Oct/090
The Price of Cost Cutting:
The Price of Cost Cutting
Sarah Palin has been ridiculed over and over for bringing up the notion of death panels, yet if we follow into the footsteps of other countries with national healthcare that’s exactly what we’ll have. Sure take away all the platitudes and politically correct language and what you are left with is a government bureaucracy that has the power to decide life and death.
You say that couldn’t happen here, well it could and will. You say we have the same situation with the insurance companies, I say you are half way right. But with the insurance companies you at least have options. You could switch companies, you could go through a charity or hospital that can help, or you can raise the money to pay yourself. In many countries with national healthcare, once the government says no you have no other choice.
This article is one of a growing many that explains the disaster of the government running end of life care.
Sep/090
The Tyranny of Health Insurance:
Obama Health Insurance
It all started with a question. If you are going to impose on every American that they must buy Health Insurance, then what is the penalty if they choose not to?
The answer is very disturbing!
A $25,000 fine or up to a year in jail!
Read more:
| September 25, 2009 Categories: Senate http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Ensign_receives_handwritten_confirmation_.html?showall Ensign receives handwritten confirmation This doesn’t happen often enough. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.” |
| By Carrie Budoff Brown 11:40 AM |
| September 24, 2009 Categories: Senate Flout the mandate penalty? Face the IRS Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The remarks Thursday from the committee’s chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama’s contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase. Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would “take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings.” Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don’t believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance. “We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment,” Ensign said. “That seems to me to be a problem.” Ensign’s argument , however, wasn’t persuasive to the committee — which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate. |
| By Carrie Budoff Brown 04:04 PM |
Sep/090
45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting
Doctors Ready to Quit
By TERRY JONES
News Analysis by IBD | Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:30 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337909690110379
Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.
The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.
It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors’ positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.
Major findings included:
• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration’s claims that doctors are part of an “unprecedented coalition” supporting a medical overhaul.
It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a “majority of physicians want public and private insurance options,” and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday’s front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline “Doctors Go For Obama’s Reform.”
Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the “association representing the nation’s physicians” and what “many still regard as the country’s premier lobbying force” — is “lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama’s sweeping plan.”
The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA’s support of Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul.
• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.
More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll’s finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.
• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered “no” when asked if they believed “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”
This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.
The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.
IBD/TIPP’s finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.
In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.
From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.
Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.
The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.
Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.
The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.
Adding millions of patients to physicians’ caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.
“It’s like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses,” Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.
Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.
The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.
Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn’t likely to change much.
On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.
Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:
• The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.
• The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.
• Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.
• Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.
A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a “lingering poor practice environment in the state.”
In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what’s being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn’t worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.
“Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate,” according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.
Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.
This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.
In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.
“A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland” because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.
British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.
Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country’s national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.
Sep/090
Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?
We The People
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337992265461227
Federal Powers: Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say the government can force people to buy health insurance? And by what authority does it prohibit the purchasing of insurance across state lines?
A key part of the administration’s plan to reform health care is what is called the “individual mandate” — a requirement that everyone must have health insurance either through his or her employer or purchased individually.
A good chunk of the uninsured are that way of their own volition. They are young and healthy and feel they have better things to do with their money at this point in their lives. Forcing them is the only way to get them covered, but it’s not clear where the constitutional authority to do that comes from.
The Constitution specifically enumerates the powers given to each branch of government and says that any powers not mentioned revert to the states and to the people. Nowhere does it say that the feds can compel you to buy health insurance. But then, this is the administration that claims the right to a de facto nationalization of the banking system and auto industry, to set executive compensation and to fire corporate officers.
With regard to health care reform, the administration seems to be operating under a distorted version of the Commerce Clause that has been grossly misinterpreted over the years as allowing the feds to regulate and control just about everything. Because the sum total of millions of individual health decisions has a collective economic impact, the reasoning goes, government has the authority, even the duty, to regulate those decisions. It does not.
Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional scholar now a Fox News analyst, says the power to “regulate” interstate commerce is just that and only that. He says that when James Madison used the word “regulate,” he meant “to keep regular.” Madison intended the government to function like a modern-day referee in football — to throw a flag once in a while and moderate disputes, but not call the plays.
The irony here, says Napolitano, is that at the same time the government wants to force people to buy insurance, it forbids them from doing so across state lines. In other words, he says, “Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person’s appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.”
David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department under both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, wrote in the Washington Post that in United States vs. Lopez in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress can only regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity.
The Commerce Clause allows for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production, distribution or consumption of commodities. The Supreme Court has specifically rejected the idea that Congress can regulate noneconomic activities simply because through a chain of collective events they might have some impact down the road.
The government does not have the power to regulate individual Americans simply because they are there and you think their individual decisions are unwise. There are other concerns, such as whether the mass collection of medical records violates the Fourth Amendment’s right of people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.”
The states are starting to rebel. In July, Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicated that he might join those invoking the 10th Amendment to fight a federal takeover of health care. “I think you’ll hear states and and governors standing up and saying ‘no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their health care,” Perry said.
If passed into law, the House’s health care reform plan will be tested. We hope the Supreme Court will once again find that H.R. 3200, and any bill like it that imposes similar mandates, violates the Constitution.
Sep/091
No, Mr. President
Obama on 60 Minutes
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009
Posted by William Kristol
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#13172
In his 60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight, President Obama apparently says, “I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it….I’m the one who’s going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right.”
No, Mr. President. It’s not about you. If legislation passes, you don’t own it.
We all own it. Any health care bill will become part of the U.S. Code, not simply an item on the Obama White House web site. We will all feel its effects. We are all responsible for the future of our country. Here the people rule.
Which is why it is wrong to jam through a 1,000+ page legislative act in such a rush that its defenders can’t even give a coherent account of what it will and won’t do, and in order to deal with a situation that the president himself acknowledged Wednesday night is not a crisis (“But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future — and that is the issue of health care.”).
The national debate on health care has just begun. Much of the popular anger of this past summer came from a feeling — a justified one — that if Obama has his way, we, the people, won’t have an opportunity to debate this issue as it deserves. The August recess seemed to be citizens’ one chance to force a reconsideration by their elected representatives before Obama succeeded in rushing the Congress to judgment.
This is a moment of truth for the two political parties.
Will enough Congressional Democrats refuse to be herded like sheep and stampeded like cattle? Will they do what is right, and insist, for the sake of the political health of the country, on an open and measured and deliberative process?
And if there are not enough such Democrats — if the Democratic party simply yields to Barack Obama and his assurance that, hey, he has every incentive to get it right, so everyone else should just get out of the way — if the Democratic Congress jams this legislation down the people’s throat — then the Republican party will have to say: We do not yield. We do not acquiesce. And we will take this issue to the country in 2010 and 2012, with the purpose of repealing this dangerous and damaging legislation.
Sep/090
An economist explains health spending
Health Care Spening
Don Surber
Robert Fogel won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993. He wrote a piece last week in which he explained the two reasons why Americans spend more money on health care than everyone else in the world.
First, Americans have had more money to spend.
“Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875,” Fogel wrote.
If we limit the basics to these three items, that means spending on non-basic items rose from 13 percent of income in 1875 to 70 percent in 1995.
That is a fivefold increase.
Some of it went to entertainment, some of it went to government (taxes are much higher), and the rest went to other things, including health care.
So we have had more money to spend on health care.
The second reason we spend more is because spending more money on health care works.
“It is important to emphasize that medical interventions have not only contributed to the decline in prevalence rates of chronic conditions but also to the reduction in their severity,” Fogel wrote.
“Advances in both surgical and drug therapies have significantly reduced the rate at which chronic conditions turn into disabilities that severely impair functioning.
“Such interventions have been especially effective in genitourinary, circulatory, digestive, and musculoskeletal conditions.
“However, many of the surgical procedures are quite expensive, and the cost of the new and more effective drugs is increasing sharply, mainly because of the large investments in developing these drugs.”
The United States, overall, has both the most expensive and the best health care in the world.
The socialist argument that somehow spending more on health care makes our health system inferior is absurd.
This argument is based on life expectancy tables.
But life expectancy has many factors, including average weight, homicide rates, suicide rates, genetics and traffic fatalities.
The emphasis in America is on saving lives, not money.
In every socialist country, the opposite is true. The only way to save money on health care is to ration it.
When socialists toss around a number such as 18,000 people die because they lack health insurance, I remember that 14,802 people died in France in August 2003 because of the French health system.
There was a heat wave, and instead of calling doctors back from their month-long vacations to tend those people, the French government decided to save money.
Adjusted for population, that would be like 70,000 deaths in America, or roughly 35 Hurricane Katrinas.
In England, the Taxpayers Alliance estimated that an extra 17,000 people die each year because of the quality of the National Health Service.
That is no big deal to many British people.
“An extra 17,000 deaths might seem high, but that figure needed to be set against annual mortality, which was between 750,000 and one million deaths every year,” the liberal London Guardian reported.
“The countries with which the UK was being compared spent more of their GDP on healthcare.”
The extra deaths are OK to liberals because, hey, look at all the money the government is saving.
Mar/080
NHS dentists play as patients wait
From The Sunday Times
March 30, 2008
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3646522.ece
Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care.
Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.
Patients have been told they must either pay privately or return in April when the new work year begins. People suffering from toothache have been advised to go to hospital.
Areas affected include Merseyside, Derbyshire, Birmingham and East Sussex. Eddie Crouch, secretary of the Birmingham local dental committee, estimates that up to a third of dentists in the West Midlands have run out of work or have had to reduce the number of NHS patients they treat. “Patients in pain have had to shop around to find a dentist that has not used up their quota,” he said.
The British Dental Association fears that other dentists have been unable to meet their quotas and will be forced to pay back thousands of pounds to the NHS.
The health department says dentists should have managed their workload throughout the year.
Sep/070
Moore Vs Stossel
(Story 1)
Michael Moore told John Stossel that, “All the world health organizations or whatever have confirmed that if there’s one thing they do right in Cuba, it’s health care. And there’s very little debate about that.” (ABCNEWS)
By MELISSA SCOTT
Sept. 7, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Exclusiva/Story?id=3568278&page=1
“Which way to Guantanamo Bay?!”
Anyone who’s seen Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” will recall the scene in which he shouts with a bullhorn as his boat takes a group of people, including Sept. 11 workers, to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he says prisoners get better health care than Americans.
After the manned gun towers blow horns at Moore’s boat, he takes the group to Havana, where his movie says socialized medicine — government-run medicine — is great for everyone. When Moore’s group arrives in Havana, they are taken to a special section of a large showcase hospital.
Moore says in the film, “I asked [the Havana hospital] to give us the same exact care they give their fellow Cuban citizens. No more, no less. And that’s what they did.”
Watch “Whose Body Is It, Anyway?! Sick in America”
Sept. 14 on “20/20″ at 10 p.m. EDT
The Debate
Moore sat down with “20/20’s” John Stossel and talked about that claim. When asked whether it really was an average hospital, Moore said, “Yes.”
“This isn’t just me saying this, you know. All the world health organizations or whatever have confirmed that if there’s one thing they do right in Cuba, it’s health care,” Moore said. “And there’s very little debate about that.”
In fact, there is plenty of debate. Miami-based Cuban Human Rights activist Jose Carro says Moore’s movie paints an inaccurate picture.
“These films that try to portray the health care system as superior to that of the U.S. are lacking in truth,” Carro said. He asserts that most hospitals for Cuban citizens are dilapidated, that conditions are filthy and that patients are so neglected that some are starving.
George Utset, who runs the anti-Castro Web site called therealcuba.com, says Moore’s group didn’t “go to the hospital for regular Cubans. They go to the hospital for the elite and it’s [a] very different condition.”
Darsi Ferrer, a human rights advocate in Cuba, issued an SOS via telephone, wanting the world to know that ordinary Cubans are “crazy with desperation” over the horrendous state of their health care.
Questioning the Numbers
Moore says that because Cubans get such good health care, they live longer and it is true that a U.N. report claims that they live nearly two months longer. But the United Nations didn’t gather any data, said Carro.
“The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so that we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are,” he said.
Although Cuba claims to have low infant mortality rates, doctors have said the data is misleading because when there might be indications of problems with the fetus, there is a widespread practice of forced abortions.
Julio Alfonso said, “We personally used to do 70 to 80 abortions a day.” Yanet Sanchez, a Cuban exile, said she was simply told to submit to an abortion. “They told me I should end the pregnancy,” said Sanchez. “It was my very first pregnancy. I wanted to have the child.”
Other doctors have said that if a child dies a few hours after birth, they don’t count it as ever having lived, which ultimately makes infant mortality in Cuba look better than that of the United States.
“It changes the number, even though the same number of children may be dying or more,” said Carro.
Long Life?
Moore disagrees. “All the independent health organizations in the world, and even our own CIA, believes that the Cubans have a pretty good health system. And they do, in fact, live longer than we do,” he said.
But when “20/20″ contacted the CIA, officials said, “We don’t say that Cuba has a pretty good system or that Cubans live longer than Americans.”
In fact, the CIA’s World Fact Book says Americans live nearly a year longer. Although a U.N. report supports Moore’s position, that data comes straight from the Cuban government.
Why believe anything the Cuban government says about Cuba? Moore said, “Let’s stick to Canada and Britain and this stuff because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the, the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things, and I’ll give you my answer.”
(Story 2)
By JOHN STOSSEL, GENA BINKLEY and PATRICK McMENAMIN
Sept. 14, 2007
In every area of our economy, when people compete for your business, consumers win. Prices drop and quality improves. And now there’s good news: A little competition has begun to improve health care.
There are some doctors’ waiting rooms in America that are elegant … and open on Saturdays. Some doctors even take e-mail from patients and give out their cell phone numbers.Top of Form
Of course, those doctors usually work in fields that insurance rarely covers, like laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery.
Dr. Brian Bonanni is a laser eye surgeon who reshapes eyes so that people can see without glasses. He knows he has to please his patients — not some insurance company or the government — because he is paid by his patients.
“I need to be available 24 hours a day,” Bonanni said. “I want to be there when a patient has questions, and I want to be reachable.”
Bonanni’s patients often meet with several doctors before deciding on a surgeon, and they demand to know exactly what it will cost.
Competitive Prices
“I can’t get away with not telling the patient how much exactly it’s going to cost. No one would put up with it,” Bonanni said. “And the difference of a hundred dollars sometimes makes their decision for them.”
Laser eye surgeons have to compete for their patients’ business. And a result of that competition is lower prices.
“In every other field of medicine, the price is going up faster than consumer prices in general,” said Dr. John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
“[But] the price of Lasik surgery, on average, has gone down by 30 percent.”
Prices dropped even though doctors pay for advertising. And while the procedure got cheaper, it also got better.
“When the lasers first came out, all they could treat was nearsightedness,” Bonanni said. “[Today] the lasers are faster, more precise.”
We see better quality, and lower prices in medical fields where most people pay for care themselves — cosmetic surgery is another example. The average price of cosmetic procedures has fallen, because doctors compete for patients’ business, and if doctors want to get repeat business, they have to offer patients a good deal. It’s what happens when doctors respond to you, not your insurance company or the government. And it’s happening now, and not just with elective surgery. We’re starting to see providers offer everyday health care even in … shopping centers.
Cheap, Convenient Care
A new kind of medical clinic, staffed by nurse practitioners, is popping up in stores like Wal-Mart, in pharmacies and grocery stores. They offer people with sore throats and ear infections convenient care … cheap. Most everything costs $59 or less.
But how can they make money charging so little?
“They’re figuring how to do something faster, better, cheaper,” said Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. “They’re responding to consumer demand, because they see that they might make some money on this. Profit! And, look who’s winning. Moms and dads and kids. Because they now have … easy access to routine health care.”
And some doctors are finding that dealing directly with patients changes their practice for the better.
Dr. Robert Berry had enough of the hassles of insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid, so he decided to stop taking insurance. Instead, he offers his patients a price list, with low prices. How often have you seen that in a doctor’s office? With visits often as low as $40, it’s hard to see how he makes any money off it.
But Berry said, “Last year I made about the average of what a primary care physician makes in this country.”
Competition, Choice, Power
Berry said eliminating insurance paperwork saves him time and money.
“I don’t have to hire billers. I don’t have to fight the insurance companies to get the money.”
And that lets him keep his prices low, which saves money for his mostly uninsured patients. Knowing that his patients pay with their own money, Berry works with them, trying to find ways to save them money.
“They’re afraid. They don’t know how much it’s going to cost,” Berry said. “So I can tell them, OK, you know, you have heartburn. Let’s start out with generic Zantac, which costs around five dollars a month. But [they say] ‘I see Nexium on TV, I see Prevacid.’ Yeah, but that costs about $130 a month. They’re great medicines, but why don’t you try this one first and see if it works.”
And sometimes, he said, the $4 pill at Wal-Mart is just as good as the $100 pill.
So when consumers pay for things themselves, saving insurance for the big stuff, doctors deal directly with customers directly and compete by posting prices and working to keep them low.
That way, instead of having governments or insurance companies make decisions for consumers, consumers decide for themselves. Competition gives consumers more choices. And choice gives them power.
(Story 3)
Opinion By JOHN STOSSEL
Sept. 10, 2007
The bureaucrats are worried about your health. They don’t think you’re making good decisions about what to eat. So, to stop you from eating things that are bad for you, the Los Angeles city council has proposed legislation to forbid the opening of any new fast food restaurants in parts of the city that have high rates of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The ban would last for the next two years.
Incredible, right? The city government will dictate the kind of restaurants that may open? It sounds more like communist Russia than southern California, but this is what happens when the government pays the bill for our health care. They think that gives them the right to order us around — in the name of taking charge of our health. Top of Form
The neighborhoods where the Los Angeles bureaucrats propose to ban new restaurants are all in the “inner-city” of south Los Angeles. A higher percentage of the people in those neighborhoods live in poverty and that means more of them use government money (Medicaid) to pay for their health care. Government pays the medical bill.
And as the old adage goes: He who pays the piper calls the tune. I keep learning more about that as I prepare for my Friday “20/20″ TV special on health care “Whose Body Is It Anyway? Sick in America.”
If government pays for our health care, then government officials have a bigger stake in monitoring our health. It’s another reason I’m wary of all the politicians today who demand more government fixes to our health care system.
Almost every one of the presidential contenders has a plan. The devil is in the details. The proposals are full of platitudes like “affordable and accessible health care” and “health care for all.” Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says we need to get “serious about preventive health care” and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, says we need “Medicare for all.” The Web site of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards says, “Edwards will offer individuals in Health Care Markets a choice of insurance plans including a public plan based on Medicare…” whatever that means. Sen. Barack Obama’s, D-Ill., Web site laments the fact that “less than 4 cents of every health care dollar is spent on prevention and public health.”
Nearly all of the Democratic presidential candidates want the government to guarantee some form of “universal health care.” Republican presidential candidates have been less aggressive, but Republican governors have already started experimenting. Mitt Romney instituted a universal health care plan when he was governor of Massachusetts and calls the idea of getting everyone in the country insured “an important priority.” Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a universal health care plan for California.
That increasing government involvement in health care will invariably lead to government wanting to tell you how to be healthy. Already, the nanny state has banned trans fats in New York City. Now Los Angeles may ban new fast food restaurants?
Come on. Adults should be able to decide for themselves what we want to eat and where we want to eat it.
Give me a break.