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The entire premise of the discussions and debate on Capitol Hill misses the key point on the question of changing the health care system. Legislators have debated four points:

a) How to pay for the package

b) How to reduce its cost

c) Whether or not to have a government-run insurance company

d) What mandate to impose on employers to cover their workers

But none of these points copes with the more basic question of where the extra doctors to cover these now uninsured people are going to come from. You cannot cover the 50 million new people Obama seeks to cover without more doctors and nurses. But the administration and even the Blue Dogs in the House have proposed nothing to add to the supply of medical services even as they plan vastly to increase the demand by covering new people.

By focusing on false issues — or at least tangential ones — the politicians can play the Washington game of compromising on these questions while failing to address the central flaw in the legislation.

The projected Senate “compromise” being discussed in the Senate Finance Committee would eliminate the employer mandate and the public insurance option. But it would still extend coverage dramatically without making provision for more medical personnel. The Blue Dog compromise in the House would replace a public option with co-op insurance companies organized by states and would limit the employer mandate, but would have the same blind spot: too few doctors and nurses to cover the new patients.

Both bills would continue to vest the administration with the power to cut Medicare and the mandate to do so. Congress’ only check on the evisceration of the program would be its ability to veto proposed cuts within a limited period of time, as now applies to military-base closure.

Experience has showed that Congress is just as happy to sit back and let the closings or cuts take place without acting to stop them.

And by failing to provide for more doctors or medical schools or nurses, both bills will force widespread rationing of medical care. And that rationing is going to mean lower-quality medical care for us all, especially for the elderly.

A doctor in Massachusetts — where Romney passed a plan similar to Obama’s, recently told us that she now has to read 60 mammograms a day in the time she used to spend on 45. Less time, she said, means less accuracy in reading the complex data and more mistakes. “It keeps me up at night,” she told us, “that I might make a mistake, I am so rushed.”

And, for the elderly, it means less and less medical care. A Federal Health Board will sit in judgment of medical procedures and protocols and will decide what guidelines all providers must use in giving patients certain types of care or withholding them.

For example, the drug Avastin is widely used in the United States to treat advanced colon cancer. But it costs $50,000 a year. So the Canadian health system will not permit its use. As a result, 41 percent of colon cancer patients in Canada die each year as opposed to 32 percent in the United States. The average eight-month wait for colonoscopies in Canada also contributes to the problem. Colon cancer rates are 25 percent higher north of the border than in the United States, where colonoscopies are readily available.

Neither the House nor the Senate will act on these bills until September. Congressmen and senators will be home during August to test public opinion. It is up to us to give them an earful!

source:  http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/viewopiarticle.jsp?id=2443&type=Opinion

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This isn’t about me,” President Barack Obama famously announced as support for his massive government takeover of health care began to falter.

Oh, but it is.

It is about him because it is his vision that has given us a so-called stimulus of staggering size and dubious value. It is his instincts that guide him to sacrifice the American economy on the altar of climatological junk science. It was his wish to run General Motors.

As with other issues, the cost to taxpayers is an annoying side issue that he and his administration simply do not want to be bothered with. Their attitude is a wave-off: How can you pester us with those trifles when we’re trying to do something titanic here?

And “titanic” is a fitting adjective, since much of what makes the American health care system the envy of the world is about to be dashed against the jagged iceberg of socialized medicine.

There is something darkly comical about these people seeking to comfort us by telling us we may keep our current health plan and our current doctors if we wish. Pardon me if I do not ooze gratitude when government chooses in its mighty benevolence to let me keep something that is a basic right.

And speaking of rights, health care is not one. It is a responsibility. It is something we should secure for ourselves, through our employers or through the open market.

That open market is about to be steamrolled by the same Obama tank brigade that flattened free-market solutions to the banking and housing problems of the last year.

As the first hot summer of the Obama era sees shoulders finally turning cold to this bum-rush of government seizures of more and more of our economy and our lives, the administration has to wonder: Are they onto us?

One can only hope.

The M.O. of this White House, on display for issues from the stimulus to climate change to health care: First, assert phony urgency; then insist that only their solutions have merit and mischaracterize opponents as seeking to “do nothing.”

It worked for the stimulus, and trillions of dollars later, some people are wondering if we’ve been had.

We have. And here they come again.

This White House’s usual logic for hastily jamming things down the public’s throat is to deny voters time to realize what is being done to them. But the health care urgency card is being played with particular ferocity, with absurd original calls for votes in both houses within mere weeks, before the August congressional recess.

They know that if members of Congress return home with the issue still pending, voters will drown them in righteous objections to a plan that brings more deserved opposition by the day.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has suggested that a health care plan born of one-party rule will fail, and with it will topple this season of madness in which a silver-tongued leader with glib PR soldiers has had its way with an inattentive nation.

“It will be his Waterloo,” DeMint suggested, giving Obama the chance to divert attention from his plan’s flagging support by accusing Republicans of “playing politics.”

As if he isn’t.

Of course it’s about politics, to the extent that the political arena is where policy matters get settled. President Obama and his party have a plan to hijack one-seventh of the national economy; the Republican Party is trying to muster the spine and strength to pry government’s grubby hands from a health care system that most Americans like.

Debates are about ideas, but Barack Obama is the face and voice of this looming health care nightmare. Yes, this is about him, and it will continue to be about him as long as he continues his assault on free markets and individual liberty.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2009/07/26/fight-is-about-obama/

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With all the current emphasis on providing basic if not socialized medicine and medical care to the residents of the United States it is always interesting to look at the basic social mores of other groups that have adopted this way of life – this means of providing medical care.

The line in the former Soviet Union was that “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” During Stalinist times of the Soviet Union the one ( if not only ) safe means of providing criticism of current economic or social conditions or of providing a comment on the current situation that the citizens were living with and through was through humour – the telling of a joke . It was considered safe tradition. Nothing new here. The basis of most fairy tales are based in political or situational humor – to make light of something very serious and dark. The tale of “Humpty Dumpty . sat on a wall, Humpty had a great fall”- was a description of the Royalty at the time – “Off with your head could be the edict in a flash”. “Ring around the Rosie … A pocket full of poesy – Hush they all fall down” relates tales of the “Black Plague” which caused untold numbers of death and disease in the dark ages.

In the same way Canadians with their health care systems , find that their only recourse to poor service levels with corresponding staggering growth of bureaucracies and their infrastructures and systems find that their only recourse seems to be the telling of jokes and humor related to the current state of the Canadian
“Health Care System” and Systems.

Medical economist M. Labovitch pointedly notes that the butt of the anger is safely directed at doctors rather than taking a risk to the health care of the teller of the tale and their families.

Bureaucrats it seems , while putting in their full days , compiling reports and printing graphs and charts on the high end colour laser printer , have little sense of humour and the telling of jokes:

Five Canadian Surgeons are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.

The first, an Ontario surgeon says, ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

The second, a Quebec surgeon responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is colour coded.’

The third a B.C. surgeon says, ‘No, I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

The fourth, an Alberta surgeon chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction workers…those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.

But the fifth, a Newfoundland surgeon shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable.

At least Canadians currently have the escape valve of private medical care in the US afforded to them at present , at least for the time being.

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Should you change or even cancel your travel medtravel health care plans due to concerns over “Swine Flu” ?  Its your call.  As with most things in life decisions are made on a risk versus benefit ratio.

First ask yourself how sick and immunocompromised you are .  What are the potential outcomes if you go , don’t go or delay therapy.  Also work in the mix the implications , complications and progression of your disease or illness should you hold off on your medical and healthcare treatment or procedure.  Of course if its strictly cosmetic surgery that is another call entirely.

Canadian Doctor: Shortages So Bad North Of The Border Some Towns … – Dr. David Gratzer, writing in the Wall Street Journal, also makes a good point about just how dependent the Canadian health care system is on America’s. Indeed, Canada’s provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. …

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Wash Park Prophet: Canadian Health Care Works – The things that work in the Canadian health care system are explained here. I suspect, although the article does not say so, that in addition to having lower administrative costs and saving money with preventantive care, that many providers are also paid less richly in Canada than in the United States (although providers in Canada have essentially no bad debt losses, while American providers are swimming in bad debt). Posted by Andrew Oh-Willeke at 6/09/2009 12:08:00 AM …

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Medical tourism not only has beneficial effects for patients treated or their families.  Medical tourism can be credited often with quicker access to medical care – in effect jumping the cue.  Medical tourism may also afford more privacy to patients in cases of cosmetic surgeries.   In addition medical tourism may also provide for care to be provided , due to reasons of cost so that treatment which may not of been affordable to the patient – either the surgery itself , or a fuller treatment or convalescent time is made available and within the budgets of the patients and their families.  Often as well somewhat of a vacation is provided to the patient and their families as an added bonus.

One often unstated and unappreciated benefit of medical tourism is to provide positive competition for medical care at home – this especially relates to the medical care in the United States – which is primarily a private , for profit , health care system.

Having an option of medical tourism provides competition to the standard health care systems.  We all know that compeition results in “things getting better”.   Whether in the case of lemonade stands,  the American automobile industry or medical care competition usually , if not always results in improvements in delivery systems , product quality and offerings and service levels.   Established players are put back in the game to “watch the ball”  or “watch the puck”.  The cannot get complacent.  If they have gotten complacent or even cocky – then there is a new kid in town to keep them alert .  In essence if you were referring to a controlling pseudo-managress with an attitude problem at your local bank – its as if you told her “there are no shortage of other banks to go “.

It can be said that under communism everyone had a job in Russia but no one had enough to eat.  Competition helps to keep everyone in check , productive and providing higher levels of service.

So is it with the positive effects of medical tourism even on medical treatment  “back home”.    Your health care coverage and costs may well benefit from medical tourism even if you never leave home or “the farm”.

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