Health Care
If there is one issue that embodies the utter failure and corruption by our blossoming police state, it has to be the health care/health insurance bill and its passage by pure deception and lies.
Many of us following this process are still in shock over what has happened right before our eyes, and how quickly. It has been obvious from the beginning to all but the most naïve among us that this effort is probably most cynical and sinister smack-down to our liberties we have ever witnessed. Unfortunately, Obama’s term is still young and he has no shortage of Mike Thompson type operatives that are happy to abandon what little integrity they have left to further enable these revolutionary ideologues.
Now that the bill has been signed into law, it is finally being revealed what is contained in this monstrosity. Just as Nancy Pelosi predicted, we are now able to find out what it contains. We further know for a fact that none of the representatives that voted for it had read and understood the bill. How do we know? Because it was passed before it was even finished.
We were told that it had to be passed quickly. No waiting, we MUST pass it today! We can’t afford to wait. Go go go! Read it? Are you kidding? Constitutional? Surely you’re joking. Go go go. Pass it TODAY OR ELSE.
Why then, don’t most of the provisions in the bill that relate in any way to health care not go into effect until 2014 or beyond?
Originally we were told stories about the uninsured millions. As the story developed the numbers began shifting in the 20-40 million uninsured range depending on who was or was not being counted. Temporarily unemployed or illegal immigrants or maybe people that simply didn’t want it? There wasn’t much mention of people not being treated because that wasn’t the problem. People get treatment, insured or not, that’s the current law. It was all about the insurance. So with their usual finesse the statists that were designing this piece of junk had a great idea about how to get all these people insured; FORCE them to buy it!
Wow, why didn’t I think of that?! Brilliant, threaten to take away their property and/or liberty unless they buy a government approved insurance policy. Sometimes the police powers of the state can be real handy.
Since these authoritarian “angels of mercy” were so concerned with how the evil insurance companies lacked “compassion” they decided to go to “Compassion Central” otherwise known as the IRS, to enforce their edicts.
From there is just got more bizarre and disconnected from reality.
Remember the rosy claims? This bill was going to save us tons of money AND reduce the deficit. Not only that, it was going to be paid for by cutting all of the waste, fraud and abuse that presumably would remain invisible until the bill got passed, then all of that waste, fraud and abuse would surrender to the authorities. Great! But what if they need a bit more money to fund this hoax in the unlikely event that they come up a bit short? No problem, just roll a few millionaires and presto, problem solved.
Let’s turn to how this bill will reduce the costs of medical care. Only the government could come up with some of these ideas. How about a requiring really expensive and often unnecessary items be a component of an ‘approved’ insurance policy. How does that cut costs? How about taxing medical devices? Yeah, that should really reduce the costs of medical care. And what’s up with the tanning bed tax? Apparently the tanning bed industry’s lobbyist got stuck in traffic the day they wrote that one. With rare exception such as psoriasis treatments, this sure looks like a ‘cracker tax’ to me. And yet another example of an unrelated goody; I am still trying to find the connection to mandatory reporting of gold sales and health insurance.
A disturbing aspect of this legislation is the whole electronic medical records scam. Obama talked about this during his campaign regularly. He seemed obsessed with the idea. I’m still unclear where this online records element will end up taking us, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. Turning this type of thing over to a government that can’t even keep military secrets under control doesn’t seem to be such a hot idea. Apparently the government is beginning to admit that secret isn’t really secret. What else would explain their proposal that certain conditions (abortion history and HIV status for example) be allowed to be omitted from electronic records.
Needless to say, for promoters of the nanny state, this bill is the mother lode. The only thing that could give the busy-bodies more of a claim over your behavior would be a pure centralized single payer government run plan.
I think that anyone paying attention is anticipating that move real soon.
Another angle on government control over our lives that is represented especially by this type of legislation is the undercurrent of suppression of other freedoms. I first saw this pointed out by Thomas Sowell regarding this particular bill and it rang true based on my own experiences in confronting aggressive government activities, in this case, stifling freedom of speech.. Let me explain:
Mr. Sowell proposed that if the government became the gatekeeper to medical care (a direction that they clearly want to go), and you put yourself in the position of a parent that had a sick child requiring special medical care that needed to be approved by a government agent, it would only be natural to feel pressure not to speak out and criticize that same government. I know that this is a very real phenomenon that I have personally experienced many times in a slightly different context.
I will further explain:
It seems that I am forever getting involved in property rights issues that require confrontation with elected officials and/or government bureaucrats. I could go on and on with stories about what is a clear contempt by most government officials for property rights, but for the sake of what brevity I can muster (not much) let’s just say that most of them have a bit of a sadistic streak.
In one form or another, the following example has played out in my activities too many times to count.
Let’s say we are trying to qualify to get on-ballot and campaign a pro-property rights initiative. One of the first things required is to find official proponents for an initiative. While there is no shortage of people willing to tell me privately that I NEED to push forward, getting them to be named as official proponents is a different story; “I’d really like to help you out but I’m planning to expand my vineyard and you know how the county is… can’t rock the boat”.
Then I need to raise money for the same project; “Sorry I could only contribute 99 bucks, but if my name shows up on a campaign report… well, you know, my wife works for the city… bad scene”.
Then we need endorsements; “The company I work for has some bids in for a possible county contract… maybe next time”.
Well can I at least count on you voting for it? “I’m not registered to vote. You know, jury duty”.
So my point is people’s behavior is definitely influenced by fear of government retaliation. And don’t think for a minute that government officials don’t know it and thrive on it. Sorry to have wandered, but I think you can see the connection. Back to health care.
From my point of view, there are a few fundamental problems that may be helpful to address way before we blow-up the entire health care system and try to fix it with some weird government driven, centrally planned, bureaucrat full employment act.
First, our politicians are scared to death to take on questions of tort reform. How in the world could you produce a 1900+ page ‘reform’ bill and not deal with that? I think we KNOW how and why, but corruption of our congress is another topic. My observation is that ‘defensive medicine’ is simply a way of life. Its not just medicine, have you bought a ladder or chain saw lately? At some point the stickers and warnings of sawing your arm off or being electrocuted become comical. This subject would take up too much space to deal with here and now, so let’s just say that defensive medicine is certainly a factor in health care costs that we can deal with, and in my opinion, in a way that doesn’t need to destroy personal freedoms.
Pre-existing conditions coverage is probably the one area that produces the biggest horror stories. I would sure like to see it avoided, but if there is any issue within the healthcare reform arena that may at least require some governmental action this may be it. I frankly don’t know what the numbers would ultimately look like, but I’m sure that the required expenditures would be a tiny fraction of what we are currently looking at and would be of minimal impact to our freedoms and privacy.
One area that I have been harping on for years and for some reason gets largely ignored is the enormous amount of money that is spent unnecessarily on visits to the doctor’s office simply to access drugs that actually work.
How many times has your decision to schedule a doctor visit been driven primarily by your need to access a prescription medication? Usually you know what condition you have because you’ve had it before. If you could simply go to the pharmacy, consult with the pharmacist, and leave with an appropriate medication, that would probably save you or your insurance company a hundred bucks or so on an unnecessary office visit. Possibly a lot more if it is a weekend.
In many countries, Canada and Mexico included, there are many more commonly used prescription drugs available over the counter than here in the US. It seems that most of this is driven by the fact that most other countries are on a government run single payer system.
My guess is that since the governments were paying the bills for too many unnecessary office visits, they made the pragmatic decision to move to over-the-counter or direct pharmacist dispensing of many common drugs.
This may be one of those cases of when the government is in a position to gain financially, a vice becomes a virtue. Remember how destructive and soul robbing gambling was before the state got into the lottery business? Now you can get halfway to heaven by simply grabbing a few ‘quick-picks’ along with your six pack and jerky.
From what research I’ve done, there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem with misuse or abuse of these drugs due to the more open availability and I’m quite certain it would greatly reduce our cost of routine medical care.
Just one last comment while I’m on this subject. I’ve always felt that pharmacists potentially have a lot more to offer in the health care system. They spend a lot of time in school studying many subjects related to health care and it seems that they spend most of their time moving drugs from big bottles to little bottles and sticking on labels. I may be missing a lot of the picture, but it strikes me that they have a much larger skill set and professional knowledge than is regularly used. Just as the rise in use of nurse practitioners seems to have been a very positive development the delivery of health services, I think that too much government restriction on what qualified professionals can and can’t do keeps an unnecessary upward pressure on prices.
You might still be asking “Hey Mike, does this mean you would vote to repeal the recently passed health care bill?”
My answer is, kill it and bury it. Repeal it if possible or at least defund it (if the numbers aren’t there for a veto override).
If necessary, dig it up and kill it again! Repeat as needed.
If there is one issue that embodies the utter failure and corruption by our blossoming police state, it has to be the health care/health insurance bill and its passage by pure deception and lies.
Many of us following this process are still in shock over what has happened right before our eyes, and how quickly. It has been obvious from the beginning to all but the most naïve among us that this effort is probably most cynical and sinister smack-down to our liberties we have ever witnessed. Unfortunately, Obama’s term is still young and he has no shortage of Mike Thompson type operatives that are happy to abandon what little integrity they have left to further enable these revolutionary ideologues.
Now that the bill has been signed into law, it is finally being revealed what is contained in this monstrosity. Just as Nancy Pelosi predicted, we are now able to find out what it contains. We further know for a fact that none of the representatives that voted for it had read and understood the bill. How do we know? Because it was passed before it was even finished.
We were told that it had to be passed quickly. No waiting, we MUST pass it today! We can’t afford to wait. Go go go! Read it? Are you kidding? Constitutional? Surely you’re joking. Go go go. Pass it TODAY OR ELSE.
Why then, don’t most of the provisions in the bill that relate in any way to health care not go into effect until 2014 or beyond?
Originally we were told stories about the uninsured millions. As the story developed the numbers began shifting in the 20-40 million uninsured range depending on who was or was not being counted. Temporarily unemployed or illegal immigrants or maybe people that simply didn’t want it? There wasn’t much mention of people not being treated because that wasn’t the problem. People get treatment, insured or not, that’s the current law. It was all about the insurance. So with their usual finesse the statists that were designing this piece of junk had a great idea about how to get all these people insured; FORCE them to buy it!
Wow, why didn’t I think of that?! Brilliant, threaten to take away their property and/or liberty unless they buy a government approved insurance policy. Sometimes the police powers of the state can be real handy.
Since these authoritarian “angels of mercy” were so concerned with how the evil insurance companies lacked “compassion” they decided to go to “Compassion Central” otherwise known as the IRS, to enforce their edicts.
From there is just got more bizarre and disconnected from reality.
Remember the rosy claims? This bill was going to save us tons of money AND reduce the deficit. Not only that, it was going to be paid for by cutting all of the waste, fraud and abuse that presumably would remain invisible until the bill got passed, then all of that waste, fraud and abuse would surrender to the authorities. Great! But what if they need a bit more money to fund this hoax in the unlikely event that they come up a bit short? No problem, just roll a few millionaires and presto, problem solved.
Let’s turn to how this bill will reduce the costs of medical care. Only the government could come up with some of these ideas. How about a requiring really expensive and often unnecessary items be a component of an ‘approved’ insurance policy. How does that cut costs? How about taxing medical devices? Yeah, that should really reduce the costs of medical care. And what’s up with the tanning bed tax? Apparently the tanning bed industry’s lobbyist got stuck in traffic the day they wrote that one. With rare exception such as psoriasis treatments, this sure looks like a ‘cracker tax’ to me. And yet another example of an unrelated goody; I am still trying to find the connection to mandatory reporting of gold sales and health insurance.
A disturbing aspect of this legislation is the whole electronic medical records scam. Obama talked about this during his campaign regularly. He seemed obsessed with the idea. I’m still unclear where this online records element will end up taking us, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. Turning this type of thing over to a government that can’t even keep military secrets under control doesn’t seem to be such a hot idea. Apparently the government is beginning to admit that secret isn’t really secret. What else would explain their proposal that certain conditions (abortion history and HIV status for example) be allowed to be omitted from electronic records.
Needless to say, for promoters of the nanny state, this bill is the mother lode. The only thing that could give the busy-bodies more of a claim over your behavior would be a pure centralized single payer government run plan.
I think that anyone paying attention is anticipating that move real soon.
Another angle on government control over our lives that is represented especially by this type of legislation is the undercurrent of suppression of other freedoms. I first saw this pointed out by Thomas Sowell regarding this particular bill and it rang true based on my own experiences in confronting aggressive government activities, in this case, stifling freedom of speech.. Let me explain:
Mr. Sowell proposed that if the government became the gatekeeper to medical care (a direction that they clearly want to go), and you put yourself in the position of a parent that had a sick child requiring special medical care that needed to be approved by a government agent, it would only be natural to feel pressure not to speak out and criticize that same government. I know that this is a very real phenomenon that I have personally experienced many times in a slightly different context.
I will further explain:
It seems that I am forever getting involved in property rights issues that require confrontation with elected officials and/or government bureaucrats. I could go on and on with stories about what is a clear contempt by most government officials for property rights, but for the sake of what brevity I can muster (not much) let’s just say that most of them have a bit of a sadistic streak.
In one form or another, the following example has played out in my activities too many times to count.
Let’s say we are trying to qualify to get on-ballot and campaign a pro-property rights initiative. One of the first things required is to find official proponents for an initiative. While there is no shortage of people willing to tell me privately that I NEED to push forward, getting them to be named as official proponents is a different story; “I’d really like to help you out but I’m planning to expand my vineyard and you know how the county is… can’t rock the boat”.
Then I need to raise money for the same project; “Sorry I could only contribute 99 bucks, but if my name shows up on a campaign report… well, you know, my wife works for the city… bad scene”.
Then we need endorsements; “The company I work for has some bids in for a possible county contract… maybe next time”.
Well can I at least count on you voting for it? “I’m not registered to vote. You know, jury duty”.
So my point is people’s behavior is definitely influenced by fear of government retaliation. And don’t think for a minute that government officials don’t know it and thrive on it. Sorry to have wandered, but I think you can see the connection. Back to health care.
From my point of view, there are a few fundamental problems that may be helpful to address way before we blow-up the entire health care system and try to fix it with some weird government driven, centrally planned, bureaucrat full employment act.
First, our politicians are scared to death to take on questions of tort reform. How in the world could you produce a 1900+ page ‘reform’ bill and not deal with that? I think we KNOW how and why, but corruption of our congress is another topic. My observation is that ‘defensive medicine’ is simply a way of life. Its not just medicine, have you bought a ladder or chain saw lately? At some point the stickers and warnings of sawing your arm off or being electrocuted become comical. This subject would take up too much space to deal with here and now, so let’s just say that defensive medicine is certainly a factor in health care costs that we can deal with, and in my opinion, in a way that doesn’t need to destroy personal freedoms.
Pre-existing conditions coverage is probably the one area that produces the biggest horror stories. I would sure like to see it avoided, but if there is any issue within the healthcare reform arena that may at least require some governmental action this may be it. I frankly don’t know what the numbers would ultimately look like, but I’m sure that the required expenditures would be a tiny fraction of what we are currently looking at and would be of minimal impact to our freedoms and privacy.
One area that I have been harping on for years and for some reason gets largely ignored is the enormous amount of money that is spent unnecessarily on visits to the doctor’s office simply to access drugs that actually work.
How many times has your decision to schedule a doctor visit been driven primarily by your need to access a prescription medication? Usually you know what condition you have because you’ve had it before. If you could simply go to the pharmacy, consult with the pharmacist, and leave with an appropriate medication, that would probably save you or your insurance company a hundred bucks or so on an unnecessary office visit. Possibly a lot more if it is a weekend.
In many countries, Canada and Mexico included, there are many more commonly used prescription drugs available over the counter than here in the US. It seems that most of this is driven by the fact that most other countries are on a government run single payer system.
My guess is that since the governments were paying the bills for too many unnecessary office visits, they made the pragmatic decision to move to over-the-counter or direct pharmacist dispensing of many common drugs.
This may be one of those cases of when the government is in a position to gain financially, a vice becomes a virtue. Remember how destructive and soul robbing gambling was before the state got into the lottery business? Now you can get halfway to heaven by simply grabbing a few ‘quick-picks’ along with your six pack and jerky.
From what research I’ve done, there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem with misuse or abuse of these drugs due to the more open availability and I’m quite certain it would greatly reduce our cost of routine medical care.
Just one last comment while I’m on this subject. I’ve always felt that pharmacists potentially have a lot more to offer in the health care system. They spend a lot of time in school studying many subjects related to health care and it seems that they spend most of their time moving drugs from big bottles to little bottles and sticking on labels. I may be missing a lot of the picture, but it strikes me that they have a much larger skill set and professional knowledge than is regularly used. Just as the rise in use of nurse practitioners seems to have been a very positive development the delivery of health services, I think that too much government restriction on what qualified professionals can and can’t do keeps an unnecessary upward pressure on prices.
You might still be asking “Hey Mike, does this mean you would vote to repeal the recently passed health care bill?”
My answer is, kill it and bury it. Repeal it if possible or at least defund it (if the numbers aren’t there for a veto override).
If necessary, dig it up and kill it again! Repeat as needed.
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