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Another Doctor "Goes Galt"

EvanMadianosMD — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:16:10 -0400

Another Doctor "Goes Galt"
By Paul Hsieh, MD

Psychiatrist-blogger "Dr. Sanity" explain why she's stopped fighting against socialized medicine. Here are some excerpts from her June 13, 2009 blog post:

THIS TIME, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE...LET THE ZOMBIES TAKE OVER MEDICINE

...My entire professional life as a physician and psychiatrist I have been exceptionally vocal aout the prospect of government medicine here in the US. I have given impassioned speeches (when I was younger); written essays in medical journals and elsewhere; and talked until I am blue in the face to anyone and everyone about the horrors of socialized medicine and government interference in the health care system of this country. Once it would have seemed impossible that I would ever want to quit medicine; to stop practicing psychiatry.

I have watched with dismay as every year we have inched closer and closer to the Democrats and the left's goals; goals which I firmly believe will completely destroy American medicine. I have watched up close and personal the utter soul-destroying consequences to both patients and doctors alike, of the pervasive cultural collectivist and looter thinking in my specialty. Every time this madness is killed, it just doesn't stay dead. Like some kind of putrefying zombie, the left just keeps resurrecting it. Logic doesn't matter. Facts don't matter.

Let's face it. To the zombies of the left, reality doesn't matter. With President Postmodern in office, aided and abetted by zombie hordes in Congress; why should I pretend anymore that it does?

This time around, I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE. If that's what people want, so be it. I'm done. If Congress passes Obama's destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.

Freedom Is Indivisible

EvanMadianosMD — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:29:05 -0400

Freedom Is Indivisible

excerpt from www.TIADaily.com by editor, Robert Tracinski

"How bad are things getting?

Below is an example: an article gloating over America's descent into Marxism-published in Pravda.

Aside from the curiosity value of this piece- which I have excerpted without making any effort to correct its slightly broken English-note the purpose of the gloating. The author derides our descent into economic servitude- in order to dismiss America's criticism of the Russians for their descent into political servitude.

This is an aspect of the fact that freedom is indivisible.

When America turns away from one aspect of freedom, it diminishes both the material resources and the moral credibility that allows us to fight for every other aspect of freedom.

Thus, as we descend into a kind of economic dictatorship under the "czars" Obama is appointing to manage every major industry, that decline encourages all of the world's tyrants.

"American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper...,"
Stanislav Mishin, Pravda, April 27

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

Healthcare shouldn't be linked to employment

EvanMadianosMD — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:24:43 -0400

Healthcare shouldn't be linked to employment

By Jeff Jacoby / Boston Globe

Excerpt:

"...An end to employer-based health insurance is exactly what the American healthcare market needs. Far from being a calamity, it would represent a giant step toward ending the current system's worst distortions: skyrocketing premiums, lack of insurance portability, widespread ignorance of medical prices, and overconsumption of health services.

With more than 90 percent of private healthcare plans in the United States obtained through employers, it might seem unnatural to get health insurance any other way. But what's unnatural is the link between healthcare and employment.

After all, we don't rely on employers for auto, homeowners, or life insurance. Those policies we buy in an open market, where numerous insurers and agents compete for our business.

Health insurance is different only because of an idiosyncrasy in the tax code dating back 60 years - a good example, to quote Milton Friedman, of how one bad government policy leads to another.

During World War II, federal wage controls barred employers from raising their workers' salaries, but said nothing about fringe benefits. So firms competing for employees at government-restricted wages began offering medical insurance to sweeten employment offers.

Even sweeter was that employers could deduct those benefits as business expenses, yet employees didn't have to report them as taxable income. For a while the IRS resisted that interpretation, but Congress eventually enshrined the tax-exempt status of employer-based medical insurance in law.

A Mexican Welcome

Dr. Diastolic — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:00:09 -0400

A colleague of mine, who's been forced to deliver free medical care to thousands of Mexican migrants here in Virginia over the years (thanks to our laws), just returned home from a vacation trip to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.
After his 6 year old daughter got high fever and nuchal rigidity, they went to a local hospital, concerned about meningitis. Guess what? The ER doc/hospital would not see her or get her admitted, unless the family deposited $800 in a credit card charge upfront.

There are a number of arguments for why our medical system is eating so much money. But there is no doubt that one of the biggest causes is that we are supporting millions of people in our emergency rooms and wards, and they are from what is essentially a third world nation.

Mexican emergency rooms clearly refuse to take patients based on need, and so there is no doubt many cross to seek help in America. It will be interesting to see what will happen if the pandemic spreads and millions more have to cross the border in search of Tamiflu.

Slowing The Push Towards Fast-Tracking

EvanMadianosMD — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:37:59 -0400

From today's post at the Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine blog

http://www.westandfirm.org/blog/index.html

Slowing The Push Towards Fast-Tracking

By Paul Hsieh, MD

It's Time to Nationalize Grocery Stores....A Satire.....Let's Hope....

EvanMadianosMD — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:55:53 -0400

It's Time to Nationalize Grocery Stores ;)

- Richard E. Ralston, Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.

http://www.afcm.org

This is a satire....I hope...

"One of the great scandals of our age is the fact that America spends more on food than any other nation. Many political leaders are now calling for urgent reform to bring spending on food under control. While food spending is rapidly increasing and many Americans are overweight, some do not have enough to eat.

In spite of this high spending, the United Nations reports that, according to surveys they sent to government officials around the world, the quality of U.S. food is ranked very low. Results from officials in France report that their food is the best in the world. Although that needs to be taken with a grain of Dijon, it might be true. More insulting is the higher ranking that British experts give their food.

Leaders in Congress now point to what they see as the heart of the problem: corporate greed in the form of grocery stores and restaurants operating on a for-profit basis.

They promise to replace all private grocery stores with a national system of government commissaries, which will allegedly operate far more efficiently without the administrative overhead required to make a profit. As it will take some time to organize the national network of commissaries, initially groceries will be available only at offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles and U.S. Postal Service.

These offices have a proven track record of operational efficiency and excellent customer service, and will be a model for the development of a government commissary system.

Video Clip: Daniel Hannan on UK Health Care

EvanMadianosMD — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:27:09 -0400

Video Clip of Daniel Hannan, a UK Member of European Parliament discussing the Disaster of Universal Health Care in Great Britain:

http://www.westandfirm.org/blog/2009/04/hannan-on-uk-health-care.html

Tea Party Protests: Fighting for What ??

EvanMadianosMD — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:47:33 -0400

Those who are gathering in grass roots Tea Party protests need to realize that the issue they are fighting for is bigger than rising taxes.The growing power and scope of government is repudiating and threatening the freedom and individual rights this country was founded on :

"On April 15, thousands of Americans will gather for modern day tea parties, proudly named after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Like our revolutionary ancestors, we are protesting against growing government power, a government that increasingly oppresses its citizens instead of protecting them.

But what are we fighting for?

Have we earned the right to call our protests by the same name the Founding Fathers used? Believe me, they understood exactly what they were fighting for. When those Bostonians boarded the cargo ship, Dartmouth, and hurled chests of tea into the ocean, they were not just mad about high taxes. In fact, the Tea Act that inspired the protest had actually lowered the tea tax on the colonies.

No, the colonists were driven by a certain view of the proper purpose of government, which the Tea Act repudiated. That view, which would reach its full expression in the Declaration of Independence, was that the role of government is to protect individual rights--to protect the sovereign individual’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

But over the past two centuries, the ideal of individual rights has all but disappeared from public discourse. In its absence has emerged today's massive regulatory-welfare state, which taxes away nearly half our income, tells us what medicines we can take, what kind of light bulbs to buy, and is rapidly consolidating control over America’s banks, insurance companies, and industrial giants like General Motors.

Obama's Gov.Health Plan: Death Warrant for Private Health Insurance

EvanMadianosMD — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:13:29 -0400

Obama's Gov.Health Plan: Death Warrant for Private Health Insurance

Excerpt:

"...President Obama and Congress' plan to offer a government health plan would ultimately be a death warrant for private health insurance. The public must be alerted.

The findings this week of the respected Lewin Group health care consulting firm should be chilling to all Americans. "The private insurance industry might just fizzle out altogether," warned John Sheils, chief author of the study, which looked at the effects of setting up federally managed insurance.

Its premiums could be 30% below the average offered by the private market, assuming Medicare payment levels. If eligibility were only extended to small businesses, individuals and the self-employed, as the president promised in last year's campaign, enrollment in that cheaper public option would reach nearly 43 million. Insurance companies would lose 32 million customers...

It is not a failure of the market, but the ways the market has been distorted largely due to government policies and programs," the House GOP plan states.

"They have undermined the doctor-patient relationship and removed the individual patient from the decision-making process...

Layering on more government control, regulation, and 'management' cannot address the problem; it will only reduce the alternatives available to individuals and families."

Full article:

http://tinyurl.com/c38l76

First, Do No Harm: Sign the Petition Against ObamaCare

EvanMadianosMD — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:05:05 -0400

First, Do No Harm: Sign the Petition Against ObamaCare

"The physician’s creed to “First, do no harm” also is a warning to America’s policy makers and leaders as they consider massive changes to our health sector.

Congress and the Obama administration are on a dangerous march to dramatically expand government control over America’s health care.

President Obama's health care reform proposals would put us on a super-highway toward a single-payer health care system, which Mr. Obama said during the campaign really is his first choice in health reform.

Government health insurance already is in place for children, the poor, the elderly, veterans, and others.

The next step to locking in a single-payer government-run system (which fewer than 10% of Americans say they favor) is to put all working Americans and their families on a government health program.

Would the health reform prescriptions being offered by President Obama and congressional leaders help patients?

It seems a fitting question to ask since Mr. Obama has assured Americans they will be able to keep their doctor and their current coverage if they are satisfied and will have even more choices.

The Health Policy Consensus Group at the Glaen Institute took that as a challenge to ask whether the policy prescriptions fit the rhetoric by analyzing the major reform pillars Washington leaders are proposing.

They issued a statement this week, signed by 25 health policy experts from the major market-oriented think tanks, saying, we are "gravely concerned" that their proposals "would make matters worse, not better…and would not fulfill the goals and promises made to the American people."

Then, the Galen Institute put together a petition at DoNoHarmPetition.org that is based on the Consensus Group statement.

US Health Care: High Cost and High Quality

EvanMadianosMD — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:27:16 -0400

High Cost of US Health Care? Thank Government and Third Party Payer System

High Quality in US Health Care? Thank Money- and Wealth

The ReasonPharmg blog of Jan 16, 2009 ( http://tinyurl.com/csd3pd )makes the following sage observation:

"....When a third party is introduced, the patient is insulated from the true
cost of care. He starts to want the best of everything, regardless of how much it costs -- because his insurance company is covering the cost.

The insurance company, on the other hand, wants to reduce costs as much as possible, even if it means that some patients are dissatisfied with their care. Thus, instead of mutual trade to mutual benefit, we get a system nobody is happy with...."

This, of couse, is true- and is one of the promary causes why the premiums of health "insurance" policies rise higher every year:

Patients are largely puchasing services with pre-paid all-inclusive policies
with relatively low out-of-pocket costs at the time of service that causes them to try to_ maximize_ their utilization of high tech services to get the most services ( even if of marginal value or wasteful) for their premium.

A great little booklet that explains how this works and how today's health care consumers can be the _solution_ to rising health care costs is:

"Why health care costs so much: The Solution - Consumers"
- by Dave Racer & Greg Dattilo, CEBS

http://www.alethospress.com/howmuch.htm

Review: http://tinyurl.com/cpv3o3

Don't our schools teach what socialism is?

EvanMadianosMD — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:12:30 -0400

Don't our schools teach what socialism is?

Socialism is something to be feared
- by Harris Kenner:

"The reason so many people are not "fooled" by "cries of
socialism" is that most people educated in today's schools have
already been fooled: They do not know what socialism is. And
from his letter, I think Mr. Smith has also been fooled.

Today we have neither capitalism nor socialism. We have a mixed
economy, a quickly perishing capitalism infected by socialism,
what Mr. Smith calls "cruel" capitalism.

In contrast, true capitalism is the system in which all property is owned and
controlled by private citizens.

Full socialism is the system in which all property is owned and controlled by the state. Socialism achieves this by vote, whereas its big brother, communism, achieves this by direct force.

A variation of these systems, fascism, appeals to those little
brothers who are not yet ready to openly confiscate property.
Fascists pretend that property is owned by individuals, but the
actual control of that property is in the hands of the state. Those
more wizened recognize that to own something you do not control
is to not own it at all.

<< This is particularly appropriate to those who like to prattle on_
idiotically_ about the utopian "public- private partnership" that will exist
when government takes over to administer and fund universal health care.....

WSJ: National Health Preview - MA Debacle on a Grand Scale

EvanMadianosMD — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:22:58 -0400

WSJ: National Health Preview - MA Debacle on a Grand Scale

According to today's Wall Street Journalm Congress now wants to inflict on the entire country the budget-busting Massachusetts universal health care program- in all it's glory- with the coverage restrictions, cost controls, waiting lists , etc

National Health Preview

Insurers Extend Their Faustian Bargain

EvanMadianosMD — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:33:34 -0400

Insurers Extend Their Faustian Bargain
By Paul Hsieh, MD

Excerpt:

"Health insurance companies have offered to speed up their eventual suicide, agreeing to yet more concessions to the government in exchange for a law requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance.

This is just an extension of the Faustian bargain described in my earlier piece, "Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil".

Here's the latest development:

"Insurers Offer to Stop Charging Sick People More"

"The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems.

The offer from America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift in the debate over reforming the nation's health care system to rein in costs and cover an estimated 48 million uninsured people. It was contained in a letter to key senators.

In the letter, the two insurance industry groups said their members are willing to "phase out the practice of varying premiums based on health status in the individual market" if all Americans are required to get coverage.

...Insurers are trying to head off the creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with them, something that liberals and many Democrats are pressing for.

Of course, making more concessions to the statists will only embolden -- not discourage -- them.

Once insurers concede the premise that the government is right to set the terms for "universal coverage", then a taxpayer-subsidized government plan will be the inevitable next step.

After all, if people have a "right" to insurance but the government deems private offerings to be "unaffordable", then the government will have to step in to allegedly rectify the situation with its own plan.

Pardon the interruption: FACTS Comparing Outcomes in US Health System vs. Canadian and European Government -Run Models

EvanMadianosMD — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:55:27 -0400

"Although Sen. Edward M. Kennedy seeks universal health care, Americans enjoy superior care to citizens of many European countries, according to Washington Times contributor Scott Atlas."

Pardon the interruption

by Scott Atlas

COMMENTARY:

As politicians, economists, popular media and an ever increasing list of others convincingly proclaim cures for the ills of American health care, we Americans are subjected to a stream of opinion deriding as utterly miserable our health-care system compared to the rest of the developed world.

Much of this chatter resonates with the public; many assume the arguments are sound and the expertise of the presenters profound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex.

In their haste to address such serious challenges as escalating costs and the uninsured, many economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger role for government in health care.

In this interlude between health czar nominees, and before we legislate government as the solution and final arbiter of medical care, it may be a good time to consider a few unheralded facts about America's health-care system. For instance, did you know:

(1) Americans have better survival rates from both common and rare cancers than Europeans? (Sources: Lancet Oncology, 7, No. 2 ( February 2006): 132-40; Verdecchia et al., "Recent Cancer Survival in Europe : A 2000-02 Period Analysis of EUROCARE-4 Data," Lancet Oncology, No. 8 (2007): 784-96.)