Let’s just look at a few of his policies. I don’t think I really have to say much about them.  Dr. Emanual, the brother of Obama’s Chief of Staff, and my former Congressman Rahm Emanuel, has said some pretty disturbing things to say.x

First in a June 2008 issue of JAMA, he blames the Hipocratic Oath for the “overuse” of medical care.

“Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness,” he writes. “This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition to ‘use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment’ as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others.”

He says that there will be hard choices to make.

“In the next decade every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources. There is no consensus about what substantive principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations,” he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 19, 2002. Yet Dr. Emanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line.

He suggests that when making these decisions, the focus must be on who will be best for the “good of the people.”  Of course, what is best for the “good of the people,” will be determined by the government, specifically him.

“Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar writings as the above in a Nazi Eugenics Manuel.

And of course, age should also be taken into account.

“However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear.” In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: “When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated.

He even illustrated his point using the following Reaper Curve in a Lancet article.

All in all, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a sick sick person and Obama is sick person for relying on his advice.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I totally agree with that guy on CNN that the insurance companies are bad. But, as usual, that guy only gives us the false choice between the current system where the government spends 50 cents of every dollar spent in the health care system and a new system where the government will spend an even bigger chunk on health care. Where the insurance companies, along with the doctors, do their best to get government to legislate and regulate as much competition out of the health industry as possible, and in doing so drive the cost very high. I pointed out to people the other day that adjusting for inflation, it cost about $250 to have a baby in the 1950s but over $10,000 today http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly09/healthcare07-09.html.  Once upon a time people could afford to have health care without insurance, and if they did have insurance they only had it for catastrophic events. Doctors and hospitals could afford to treat people that could not afford health care at a reduced or free cost, but now, because of all the money hospitals and private practice offices have to pay to comply with regulations. Even if the government regulations were perfect, which I doubt since they are written by politicians that don’t know anything about medicine, these companies still have to hire extra people (including lawyers) to fill out paper work, and make sure the company complies with the regulations. Not to mention the high initial cost to comply with regulations on doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, that make it incredibly hard for somebody to start a competing company.

Let us look at the system Obama was proposing. He wanted the public option. (Now he wants a co-op, which I believe will have the same effect.) Since the government has unlimited resources that it steals from us, it will be impossible for insurance companies to compete with it. Any companies that do survive will be premium companies that mostly service the families of politicians, just like the private (non-religious) schools that manage to compete with the public school systems.

This will also motivate doctors to find other work. It is already hard enough for doctors to deal with medicare and medicaid. They pay the lowest fees and they take the longest to pay. Many would go out of business if all of their patients had one of those two programs. What makes anybody think that this co-op will be any better?

One of the biggest things that will force insurance companies out of business is the pre-existing conditions part of this plan. I know it sounds horrible that you would deny somebody insurance if they have a disease already, but the point of insurance is that you have it in case you get sick, not only after you get sick. This will have two effects. First, like regulations in many states that require all insurance in that state to cover some conditions, it will drive up the premiums. Because you have to buy insurance in your own state, the states with more requirements will have the highest insurance. That is why it is very expensive to have insurance in New York compared to Wyoming. The second effect this requirement will have is that people will not get insurance until they get sick. This will send the insurance companies out of business left and right.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

This essay was originally published in The Free Market in April 1993.

It’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

It’s time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removmg unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.

Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing – if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a “national standard” of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own – rather than the government’s – risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

Read the rest of the article

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The Trouble With “Single-Payer Healthcare”

By David McKalip, M.D.
Published 05/12/09

Pennsylvania HOUSE Health Council TESTIMONY
David McKalip, M.D.
Chairman, Council on Medical Economics, Florida Medical Association
President, Florida Neurosurgical Society
Chairperson, Florida Taxpayers Union

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, 1782.

Thank you for bringing me to testify before the Pennsylvania House Health Care Policy Task Force. I am a private practice neurosurgeon from Florida and for over ten years, I have practiced in academics, small group and solo settings taking care of patients from all walks of life. While in my first practice at San Francisco General Hospital, I saw the many shortcomings of a government run hospital.  Even with dedicated professional health care staff, the constant budget shortfalls, debt and politically motivated regulatory burdens drained the hospital there.  Patients waited weeks to go to rehabilitation units while patients in private systems went in days.  Repeat patients never took responsibility for their own health — always assuming that the public system would be there for them.  I went to San Francisco a young liberal and left two years later a disillusioned doctor.  After about two years in private practice I began to realize that only the private sector could deliver high quality affordable health care in the most fair and equitable way without rationing.  That is not to say that the current structure of private health care is perfect — it is encumbered by a complex and odd system of financing that few economists would design: third party financing of first dollar coverage. Nevertheless, the care patients receive through private health insurance is far better than that received by those with government funded health care.  Better than private or public third party payment is the results produced when patients spend their own money from a health savings account backed by a catastrophic health plan.  (But I will discuss that more later).

I saw Medicaid patients for seven years by choice even though Medicaid in Florida pays only 56% of Medicare rates and each patient entering my practice was the equivalent of me writing them a check. I couldn’t blame other neurosurgeons who were not taking these patients and I saw patients drive hours to see me.  Finally I opted to see Medicaid only for hospital emergencies — not in my office.

Another publicly run health system also has neglected some of our most valued citizens: The Veterans Administration.  Layers of stifling bureaucracy and limited resources have lead to long waits for advanced medical care. At multiple V.A.’s I saw Veterans wait months for a spine surgeon while living with crippling pain or slowly evolving paralysis, get put on another waiting list for surgery and have their surgery cancelled at the last minute simply because there wasn’t enough staff to keep working after 3 pm or any interest of the employed physician staff to work harder.

I have seen Medicare patients denied advanced spinal surgical techniques or subject to overnight stays when others go home the same day due to arcane rules.  I have had to perform two surgeries on Parkinson’s patients for dual brain stimulator pacemakers since Medicare won’t pay for the single pacemaker at the same price! I have seen how Medicare patients wait over an hour to see a Nurse Practitioner for 10 minutes and their doctors for 3 minutes and leave confused only to enter the mill again.  I have seen referrals to specialists from Nurse Practitioners that a primary care physician could have avoided.  But the number of primary care doctors has dropped as Medicare has artificially controlled the amount of payment for their services. I also routinely see able-bodied patients inappropriately granted disability for health care and disability benefits.

Read the rest of the Article

Bookmark It

Hide Sites