The Hell of Obama’s Proposed Healthcare System for America
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 18, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
Pres. Obama has lofty, expensive plans for remaking America’s healthcare system, all of which must be funded by all of us.
But, he’s assured the American people time and again that this will not significantly affect the current healthcare system. He’s promised that it will improve the health care services for millions upon millions of Americans because the government will be running it.
How is that even possible?
It isn’t. It’s not even remotely possible. Call it what you want—universal healthcare, government-run healthcare, or more accurately, socialized healthcare—has miserably failed or is still failing everywhere it has been tried. America’s health care has its problems, its flaws, its need for improvement. But it is still the best healthcare system available. For now, anyway.
Once Obama and the DNC destroy what we currently have in order to launch universal healthcare, we will no longer be heads above those who have socialized healthcare. We will be down in the muck, suffering, just like the other nations with socialized health care.
We will be in “healthcare hell” just like them. And we’re being forced into this nightmare by Obama and the DNC.
Important reading and listening at Faces of Government Healthcare: Listen to the Real Life Stories of the Victims of Government-run Health Care.
From Matthew Vadum, American Spectator:
DNC Organizing to Destroy U.S. Healthcare
Organizing for America, a propaganda arm of the Democratic National Committee, is lying to Americans about leftists’ proposed so-called reforms of the healthcare system…
That ObamaCare, like HillaryCare before it, would destroy the nation’s healthcare system, is beyond dispute. It would turn hospitals and doctors’ offices into the DMV. Patients would receive treatment –even in life-and-death cases– at the whim of bureaucrats, and would be forced to line up to get it.
This is not hyperbole. To make matters worse, Canada is being bankrupted by its universal healthcare scheme and Canadians, including politicians who routinely mouth platitudes in support of the government-run system (e.g. billionaire MP Belinda Stronach, former Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa), routinely flee to the U.S. to receive treatment they can’t get in their own country.
Quebec, incidentally, doesn’t even have an air ambulance system to bring patients to emergency rooms, a fact that may have cost British actress Natasha Richardson her life. (Wild animals take priority over people in Quebec. The provincial government does use helicopters to air-drop rabies vaccine to skunks).
Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is trying to save Americans from this socialist healthcare Hell by sharing the real-life horror stories of physicians and patients in Britain and Canada.
Click here to read the entire article.
From Nadeem Esmail, Wall Street Journal:
‘Too Old’ for Hip Surgery
As we inch towards nationalized health care, important lessons from north of the border.President Obama and Congressional Democrats are inching the U.S. toward government-run health insurance. Last week’s expansion of Schip — the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — is a first step. Before proceeding further, here’s a suggestion: Look at Canada’s experience.
Martin KozlowskiHealth-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.
Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.
In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.
Ontario’s government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He’s challenging Ontario’s government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Shona Holmes, another Ontario court challenger, endured a similarly harrowing struggle. In March of 2005, Ms. Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo Clinic and paid for her surgery.
On the other side of the country in Alberta, Bill Murray waited in pain for more than a year to see a specialist for his arthritic hip. The specialist recommended a “Birmingham” hip resurfacing surgery (a state-of-the-art procedure that gives better results than basic hip replacement) as the best medical option. But government bureaucrats determined that Mr. Murray, who was 57, was “too old” to enjoy the benefits of this procedure and said no. In the end, he was also denied the opportunity to pay for the procedure himself in Alberta. He’s heading to court claiming a violation of Charter rights as well.
These constitutional challenges, along with one launched in British Columbia last month, share a common goal: to win Canadians the freedom to spend their own money to protect themselves from the inadequacies of the government health-insurance system…
Click here to read the entire article.
We must not let socialized healthcare be implemented in America. We must fight it before it’s too late.
Related reading:
Pursuing Holiness: Railroaded Into Nationalized Health Care
Politico: RNC website takes aim at Democrat health care plan
Glenallen Walken, Salon: Ask a Wingnut: The Wingnut explains why socialized healthcare sucks
Michelle Malkin: Tax-maniacs backing off health benefits? and Caught on tape: SEIU thuggery and Obamacare on the rocks?; Plus: All Barack Channel refuses diverse viewpoint and Undercover at an Obama health care meet-upand Couterprotesting Obamacare and the ACORN/SEIU mob and Mobilizing against Obamacare and Washington can’t meet the Cheerios Standard and www.facesofgovernmenthealthcare.com
and “Administration Is Open to Taxing Health Benefits” and Did Canadacare kill Natasha Richardson? and Hey, how about spending another $1.5 trillion?
Greg Gutfeld, Big Hollywood: Daily Gut: Why Obama Hates Obamacare
Tim Slagle, Big Hollywood: Democrats — Why so Unhappy?
Hot Air: Obama: Let’s work together to destroy American health care by year’s end and Video: Are the elderly cost effective?
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: A “Cultural Fix”?: Global Citizen Educators Rethinking Sustainability into Population Control vs. Academic Freedom
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: Is it still 95% of Americans getting a tax cut? Next on the Obama tax machine – employee health benefits
The Christian Science Monitor: White House laughs at GOP idea to call Democrats “Socialists”
ObamaIsDumb.com: Obama challenged on Healthcare
Frugal Café Blog Zone: The Sham of Socialism: Save America While There’s Still Time… ’1984′ Prophesy and Video: Steven Crowder: ‘Socialized Health Care Sucks’ and Heritage Foundation: Myth Exposed – American Health Care System Not Perfect, but Superior to Socialized Health Care and Cautionary Tale: ‘Prime Minister, You Have Run Out of Our Money’
World Net Daily: Government health care ‘an abyss’ financially – ‘I think there’s going to be no end for the claims’
Matthew Moore, Telegraph.co.uk: Sufferers pull out teeth due to lack of dentists
Jewish World Review: Far East illustrates the limitations and dangers of universal health care
Business and Media Institute: CNN Glosses Over Failure of Universal Health Care
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: ‘Global Citizenship’: An Unsustainable Social Injustice
Daily Herald: Universal health care isn’t universal
Jim Blazsik: Did Socialized Medicine Have a Hand in Costing Natasha Richardson Her Life?
BBC News: Mother killed after care failures
John Goodman, Cato’s Letter (pdf): Five Myths of Socialized Medicine
Positive Liberty: “If you think health care is expensive now…”
GOPMom: Bring on National Health
The American Spectator: Quebec Has Helicopters for Pepe Le Pew But Not Emergency Patients and Obama’s False Choice
Pirates! Man Your Women: Wherever the Winds Blow…
Homeland Stupidity: “Universal Health Care” Has Failed Again
John Saarikko, Universal Health Care Info: The Truth Nobody Wants You To Know
About the author
We happen to live about a quarter of a mile from our hospital.
Life-Flight, a chopper, visits that hospital 3 to 4 times a week.
I know, it shakes our house when it lands, 24/7/365.
The fact that Quebec has no airborne rescue is unbelievable.
We have got to take this country back asap, but I fear that the only thing we can do is get to 2010 to fix the majorities in congress.
By that time, Obama will have had his will imposed on our country.
There has got to be an “out” written into those bills so that they can be rescinded, revoked, whatever.
Now, as per Glenn Beck, Barney “big boy?” Frank is running a bill through congress to bail out California.
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are in line with a similar financial situation.
Excellent Post!
IMHO, the key is to think out of the box (not deeper into the hole) for solutions. In the case of health care, one of the simplest solutions is to allow health care providers to deduct the uncompensated portion of any welfare/charity care from their income. While a grocery store can donate a thousand cans of soup to some food bank and get a tax deduction for their charity, this isn’t currently an option for health care providers.
Currently Medicaid/SCHIP pays about 40% or less the regular cost of care — not enough to cover costs in many cases. Hence, many health care providers currently provide little to no Medicaid care. If charity care were allowed to be tax deductible, you’d have providers falling all over themselves to provide top quality care — FREE FROM RED TAPE of Medicare, SCHIP and Medicaid.
Unlike welfare programs, this would self limiting for providers as one can’t provide more services than one has income to deduct.
Also, the ‘uncompensated’ portion would provide a check and balance against politicians short changing providers with lower and lower payments for Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP.
I’ve not heard this health care option expressed before… your alternative has a lot of merit, Fred. Thanks for putting another valid “outside of the box” option out there for us to consider.
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