Obamacare Unconstitutional

Finally, some common sense. Judge declares Obamacare unconstitutional.

Canadians and Health Care

I have some friends from Canada staying with us this week. Their son severely twisted and sprained his ankle coming down the stairs the other day so we took him to the Emergency Room at St. Pats. The folks at St. Pats were fantastic and professional as always.

My Canadian friends had never visited a US hospital and were impressed with it's cleanliness, staff, doctors and modern equipment. They were particularly impressed with how quickly their son got in to see a doctor - it was about half an hour from the time we checked in to the time the doctor looked at him. They further said they would probably have spent four to five hours in the waiting room in their Canadian hospital and be seen by an exhausted and distracted doctor. As a result, they cannot understand why Americans want to change our system from what it is now. I clarified to them that it is only a minority of extremists who want the change and have manipulated the system to get the current law through. Most Americans don't want it.

Their boy is fine. Sever sprain and he's wearing a boot.

From the Mouths of Babes...

My 16 year old daughter came home the other day telling me one of her teachers told the class that GWB was a baby killer. Seriously. I, of course, asked why in the world would he say that about our President, and thought that the teacher was referring to the Iraq war. She told me that it was because Bush vetoed the SCHIP reauthorization and because of that thousands of babies would die from not having insurance. We both chuckled at this because we have had discussions about this liberal wacko teacher before and my daughter and I use his liberal indoctrination attempts as learning opportunities.

I explained my point of view on the subject and then we sat down at the computer and did a little bit of research. We found the following information on Whitehouse.gov explaning Bush's position on SCHIP.

Guess what she discovered with just a quick google search? That Bush actually supports the reauthorization of SCHIP and a 20% increase in funding and wants to maintain the original purpose of the program of targeting the dollars to poor children.

We, she actually, also discovered the real and truthful reasons Bush vetoed the bill.

MYTH #2: Cost is the only reason for President Bush's veto threat.

• FACT: There are numerous problems with Congress's SCHIP bill. In addition to raising spending by $35 to $50 billion, the legislation:

1. Turns a program meant to help poor children into one that covers children in some households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year.

2. Would move millions of American children who now have private health insurance into government-run health care.

3. Is an incremental step toward the Democrats' goal of a government-run health care system.

4. Raises taxes on working Americans.

5. Relies on a budget gimmick that drops SCHIP funding by almost 80 percent in year six, masking future deficits and ultimately resulting in a choice between higher taxes or forcing millions of children to lose health insurance.

6. Creates new funding schemes inviting states to overspend their budgets and shift health care costs to the Federal government by using SCHIP funding to offset state Medicaid spending.

7. Provides incentives to states to relax protections against enrolling ineligible individuals, including illegal immigrants.

MYTH #3: President Bush is wrong in claiming the Senate SCHIP bill would cover children in some households with incomes of up to $83,000 per year (400 percent of the Federal poverty level).

• FACT: The Senate bill grandfathers in New York at a higher SCHIP match rate than the rest of the country – allowing SCHIP to cover children in some households with incomes of up to $83,000 per year.
  

I then directed her to this story about middle school student Graeme Frost who gave the Democrat rebuttal on Bush's reasons for vetoing the bill. She was shocked and amazed that this family, with everything they own and paying private school tuition would have the nerve to say they cannot afford private health insurance. It ticked her off to say the least because she knows that we pay for our own insurance and have to make sacrifices on many things in order to be able to afford it.

After reading and talking about what we discovered, she asked me, "Dad, do democrats think we're all stupid?" I asked her why she asked that. She answered by saying "Well, it's not that hard to find out why Bush vetoed the bill and why would they have a kid who has more than most people whining about how his parents can't afford their own health insurance?"

I then asked her "What do you think?" She said "Yep, they think we're all stupid."

I think she nailed it.

Will We Get a Knock at the Door in the Middle of the Night??

Edwards would require that we go to the doctor every year...

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

So what happens if I don't want to? Will there be a knock at my door in the middle of the night and will I be "taken" to the doctor for my annual "checkup"?

For those of you who are going to see him, please ask Mr. Edwards this when he's in Missoula.

Universal Health Care Will Take Away Our Privacy

This may have already been discussed somewhere but I haven't seen it. I was repainting my deck yesterday and thinking about political issues and the three that I seem to spend the most time on these days are Global Warming, Universal Health Care, and the War on Terrorism. My focus yesterday was on Universal Health Care and what it would mean to our privacy should it ever pass into reality.

Assuming it becomes reality, my problems and vices suddenly become the concern of everybody else and everybody else's problems and vices become my concern. What does this mean? This means more government control over our freedoms. Are we eating the right kinds of food, drinking too much alcohol, practicing risky sexual behavior, not wearing helmets on our motorcycles and bikes, should we ban smoking and chewing tobacco, and should we allow the government to screen our kids for mental health problems with or without parental consent?

I'm sure the supporters of Universal Health Care think it's important to control and regulate these behaviors for the good of all. I am not. It is clearly an invasion of my right to privacy, which is, after all, in the Constitution as found by the Supreme Court in their Roe v. Wade decision.

Canadian Couple Has to Drive to Great Falls to Have Babies

A couple from Calgary, Karen and J.P. Jepp, had to drive 325 miles to Great Falls in order to have their identical quadruplets because the hospitals in Calgary were unable take them because they were at capacity. They would have had to wait a few months, I guess. So the couple could not rely on their country's Universal health care and had to look to the US where there is no wait time at Benifis Healthcare Hospital.

It seems that this happens fairly regularly according to the Great Falls Tribune.

Karen Jepp was the fifth pregnant woman transferred to Benefis this year because of neonatal care unit shortages in Canada.

This is just more evidence that Government run healthcare will produce shortages, inefficiencies and reduce the quality.

If you are interested in helping the Jepp family with their quadruplets, they have a website where you can donate to help them out with their beautiful new additions.

UPDATE: I found this article from the BBC with this quote:

A medical team and space for the babies had been organised for the Jepp family at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary but several other babies were born unexpectedly early, filling the neonatal intensive care unit.

Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada but none had space.

The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500km (310 miles) to the Montana hospital, the closest in the US, where the quadruplets were born on Sunday.

Rehberg and SCHIP

Our state's lone voice of reason in the Congressional Delegation made the right vote on SCHIP last week. He wrote a piece that appeared in the Billings Gazette explaining why he voted against this huge "stealth" expansion into socialized health care.

He also explained why here:

Rehberg said he opposed the Democrats’ bill because it allows states to extend SCHIP coverage to adults and non-U.S. citizens, and has no income limits on who can get the coverage, leaving those limits up to the states.

Despite our side losing this one, you made the courageous and right vote, Denny. Thank you.

One European's View on Socialized Health Care

The WSJ ran a piece today called Sicko Europe where an Italian named Daniele Capezzone wrote about the failings of socialized health care in Europe. Supporters like to point to Europe, Canada, and Cuba as successful examples of how wonderful socialized medicine is. So I'm happy to pass along this commentary from an Italian who thinks a very important part of his country's socialized health care is costing people their lives.

His first two paragraphs are particularly illuminating. Emphasis mine

We live in an age of unprecedented medical innovation. Unfortunately, most of today's cutting-edge research is conducted outside Europe, which was once a pioneer in this field. About 78% of global biotechnology research funds are spent in the U.S., compared to just 16% in Europe. Americans therefore have better access to modern drugs. One result is that in the U.S., the annual death rate from cancer is 196 per 100,000 people, compared to 235 in Britain, 244 in France, 270 in Italy and 273 in Germany.

It is both a tragedy and an embarrassment that Europe hasn't kept up with the U.S. in saving and improving lives. What's to blame? The Continent's misguided policies and state-run health-care systems. The reasons vary from country to country, but broadly speaking, the custodians of public health budgets aren't devoting the necessary resources to get patients the most modern and advanced medicines, and are happier with the status quo. We often see news headlines about promising new cures and vaccines next to headlines about patients who can't get life-saving drugs as politicians impose ever stricter prescription controls on doctors.

This situation is especially dire in Italy. The government has capped spending on pharmaceuticals at 13% of total health-care expenditures while letting expenses for infrastructure and staff skyrocket. From 2001 to 2005, general health expenses in Italy grew by 31% while expenditure on medicines increased a mere 1.7%. Italian patients might well have been better off if the reverse was the case, but the state bureaucrats who make these decisions refuse to acknowledge the benefits of advanced drugs.

Governments simply cannot efficiently control the marketplace. When they try, quality goes down and costs go up. The profit incentive generates the research capital and desire to develop life saving drugs and treatments. This is why the US leads the world by such a large margin.

I don't want a system where the government controls my health care. It simply will not work.

More Evidence Against Government Run Universal Health Care

From the Wall Street Journal is an article about how the Universal Health care system in Massachusetts is creating a shortage of doctors.

As it happens, primary-care doctors, including internists, family physicians, and pediatricians, are in short supply across the country. Their numbers dropped 6% relative to the general population from 2001 to 2005, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington. The proportion of third-year internal medicine residents choosing to practice primary care fell to 20% in 2005, from 54% in 1998.

A principal reason: too little money for too much work. Median income for primary-care doctors was $162,000 in 2004, the lowest of any physician type, according to a study by the Medical Group Management Association in Englewood, Colo. Specialists earned a median of $297,000, with cardiologists and radiologists exceeding $400,000.

At the same time, the workweek for primary-care doctors has lengthened, and they are seeing more patients. The advent of managed care in the mid-1990s added to the burden as insurance companies called on primary-care doctors to serve as gatekeepers for their patients' referrals to specialty medicine.

In addition to the lower pay and longer workweek,

Doctors are reimbursed by insurance providers -- at below-market rates comparable with Medicaid reimbursements.

And this is what the community health centers are having to do;

community health centers have placed a temporary freeze on primary-care enrollment because they don't have enough doctors. Dorchester House, a community health center in southeast Boston, had nearly 55,000 primary-care visits last year to its 21 doctors and nurse practitioners.

"We've barely got room to treat anyone else," says Patrick Egan, the center's medical director. "We're pushing it already."

So here's a real life case of how government run health care is actually working.

Now in Wisconsin they are trying to get Universal Health Care passed and are being very transparent about it all.

Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is "free" health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.

Who's going to pay for it?

Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.

The Democrats and supporters of this program say it will save money through gains in efficiency by eliminating administrative costs of private insurance.

But those costs won't vanish; they'll merely shift to all taxpayers and businesses. Small employers that can't afford to provide insurance would see their employment costs rise by thousands of dollars per worker, while those that now provide a basic health insurance plan would have to pay $400 to $500 a year more per employee.

So where will the savings come from?

Where they always do in any government plan: Rationing via price controls and, as costs rise, waiting periods and coverage restrictions. This is Michael Moore's medical dream state.

UPDATE: I keep trying to have the font and size of the quotes from the articles be the same but every time I try to fix it and then publish the post, they change to something else and are different throughout the post. I apologize for the sloppy format of this post.

The Problem With SCHIP

Proponents and supporters of the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) are leaving out some very important and crucial information about the program that most people would find alarming.

First of all, SCHIP was created in 1997 to cover the health insurance of children in families that were not eligible for Medicaid. The income threshold was 200% of the poverty line, $40,300 for a family of four.

Seven states set eligibility to be over 200% of the poverty line and fourteen states loosely defined child to include parents, pregnant women, and childless adults.

Senators Clinton and Dingle like what these states are doing and have proposed bills that would allow states to establish the income threshold to 400% of the poverty line, $82,600 for a family of four and allow children to be defined to age 25.

The cost of Clinton/Dingle would be $85 Billion over five years compared to $25 Billion if the program were left as is. To pay for it, expect our taxes to increase.

This is clearly the first attempt at socializing our health care.

I'm Back and my admiration for US health care

I'm back and feeling pretty good these days. I hadn't been feeling well for quite some time and finally had to have some major surgery which takes some time to recover from. I also had some complications afterwards which put me back in the hospital for a week.

Each day I was in the hospital and each visit with the many doctors and specialists made me thankful that I live in the United States which has the best medical care in the world. Not once did I consider going to Cuba or Canada for my health care. I was very happy and confident to have my care in Missoula, MT. Yes, insurance covered most of my bills and I'm thankful that I had the foresight and responsibility to have purchased insurance through my employer.

While I'm still not at 100%, I finally am back to work and feel good enough to get back into blogging. I'll be as ornery as ever supporting my beliefs and bashing liberal beliefs.

My first post back was on Bush's commuting of Scooter Libby's sentence which was a first step in the right direction, a full pardon. I also dropped a few comments on Montana Netroots just to get back into the swing of things and let them know I'm back.

I appreciate the nice comments on my post announcing my being gone for a while. I pray for those who left the nasty comments.

I'm glad to be back in many more ways than one.

Watch Out For "Hillary-Care"... again

With the Democrats in charge of both the Senate and the House, you can count on Hillary Clinton to try to get her Universal Health Care plan through again.

Just a refresher for those who were not paying attention in 1992, Clinton's plan was basically geared toward central planning of our health care system. They argued that we had too many specialists, too many MRI machines, and too much technology. They wanted to control and limit the number of doctors in specialties and cut down on investment.

The first thing they did was try to demonize the pharmaceutical industry, as they, the Democrats, are starting to now. They claim they are ripping people off and are too profitable. So they want government to negotiate prices which would go a long way in killing any incentive for further research and development. The profit incentive works for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them the incentive to develop miracle drugs that have extended the lives of millions of people throughout the world. Profits provide companies with the incentive to risk their assets to develop drugs for cures. Without that incentive, these companies would just keep stamping out the same old drugs without developing new ones.

In addition, many of the pharmaceutical companies have programs that provide free prescription drugs to families that earn $35,000 or less.

Democrats also like to point out that 40 million Americans are without health insurance . However, if you look at the most recent CBO study on health insurance, half of those people are covered by insurance some time during the year. They are, most often between jobs. Then there are those who are long term uninsured who many are young people who choose not to be insured and prefer to spend their money on other things. So I would estimate that there are fewer then 10 million people out of 300 million who are uninsured in our country which comes to 3.33%. Those 10 million get free care through Emergency Rooms. For this, the Democrats what to overhaul our health care system.

The current cost escalation problem in our health care system is because of government intervention through Medicaid and Medicare. Medicare began in 1965 and cost taxpayers $3 Billion a year. The projection in 1965 was that it would cost $9 Billion a year by 1990 when the actual cost was $67 Billion. Today it costs $277 Billion a year of 13% of the federal budget.

The problem is that if the government pays for all your medical needs, you, through human nature, are going to see the doctor and seek more treatments then you would if you had to pay for some or all of it. This is the fatal flaw in socialized medicine. In a real life example with me, in the early 1990s, my company introduced an insurance that paid for all office visits 100%. We had just had our first child and we were at the doctor every week for every little thing. If we were to pay for these visits out of our own pocket we would have not have gone nearly as much. As it turns out, all the employees in the company did the same as my wife and I and the program went broke in less than a year and my company went back to traditional coverage.

We need to take the government out of our health care and allow the free market and competition to work it's magic. Deregulation is the answer. The system needs to be returned to the market place. This will bring down prices of our medical care and pharmaceuticals.