area.<br /><br />All this to provide a visual counter to complaints from doctors that pending legislation is bad news for the medical profession. </blockquote><br /><br />What the media won’t tell you is that some of the doctors were former members of the “Doctors for Obama” organization. Oh, but it’s renamed after the election “Doctors for America”, which is part of “Organizing for America”, which was renamed from “Obama for America”, which was/is Obama’s campaign machine.<br /><br />One of the Obama administrations early accomplishments was making the word AstroTurf a commonly understood term in America. Previously AstroTurf was an obscure term like “teabagger” known mainly by the small number of the liberal-left who were practitioners of it. Long associated with Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod, AstroTurf as now employed by Obama’s White House is something voters are learning to recognize and reject.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2010/03/obama-wants-to-exploit-physicians-not-listen-to-them">SOURCE</a> (Some good pix at the link)<br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Silver bullet from U.S. states kills 'mandatory' Obamacare</b><br /><br /><i>36 legislatures fight for citizens' rights to opt out of health-coverage demand</i><br /><br />At least 36 state legislatures are considering legislation that would allow citizens to opt out of a key component of President Obama's health-care "reform" – an "individual mandate" requiring that all Americans have health insurance.<br /><br />Both the House and Senate health-care bills require Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. The House bill establishes a fine based on percentage of a person's income, while the Senate version creates a penalty as a flat fee or percentage of income, whichever is higher. Those refusing to get insurance could be found guilty of a misdemeanor crime, punishable by another fine or even jail time.<br /><br />Join nearly 100 members of Congress and 13,000 Americans in rejecting federal government health-care mandates on patients, employers, individuals and states – sign on to the Declaration of Health Care Independence.<br /><br />"The president's proposal adopts the Senate approach but lowers the flat dollar assessments, and raises the percent of income assessment that individuals pay if they choose not to become insured," a White House plan released in February states.<br /><br />States rejecting 'individual mandate'<br /><br />According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, formal resolutions or bills have been filed in opposition to the individual mandate in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.<br /><br />Also, as of March 4, Virginia became the first state to enact a new statute section titled, "Health insurance coverage not required." In Arizona, voters will cast ballots on a constitutional amendment in November 2010 that would "preserve the freedom of all residents of the state to provide for their own health care."<br /><br />Lawmakers suggest approval of the legislation may spark a legal battle over states' rights versus the federal government's reach of power. The Boston Globe reported the measures could set the stage for "one of the greatest tests of federal power over the states since the civil rights era."<br /><br />"The administration is trying to shift from a government by social compact, agreement between elected officials and citizens, to a government where the leaders tell the subjects what to do," Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, chief sponsor of the measure in his state, told the Globe. "That is not what the American Revolution was about."<br /><br />The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has sparked nationwide interest with its model "Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act: How Your State Can Block Single-Payer and Protect Patients' Rights." ALEC warns that forcing patients to enroll in one-size-fits-all plans would cause massive increases in spending and force policymakers to ration care as a cost-containment measure.<br /><br />Is mandatory insurance constitutional?<br /><br />Minnesota State Rep. Tom Emmer told the New York Times in September 2009 that lawmakers in his state have proposed a state constitutional amendment to protect citizens from government interference in their private health decisions. "All I'm trying to do is protect the individual's right to make health-care decisions," Emmer said. "I just don't want the government getting between my decisions with my doctors." He said an amendment wouldn't prohibit anyone from participating in a federal health program. It would simply prevent them from being forced to enroll. "[T]ell me where in the U.S. Constitution it says the federal government has the right to provide health care," Emmer said. "This is the essence of the debate."<br /><br />During the Democratic presidential primary, Obama took a jab at Hillary Clinton over the individual mandate. "The main difference between my plan and Sen. Clinton's plan," he said, "is that she'd require the government to force you to buy health insurance and she said she'd 'go after' your wages if you don't."<br /><br />According to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, the federal government has never mandated that Americans purchase any good or service. In 1994, the CBO studied the individual mandate in Clinton's universal health-care plan and found that it was an unprecedented requirement. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action," the CBO report stated. "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government."<br /><br />Opponents say the individual mandate is unconstitutional because the Constitution doesn't grant the federal government power to fine citizens for refusing to purchase goods and services. Ken Klukowski, senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union, explained in a Politico commentary why there is no constitutional basis for the individual mandate. "People who decline coverage are not receiving federal money, so that mandate can't fall under the spending part of the Tax and Spending Clause," he wrote.<br /><br />Article I of the Constitution authorizes excise and capitation taxes, and the 16th Amendment created the income tax. However, Klukowski contends that government health insurance cannot be considered an excise, capitation or income tax. "It can't be an excise tax because that's a surcharge on a purchase, and here people are not buying anything," he explained. "It can't be a capitation (or 'direct') tax because that is a tax on every person in a state and must be equal for every person in the state; this would be a levy that some people would pay and others would not. And it can't be an income tax because that must be based on personal income, not purchase decisions."<br /><br />He added, "All that's left is the Commerce Clause. And the people who declined to purchase government-mandated insurance would not be engaging in commercial activity, so there's no interstate commerce. That, in fact, is the government's problem with them: Those people refuse to take the money or play the game."<br /><br />Likewise, the Congressional Research Service recently reported that determining whether an individual mandate is constitutional under the Commerce Clause "is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service."<br /><br />Klukowski wrote that if Obama wants a plan that forces Americans to purchase insurance, he will need to "persuade the nation to adopt a constitutional amendment creating a right to health care." He added, "You might have better odds of getting struck by lightning."<br /><br />Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and outspoken critic of the individual mandate, told CNS News that if Congress can force Americans to buy health care, or mandate the purchase of anything, "we've lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127404">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Real competition among health plans</b><br /><br />The flash point of last year’s health care debate was the public option. The proposal, which calls for a government-created health insurer to compete with private insurers, was praised by President Barack Obama and its liberal supporters as a way of “keeping insurance companies honest.” Conservatives criticized it as a slippery slope to a government-run single-payer system.<br /><br />The public option appeared to be dead when Senate leaders decided not to include it in their health care reform bill. But prominent liberals have recently called for the Senate to add it to the new reform proposal. More than 100 House Democrats, 37 Senate Democrats and major progressive groups like MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have urged that the public option be added through reconciliation. The public option now has “a new pulse,” says the liberal website Talking Points Memo.<br /><br />So far, arguments have been largely theoretical. Or they refer — positively or negatively — to government-run health care systems in foreign countries. A better comparison, however, might be to a “public option” Washington created in another part of the insurance industry.<br /><br />Since September 2008, the government has infused billions into an insurer that provides coverage for cars, homes and business assets. Once this insurer got government funding, it began slashing premiums for many of the insurance policies it sells. Its private-sector competitors have cried foul, but new customers keep signing up.<br /><br />Chances are that most readers have heard of this insurer — just not referred to as a “public option.” Rather, it is known by its initials: AIG. Though the primary argument for the government to pour more than $180 billion into American International Group’s coffers was to save the financial system from the company’s bad mortgage bets, the infusions have given the company an advantage over its rivals in its daily businesses. In the months after the bailout, The Wall Street Journal reported, “AIG at times has slashed insurance prices — by more than 30 percent in some cases — to fend off rivals and to keep or win contracts.”<br /><br />AIG cut premiums by 34 percent, for example, to underbid three other firms and win renewal of a policy with the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Journal reported. It pried away a rival’s contract covering the city-owned airport in Mesa, Ariz., by bidding about 30 percent less. The company assuaged concerns about safety and soundness by pointing directly to the government infusion that, it says, “strengthens [AIG’s] capital positions.”<br /><br />Rival insurers have complained loudly. So have trade groups like the American Insurance Association. But AIG’s competitors aren’t the only ones concerned. The Government Accountability Office and the insurance department of Pennsylvania are investigating whether the company has been charging inadequate amounts for the risks involved in its policies since it received bailout money. In a preliminary report, the GAO said it had not “drawn any final conclusions about how the assistance has impacted the overall competitiveness” of the market but did find that “AIG’s insurance companies have likely received some indirect benefit” from not having the parent company’s credit rating downgraded.<br /><br />On the liberal website The Huffington Post, Don McNay, a personal finance columnist, decried AIG’s apparent use of its subsidies to distort the insurance market. “Undercutting the market,” he wrote, “is a bigger issue than the $165 million in bonuses. If AIG loses millions, or billions, in the future due to its ‘overly aggressive pricing,’ we are going to be picking up the tab.”<br /><br />Indeed, liberals often complain about companies that use an advantage to allegedly engage in “predatory pricing,” even if it results in short-term benefits for consumers. They claim that airlines, discount retailers and other businesses that slash prices will drive out smaller competitors.<br /><br />Though the Supreme Court concluded, in 1986, that “there is a consensus among commentators that predatory pricing schemes are rarely tried, and even more rarely successful,” it is a different story when the government gives one firm a direct subsidy or regulatory advantage.<br /><br />Yet liberals have abandoned their fears of underpricing driving out competitors when it comes to a public option in health insurance. Another Huffington Post contributor, Sahil Kapur, argued that “if private insurers don’t survive” competition from the government plan, “it’s because they were ripping off customers or operating inefficiently.” A concern about unfair competition, he declared, “implicitly prioritizes the well-being of providers over consumers.”<br /><br />Yet everyone eventually loses when the game is rigged through a subsidized insurance competitor — whether it’s AIG or the public option. Private insurers folding or leaving the market for a particular type of insurance means less innovation in pricing and risk prevention, leading to fewer options and higher costs for most consumers.<br /><br />And if a price war engendered by subsidized competition meant premiums were inadequate to cover risk, the government might be faced with a bigger insurance tab. The quality of coverage could also suffer. Choice, in turn, would be limited even more.<br /><br />Of course, competition isn’t the end goal of some public option advocates, who most likely see the public option as a way station for a single-payer system like Canada’s. But if that’s the case, why not have an honest debate, as Washington Post economist Robert Samuelson suggests, between single payer and “genuine competition among health plans over price and quality”?<br /><br />To bring real competition, let customers buy health insurance across state lines and remove provisions of the tax code favoring employer-based health insurance. But let’s not bring the “too big to fail” model, which proved such a disaster for the financial industry, into our health care system, under the guise of the public option.<br /><br /><a href="http://cei.org/articles/2010/03/11/real-competition-among-health-plans">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>British toddler died of meningitis after five doctors failed to spot symptoms</b><br /><br />A toddler who died of meningitis after five doctors failed to spot he was suffering from the disease was "completely failed by the medical profession", his family said.<br /><br />An inquest heard 21-month-old Oliver Martin was rushed to hospital by his mother, a district nurse, when he fell seriously ill at home. He was displaying several of the major symptoms of meningitis, including a rash that disappeared when pressed, high temperature, pale complexion and lethargy. But the hearing was told the illness was "at the back of the mind" of the first doctor to examine Oliver who thought he was suffering from chicken pox.<br /><br />He was subsequently seen by a further four other doctors - but was not given antibiotics until eight and a half hours after his arrival at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. By then it was too late, and Oliver, of Welford, Northants, died of meningococcal septicaemia, a type of blood poisoning caused by the same bacteria as meningitis, a short time later.<br /><br />Oliver's mother, Louise Martin, 27, was too upset to attend the inquest at Leicester Town Hall. But speaking afterwards, his aunt, Susan Wilson, who sat through the evidence, said: "He was failed from the moment we walked through the door. "His treatment was disgusting. The medical profession let him down. I'm very, very angry. "The Government tells us through their leaflets to trust our instincts and not take any chances, to get children to hospital and get antibiotics. "And Oliver did - but eight-and-a-half hours later, and by then it was too late.<br /><br />"If his mum had kept him at home and given him a dose of Nurofen, which is basically what the hospital did, she would be on a child neglect and manslaughter charge now. "But what have the Leicester Royal Infirmary got? Nothing. We've not even had an apology. "If this inquest prevents this happening again, then it will have been worthwhile."<br /><br />Leicester City Coroner Catherine Mason, who recorded a narrative verdict, criticised "poor" communication between staff at the hospital which meant vital information about Oliver's condition and symptoms was not passed on when his case was handed over. She added: "Had earlier treatment been given Oliver may still have died, but on the balance of probabilities his chances of survival would have been better."<br /><br />The inquest heard Oliver was taken to the hospital by his mother at around 10am on May 13 last year, and first seen by Accident and Emergency doctor Kalmjit Kaur. She noted a number of possible diagnoses, including meningitis, but suspected it was more likely he was suffering from chicken pox. Crucially, she chose not to administer antibiotics - and instead decided Oliver's condition should simply be monitored.<br /><br />He was later moved to the children's ward, where concerned nurses tried to get the duty paediatric registrar, Dr Manjith Narayanan, to re-examine him. But he failed to do so for over an hour because he had been told at the start of his evening shift that Oliver's condition was "not serious". He said: "If I had been given all of the information I would've come out of the hand-over, gone to see him straight away and given him antibiotics." Doctors eventually suspected meningococcal septicaemia and ordered a course of the anti-viral drugs at 6.30pm. But Oliver died at around 10pm.<br /><br />Kevin Harris, the acting medical director at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said: "We accept the coroner's verdict following the inquest into Oliver Martin's death. "We would like to express our sincere condolences to his family for the upset and distress caused. "If Oliver's family have any questions following the verdict we would welcome the opportunity to discuss these with them." <i>[In other words: So sad, too bad]</i><br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7428276/Toddler-died-of-meningitis-after-five-doctors-failed-to-spot-symptoms.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Australia: Widow sues government over faulty ambulance equipment -- equipment KNOWN to be faulty</b><br /><br />A woman is suing the Queensland government for $1.62 million over claims faulty ambulance equipment contributed to her husband's death. In a statement of claim filed this week in the Brisbane Supreme Court registry, Carmal Corsie and her three children allege the government was negligent in failing to ensure crucial equipment was working properly when an ambulance came to collect Iain Corsie on March 23, 2007.<br /><br />According to the claim, the ambulance was called to the family's Mitchelton home after Mr Corsie, 38, suffered pains in his chest and arm. Mrs Corsie claims ambulance officers checked his condition and determined he was having a heart attack. They used a Heartstart 4000 monitor/defibrillator to conduct an ECG before he was allowed to walk to the ambulance.<br /><br />Court documents claim the defibrillator malfunctioned while en route to the hospital, and that the paramedics elected to divert to the ambulance station to find a replacement piece of equipment. Shortly afterwards Mr Corsie lost consciousness and died.<br /><br />The Corsie family claims it later learned the defibrillator had malfunctioned in late February and then failed to pass an equipment check the day before Mr Corsie's death. Court documents allege the machine was not serviced or taken out of use.<br /><br />The family is suing the government for $1.62 million, claiming it was negligent in failing to ensure proper, working equipment was available to treat Mr Corsie. They also allege the ambulance took an unacceptable 19 minutes to arrive at their address after being called, and then should have travelled directly to hospital instead of making a detour to the station. "If the defendant had not been negligent, the deceased would not have died," the claim states.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/widow-sues-government-over-faulty-ambulance-equipment-20100311-q19c.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-54459434229933513812010-03-12T00:38:00.001+11:302010-03-12T00:38:26.085+11:30<b>A doctor savages Obama's healthcare reform plan</b><br /><br /><i>Dr Wolf is a distant relative of Obama's</i><br /><br />"Primum nil nocere."First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.<br /><br />Imagine if, like physicians, politicians were personally held to the incredibly high level of scrutiny that includes civil and financial liability for any unintended consequence of their decisions. Imagine if they were forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on malpractice insurance and still faced the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision they made. If so, a government takeover of health care would be the furthest thing from their minds.<br /><br />Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and -if you act now!- we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?<br /><br />America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let's not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe's common cancer mortality rates to America's: breast cancer - 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer - a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer - 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.<br /><br />Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.<br /><br />Obamacare: Fixing price at any cost<br /><br />The justification for Obamacare has been to control costs, but the problem is there is little in Obamacare that will do that. Instead, there are provisions that will ration care and artificially set price. This is a confusion of costs and price.<br /><br />As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare's financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently - no matter how valid the reasons - he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother's shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.<br /><br />Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they've been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives - for me, 13 years of school and training - to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.<br /><br />Giving power back to people<br /><br />I believe there is a better way. The problems in the American health care system are not caused by a shortage of government intrusion. They will not be solved by more government intrusion. In fact, our current problems were precisely, though unintentionally, created by government.<br /><br />World War II-era wage-control measures - a form of price controls - ushered in a perverted system in which we turn to our employers for insurance and the government penalizes us if we choose to purchase insurance for ourselves. You are not given the opportunity to be a wise consumer of health care and compare prices as well as quality in any meaningful way. Worse still, your insurance company is not answerable to you because you are not its customer. It is answerable to your employer, whose interests differ from your own.<br /><br />Insurance companies have been vilified for following the perverse rules that government has created for them. But it gets worse. The government, always knowing best, deploys insurance commissioners across the land to dictate what the insurance companies must provide, whether you want it or not, and each time, your premiums increase. Obamacare will make all of this worse, not better.<br /><br />One of America's founding principles is our trust in the people and their economic freedom to rule their own lives. We should decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again. Allow them to determine the insurance plan that best meets their families' needs and which company will provide it. This will unleash a wave of competition that will drive costs down in a way that price controls never have. Eliminate the artificial state boundary rules that protect insurance companies from true competition and watch as voters demand that their state insurance commissioners get the heck out of the way. Innovative companies will drive down costs similar to how Geico and Progressive have worked for automobile insurance. And it won't cost taxpayers a trillion dollars in the process.<br /><br />This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies - now answerable to you rather than your employer - would cover it.<br /><br />Between Barack and a hard place<br /><br />I have personally trained and practiced in both the government-run and free-market segments of American medicine. The difference is vast. Patients see this for themselves, and this may be why, according to a recent CNN poll, they oppose Obamacare nearly 3 to 1. I am with them. It is difficult for me to speak publicly against the president on his central issue, but too much is at stake.<br /><br />I wish my cousin Barack the greatest of success in office. But I feel duty-bound to rise in opposition to Obamacare. I must take a stand for my patients, my profession and, ultimately, my country. The problems caused by government will not be solved by growing government. Now that this new era of big-government takeovers has spread to our health care system, it's not just our freedoms or our wallets that are at stake. It's our lives.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/11/obama-family-health-care-fracas">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Hill Democrats brush back White House health deadline</b><br /><br />As House Democratic leaders struggle to round up the 216 votes needed to pass President Obama's health care plan, they have all but set aside the March 18 deadline set by the White House and are hinting the debate could extend well past the upcoming Easter recess. A delay would likely make it even more difficult for the Democrats to pass a bill.<br /><br />"I believe that if members of Congress go home for two weeks, they will hear from the American people what they really think about the bill and they will be less likely to vote for it when they come back," Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said.<br /><br />House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Democratic leaders have yet to begin negotiating with approximately one dozen pro-life Democrats who comprise one of the biggest obstacles in the House. Hoyer also discounted the deadline put forward last week by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "None of us have mentioned the 18th, other than Mr. Gibbs," Hoyer said.<br /><br />Hoyer said Democrats are still wrangling with how to pass the Senate health care bill in the House and then follow with a smaller bill that makes corrections to the Senate bill. House Democrats are refusing to back the Senate bill unless it is done concurrently with a second bill that would purge several special deals cut for certain senators as well as an excise tax on expensive insurance plans. Hoyer called a pre-Easter vote "an objective, not a deadline."<br /><br />Without some kind of concurrent passage of both bills, it will be nearly impossible for House Democratic leaders to come up with the votes because House Democrats don't trust the Senate to follow through with the corrections bill once the Senate health care bill is signed into law by Obama. The Senate would have to take up the second bill under budget reconciliation rules in order to pass it with just 51 votes, which could be difficult and politically dangerous, depending on what's in it. But senators on Tuesday said they are committed to taking up the second bill.<br /><br />"I can tell you this," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said. "Nobody wants to stab the House in the back. Every one of us understands the position the House is in. I guess what we ask is that the House understand our position as well."<br /><br />Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who voted for the Senate version, said the national polls don't matter as much as the sense he gets from his constituents. The majority in Nebraska, he said, "do not" support the Democratic health care plan, but will decide whether to back it as soon as the bill is written and given a price tag by the Congressional Budget Office. "I'm not going to say I'm going to support something I haven't seen," Nelson said.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Hill-Democrats-brush-back-White-House-health-deadline-87169912.html">SOURCE</a><br /> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Obama's Reconciliation Lie</b> <br /><br />Less than one week ago, President Obama stood before an assembled audience of hand- picked sympathizers on healthcare reform at the White House and called on Congress to pass his healthcare reform package into law... again.<br /><br />Having spent his entire year long presidency singularly focused on passing a massive, trillion dollar, federal government takeover of the healthcare industry in America, and failed -- Obama had a couple of choices going forward. With an American public now solidly against his healthcare proposal, and his Democrat margins in both houses of Congress now a wee bit slimmer, Obama was forced to choose between either a) substantially altering his healthcare proposal to make it more palatable and bipartisan as he claims is his goal, or b) forging ahead with virtually the same heavy-handed government takeover package and hope to woo skeptical Americans and Democratic lawmakers by the sheer force of his personality.<br /><br />In Obama’s speech – a rather short one for him of only 21 minutes – he made it clear that he is opting for Plan B. Obama stated: “No matter which approach you favor, I believe the U.S. Congress owes the American people a final vote on healthcare reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly. Not just for the past year, but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a super-majority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the children’s health insurance program, that was used for cobra health coverage for the unemployed, and by the way for both Bush tax cuts, all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.”<br /><br />In other words, he plans to utilize budget reconciliation to pass ObamaCare, which requires only a simple majority in both chambers. And Obama appealed to history, citing five specific examples of major legislation that was passed using reconciliation.<br /><br />Here’s the only problem with Obama’s appeal: every bill he cited was passed with bipartisan support. This is, of course, precisely the opposite of what is occurring on ObamaCare, where the minority party is unanimously opposed to the entire package. In fact, reconciliation has been used nearly 20 times since it’s origination in 1981, but never once in a completely partisan fashion to pass major social legislation. Not once.<br /><br />A quick review of the actual legislation Obama cited shows example after example of bipartisan support. Both Bush tax cuts were passed with Democrat votes in both chambers. Cobra was enacted in 1986 with a Republican controlled White House and Senate and a Democrat controlled House. Landmark welfare reform was passed by a Republican controlled Congress (with 125 Democrat votes from both chambers) and signed into law by President Clinton, as was the Children’s Health Program in 1997 within the Balanced Budget Act.<br /><br />Republican claims that Obama’s intended use of reconciliation to pass his version of healthcare reform is unprecedented (what the word really means, not how Obama uses it) and hyper partisan is absolutely true. It would be complimenting Obama to say he was being merely disingenuous in his stated reason for using reconciliation.<br /><br />In the same speech noted above, Obama portended to take the high road by maintaining “I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right” and saying he would “provide the leadership” the American people so desperately want on healthcare reform. Perhaps Obama is genuine in stating he does not know how this will play politically, but Americans seem to know instinctively, and they are not calling it leadership, they’re calling it a lie.<br /><br /><a href="http://netrightnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1252477:obamas-reconciliation-lie&catid=1:nrn-blog&Itemid=7">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Canadian Health Care System Bad Model for USA</b><br /><br />During an interview prior to the health care town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) this morning in St. Charles, Mo., I spoke with Joe DeVincent, a government retiree from nearby Wentzville, about the prospects of government-run health care (a.k.a., “ObamaCare”). He expressed deep reservations about ObamaCare based, in part, on his own daughter’s experience as the wife of a Canadian citizen living north of the border.<br /><br />“She doesn’t like it at all,” he said. “You can’t see doctors when you want to see doctors. The few doctors that are even practicing there, their business is just so full…<br /><br />“One time, my wife and I went with her to see her primary care physician. She had an appointment, and it took three hours to get in. The waiting room was just so jammed, because nobody one can see doctors there.<br /><br />“The doctors only work until they’ve made a certain amount of money. When they make that amount of money, they don’t get paid anymore,” he continued. “We definitely don’t need this system in the United States.”<br /><br />The problem is so bad, he said, that his daughter has been forced to come to the United States on more than one occasion. <br /><br />A fix, he said, would be new legislation that gave everyone the same coverage. “If they want to put a health plan in, make it everybody, including Congressmen, senators, the president, everybody falls in that plan. Then, they’ll put one in there that’ll work.”<br /><br />Asked if he thought it would ever happen, he was doubtful. “It’ll never happen. They’re gonna take care of themselves and, if this goes in, we’re gonna suffer.”<br /><br /><a href="http://bobmccarty.com/2010/03/10/canadian-health-care-system-bad-model-for-usa/">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Dead body was left on bed next to me for eight hours: Patient tells of horror on packed NHS ward</b><br /><br />An NHS patient has spoken of her horror after the body of a woman was left in an adjacent bed for up to eight hours. Sarah Stevenson, 64, said staff left the corpse on a packed ward from 1pm until after 8.30pm. Two other patients who died on the same day were also left for several hours behind thin curtains on the ward where Mrs Stevenson was being treated for pneumonia, she said. The three bodies were finally removed in front of distressed families and young children during visiting hours.<br /><br />Bosses at Heartlands Hospital, in Birmingham, last night apologised. They said the wait was caused by delays in bringing specialist equipment to remove the bodies, but denied they remained for as long as eight hours.<br /><br />Mrs Stevenson, a great-grandmother from Small Heath, Birmingham, was admitted to hospital on February 15 with suspected pneumonia. She was given a bed on a single-sex ward and was placed in a bay next to another woman. Two days later, at around 1.10pm, she noticed the woman had died. She told a nurse but says the body was not taken away until after 8.30pm. All that divided Mrs Stevenson - whose daughter is a nurse - and the patient was a thin curtain.<br /><br />She said: 'At about 1.10pm the woman in the bed opposite me, a lady in her late-50s or early-60s, died and I had to alert the nurse that she had passed away. 'Another one died at around 2pm and the third a while later. I was upset because I was so ill myself and to lie next to a dead body all day was my worst nightmare. I don't think they showed the patient any dignity in death. My daughter is a nurse so I know bodies are only supposed to stay on the wards for a maximum of four to six hours, but it was nearly eight hours before they came to take her to the mortuary. 'It was appalling and it should never take that long. The nurses were pushed to the limit and couldn't control a lot of what was going on.'<br /><br />Mrs Stevenson, who has been married and divorced twice and was a stay-at-home mother to her three children and four step-children, was discharged on February 22. Her allegations came after a damning survey revealed the Third World conditions on overcrowded NHS wards, despite the budget being tripled under Labour over the past ten years.<br /><br />A survey of 900 nurses this week showed patients are routinely treated in kitchens, corridors, mop cupboards and TV rooms because wards are full. Four in ten told the Nursing Times that patients' dignity and privacy were not protected, while many spoke of chaotic mixed-sex wards where emergency buzzers were left out of reach. The shocking series of anecdotes followed a series of NHS scandals including the unnecessary deaths of up to 1,200 patients at Stafford Hospital.<br /><br />The Heart of England Foundation Trust has launched an investigation into Mrs Stevenson's claims. Spokesman Charlotte Calder said: 'Three patients did die on the ward on the same day but two of those were further away from Mrs Stevenson. 'One terminally ill patient did unfortunately die in the bay where Mrs Stevenson was being treated. 'It was felt that it would be more respectful to prepare the deceased patient in the bay with the curtain drawn. 'The transfer of this patient took four and a half hours - longer than normal - due to the clinical condition of the deceased patient and the need for specialist equipment.<br /><br />'We are sorry that this may have disturbed and caused Mrs Stevenson distress. 'Our stance is that no patient's body had been left on the ward for more than five hours but we are investigating the matter.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256609/Hospital-staff-left-dead-bodies-packed-ward-hours.html">SOURCE</a><br /> <br /><br><br /><br /><b> NHS 'wasted £21bn tackling life gap between rich and poor' </b><br /><br />Billions of pounds may have been wasted on a high-profile Government pledge to reduce the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor, a watchdog revealed yesterday. A total of £21billion - more than a fifth of the entire National Health Service budget - has been set aside to cut inequalities in this financial year alone. But an Audit Commission report says it can't find any evidence that it provides value for money.<br /><br />The health of people in England has improved since Labour started pumping billions into the NHS, but the health of richer people has improved far more quickly than those in deprived areas. Instead of the Government meeting its much-vaunted goal of reducing health inequalities, the gap has widened.<br /><br />Ministers pledged that by 2010, they would reduce by 10 per cent the gap in life expectancy at birth between people living in the bottom 20 per cent of the most deprived areas and the population as a whole. But the report has found that 'stark problems remain'. The report said: 'It is hard to see an obvious link between spending and improvement, or get any clear view of value for money. 'Progress in reducing inequalities, and in some aspects of health such as that of very young children, has been disappointing, even if general progress on, for example, life expectancy and other broad measures has been very positive. 'Without such a link, it is hard to argue that higher spending - even if it were an option - would itself result in significant gains.'<br /><br />The report said problems such as teenage pregnancy 'have proved challenging, despite some progress'. 'New problems have emerged, for example obesity,' it added. 'Problems with alcohol have grown. If today's trends continue, NHS hospitals in England will admit one million patients with alcohol-related conditions in 2011.' A Government target to reduce teenage conceptions by 50 per cent by 2010 has also failed dismally. The rate has fallen by only 13 per cent and in some regions, it has soared by almost 50 per cent.<br /><br />NHS spending in England rose from £40billion in 1999/2000 to £98billion in 2009/10, the report said. But it is hard to know how much has been spent on reducing health inequalities, or what the impact has been. The report said: 'There needs to be more ruthless targeting of money and services and close attention to outcomes. This requires much clearer sight of what is being spent and much sharper evaluation of its impact.'<br /><br />The report did congratulate ministers on meeting targets to cut deaths from heart disease and stroke by 2010. It said life expectancy was on the up, and infant death rates were going down.<br /><br />Andy McKeon, the commission's managing director for health, said: 'We know the health of the nation is improving. But variation in the health of people living in different parts of the country remains stark.'<br /><br />A Department of Health spokesman said: 'We are pleased the Audit Commission recognises that life expectancy is the highest it has been and infant mortality is at an all-time low, but more needs to be done to narrow the gap between disadvantaged areas and the rest of England.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257102/NHS-wasted-21bn-tackling-inequality.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-84136593906602167782010-03-11T01:25:00.001+11:302010-03-11T01:25:56.713+11:3011 March, 2010<br /><br /><b>ObamaCare Means a Two-Tier Health Care System</b><br /><br /><i>As is true in all socialist countries, there will be one standard of health care for you and me — and then a higher standard for the ruling class</i><br /><br />The most important amendment Republicans must propose for Obama’s Medi-Grab bill is a very easy one: "Resolved: that all federal and state employees must enroll in ObamaCare, without exception. Any violation of this amendment will be punishable by a fine, imprisonment, and/or loss of federal or state employment. Enforcement of this provision will be overseen by a popularly elected commission, whose proceedings will be open to the public via the worldwide web."<br /><br />“All federal and state employees” includes every member of Congress and the executive branch — those who currently have the finest medical insurance available in the country today (courtesy of you and me).<br /><br />This is the key test for the Medi-Grab bill. Any member of Congress who votes against it reveals his or her true stand on America’s founding principles. Anyone who votes for it shows that he or she actually gets it. There are many terrifying parts of this Medi-Grab bill, but this is the simplest litmus test. It’s so simple that everyone in the country can understand it. It’s do-or-die in terms of the integrity and honesty of the takeover of one-sixth of the economy that Obama is so determined to drive through Congress.<br /><br />Socialist regimes reveal their true nature by the special treatment they give to their permanent ruling class; they deny such treatment for ordinary schlubs like you and me. The worst corruption in socialist regimes flows from that simple two-caste system. In Europe, the ruling class hardly bothers with elections any more. The same people just turn over in their lifelong careers, or they just stay in the tenured bureaucracy.<br /><br />The so-called European Parliament is elected by the voters, all right, but it does not have the power to legislate — or even to investigate the all-powerful EU bureaucracy, which is unelected. The European Parliament is therefore an elaborate front. In typical fashion, the EU has a special term for that: the “democracy deficit.” It is regrettable, to be sure. Only trouble is, nobody does anything about it, and they won’t because the dual caste system is the key power grab whereby all sovereign power in European nations is now flowing into the EU — like so much water draining out of a bathtub.<br /><br />Obama’s medical takeover bill is a monstrosity in many ways, but the biggest danger comes from the separate treatment it reserves for the ruling left compared to us ordinary folks. Obama’s Medi-Grab will force ordinary people into a medico-legal corral. But it exempts members of the ruling left, and by creating a political monopoly over medical care, it ensures that we must all go begging, hat in hand, to the bureaucracy for our very survival.<br /><br />If Obama wins, Europe is our future. In Britain, Gordon Brown does not go to his local NHS clinic to get substandard medical care, nor does he go to the scandalously dirty hospitals in the Midlands. In Brussels, the European Union bureaucrats would just sneer at medical care for ordinary folks. They get nothing but the best. That hypocrisy is all over the American ruling left as it is emerging today: Obama and Al Gore both attended special upper-class schools from early on in life. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. They are special, these well-born rulers, not like you and me.<br /><br />Real power in Europe now flows from the Brussels bureaucracy, which issues a mighty and endless tide of top-down decrees for regular folks to obey. EU decrees cannot be overturned by the voters, because the judiciary is just another appointed arm of the EU bureaucracy. They cannot be resisted, on pain of very real bureaucratic penalties. The left controls the media (like the BBC) as well as the schools. The European Parliament is therefore a sort of Hollywood movie set: the real power holders don’t bother with elections, and the elected Members of Parliament have no power. Simple, clean, tyrannical. This is not an accident. It’s the key to the way they operate. That is Obama’s goal.<br /><br />When a blog reporter (the only honest kind of reporter today) challenged Rep. Fortney (Pete) Stark in his office on a YouTube video, Mr. Stark’s first question was: “What college did you go to?” The congressman simply resorted to insults when the reporter answered: “the University of Puerto Rico.” Notice Pete Stark’s standard: it’s not what you know, but whether you went to an elite college. Stark never answered the basic economics question, needless to say. In his mind, he didn’t need to. Behold, the ruling class of America.<br /><br />The American left adores Europe. But Europe today is bowing down to another permanent aristocracy, not much different from the 19th century version. The results are plainly visible in the shoddy and unhygienic conditions at the National Health Service hospitals and clinics in the UK, compared to the special treatment given to the political class. They are visible in the long waiting lists for life-saving cancer and cardiac operations — for ordinary folks, that is. This is what the “death panels” (presided over by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in Britain) are about: they reserve expensive treatments for the politically powerful and well-connected. Expensive treatments for ordinary folks are not considered to be “cost-effective.” As Robert Reich has said so clearly about these critical treatments, “It’s too expensive … so we’re going to let you die.”<br /><br />That’s because there’s only so much money in the national medical kitty, and it is distributed according to your high-quality life expectancy. If you are severely depressed, suffer from a disabling illness, or are just old, your life is worth that much less. The young (who need little care) are allocated more of the nation’s medical kitty, because they have greater life expectancy at a higher quality of life — at least according to the health bureaucrats. Down Syndrome fetuses are aborted, according to the same logic, at the very beginning of life. You see, Down Syndrome kids may live a long time, but they don’t have high-quality lives. So they just abort them.<br /><br />I’ve personally attended a European lecture given by an utterly arrogant chief of an acute care unit. He explained his criteria for pulling the plug on unconscious patients at a major European university hospital. His answer was: budget. His ward was budgeted to keep people on life support for a maximum of two weeks. After that, it’s “goodbye, Sally” — we need your bed for another case. That is what Obama has in store for us. Unless you are Obama or Hillary, of course. It’s the value of our lives versus theirs, and we won’t have a voice in that decision.<br /><br />Not after ObamaCare passes.<br /><br /><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamacare-means-a-two-tier-health-care-system">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>At least the States are aware of economic reality</b><br /><br />At the heart of President Obama’s drive to rein in health costs is a proposal for federal review and regulation of health insurance premiums, with a new agency empowered to block excessive rate increases. State officials are leery of the proposal, which raises a host of questions: How would Congress define “excessive”? How would the new federal power relate to state insurance regulation?<br /><br />The proposal has great political appeal. But experts see a serious potential problem: Federal officials will focus on holding down premiums while state officials focus on the solvency of insurers, the ultimate consumer protection.<br /><br />Economists say that holding down premiums does not necessarily hold down the cost of care, which reflects the prices charged by doctors and hospitals and the volume of services.<br /><br />State officials worry that they would be left to police the solvency of health insurance companies while federal officials pressured insurers to reduce premiums, as Mr. Obama has done in recent days. “You can’t separate the underlying solvency of companies from the rates they charge,” said Sean Dilweg, the insurance commissioner in Wisconsin. “The federal proposal would be a huge pre-emption of decisions that states have made over their history.”<br /><br />Mary Beth Senkewicz, a deputy insurance commissioner in Florida, said, “If you divorce rate-setting from financial oversight, that’s a fundamental flaw. Premiums must be reasonable in relation to the benefits,” Ms. Senkewicz said. “That becomes a fairly complex analysis.”<br /><br />Insurance commissioners said they fully supported efforts to expand coverage and rein in health costs. But they said it would be risky to hold down premiums before costs were under control. And they do not expect the federal legislation to drive down costs anytime soon.<br /><br />Sandy Praeger of Kansas, one of several insurance commissioners who met with Mr. Obama at the White House last week, said: “From a consumer protection standpoint, the most important thing we do is ensure the solvency of companies. We would strenuously resist not having the ability to approve rates or having the commissioners’ oversight of rates overturned.” “You are not necessarily helping the consumer if you keep rates artificially low,” Ms. Praeger said. “What’s worse for the consumer: having a premium increase or having to pay the full amount of a medical expense because the company is out of business?”<br /><br />More <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/health/policy/09rates.html">here</a><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>For Key Democrats, Health Care Becomes Ego Trip</b><br /><br />In the entire health care debate, among all the competing lawmakers, politicians, experts and pundits, there's just one person who has seen things from both sides of the political aisle. That is Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who was elected as a Democrat in 2008 and was part of the House Democratic caucus until last Dec. 22, when he switched sides to become a Republican. (Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter doesn't count, because he switched parties in April 2009, before the current health care debate got underway.)<br /><br />Given Griffith's unique perspective -- he is also a doctor, with 30 years' experience as an oncologist -- perhaps he has some insight into why the White House and his former Democratic allies in Congress continue to press forward on a national health care bill despite widespread public opposition.<br /><br />It's gotten personal, Griffith says. "You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It's no longer about health care reform. It's all about ego now. The president's ego. Nancy Pelosi's ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what's good for the American people."<br /><br />Conflicts driven by personal feelings can lead to self-destructive outcomes. Ask Griffith whether Speaker Pelosi, his old leader, would accept losing Democratic control of the House as the price for passing the health care bill, and he answers quickly. "Oh yeah. This is a trophy for the speaker, it's a trophy for several committee chairs, and it's a trophy for the president." It does not seem to matter that if Democrats lose the House, the speaker will no longer be speaker, the chairmen will no longer be chairmen, and the president will be significantly weakened.<br /><br />As Griffith sees his former colleagues, Democratic leaders have become so consumed with the idea of achieving the historical goal of a national health care system that they are able to explain away the scores of opinion polls over the last six months that show people solidly opposed to the Democratic proposal.<br /><br />The polls are wrong, they say. Or the polls are contradictory. Or the polls actually show that people love the health care plan. And even if the polls are right, and people hate the plan, real leaders don't govern by following the polls. So just pass the bill.<br /><br />That's easy for Democrats like Pelosi, who occupy safe seats. Not so for dozens of moderate House Democrats whose votes are required for passage, but who face likely defeat for it. "I don't think there are that many moderate or conservative Democrats who want to be sacrificial representatives," says Griffith.<br /><br />Just for the record, the RealClearPolitics average of polls on the Democratic health care plan shows 51 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor. A similar compilation of surveys by Pollster.com shows the gap at 51 percent to 43 percent. There have been more opponents than supporters of the plan since last July, when Democrats first began to unveil concrete health care proposals.<br /><br />Can Democrats really ignore the polls all the way to the end? Yes, but it gets a little harder with each passing day. George W. Bush couldn't ignore public opinion when he wanted to remake Social Security and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Faced with broad opposition, Bush ultimately gave up.<br /><br />And now Democratic leaders are showing signs of weakness. Why would they suddenly express interest, even feigned interest, in Republican ideas they derided for months? Why would they invite GOP lawmakers to a high-profile discussion of health care? Because they don't have the votes to pass the bill. "If they had the votes, we wouldn't have had the summit," said Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn recently, referring to the day-long White House health care confab on Feb. 25.<br /><br />That's a change from the heady days of last year, when Democrats, as Griffith says, "never really wanted anyone else's input" on health care. When a Republican offered a suggestion, "There was a polite smile and a comment like, 'That's very interesting, and we'll take a look,'" Griffith recalls. Of course, they never did. Now, they make a big show of listening.<br /><br />But it's too late to make the fundamental changes that would be required to improve the bill. It's too late to change public opinion. It's too late to reassure nervous lawmakers. The Democratic leadership has made the decision to push the bill to the very end, and so they will.<br /><br />It's personal.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/ByronYork/2010/03/08/for_key_democrats,_health_care_becomes_ego_trip">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Insurers: Obama's scapegoat</b><br /><br />President Barack Obama obviously has no qualms about slandering people or industries that interfere with his agenda. In the same creepy manner he defamed the Cambridge Police Department without benefit of the facts, he is scapegoating the insurance companies based on his distorted version of facts.<br /><br />In the past week, he has ratcheted up his war on insurance companies, who, he apparently figures, must be destroyed if he is to accomplish his Utopian dream of socialized health care. He made them the focus of his wrath again, in his umpteenth health care speech, Monday in Philadelphia. Even the White House blog, in a post titled "Moving Forward to Put the American People Ahead of Insurance Companies," frames this debate as between insurance companies and the people.<br /><br />Who is Obama to be smearing health insurance companies for allegedly bankrupting people to increase their profits when his policy agenda is already bankrupting America to increase government power? As the late Milton Friedman asked the clueless leftist Phil Donahue, "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?" It's not the insurance industry versus the American people; it is Obama's socialist leviathan versus the American people, with the insurance companies as necessary collateral damage.<br /><br />Is it fair to accuse the insurance companies of arbitrariness when they refuse to cover what their contracts don't require them to cover? And isn't Obama implying that if the government were to take full control over health care, there would be no denial of coverage? We don't have to wait for his plan to take effect to know that's false. Everyone, including Obama, is aware of Medicare's denying or reducing reimbursements so drastically that an increasing number of doctors are refusing Medicare patients. Does he call that arbitrary?<br /><br />In addition, whether or not you bristle at those suggesting Obamacare would usher in death panels, you are in fantasyland if you think Obamacare doesn't contemplate increased rationing -- by the government. The Democrats' plans involve the formation of an administrative board, which would make determinations on what kind of coverage the government would pay for and, perhaps, even allow.<br /><br />What's the difference between that and an insurance company's denying coverage? Well, it's worse for the government to do it, actually. The government's coverage decisions would be dictated not by a private and at least somewhat consensual contract, but by the fiat of a largely unaccountable bureaucrat whose authority would be derived from powers delegated to him by whatever administrative bodies Congress might outsource to do its dirty work. The bureaucrat's charge would not be to infuse compassion in his decision, but to coldly cut costs. Read the Democratic bills!<br /><br />Though I don't belong to the "Obama is a genius" school, I know he's smart enough to realize that insurance company profits are but a fraction of rising health care costs and that it's grossly misleading to make insurers the primary villains. This is simply Chicago politics writ large in a last-gasp effort to enslave us with government health care.<br /><br />Obama is also dishonest in portraying his still-unwritten plan as middle-of-the-road between the extreme position of those who want socialized medicine and the extreme position of those who want to relax all regulations on the health insurance industry and just pass reforms in "baby steps."<br /><br />First, he is intentionally mischaracterizing the Republicans' position. They don't advocate baby steps, but a series of market reforms that would not entail restructuring the entire system under government control.<br /><br />Nor do they want to relax all regulations on insurance companies. They do want to remove some of the coverage mandates, not for the purpose of helping insurers, but to benefit consumers, who ultimately would have to bear the costs of elective procedures for others. Republicans also want to relax arbitrary laws preventing consumers from buying across state lines.<br /><br />Further, Obama is misrepresenting his own plan as centrist and a composite of Democratic and Republican ideas. It is the last thing from centrist. His plan contemplates -- and would eventuate in -- full-blown government control, which is also deliberate and which he's on record advocating.<br /><br />He has rejected outright all Republican ideas except for tort reform and "fraud and abuse." But he is just pretending to support tort reform with some meaningless smoke and mirrors. As for fraud and abuse, it's revealing that he would credit Republicans with a franchise on the concept, but his lip service promise to curb it is just more cynical sophistry. He already has a track record on this with his stimulus plan. Enough said.<br /><br />Everything about this unprecedented federal power grab stinks, not least of which are the highhanded, unconstitutional and otherwise illegal methods Obama is explicitly advocating to pass this monstrosity over the informed will of the American people. We must pray he fails.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2010/03/09/obama_vs_insurers_and_the_people,_part_2">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>NHS doctors thought pregnancy was gout!</b><br /><br /><i>No scans, of course. They cost money</i><br /><br /><img src="http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01001/baby_280_1001683a.jpg"><br /><br />STUNNED Belinda Waite became a mum for the first time — just THREE hours after doctors discovered she was pregnant. The 21-year-old had been in and out of hospital for nine months after being told she was suffering from a severe case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and gout. It was only after she was admitted to hospital in agony that medics realised she was expecting.<br /><br />They told Belinda she was around three months pregnant and sent her back home to Bampton, Devon, just before midnight. But at 2.30am the following morning baby daughter Louise arrived weighing a healthy 8lb 14oz to the amazement of Belinda and partner Wayne Boyles, 28.<br /><br />Wayne's mum Sylvia helped with the unexpected arrival and hairdresser Belinda said she had "not been feeling right" for eight months. She said: "I can't believe I was pregnant all this time - you'd have thought the doctors would have noticed something like that. "I think Wayne was even more shocked than me because we had no idea, but she is a beautiful baby and we're really happy. "I did feel like something was moving inside me as the months went on. "But I never considered I was pregnant - and it doesn't seem to have crossed the doctors' minds. "It was obviously a huge shock for us all but you have to get on with these things - and we are all really enjoying it."<br /><br />Belinda gave birth after she was taken to Tiverton Hospital at 10pm on February 6 suffering with pains throughout her body. Doctors announced she was around three months pregnant and sent her home. Belinda said: "I was really shocked. They told me to get some rest and make an appointment with the doctors the following Monday. "Three hours later, Louise was born. I don't think Wayne could believe it was happening. "We hardly had time to think about it; no one believed us when we told them we suddenly had a child. "You read about these stories in magazines, but you never think they happen to real people - and I certainly never thought it would happen to me."<br /><br />Belinda said Louise was perfectly healthy despite her being very active through her pregnancy. She said: "I went on rollercoasters at Alton Towers, on water slides in Spain, I probably ate all the wrong foods. Luckily I do not smoke and I stopped drinking alcohol as it made me feel sick." The hospital, run by NHS Devon, was unavailable for comment.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2885315/Docs-thought-baby-was-gout.html">SOURCE</a><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>NHS hospital ignores clear suicide danger -- even after warning</b><br /><br />A woman leapt to her death hours after her father begged a psychiatric unit not to release her. Graham Nye warned them: 'If she goes back to her flat she will throw herself off the balcony.' Just seven hours later his chilling prediction came true when Victoria jumped from her 13th-floor flat.<br /><br />Mr Nye is now demanding to know why his daughter - who had a history of suicide attempts - was allowed out of the unit at the Royal South Hampshire Hospital. The NHS trust has launched an independent investigation.<br /><br />Mr Nye, 55, has told how his daughter had suffered for eight years with mental illness. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder two years ago but, after reacting badly to medication, experts told her they believed she was suffering from a personality disorder, which required separate treatment.<br /><br />Miss Nye, 22, admitted herself to the unit in an attempt to turn her life around. But after a fortnight of treatment, Mr Nye claimed, she was told by psychiatrists that she 'could not be helped', despite a family doctor telling them she was in need of urgent care. She phoned her father around 5pm on March 3 to say she was being sent home. Within the hour he had called doctors asking them not to release her. He says he was told his comments would be shared with doctors. At 12.40am the next day Miss Nye's body was discovered by neighbours outside the tower block where she lived in Southampton.<br /><br />Mr Nye, a freelance television producer, said: 'She said they told her they could not help her. She took this to mean that although she had something wrong with her she could not be helped. 'I have no doubt she killed herself because she felt there was no help for her.'<br /><br />Dr Huw Stone, Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust's medical director, said: 'In any serious incident we always carry out a thorough investigation into all aspects of the patient's care.'<br /><br />Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity SANE, said: 'We find it unforgivable that people in distress can be discharged from hospital before they are ready to leave.'<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256573/Young-woman-jumped-100ft-death-just-hours-father-begged-psychiatric-hospital-release-her.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-55974101107858641452010-03-10T00:41:00.001+11:302010-03-10T00:41:42.710+11:30<b>Four big obstacles remain for Obamacare</b><br /><br />House Democratic leaders concede they do not have enough support to pass President Obama's health care package, but the party is hopeful it will come up with the 216 votes needed to pass the bill before the March 18 deadline set by the White House. But first they will have to clear a number of hurdles standing in the way of passage.<br /><br />1. The Senate -- Looming large in the minds of nearly every House member are the 290 or so House bills the Senate has ignored since January 2009. Many House Democrats are refusing to pass the Senate's health care legislation without a guarantee that the Senate will take up a corrections bill using an exhaustive and potentially politically damaging parliamentary tactic that would require just 51 votes to pass it in their chamber. "There are too many deficiencies in the Senate bill for us to just go on faith," Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., said.<br /><br />2. Pro-life Democrats -- Up to a dozen Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., stand ready to vote against the Senate bill because of its effect on federal funding of abortion. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has insisted the bill does not expend taxpayer money on the procedure, Stupak and others point to provisions in the Senate bill like one that would provide funding for elective abortions by private health insurance plans that receive federal dollars. Stupak told The Examiner that Pelosi is working around the pro-life Democrats, trying to find other former "no" votes to make up the deficit, but Democratic strategist Peter Fenn said the leadership will have to find a way to win the votes of at least some pro-life Democrats. "If you lose the Stupak crowd, you are going to be in trouble," Fenn said.<br /><br />3. Fiscal moderates -- As Pelosi goes fishing for new "yes" votes among the 39 Democrats who voted against the House health care bill, she may have hard time reeling anyone in. That's because the vast majority of these lawmakers represent red districts. Seven of them won their last election by less than 5 percentage points and 14 are vulnerable freshmen. Many of these members dislike the bill's $1 trillion cost and size. "My top concern is cost containment and delivery system reform," Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., who voted against the House health care bill, told The Examiner. "I'm going to do what's right by my constituents and right by my district."<br /><br />4. House liberals -- While it is expected that many of the 80 or so of the most liberal members of the Democratic caucus will vote for the Senate bill because it's better than nothing, don't rule out the possibility that at least a few of them will defect and vote down the bill because it does not include a government-run public option that was part of the House-passed version. Upon resigning from the House on Monday over sexual harassment charges, freshman Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., said Democratic leaders were forcing him out because he planned to vote against the Senate bill because it did not create a European-style, single-payer system of health care delivery. "I suspect that most will fall in line and vote for it, but there may be some holdouts that we don't know about," said Merrill Matthews, director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, a research and advocacy organization.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Four-big-obstacles-remain-for-Obamacare-87000027.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Obama: Time to debate health care over</b><br /><br />President Obama on Monday tore into private health insurers for recent rate hikes, taking a more aggressive rhetorical turn as he pushes for final congressional passage of his top domestic priority. Obama repeated his assertion that the plan under consideration includes the best Democratic and Republican ideas. The time for debate has ended, he argued. Congress "owes the American people a final up or down vote on health care. It's time to make a decision," he told an enthusiastic crowd at Arcadia University near Philadelphia. "Stand with me and fight with me. ... Let's seize reform. It's within our grasp."<br /><br />The administration is ramping up its health care push in the coming weeks. The White House has called for legislation to be on the president's desk at the end of March before the congressional Easter vacation. Two Democratic leadership aides told CNN last week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is aiming to have the House of Representatives pass the Senate's health care bill by March 17.<br /><br />A separate package of changes designed in part to make the overall measure more palatable to House liberals then would be approved by both chambers through a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Bills passed under reconciliation require a Senate majority of 51 votes. Democrats lost their filibuster-proof, 60-seat Senate supermajority with the January election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts.<br /><br />Obama opened his remarks Monday by targeting Anthem Blue Cross in California for recently boosting its rates by almost 40 percent. A diabetic Philadelphia-area woman introduced the president. Her insurer reportedly told her in January that her rates would more than double. "The price of health care is one of the most punishing costs for families, businesses and our government," Obama said. "The insurance companies continue to ration health care. ... That's the status quo in America, and it's a status quo that's unsustainable."<br /><br />Insurance companies, the president argued, have made a calculation. He cited a recent Goldman Sachs conference call in which an insurance broker told investors that insurers are willing to lose some customers through premium hikes because of an overall lack of competition in the industry. "They will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it," Obama said. "How much higher do premiums have to rise until we do something about it? How many more Americans have to lose their health insurance? How many more businesses have to drop coverage?"<br /><br />Obama dismissed GOP criticism that his nearly $1 trillion proposal fails to control spiraling medical costs. "You had 10 years," Obama said in reference to GOP control of Congress. "What were you doing?" He also brushed aside warnings by political observers that health care reform may lead to major Democratic losses in midterm elections. Washington is "obsessed with the sport of politics," he said. "We have debated health care in Washington for more than a year. ... When's the right time? If not now, when? If not us, who?"<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Senate's top Republican made it clear Sunday his party won't relax any of its efforts to halt the reform package. "What the American people would like us to do is not make this gargantuan mistake," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told ABC's "This Week."<br /><br />If the bill does go through, avoiding a GOP filibuster by using the reconciliation tactic in the Senate, the battle moves to its next stage. "Every election this fall will be a referendum on this bill," McConnell said.<br /><br />Obama said Monday he's not inclined to take "advice about what's good for Democrats" from McConnell. But "the issue here is not the politics of it," he asserted, saying Congress and the president were sent to Washington to "solve the big challenges." <br /> <br /><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/08/health.care/?hpt=T2">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /> <br><br /><br /><b>Liberals want to suspend self-government for Obamacare</b><br /><br />President Obama is demanding a final vote on Obamacare before the members of the House and Senate return home for the Easter recess, which begins March 29. Whatever your views on the merits of the variety of health care reform proposals that collectively have been debated over the course of the past 15 months, you should be offended and repulsed by this schedule. Why? Because there is no bill to look at and debate; no text to read; no budget estimate to examine for its assumptions and calculations.<br /><br />This is a massive proposed law, thousands of pages long, with extraordinarily dense language. The president has promised even more new provisions touching on such important subjects as tort reform and Medicare taxes, provisions that have never seen the light of day or been debated in any committee. His whole pitch is "Trust me," and the American people clearly do not, but still he pushes for a rapid conclusion to the debate.<br /><br />This is not how free people govern themselves, and there can be no rhetorical cover for this attempted diktat. There is no urgency for a program the benefits of which do not begin to arrive in great measure for many years. There is no conceivable argument for voting in essence "sight unseen" except that the bill cannot withstand scrutiny, so scrutiny must be avoided.<br /><br />Time and time again we have seen how the legislative process tosses up unseen and unread provisions that shock and appall. Most recently in the law to reauthorize the Patriot Act, there appeared out of nowhere a provision that would have criminalized various interrogation procedures. The "McDermott Amendment" was stopped, but not for lack of trying.<br /><br />There will be no end to the fine print in Obamacare 4.0. The outrages of the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" will have plenty of cousins in the newest proposals pushed by the president. With enough time, they can be discovered, and public opinion can be brought to bear to force them out.<br /><br />Once into law, however, the worst provisions of Obamacare, passed in darkness and with undue speed, will require enormous effort to repeal and supermajorities if the president wields his veto to protect the special interests that benefit from the law's nooks and crannies.<br /><br />Look at the fiasco that is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which has cost tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars. The Congress cannot move itself to remedy even its most absurd overreaches. Once on the books, we are stuck with Obamacare with all of its unseen deals.<br /><br />Nor will we be able to see until it is too late what hasn't happened. Is the tort reform being promised by the president in any way real? Do the numbers add up? Will the Medicare cuts be as deeply destructive as advertised, or will they be suspended and thus the deficits in the out years far greater than advertised?<br /><br />Liberals who are pushing for a final vote are pushing for a suspension of self-government, for an astonishing and sickening descent into "who cares, just do it" extremism that departs from the long legacy of the American constitutional project.<br /><br />Every legislator who votes to proceed in this fashion is participating in a shameful humbling of the role of the Congress. They will deserve to be thrown out regardless of the merits of Obamacare because they could not possibly have known what those merits are.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Liberals-want-to-suspend-self-government-for-Obamacare-86759407.html">SOURCE</a> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Obama Bribes, Threatens, and Rewards Congress to Pass Health Care</b><br /><br />All aspects of President Obama's Chicago-style tactics are on display as he cajoles, bullies and bribes the House to pass his health care proposals despite the overwhelming public rejection with which they have been met.<br /><br />To some, he offers bribes. Rep. Jim Matheson, endangered species -- a Utah Democrat -- succeeded in getting his brother Scott appointed to a federal judgeship. Matheson voted against Obamacare when it first passed the House. With his new-found winnings in his pocket, he now professes to be undecided. He faces a clear conflict between his district and his conscience on the one hand and the bribe to his brother on the other. The conscience will probably lose.<br /><br />Matheson supports his party 91 percent of the time according to The Washington Post even though John McCain got 58 percent of the vote in his district in 2008. But Matheson got re-elected -- by professing independence from the Democratic Party's liberal line -- with 63 percent of the vote, so he probably figures he can sneak in a vote for health care and still con his district into re-electing him. After all, he's not heavy. He's my brother.<br /><br />Even as Matheson basks in the glow of presidential bribery, Eric Massa, a renegade Democrat from the Southern Tier of New York state faces his wrath. Massa's sin was to vote against Obamacare. So Pelosi and the ethically challenged House Ethics Committee are investigating him for "verbally abusing" a male member of his staff.<br /><br />In this age of more serious offenses, using "salty language" to express his displeasure with staff work would not seem to rank high on the list of indictable offenses. If it were, Lyndon Johnson would have been impeached. But Massa is being hung out to dry as an example to other would-be independent-minded Democrats. The attacks on him have gotten so bad that Massa has announced his retirement after only one term in office.<br /><br />But there is a reward waiting for House members who ignore the wishes and interests of their constituents and vote for Obama's health care proposals. Alan Mollohan has had a pesky FBI investigation hanging over his head for a few years. Now, presto, right before the health care vote, it went away. The Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, announced that the FBI was closing the inquiry.<br /><br />Mollohan's sin? He pushed for earmarks for nonprofit enterprises in his district and then went into a real estate deal in Florida with the head of the company under financial terms that were distinctly favorable to the congressman. But Mollohan toes the party line and is now getting his unjust reward.<br /><br />With health care reform coming up for a vote in the next few days, such tactics send a message to the House, where Nancy Pelosi is having trouble lining up her votes: Obama will do anything -- anything at all -- to pass this bill.<br /><br />For those of us without judgeships or the FBI at our disposal, we can only call and write the swing congressmen (go to dickmorris.com for a list and their phone numbers) or donate to the League of American Voters to step up its fierce media offensive in their districts to urge them to vote no.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/03/08/obama_bribes,_threatens,_and_rewards_congress_to_pass_health_care">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Leftist British government ignored safety warnings for years over children's heart surgery</b><br /><br />Ministers repeatedly ignored warnings about the safety of Britain's child heart surgery units, it can be revealed. In 2001, a public inquiry into the deaths of dozens of babies at Bristol Royal Infirmary said cardiac units should be barred from carrying out paediatric surgery unless they met safety standards, including carrying out a minimum number of operations per year. The recommendation to ensure surgery was only carried out by those skilled enough to perform the most delicate procedures was made to prevent the recurrence of a scandal such as Bristol – dubbed "the killing fields" in the 1990s.<br /><br />Later this month, the Department of Health (DoH) will say no unit will be allowed to operate unless it has four surgeons and carries out at least 400 operations a year. The ruling will mean around half of Britain's 11 child heart surgery units must close, while the remainder expand. It means departments such as that at John Radcliffe Hospital, which suspended surgery last week following four deaths, and carried out just 100 operations in the last year, could not continue in their current form.<br /><br />Today we reveal how:<br /><br /> * Ministers dismissed a warning in 2003 by the UK's most senior heart surgeon that half of Britain's units should be closed. As President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons (SCTS) of Great Britain and Ireland, Prof James Monro was commissioned by ministers to propose changes following the Bristol inquiry, yet "the Government did absolutely nothing" about his key demand, he told The Sunday Telegraph;<br /><br /> * Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the health service, told NHS bosses two years ago that he feared "another Bristol" tragedy because specialists were so thinly spread;<br /><br /> * The consultant told this newspaper "there has been frankly little progress" reorganising services to make them safer since the public inquiry reported in 2001. Sir Bruce recently told colleagues that failing to make changes now would leave "a stain on the soul" of his profession.<br /><br /> * Britain's leading children's heart charity says Labour ministers "ran scared" from introducing an overhaul of the specialist system which could have saved lives, and prevented major disabilities.<br /><br />The public inquiry into the Bristol heart deaths scandal was the most damning in the history of the NHS. It said botched heart operations killed 30 to 35 babies between 1990 and 1995, while over a longer period, up to 170 babies died who might have been saved elsewhere. Sir Ian Kennedy, the inquiry's chairman, ordered a reorganisation of services to improve safety, with each unit carrying out a specified minimum number of operations.<br /><br />The DoH asked Prof James Monro, then President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons, to carry out a review, which in 2003 said the figure should be set at 300 operations annually – meaning the closure of at least half of the centres. Prof Monro told The Sunday Telegraph: "That was our main recommendation and the Government did absolutely nothing about it at all. Not a single unit was closed, and many of them should have closed years ago".<br /><br />The surgeon, now retired, said he thought it was "extraordinary" that the whole process was being started again now, years after the recommendations were shelved. Prof Monro said he never received an explanation for the rejection of his report, but said "politicians had their fingers in the pie" and were fearful of making changes which might upset local constituencies. In 2003, Stephen Ladyman, the then-health minister, dismissed the recommendation claiming the report contained "no evidence" to justify such closures, despite its inclusion of studies showing higher mortality at small units.<br /><br />Four years later, Sir Bruce Keogh, then President of the SCTS wrote to health service bosses, expressing concerns about the current and future safety of Britain's paediatric cardiac units. He wrote the letter because he feared several units had become perilously short-staffed. Sir Bruce told this newspaper: "A number of surgeons had retired or stopped doing paediatric work, and I was worried things were looking a bit unstable. "In short, I was worried about the risk of another 'Bristol', and I felt anxious that we had a situation where two or three units were working single-handed."<br /><br />Months after sending the letter, he was appointed NHS medical director, and ordered an urgent review of the service, which will result in a blueprint for children's heart surgery, to be published later this month. The document will say each service should carry out at least 400 and ideally 500 operations a year, and have 4 surgeons, so it can provide safe around-the-clock cover and perform a larger range of complex procedures. As a result, about half of England's 11 centres will be earmarked to close.<br /><br />Sir Bruce was so fearful of an immediate crisis in cardiac care that in a letter seen by this newspaper, and sent in May 2008, he warned the head of NHS specialist services to draw up a "risk strategy" in case immediate problems emerged before the reorganisation could be carried out. The letter followed his explicit warning to the NHS management board that "another Bristol" could emerge in the foreseeable future.<br /><br />Anne Keatley-Clarke, chief executive of the Children's Heart Federation, said families who had experienced the trauma of high-risk surgery were furious that politicians had delayed changes which could have saved lives. "Parents who know about heart surgery are hugely angry and frustrated about this. The clinicians were ready to do this a long time ago, the parents expected it; we think the politicians ran scared and blocked it," Mrs Keatley-Clarke said. She added: "We will never know how many children these delays have affected; whether that is in terms of needless deaths, or more children ending up with learning disabilities because they suffered neurological damage which could have been avoided."<br /><br />Sir Bruce said there had been "frankly little progress" to make the changes since Kennedy reported in 2001, but said it was "too easy" to blame politicians given the likelihood of fierce constituency battles once the names of the units to close become public. He urged fellow surgeons to show leadership, and support changes even if it meant uprooting themselves and moving hundreds of miles to a different unit. Any more delays would create "a stain on the soul" of his profession, he said.<br /><br />The largest units at Great Ormond Street and Royal Brompton Hospital in London, and Birmingham Children's Hospital, currently carry out more than 400 operations a year, while Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and Evelina Hospital, part of Guys and St Thomas' Foundation trust in London carry out around 350. The threat of closure looms largest over units at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, which carried out just 100 operations in the last year, while hospitals in Leicester, Southampton, Newcastle, Bristol and Leeds all did less than 300.<br /><br />This review will report this autumn, after considering which hospitals can best expand, and taking into account transport links for families. However Sir Bruce indicated that the John Radcliffe, which last week suspended its service amid an investigation into the deaths of four babies operated on by surgeon Caner Salih, is at greatest threat of closure. Sir Bruce said: "All of the judgements have yet to be taken, but the eye does fall on Oxford, given it's got the lowest number of operations by far, and only one surgeon [since the departure of Salih]".<br /><br />Yesterday grieving mother Aida Lo, 29, from Oxford, spoke of her shock and anger at finding out that the death of her daughter, three-week old Nathalie, was one of four cases in less than three months which will form part of the inquiry announced last week. The hospital said Mr Salih, who started work at the hospital just three months ago, has left the hospital to work elsewhere. A spokesman said his departure was not connected to the investigation.<br /><br />Sir Ian, who headed the public inquiry into the Bristol deaths, has recently been appointed to run the Government panel which will decide which paediatric cardiac units can stay open. Asked about the delay of almost a decade since he made his recommendations, he said only: "I did my bit – it was for others to take action. "Obviously I made the recommendation in the expectation action will be taken; I look forward to that happening."<br /><br />The DoH said it had been monitoring children's heart surgery closely, and that to date, all units were providing acceptable results. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/7386895/Ministers-ignored-safety-warnings-for-years-over-childrens-heart-surgery.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>NHS patients routinely treated in mop cupboards and corridors, nurses' survey says</b><br /><br />A shortage of space in overcrowded NHS hospitals means patients are routinely treated in television rooms, mop cupboards and corridors, a survey of nurses suggests today. Kitchens and storage areas are also used while extra beds are put on wards, increasing the the risk of infections spreading.<br /><br />The poll of more than 900 nurses for Nursing Times found that 63 per cent were aware of patients being placed in areas not designed for clinical care. Almost eight in 10 respondents (79 per cent) said they believed this resulted in patient safety being put at risk, due to patients not having access to call bells or water, or fire exits being blocked.<br /><br />Of those who were aware of the practice, 29 per cent said it happened every day, 29 per cent said several times a week and 11 per cent said once a week. The remainder said it happened once a month or less.<br /><br />Reasons cited for the use of non-clinical areas included the hospital being “full”, A&E being “under pressure” or a risk that the Government’s four hour target for people to be seen in A&E may be breached, leading to unnecessary hospital admissions.<br /><br />More than 300 nurses who responded to the survey revealed specific examples of what happened to patients. One anonymous nurse said the areas had been described as an “overspill car park”, while another said: “If a patient’s condition suddenly deteriorated resulting in them having a cardiac arrest we would not be able to get the crash trolley to them.” Another nurse added: “Urine bottles are not emptied, meals are missed, as staff are not aware of the patient.”<br /><br />A total of 83 per cent of nurses said they had raised concerns about the practice with senior staff but only 4 per cent said it had then been stopped. Others said the move had been authorised by senior managers, while some nurses said they had been bullied and accused of “not being a team player” for raising their concerns.<br /><br />In a statement, the Department of Health said that the vast majority of NHS patients experienced good quality, safe and effective care. “However, we acknowledge there is more to do and will continue to strive to make services even safer.”” It was for local health authorities and providers to assess services locally, a spokesman added. “Every nurse must comply with the standards, performance and ethics outlined in the Nursing and Midwifery Council code. In particular, any nurse who is concerned about any risk to their patients should report their concerns to their manager, in writing if necessary.”<br /><br />Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, added: “Not only is this potentially unsafe, but it is completely undignified. In extreme circumstances the NHS might need to resort to this, but the results of this survey suggest it is a widespread practice.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7054843.ece">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-59440495034671358972010-03-09T00:48:00.001+11:302010-03-09T00:48:46.820+11:30<b>Dems' splintering threatens health bill</b><br /><br />The escalating battle among Democrats over abortion has grabbed headlines, but a few other intraparty disputes are endangering President Obama's proposed health care overhaul. From stemming rising health care costs and addressing regional disparities on Medicare rates to a general skepticism of the Senate, rank-and-file House Democrats are struggling to support Mr. Obama's plan as they close in on midterm elections. Voters have become increasingly hostile to the effort. "Any time the Senate is involved, I become nervous," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, Missouri Democrat.<br /><br />Polls show that certain provisions in the Democrats' plan are popular but that the American public is frustrated with the process, which has included deeply partisan attacks and accusations of legislating state-specific carve-outs in exchange for votes.<br /><br />It's unclear how much can be changed from the president's plan, which is based largely on the Senate bill. Even if Democrats reach compromises on tough sticking points, some provisions can't be changed if Democrats keep to their plan to wrap up work on health care reform under complex budget reconciliation rules in the Senate.<br /><br />Liberal Democrats are disappointed that the president's plan doesn't have a public option and say the tax subsidies aren't generous enough to help the poor and middle class meet the bill's insurance requirements.<br /><br />Mr. Obama may have eased some of those concerns in a White House meeting last week when he pledged to try to push through a public insurance plan once he gains momentum with the health care overhaul bill, said Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Democrat and co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.<br /><br />Another group of members, largely from the New Democrat Coalition, says the Senate bill doesn't do enough to repair the broken system that pays physicians and hospitals for treating Medicare patients. "I've always felt that the key to successful health care reform is changing the way we pay for health care, so it's outcome- and value-based, not volume-based as is fee-for-service today. And I'd like to see more in that direction," said Rep. Ron Kind, Wisconsin Democrat and one of the lawmakers who met with Mr. Obama last week. The Senate bill reforms the payment process for physicians but not hospitals or other parts of the health care system, he said. "The House did a better job of that when we passed our bill," Mr. Kind said.<br /><br />Rep. John Adler, New Jersey Democrat, said on "Fox News Sunday" that "I'm not sure we've gone far enough in terms of fixing the underlying system to make it affordable for businesses and for taxpayers."<br /><br />House members also have taken serious issue with the Senate's tax on high-cost insurance plans over concern that it would hurt unions, a group loyal to Democrats. The House's plan instead would increase taxes for Americans with the highest incomes. Mr. Obama's plan tried to address that concern by scaling back the tax and delaying the date it takes effect.<br /><br />House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, promised to reform the nation's health care system soon but said it wouldn't be easy. "Every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here," she told reporters last week. "Assume nothing as to where we were before and where people may be now. We start, one, two, three, four, all the way up to a majority vote."<br /><br />Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, said on Sunday's political talk shows that passage is uncertain. "Do we have a mortal lock? No," he said, though he repeated that he does "believe it will pass." "I think the trend is in the right direction because people see that the status quo is absolutely broken," he told CNN's "State of the Union," adding that his party caucus wants to see how the Congressional Budget Office analyzes a final plan's fiscal impact before committing to any votes.<br /><br />The abortion issue threatens to untie support in the House as well. A dozen Democrats who voted for the House bill, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, say the Senate bill would allow for federal funding of abortion and won't support it. The group proved its strength when it inserted strong restrictions into the House bill. These Democrats say the Senate plan would allow federal funding to cover community health care centers that provide abortions and allow tax subsidies for insurance plans that cover the procedure.<br /><br />Underlying the policy differences is the House's skepticism of the Senate. The House has passed nearly 300 bills during this session of Congress that are still waiting for consideration by the Senate. Some of the bills, including a cap-and-trade proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions, were approved with votes that were politically risky for House Democrats.<br /><br />Under the president's plan, the House would pass the Senate bill and then a companion bill that repairs the Senate's plan would be introduced into both chambers. In the Senate, it would have to pass under complex budget reconciliation rules. Senate Republicans are threatening to make that process more complex in attempt to increase the wedge among skeptical House members. Republicans in the House and Senate have said they plan to make health care reform a central issue in the November elections.<br /><br />The American public largely favors many of the proposed reforms but has grown frustrated with the process. Twenty-five percent of respondents in a CNN poll conducted in mid- to late February said Congress should pass a bill along the lines of what already has been proposed. That is down from 30 percent a month earlier. Proposals that have majority of public support include those requiring large and midsize businesses to provide insurance to employees (72 percent), preventing insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions (58 percent) and the public insurance plan (51 percent) that liberals favor but Mr. Obama removed from his plans. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/08/democrats-splintering-threatens-health-reform-bill">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The same rotten Rx</b><br /><br /><i>If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try again</i><br /><br />With Plans A, B and C having failed miserably, President Obama yesterday unveiled his latest "new and improved" version of health-care reform. He says that this incarnation "incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans — including some of the ideas that Republicans offered during the health-care summit." Unfortunately, its fundamental premise remains exactly the same — a government takeover of the health-care system.<br /><br />Start with those "Republican ideas": Though mostly not bad, they're hardly game changing.<br /><br /> * Increase the financial incentives for states to experiment with malpractice reform by $50 million. Wow — a million dollars per state! That undoubtedly has the trial lawyers quaking in their boots.<br /> <br /> * Undercover stings to help root out Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Fine — but when fighting fraud in government programs becomes a major concession, it shows just how out of touch Washington has become.<br /> <br /> * Increase Medicare reimbursements. OK, higher spending for a program that's already going broke may well be a Republican idea, but it doesn't exactly make Obama's better.<br /> <br /> * Allow health-savings accounts to be sold through the government-sponsored exchanges. This could be a positive step — but the details are key, and they remain to be seen.<br /><br />HSAs have been proven to reduce the cost of health care and have added nearly 3 million people to the ranks of the insured since their inception. But they only really work in conjunction with high-deductible insurance — if your policy already pays for everything, there's not much point to saving for health expenses.<br /><br />And every version of ObamaCare to date has restricted high-deductible insurance and/or mandated low-deductible policies. Unless the president is prepared to make major changes in those areas, the HSA concession is just bait-and-switch.<br /><br />All in all, saying that these changes represent a "compromise" with Republicans is a bit like saying that Yankee speedster Brett Gardner is a home-run hitter. It's technically true (he hit three dingers last year), but no one's going to mistake him for Babe Ruth.<br /><br />The president has also touted the new plan as "smaller" and "leaner." Smaller and leaner than what? This version may actually cost more than the last one — breaking the $1 trillion mark even under the White House's rosy assumptions.<br /><br />At its heart, ObamaCare hasn't changed. It still represents a top-down, centralized, command-and-control approach to reform. The government would require everyone to have health insurance, would determine what benefits that insurance must include, would regulate insurance prices and physician reimbursement and would micromanage how medicine is practiced. All this would be accompanied by higher taxes and, most likely, higher insurance premiums.<br /><br />It is a plan that says the government knows best — when it comes to a sixth of the US economy and some of the most important, personal and private decisions in people's lives. A few cosmetic concessions can't fix that basic premise.<br /><br />Obama also made it clear yesterday that he wants Congress to use an obscure parliamentary gimmick known as "reconciliation" to bypass a Republican filibuster and force the bill through the Senate. Democrats will likely manage to get the 50 votes needed in the Senate to use this tactic — but the vote will be far closer in the House, where deaths, defections and resignations have erased the three-vote margin of victory Democrats had last November.<br /><br />The president was right about one thing yesterday. As he said, "Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everyone has said it. So now is the time to make a decision."<br /><br />Reportedly, as many as nine House Democrats who once voted against ObamaCare, including Rep. Scott Murphy of upstate New York, are now open to supporting the latest version. If they do, in the face of overwhelming public opposition, this new version of health reform could turn out to be Plan L — for "loser."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11423">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Dems turn risky health vote into manhood contest</b><br /><br />There's no way around it. Things in the House of Representatives are about to get very, very rough. With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November.<br /><br />If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they've never experienced.<br /><br />I called a Democratic strategist with a question: Say I'm a moderate Democrat. I voted for the House bill last November, but I've seen the polls, I know a majority in my district opposes the bill, and I feel certain that voting for final passage will end my time in office. Why should I vote yes? <br /><br />"Look, you voted for it before," said the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous. "You should have thought about that then. You're stuck with the vote, it's around your neck, you're going to wear it like an albatross. The ad that's going to run against you is going to be the same whether you vote for it now or not. "The Republicans are going to be able to frame what you did their way, and you're going to need to be able to frame it a different way, to say that you fought to make health insurance more affordable and insurance companies more accountable. "And if you're a bedwetting crybaby, you should just go home right now." If you get the idea that, in private at least, Democrats are going to make this vote a serious test of manhood, you're right. <br /><br />"You big weenie, you know what I'd like to say to you?" the strategist continued. "You sit there and you're willing to go send an 18-year-old to go fight for his country, knowing he might die, and here you are unwilling to take a tough vote on an issue that you promised your constituents and you voted for once before? You don't deserve to be here!"<br /><br />What about this argument, I asked: Yes, I voted for it once, but why compound the damage by doing it again? Say you've cheated on your spouse. You can tell them you only did it once, that it was a mistake, and that you won't do it again. Or you can assume the damage has been done and carry on like Tiger Woods. Which is more likely to save the relationship?<br /><br />Sorry, I was told. Real men don't turn back. "If they're bedwetters, they're bedwetters, and a lot of them are bedwetters," the strategist said of his fellow Democrats. "BUT THEY ALREADY VOTED FOR IT."<br /><br />Well then, what about those Democrats who voted against the bill? To get to the 217 votes required for passage, Pelosi needs some of them to change their votes. "That's a much harder case," said the strategist. "You say to them, 'Look, we're Democrats. If we fail on this, we all fail together and everybody's going to pay the price. If you think it's important for the party -- the one that you're a member of -- to get something done, then you need to reconsider your vote. We need you. If we didn't need you, we wouldn't be asking.'"<br /><br />"There are ways we can help you explain it. The Senate bill that you'd be voting for is less progressive than the House one, less costly, less tax-raising. So you can say, 'I was always for health care reform, but I wasn't going to raise taxes on families to do it.'"<br /><br />But what happens when the lawmaker, however he voted the first time, raises the ultimate objection: If I vote for this, I'll lose my seat. "Let's assume you do get beat, and you have to live with it for the rest of your life," the strategist explained. "Would you rather get beat because you did something big that changed the country, or would you rather get beat because you're a weenie and sat around saying, 'I was too scared, so I got beat?'"<br /><br />In the hallways and the hideaways of Capitol Hill, the Democratic message is clear: Real men don't cross the party. Understand?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Dems-turn-risky-health-vote-into-manhood-contest-86422107.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>One Giant Government Leap Backwards</b><br /> <br />Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a government-run utility -- without bending the cost curve downward.<br /><br />More spending. More tax hikes on investors, businesses, and individuals. New government boards to control prices, ration care, and redistribute income. The Obama administration is basically taking a giant government leap backwards that the country doesn’t want to take.<br /><br />One of the most galling features of this plan is a taxpayer-subsidized government-insurance entitlement for people earning up to 400 percent above the poverty line, or nearly $100,000 for a family of four. In other words, a middle-class health-care entitlement that will add millions of people to the federal dole. It’s all too reminiscent of the political dictum of the old New Dealer Harry Hopkins: tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.<br /><br />The spending has been well chronicled by congressman Paul Ryan, who baffled President Obama at the so-called health-care summit with his cogent analysis of a ten-year cost of $2.3 trillion that sets a floor, rather than ceiling, for the likely expense of this entitlement package. Obama had no rebuttal.<br /><br />On taxing, let’s not forget that the current health-care payroll tax of 2.9 percent will be expanded to cover all forms of investment and capital formation, on top of the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. The anti-growth consequences are incalculable. As the late Jack Kemp used to say, you can’t have capitalism without capital.<br /><br />The White House says job creation is priority number one. But you can’t have new jobs without healthy businesses. And healthy businesses require investment. However, by taxing investment more we’ll get fewer jobs, reduced real wages, and slower economic growth.<br /><br />And how stupid is it for the president to support a six-month payroll-tax cut for small businesses in the name of job creation while imposing a 1 percent permanent increase in that very same tax to fund the massive new health-care entitlement. Talk about self-defeating.<br /><br />Oh, by the way, a government takeover of health care will cripple one of our most productive job-creating sectors. Over the deep two-year recession, while overall corporate payrolls fell by about 7.5 million, private health-care firms created almost 700,000 new jobs.<br /><br />And the health-care industry is one of our fastest-growing, most technologically advanced areas. With constant breakthroughs in biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and diagnostics, the growing demand for more health care could elevate this prosperous job-creating sector to a third of the economy in the decades ahead. What’s wrong with that? Why crush it?<br /><br />Health-care reform was supposed to be about getting 10 million low-income, chronically uninsured people some health insurance. But that can be solved by playing small ball. Health-care reform also was supposed to slow down cost increases. But that will never happen until the third-party payment system, run by Big Government and Big Business, is replaced by true consumer choice and market competition.<br /><br />Just give consumers the tax break, and let them shop across state lines to find the right insurance plan. And young people who are already paying taxes into Medicare should not be mandated to pay more taxes into this entitlement plan. The young will pay for health insurance when they’re ready to pay for it.<br /><br />Clearly this new New Deal, or new Great Society, or whatever it is, is the government selling a product that the rest of the country doesn’t want. Ironically, polls show that roughly 80 percent of voters believe their health insurance is satisfactory, good, or excellent. Polls even show that the public knows that a simple majority vote on reconciliation is an insufficient check on runaway government.<br /><br />The Byrd rule says that reconciliation is for budget control and deficit reduction. But the Obama Democrats think they can use reconciliation to install a massive new social policy that would emulate the socialist-labor entitlement state now prevalent in Western Europe. As the Greece crisis amply shows, that entitlement state is on the verge of bankruptcy.<br /><br />Perhaps Obama’s throwing down the gauntlet on nationalized health care will be the political gift that keeps on giving, in terms of political regime change come November. But if Obamacare does pass, a future rollback will be very difficult, and American health care and economic prosperity will be put in grave jeopardy.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryKudlow/2010/03/05/one_giant_government_leap_backwards">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Doctor's lives already being burdened by too much bureaucracy</b><br /><br /><i>Leading to a REDUCTION in available medical services. Yet Obama wants to impose yet another level of bureaucracy</i><br /><br />Some years ago, one of my favorite doctors retired. On my last visit to his office, he took some time to explain to me why he was retiring early and in good health. Being a doctor was becoming more of a hassle as the years went by, he said, and also less fulfilling. It was becoming more of a hassle because of the increasing paperwork, and it was less fulfilling because of the way patients came to him.<br /><br />He was currently being asked to Xerox lots of records from his files, in order to be reimbursed for another patient he was treating. He said it just wasn't worth it. Whoever was paying-- it might have been an insurance company or the government-- would either pay him or not, he said, but he wasn't going to jump through all those hoops.<br /><br />My doctor said that doctor-patient relationships were not the same as they had been when he entered the profession. Back then, people came to him because someone had recommended him to them, but now increasing numbers of people were sent to him because they had some group insurance plan that included his group. He said that the mutual confidence that was part of the doctor-patient relationship was not the same with people who came to his office only because his name was on some list of eligible physicians.<br /><br />The loss of one doctor-- even a very good doctor-- may not seem very important in the grand scheme of heady medical care "reform" and glittering phrases about "universal health care." But making the medical profession more of a hassle for doctors risks losing more doctors, while increasing the demand for treatment.<br /><br />A study published in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Law & Economics showed that a rise in the cost of medical liability insurance led to more reductions of hours of medical service supplied by older doctors than among younger doctors. Younger doctors, more recently out of medical school and often with huge debts to pay off for the cost of that expensive training, may have no choice but to continue working as hard as possible to try to recoup that huge investment of money and time. Younger doctors will probably continue working, even if bureaucrats load them down with increasing amounts of paperwork and the government continues to lower reimbursements for Medicare, Medicaid and-- heaven help us-- the new proposed "universal health care" legislation that is supposed to "bring down the cost of medical care."<br /><br />The confusion between lowering costs and refusing to pay the costs can have a real impact on the supply of doctors. The real costs of medical care include both the financial conditions and the working conditions that will insure a continuing supply of both the quantity and the quality of doctors required to maintain medical care standards for a growing number of patients.<br /><br />Although younger doctors may be trapped in a profession that some of them might not have entered if they had known in advance what all its pluses and minuses would turn out to be, there are two other important groups who are in a position to decide whether or not it is worth it.<br /><br />Those who are old enough to have paid off their medical school debts long ago, and successful enough that they can afford to retire early, or to take jobs as medical consultants, can opt out of the whole elaborate third-party payment system and its problems. What the rising costs of medical liability insurance has already done for some, other hassles that bureaucracies and politicians create can have the same effect for others.<br /><br />There is another group that doesn't have to put up with these hassles. These are young people who have reached the stage in their lives when they are choosing which profession to enter, and weighing the pluses and minuses before making their decisions. Some of these young people might prefer becoming a doctor, other things being equal. But the heady schemes of government-controlled medicine, and the ever more bloated bureaucracies that these heady schemes will require, can make it very unlikely that other things will be equal in the medical profession.<br /><br />Paying doctors less and hassling them more may be some people's idea of "lowering the cost of medical care," but it is instead refusing to pay the costs-- and taking the consequences.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/03/05/alice_in_medical_care_part_iv">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Ten complaints a day from new mothers in NHS maternity wards</b><br /><br />Ten new mothers a day complain about the appalling treatment they receive on overstretched and underfunded maternity wards. The catalogue of complaints ranges from patronising and rude midwives and doctors, to botched deliveries and babies being born in toilets and on reception floors. They paint a bleak picture of a hospital service that is routinely failing women and babies when they are at their most vulnerable.<br /><br />Hospital spokesmen say the vast majority of new mothers are happy with the service they receive, but MPs and campaigners say the shocking figures are symptomatic of a target-driven health service dangerously short of midwives. Horror stories uncovered by a string of Freedom Of Information requests include:<br /><br />● An anaesthetist who slurred his words and fell asleep twice in front of a mother-to-be.<br /><br />● Women giving birth on toilets, in wheelchairs and even on the floor of the reception area.<br /><br />● Midwives talking on their mobile phones while treating women and arguing with doctors in front of a patients.<br /><br />● A nurse dropping a gas-and-air unit on the head of a patient.<br /><br />The FOI requests to 149 hospital trusts with maternity units revealed that 2,792 complaints were lodged last year. However, just 111 trusts replied to the survey. If all had responded, the total number of complaints is likely to have reached 3,700 - or ten a day.<br /><br />Almost half of the complaints related to bullying, unsympathetic, rude and apathetic staff. Seventy complaints were made about maternity care at Southampton's Princess Anne Hospital, the subject of a Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary called One Born Every Minute.<br /><br />The Royal College of Midwives says Britain needs another 3,000 midwives to give new mothers the one-to-one care they need. It emerged last year that the nation's midwives are more overworked than they have been for at least a decade and experts believe up to <font color="#ff0000">1,000 babies a year die needlessly</font> because doctors and midwives are too overstretched or poorly trained to detect the warning signs. Maternity units paid out almost £200million in compensation last year.<br /><br />Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said the Government warned a culture of red tape and targets was putting midwives under unbearable strain. He added: 'You have good and highly dedicated people but it goes wrong if they are constantly under pressure to meet administrative requirements rather than being able to deliver the best service.'<br /><br />Anna Davidson, of the Birth Trauma Association, said: 'These figures and examples are not surprising given the things we hear. 'The shortage of midwives is a real problem. We hear of women left on their own to give birth or one midwife trying to cope with eight cases at a time. 'I am sure there are examples of fantastic care and dedication, but we hear from mothers who suffer nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks. 'They say they have suffered uncontrollable pain, haven't been listened to and were not able to follow their birth plan.'<br /><br />A Department of Health spokesman said: 'The NHS delivers hundreds of thousands of babies safely every year and England is one of the safest places in the world to have a baby.'<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256197/Ten-complaints-day-new-mothers-NHS-maternity-wards.html">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8125125.post-5243666996339939382010-03-08T00:15:00.001+11:302010-03-08T00:15:23.247+11:30<b>The Health Care Bill That Just Won't Die</b><br /> <br />Just when you think that the Democrats' Health Care Bill is dead . it rises from the grave like a zombie propelled by the sheer will of liberals in Washington who think they alone know what's best for the American people. President Obama today ordered Congress to pass the Health Care Bill in the next two weeks so that it can be written into law by a strategy called "reconciliation". The promise of bipartisanship has faded. Now, the bill will pass without Republican support.<br /><br />While the Democrats in the House are busy lining up their votes, one wonders if any will take the time to read the more than 2,000 page monstrosity. In the meantime, the American people are left to question what the role of government should be on health care.<br /><br />Everyone in this country wants better and more affordable health care made available to a larger number of people. Those in this debate are not arguing about whether more people should be insured, the debate is about how to increase coverage for more people. The Democrats make it seem like our choice is between the current, albeit imperfect system, and radical reform. This is not true. As we saw in the last election, voting for change doesn't necessarily get you the kind of change you want. Sometimes a change can be a change for the worse.<br /><br />The federal mandate to purchase health insurance has been part of this bill for several months. However, President Obama recently pegged the penalty to not comply with the mandate at 2.5% of annual income. The problem is the mandate. The mandate exists to force people to purchase the amount and type of insurance favored by the federal government. The decision about what kind of health care you want to buy - or if you want to buy it - is fundamentally the same kind of decision as where you want to live or where you want to work: a private matter that is related to fundamental values about how you want to live your life. A mandate of this kind is a substantial infringement on your individual freedom.<br /><br />Mandating universal health coverage and making the government the ultimate provider of health insurance takes our private choices about lifestyle, health, and medicine and turns them into public, social choices. Whether you eat donuts or hamburgers or get a check-up so many times a year is no longer a choice about your life, but rather a public, political choice about how politicians will control the distribution of resources in society. Since we'll all be tied together through a social health care system, you will no longer make private decisions about your lifestyle. This is a scary prospect. We don't want to live in a society where a National Health Director can decide that it is verboten to eat Krispy Kreme donuts because those who do have become a social liability.<br /><br />This Health Care debate is about the American Dream. It is about the personal decisions each of us make every day as we live our own, respective lives. It is time to dare to dream again about an America that celebrates and protects the freedom to live your life based on what you think is best, not what a gaggle of Washington politicians believe.<br /><br /><a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/BrianMiller/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_that_just_wont_die">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Obama comforts House liberals: Don’t worry, this bill is just the beginning of what we’ll do with health care</b><br /><br /><i>Thus confirming what many conservatives have predicted</i><br /><br />Don’t look surprised. The left has been remarkably candid about this over the past year or two. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again they’ve warned people that the dream is bigger than universal coverage or even the public option. Memo from The One to progressives: Keep the dream alive.<br /><blockquote>Obama argued to the group of progressive members that his health care reform bill should be looked at as the foundation of reform, that can be built on in the future. He asked them to help gather votes for the final health care battle and promised that as soon as the bill was signed into law, he’d continue to push to make it stronger. But in a matter of weeks, he stressed, he could sign into law legislation that would lead to 31 million new people being insured, including the woman who wrote him…<br /><br />“He just said that the public option, something that he has supported along the way, is not something that we can pass. And he emphasized the fact that the decision now is between doing as much as we can do and doing nothing. That’s it. He thought the whole foundation thing — that this is definitely something we could be proud of, something we could build off [of],” said Schakowsky.<br /><br />Woolsey told Obama that she’d be introducing legislation to create a public option and Obama said he encouraged the effort, according to Schakowsky.</blockquote><br />Here’s an especially fun passage. Remember, Obama was self-described proponent of single-payer as recently as 2003 before deciding that it’s simply too impractical to pass. For now.<br /><blockquote>None of the members, including Kucinich, indicated that they would vote any differently this time around. “I think [Kucinich] left the meeting leaving the impression with the president that he’s a no-go,” said Schakowsky.<br /><br />But, said one attendee, Obama pointed Kucinich toward single-payer language that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was able to get into the bill. Kucinich fought for an amendment that would allow states to adopt single-payer systems without getting sued by insurance companies. Obama told Kucinich that Sanders’s measure was similar but doesn’t kick in for several years. “He definitely wrote it down,” said one member of Kucinich, suggesting that he’d look into it.</blockquote><br />I can’t decide between thinking that he’s saying this earnestly — if so, given the fallout in November, he’s going to be waiting awhile for ye olde public option — or just telling these idiots what they need to hear to vote for the much-despised Reid bill. This would, in theory, give him some cover even if he goes ahead and stabs them in the back by dropping reconciliation. After all, if this is just the first small step towards socialized medicine, who cares how small that step is? Pass anything. Just get a foot in the door so that you can swing it open in a decade or two when the wheel turns towards progressivism again.<br /><br />Exit question: Think anyone in the White House press corps will lean on Gibbs tomorrow to explain what, specifically, this bill is a “foundation” for?<br /><br /><a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/04/obama-comforts-house-liberals-dont-worry-this-bill-is-just-the-beginning-of-what-well-do-with-health-care/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>A proposal built on lies</b><br /><br />“No one has talked about reconciliation,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared during last week’s health care summit. It was a lie shocking in its boldness.<br /><br />Live on national television, the Democrats’ leader in the U.S. Senate told the nation that not a single person had discussed even the possibility of using the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules, which require a simple majority vote instead of 60, as needed under regular Senate rules, to pass President Obama’s health care reform plan. Yet, a week before, Reid himself had said publicly that reconciliation was an option for passing the plan, Politico.com reported. Of the Senate’s 59 Democrats, 23 had already signed a letter urging the president to pass the plan via reconciliation by the time Reid said “no one” was even talking about it. And of course, a week later, President Obama, as expected, urged Democrats to pass the bill through the reconciliation process if necessary.<br /><br />In other words, the Democratic Party leadership in Washington hadn’t just talked about reconciliation. It was central to their strategy.<br /><br />Reid’s blatant revisionism perfectly encapsulates the Democratic leadership’s plan for passing legislation to completely remake health care in the United States. Simply put, the plan is this: Lie. Thus, President Obama and the leadership in Congress have lied about nearly everything, from start to finish. Obama said that if you have health insurance you like, you’ll absolutely get to keep it under his plan. That was a lie. As he eventually acknowledged, millions of Americans will lose their existing coverage if the changes he wants become law.<br /><br />Similarly, Obama spent all last summer saying health care reform wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone but the rich. But on August 2 the Associated Press reported that the administration admitted that taxes might have to be raised on the middle class to pay for the health care bill.<br /><br />Obama has said repeatedly that insured families pay about $1,000 a year to cover the costs of the uninsured. Factcheck.org puts the figure at $200.<br /><br />Obama said our current health care system causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds. That’s not remotely true. If every bankruptcy in the United States in which health care costs played any factor at all were counted as a bankruptcy caused by health care, the figure would be one per minute, not double that.<br /><br />In the summer, Obama was claiming that health care reform was paid for. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the House bill added $239 billion to the federal deficit over a decade and the Senate bill $597 billion. The president’s claims still aren’t true because of tricks such as removing the “doc fix” provisions and putting them into a separate bill.<br /><br />Obama claimed health care reform would save the average American family $2,500 a year. Factcheck.org could find no evidence for that at all. Obama apparently just made it up.<br /><br />Obama promised at least eight times that the health care negotiations would be televised live on C-SPAN. They weren’t. They were done, as everything in Washington is done, behind closed doors.<br /><br />There us no shortage of additional examples. When it comes to health care, on point after point after point, the American people have been lied to – systematically, methodically and deliberately.<br /><br />It should go without saying that opponents of the Democrats’ plans haven’t always been truthful, either. Some attacks have contained intentional falsehoods, others inadvertent ones. I don’t defend any of those. But they don’t make any less outrageous the fact that our own government has systematically misled us in an attempt to generate support for a plan the president and leaders in Congress knew we would never accept if we knew the whole truth about it.<br /><br />Sure, politicians have always lied. But this administration, with its campaign theme of hopeful “change,” was supposed to be the most open and transparent administration in history. Even Congress was supposed to be different. Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical Congress in history. Instead, the White House and its Congressional allies have joined forces to launch an almost daily barrage of falsehoods designed to trick us into supporting a dramatic transformation of one sixth of the American economy. And here’s the worst part about the politics of the healthcare debacle: We have at least three more years of this to look forward to.<br /><br /><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/05/the-great-healthcare-robbery/">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><b>Government medical records are already a shambles</b><br /><br /><i>But Obama wants more of the same. If government bureaucrats can't keep records for 4 million people straight, what chance with 300 million?</i><br /><br /> The electronic health record (EHR) network portal for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was shut down this week after the VA found errors in some patients' medical data that clinicians downloaded from the defense network, according to a patient safety alert. Among the errors the VA detected through the Computerized Patient Record System's (CPRS) Remote Data View (RDV) -- its graphical user interface for clinicians -- was a prescription for vardenafil for a female patient. Vardenafil is used for treating male erectile dysfunction.<br /><br />"The DoD pharmacy staff checked the prescription number and determined the vardenafil prescription was for another patient and verified the vardenafil prescription had not been ordered for or dispensed to the female VA patient," the alert stated.<br /><br />The decision to shut down the portal was first reported by Nextgov.com. As of Monday, all access to electronic Defense Department records through the computerized record system and VistAWeb was disabled, the VA said. The agency was not sure when the system would be restored.<br /><br />VistAWeb is the VA's intranet portal to eHealth records through CPRS, and it allows remote medical facilities access to the VA's VistA EHR system. VistA stands for Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture.<br /><br />Jean Scott, director of the Veterans Health Administration's Information Technology Patient Safety Office, said in the alert that the VA pulled the plug on the system because "the potential exists for decisions regarding patient care to be made using incorrect or incomplete data."<br /><br />The VistAWeb is operated by the VA and is the largest and most comprehensive EHR system in existence, serving more than four million service members. Many medical IT experts consider it to be the archetype for EHR systems in the private sector, and vendors have copied its architecture in their own products. As of March 13, all medical records for the DoD will be accessed by phone, fax, paper or other alternative methodologies, the VA said.<br /><br />Other errors with VistAWeb and CPRS system include displaying some patient data incorrectly, incompletely or not displaying queried data at all. "The VA clinician may see the patient's data during one session, but another session may not display the data previously seen," the VA said in its alert. "This problem occurs intermittently and has been reported when querying DoD Laboratory, Pharmacy, and Radiology reports."<br /><br />The government has uncovered other prescription errors related to EHR systems that have been rolled out in private-sector hospitals as well. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), sent a letter in January to some of the nation's largest health care facilities asking for any information on "issues or concerns that have been raised by your health care providers" over the past two years.<br /><br />Grassley said the letter was prompted by concerns brought to his attention in recent months about EHR systems that included "administrative complications, formatting and usability issues, errors and interoperability." In some of the most serious cases, incorrect medication dosages are being miscalculated by software that is interchanging patient body weights with kilograms and pounds.<br /><br />IT managers also have voiced concerns that new regulatory deadlines from the government aimed a spurring EHR adoption in the private sector could wind up causing problems as people rush to deploy systems so they can claim a portion of billions of dollars in federal incentive monies.<br /><br />According to the VA, no patients were harmed as a result of the errors in the EHR system. Although the agency moved to shut down down the eHealth records exchange this week, it said it first discovered the problem in February with the Defense Department's EHR system, known as the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application. That's when the erectile dysfunction prescription error occurred.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9166678/VA_closes_Web_portal_to_eHealth_records_cites_data_errors">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Mencken on Merchants of Idiotic Ideas</b><br /><br />Last night, driving back from teaching my wonderful Principles of Microeconomics students, I heard on a DC radio station an interview with an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi approvingly repeat Pres. Obama’s insistence that, once those Americans who now oppose Obamacare actually get that care, they’ll grow to love it.<br /><br />This outcome is unlikely – or, rather, it would be unlikely if all the problems with collective decision-making (as identified by public-choice economics) didn’t distort political perceptions. As H.L. Mencken observed: “The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.*”<br /><br />Being sensible, sensible ideas seldom must be imposed by force. Sometimes sensible ideas are adopted gradually, as practices with widespread advantages displace less-advantageous practices and become part of customary behavior. Sometimes sensible ideas are adopted consciously and quickly, through the art of persuasion or the rigors of scientific demonstration.<br /><br />In contrast, idiotic ideas have nothing going for them. Most people who voluntarily adopt idiotic ideas in their private lives soon abandon them if these ideas hamper their ability to thrive in the real world. The only way to implement an idiotic idea widely and surely is through force – which is the root of Obamacare.<br /><br /><a href="http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2077">SOURCE</a><br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>Canadian healthcare at work</b><br /><br /><i>Incompetent surgeon allowed to keep operating -- with grievous results</i><br /><br />A Leamington, Ont., woman, who had an unnecessary mastectomy last fall, has launched a $2.2 million lawsuit against the surgeon who removed her breast, the pathologist who analyzed her biopsy and two hospitals in the Windsor, Ont.-area. Laurie Johnston, who never had breast cancer, is suing surgeon Dr. Barbara Heartwell, pathologist Dr. Olive Williams, Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital and Leamington District Memorial Hospital.<br /><br />At a news conference in Toronto Wednesday, Johnston said she believed she was in the hands of a good surgeon who would help her fight breast cancer, a disease that also struck her mother and sister. Instead, Johnston says she walked out of Heartwell's office a "disfigured" and forever-changed woman — for no reason. Johnston underwent radical surgery last fall in which Heartwell removed her left breast and six lymph nodes, only to find out she never had cancer.<br /><br />Johnston is seeking $1 million in general and special damages and another $1 million in punitive and aggravated damages. Her daughters, aged 22 and 15, and her sister are seeking another $200,000 in damages under the Family Law Act. "To learn that my breast was removed unnecessarily is devastating for me and (my family)," Johnston told a throng of reporters Wednesday at the office of Toronto law firm Torkin Manes LLP. "Sometimes, I'm alone and I just sit there and think about it, and I start to cry," she said. "If I'm not crying, I'm angry, I'm anxious."<br /><br />The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Windsor, alleges Heartwell failed to properly diagnose Johnston and "failed to read or properly understand" the pathology report which showed Johnston's lump was benign. The suit also alleges Williams, who examined Johnston's biopsy samples taken at Leamington hospital, produced a confusing pathology report which contributed to Heartwell's error. The allegations have not been proven in court.<br /><br />Hotel-Dieu officials have said that Williams' pathology report was correct but that Heartwell misread it. The top of the report lists a clinical diagnosis of ductal carcinoma, based on initial findings. Further down the page, Williams listed a pathological diagnosis of fibroadenoma — a benign growth in the breast.<br /><br />Johnston's lawyer, Barbara MacFarlane, said Hotel-Dieu ought to have known at the time of Johnston's surgery that Heartwell had performed another unnecessary mastectomy in 2001 on Janice Laporte, who was cancer-free. Laporte, who now lives in Sarnia, Ont., came forward with her story after hearing about Johnston in the media. Laporte settled a lawsuit against Heartwell out of court. That suit did not name Hotel-Dieu.<br /><br />MacFarlane said both Hotel-Dieu and Leamington hospitals should have known that Williams was "incompetent." Williams was suspended Jan. 4. Heartwell voluntarily stopped performing surgeries at Hotel-Dieu last week. The hospital is also reviewing her past cases. Both physicians are under investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The Ontario Ministry of Health has also launched a probe into surgical and pathology errors in Windsor.<br /><br />In a statement, Hotel-Dieu said it has not yet received official notice of Johnston's claim. "We are profoundly sorry that this tragic situation has occurred and we know this is an extremely difficult time for Ms. Johnston," hospital CEO Warren Chant said, adding that Hotel-Dieu has offered support to Johnston and "will we will continue to do so."<br /><br />Meantime, a Toronto hospital where Williams worked more than 12 years ago will be conducting its own review of her old cases. Wolf Klassen, vice-president of program support at Toronto East General Hospital, told Canwest News Service Wednesday the hospital will pull a random sample of Williams's pathology reports to check for mistakes. "In light of everything that's been reported in the media, we are doing this as a precaution," he said.<br /><br />The ministry-appointed investigators, Dr. John Srigley, Dr. Robin McLeod and Dr. Barry McLellan, will also look more broadly at the quality of patient care. "When I heard about what happened in Windsor, I thought that was important enough to send in (investigators)," said Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews. "It's a very rare thing to do, but I thought the circumstances warranted it." <br /><br />Despite calls for a provincewide pathology review, Matthews said the probe will remain focused on Windsor. Matthews said she has been in frequent contact with McLellan, Ontario's former chief coroner who is heading up the investigation, and if he believes the review should be expanded beyond Windsor, "then I will take that very seriously."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Lawsuit+launched+over+devastating+mastectomy/2636778/story.html">SOURCE</a> <br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><b>The British Labour party hid the ugly truth about the National Health Service</b><br /><br />DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected. They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have <font color="#ff0000">cost thousands of lives.</font><br /><br />The harsh verdict on the state of the NHS, after a spending splurge under Labour between 2000 and 2008, raises worrying questions about the future quality of the health service as budgets are squeezed. One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets. It says “several interviewees” cited the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [NHS Trust in Kent where 269 deaths during 2005-6 were caused by infection with Clostridium difficile bacteria].<br /><br />“Managers crowded in patients in order to meet waiting-time targets and, in the process, lost sight of the fundamental hygiene requirements for infection prevention,” the report stated. There were subsequent failings at health trusts in Basildon in Essex, and Mid Staffordshire. Filthy wards and nurse shortages led to up to 1,200 deaths at Stafford hospital.<br /><br />Lord Darzi, the former health minister, commissioned the three reports from international consultancies to assess the progress of the NHS as it approached its 60th anniversary in 2008. They have come to light after a freedom of information request.<br /><br />The first report, by the Massachusetts-based Institute for Healthcare Improvements (IHI), identified the neglect of patients as a serious obstacle to improving the NHS. “The lack of a prominent focus on patients’ interests and needs ... represents a significant barrier to shifting the trajectory of quality improvement in the NHS.” One heading in the report says: “The patient doesn’t seem to be in the picture.” It adds: “We were struck by the virtual absence of mention of patients and families ... whether we were discussing aims and ambition for improvement, measurement of progress or any other topic relevant to quality. “Most targets and standards appear to be defined in professional, organisational and political terms, not in terms of patients’ experience of care.”<br /><br />This weekend it emerged the recommendations of the reports, intended to help the NHS improve, have not even been circulated. The stark assessments, collected from leading NHS clinicians and managers, include:<br /><br />* A damaging rift between doctors and managers: “The GP and consultant contracts are de-professionalising, and have had the peculiar effect of simultaneously demoralising and enriching doctors. We’ve lost the volitional work of the doctors and far too many of us are now just working to rule.”<br /><br />* Pointless new structures. “Stop the restructurings. The only thing they generate is redundancy payments.” One body responsible for improving standards reported to five different ministers and had three different names in the space of 30 months.<br /><br />* A culture of fear and slavish compliance. “The risk of consequences to managers is much greater for not meeting expectations from above than for not meeting expectations of patients and families.”<br /><br />The IHI report, whose interviewees included Lord Crisp, chief executive of the NHS between 2000 and 2006, also described a system of self-assessment where only 4% of trusts are externally inspected.<br /><br />A similar picture emerges in the second report, by the US-based Joint Commission International. It says the “quality and integrity of [NHS]performance data is suspect”. Dennis O’Leary, its lead author and an international expert on patient safety and improvement, said it was not intended as an exposé but as a series of useful suggestions for change. “Our instructions were to pull no punches and tell it like it was, but the report wasn’t overstated,” he said. “It was how we saw things based on interviews with more than 50 people.”<br /><br />The third report, by the US-based Rand Corporation, expresses surprise at the lack of a requirement to identify the specific drug involved when patient accidents are reported.<br /><br />In 2008 Darzi issued his own blueprint for the future of the NHS, High Quality Care for All, but resigned from the government last July to return to his surgical commitments. Last week he said: “The NHS is continuing a journey of improvements, moving from a service that has rightly focused on increasing the quantity of care to one that focuses on improving the quality of care.<br /><br />“High Quality Care for All has gone to every NHS organisation in the country where it is being implemented to ensure that the NHS delivers safe and effective treatment every time, with our patients being treated with compassion, dignity and respect when in our care." A Department of Health spokesman maintained that the three reports were never intended for “wider circulation” and said they were extensively discussed by experts advising Darzi on the production of his report.<br /><br />However, Brian Jarman, emeritus professor at Imperial College London and an expert in hospital standards, said the findings should have been made available to Robert Francis QC, who led the inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. He said: “These reports have never seen the light of day. We desperately need a better monitoring system for the NHS which actually works.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article7052606.ece">SOURCE</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0