"Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. So if they're looking, and you come in, and you've got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat, or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, "You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out." —Barack Obama, 22 July 2009, on national television.
"Typically, a surgeon specializing in otolaryngology performs a tonsillectomy, NOT a pediatrician. Where is the AMA on this issue?" —NCC ed.
We the People...
ON A NATIONAL HEALTH PLAN
-- ALLEN HEMPHILL
It is always dangerous to opine on a National Health Plan, or more accurately a National Health Insurance Plan.
There is no such Plan. There are several plans, none of which are likely to pass. There is a House plan. There are at LEAST three Senate plans – a Democrat Plan, a Republican Plan and a bi-partisan plan.
The Blue Dog Democrats in both the House and the Senate are not sanguine about voting for ANY of these plans in play.
The House bill was blown out of the water by the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who was appointed by Democrats! The CBO said the House Plan was a deficit Buster.
There is no CBO “scoring” of the remainder of the proposed legislation because they have not even approached a vote.
The President is pushing for votes without any of his output – hoping to sit at the table when the disparate bills get to a Joint Conference Committee.
The Public should understand during the remainder of the debate that whatever gets the American Medical Association puts its Seal of Approval on that the AMA is the political arm of the medical communities. It is NOT the medical community.
President Obama is pressing strongly on medical and Cap and Trade because his downward popularity trend lines are rapidly approaching the slower but already lower downward trend lines for his various policies. Democrats in Congress read the polls also, and they don’t want to run having blindly supported everything that turned sour before the mid-term election.
The clock is running. I doubt that the Senate, which maintains its own circadian rhythm will adopt the two minute drill demanded by the White House.
If they do pass anything just to satisfy the White House, the medical insurance bill that comes out will be worst parts of the multiple bills, and we will spend decades trying to undo the damage.
I know that no one is saying so, but we have the best medical in the world, and what we really need is governmental benign neglect. Government is a soup sandwich.
Make a high risk pool of insurance for all legal citizens if you want, just as we have done for automobile insurance. That would insure everyone without screwing up the best medical care in the world.
That still leaves us with 12-20 million uninsured, called illegal aliens. The answer to that is increase the pressure to increase self-deportation, and require the remainder to buy into the insurance pool.
No one should get something for nothing!
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ON SEEING THINGS
What may first appear to be an adult version of Milton Bradley's "Chutes And Ladders" board game is actually the "Organizational Chart of The House Democrats' Health Plan." When you were 3 to 7 years of age and played "Chutes And Ladders" with your friends, sometimes you won... sometimes you didn't. In this version of the game, you will always lose as costs go up the "ladder" and care goes down the "chute." How can this not be with millions being added to the health care roll if Obama-Care becomes a reality? Forget the cost... where is the Obama administration going to get the doctors to care for all these additional people? Oops, this brings us to that pesky little fly in the ointment, often refuted but hard to deny, known as "rationed health care." How old are you? Would you want to have a "premie" or be on social security under Obama-Care? Give it some thought and perhaps you'll be seeing things... differently.
