We arrived for our dual
appointments - there was nobody in the waiting room so we waited just a few
minutes before we were taken to the same examining room. The nurse came, very polite,
took our information on her laptop and left, and we waited and waited. Finally,
mom’s favorite smiling doctor showed up with his laptop in tow.
He told us his office was
one hundred percent compliant with the Obama Care electronic patient portals. We
could not have cared less about his electronic compliance. Without touching her,
he made mom walk back and forth to see what her right-leaning gait looked like.
He determined that she needed a rolling walker because she probably had a mini
stroke at some point when the gait commenced. He was not going to order an MRI
because she is too old and Obama Care will not approve payment.
He did not touch her on
the previous visit either when she fell but had not broken anything; she was in
severe pain and covered in ugly, deep bruises. He did not order any x-rays then
because she did not seem to be in terrible pain, he said. Mom is stoic and put
up a good front in the doctor’s office; she lingered in bed for three months,
healing from the awful fall she took outside in the grass.
I complained of a terrible
earache and a sinus infection. From three feet away, without touching me, he shined
a flashlight into my throat, typed something into his laptop and told us that
he will order our meds into the system which is connected directly to the
pharmacy. We paid for the visit and drove to the nearest apothecary.
The prescriptions were not
there just as I had feared. The doctor’s office had closed for the day and the
pharmacist could not call to check where in cyberspace was the order trapped
for meds that we both needed right away. On the positive side, at least the
meds are available for now, rationing in pharmaceuticals has not begun yet.
As all these computers
communicate with each other through the various electronic portals, do not
expect any medical privacy or cyber security of any kind. Your entire life’s
history, health, meds, warts, skin lesions, bunions, surgeries, hospitalizations,
Social Security numbers, income, addresses, smoking history, salt intake, soda
drinking and fat-eating habits, sexual preferences, gun ownership, and biometric
data are up for grabs for all to see and use. All your private medical history
and information will be sent to a clearing house with or without your permission
in January 2014. That’s worse than some medical transcriptionist overseas
threatening to make everyone’s medical records public if she does not get a
raise.
Obama Care is not just
very expensive insurance that most of us cannot and will not afford without
drastic changes in lifestyle. It delivers lousy service, uncaring and poorly
paid doctors, inadequate reimbursement, longer wait times, and selective
rationing.
For people 65 and older,
doctors who will accept Medicare and Medicaid will be harder to find and
specialists even harder. These patients will be forced into a second class medical
care akin to what I’ve witnessed growing up under socialist nationalized health
care.
When more and more people
will be forced into Medicaid and Medicare, costs will escalate and so will taxes
to support care for 30 million more patients who were previously without
insurance.
Because there are no
eligibility requirements in place, Illegal aliens and those seeking asylum with
a certain religious bent will receive free care ahead of the line based on age,
increasing wait time and reducing the amount of money available for the
treatment of American citizens.
The Independent Payment
Advisory Board (IPAB) will have to cut costs by approving or disallowing
medical services based on how expensive they are, the age of the patient, and utility
to society. Rationing will become an important factor in the quality, quantity,
and expedience of our medical care.
If IPAB denies treatment, there is no appeal because IPAB is only accountable to President Obama. The courts or Congress cannot override that decision. At least under private health care insurance, if you are denied treatment, you have an appeal process in place to defend your ability to have treatment paid by your insurance plan.
If Medicare denies medical
care, the patient is not allowed to pay cash to a Medicare-contracted doctor,
hospital, or other health provider. Under such circumstances, a patient can seek
care from an independent doctor or hospitals, which are harder and harder to
find, or look for treatment outside of the United States.
It is foreseeable that by
2015, most private plans will be gone, replaced by a single-payer IRS/HHS government-run
insurance.
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