ER Wait, Illegal Aliens, and Units

As an older person, going to an ER room in Northern Virginia (NoVA) is an exercise in costly futility unless you are on death’s door or are prepared to wait for endless hours while younger people are being treated for colds, high fever, bleeding fingers and toes, and other accidents which occur in the exercise of our daily human lives.

Few Americans know or care that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or Obamacare had labeled those over a certain age as “units.” If patients are young, they probably think themselves immortal - they would never get old, therefore such “unit” labeling does not apply to them. The stark realization hits you like a ton of bricks - you have become an older “unit” that can be ignored because government formulas deemed your utility to society too close to zero.

Most hospitals in northern Virginia post on electronic boards the number of minutes a patient must wait before they are triaged and/or seen in an ER. That may appear comforting and caring about one’s health and time until you actually set foot in the ER and reality replaces clever and deceptive advertising.

I had to go to our local NoVA ER this week. After the initial data and insurance screening, triage, and waiting for three hours to be placed in a room and to be seen, I decided to leave.

The waiting room, triaged by two people speaking English with heavy accents, kept getting more crowded with illegal aliens who did not speak English and required a translator in their respective dialects. Over and over I heard the question, “Do you speak English,” and calls made over the loudspeaker to a phone translator or to a hospital employee who spoke that language. It was a veritable tower of Babel.

I felt alone and lost in a sea of people with sick children who could have been seen quickly and much cheaper by a local Emergicare doctor, while my chest was hurting like hell and needed immediate attention.

It is sad that, after paying half of my income in taxes and being forced to purchase three medical insurance premiums, I cannot get medical care in my own country. Illegals flood the emergency rooms in northern Virginia. As human beings, they have a right to be treated too but must I pay for them and must my medical care become secondary and tertiary to their needs?

Thirty years ago there were no Emergicare facilities where we lived and ER wait was extensive in the small southern town. I had to wait once eight hours when my child had 104.5 F fever before we could see a doctor. In that case it was because of the shortage of doctors - nobody wanted to practice medicine in a small town.

Locals had to travel 100 miles or more to the nearest larger town in order to seek medical care.  People were really nice in the local ER then but my daughter could have had a seizure. I gave her liquid Motrin but the fever was not coming down. She needed an antibiotic shot right away. She eventually got it but I am saddened to this day when I think about the length of our wait and what could have happened in that time.

Going to an ER was a big deal back then as charges were huge and people actually had to pay them immediately or over time. Today Americans and illegals flock to ERs for convenience. They use emergency rooms as their GP doctor because they have no idea how much it cost to use emergency services, they don’t care, and someone else is paying for their visit.

While we pay medical bills of illegals from Mexico and Central America, consider the situation when an elderly American residing in Mexico, was taken to a private hospital in Guadalajara recently by her American son. Following a fall and arrival at the hospital, within 30 minutes, the only American patient got a CT scan, two X-rays, blood tests, and specialist doctors to read the results. The hospital did not accept Medicare Part A insurance. The admission fee alone was 90,000 pesos ($4,500). Because the test readings were within normal range, the son asked to have the IV removed and she was discharged. The IV removal took three hours. The son had to leave his passport "hostage" with the promise to pay on Monday when the banks opened. The actual medical bill was 12,200 pesos ($610).

According to the Associated Press, starting on January 1, 2019, “Medicare will require hospitals to post their standard prices online and make electronic records more readily available for patients.”

“Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the new requirement for online prices reflects the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to encourage patients to become better-educated decision makers in their own care.” https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/medicare-will-require-hospitals-to-post-all-prices-online?fbclid=IwAR0ZhFVXxkyuRf64csFSMQV4x29X39xOJX0RFPjjqOWnSDeuapfe_JwQgkA

Americans should educate themselves before heading to the nearest ER, but what about all the illegal aliens who don’t speak English and who flood emergency rooms because they know medical care is free and is paid for by American taxpayers?

 

The Right Man for Healing and a Rare Find

Hippocrates of the Hippocratic Oath

I was not sure my ENT specialist was a good fit for me even though I read the glowing praises framed on his office walls, praises coming from his patients, colleagues, and other doctors. The young man seemed to know what he was doing but his bedside manner was brief and rather cold.

I attributed his demeanor to his introverted personality, his professionalism, and to his respect for his patients’ time. Very punctual, he very seldom made anybody wait to see him, he was always on time.

One day I realized that he was much more caring on the inside than he let people see. A young woman with her mom and a three-year old in tow had an appointment to see the doctor. The receptionist, Lupe, asked her if she was prepared to pay for that day’s visit. The young woman had a grief-stricken look on her face and wondered how much the visit was going to be. The receptionist told her that she did not know because each patient was different, depending on the problem. The prospective patient replied in a sad and disappointed voice that she will reschedule until such a time that she would have enough cash on hand to pay for the visit.

Lupe kindly explained that her insurance, Obamacare, had a huge deductible, and unless she met this deductible for the year, it will not pay the doctor anything. She offered to ask the physician, left the young woman waiting, and returned to tell her that the good doctor will see her anyway.

I decided then that this man was the right person to see in an ENT medical emergency or a problem requiring a caring specialist. His humanity, in addition to his medical professionalism, punctuality, and his education in the U.S., made him, in my opinion, an exceptional doctor, a rare find.

At the other end of the spectrum was the endocrinologist’s office in Fairfax who told me, they are no longer taking any new Medicare patients, just the already established ones who were in transition to Medicare. The receptionist’s explanation was that Medicare does not allow their patients to be seen every three to six months as needed.

I was told previously by a doctor friend that Medicare made low and very slow reimbursements to physicians because of Obamacare; therefore I did not believe the office’s explanation. Personally, I would not want to be seen by a doctor who put her profit motive above the care for a patient, any patient.

But I pressed on. What if I paid in cash, could I then see the doctor? The answer was again no because, she said, they had a contract with Medicare and thus could not accept cash payment.

Having read the pertinent section of the law, I knew this was part of the Affordable Care Act as well, the euphemistically named piece of legislation Obama’s administration and Nancy Pelosi’s Congress forced down middle class America in the middle of the night, “pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

We did find out all right, and we did not like the price we had to pay for it in order that the Democrat Party could unilaterally force an entire nation, one fifth of the economy, to become a socialized medicine nightmare for decades to come.

More insultingly, members of Congress have their own subsidized and separate health care insurance and can see whatever doctors they wish to see.

It used to be the case in America once when patients could pay cash for doctors’ visits and the fees were affordable. But that gradually changed thanks to modifications in health insurance, new cafeteria health insurance plans, in-network and out-of-network type of employer insurance, and health savings accounts that disappeared at the end of the year if unused.

If you lost your job or quit, the insurance terminated, and you were at the mercy of Cobra insurance for a while, at confiscatory monthly premiums, but nothing as expensive as Obamacare premiums today that can easily exceed a family’s mortgage and car payments combined.

Lack of insurance portability across state lines had always been a problem for Americans seeking affordable insurance. Aggressive law suits against doctors and medical malpractice awards by the courts, forced doctors to drastically buy more and more expensive malpractice insurance, making care more expensive for the average patient who did have insurance. The infamous $50 aspirin in a hospital setting was legendary.

As a student without insurance in the early 1980s, I paid $10 cash per visit to my children’s pediatrician. Once we could afford and bought insurance, each visit was $85. The pediatrician made a comfortable living, had a thriving practice, but he was certainly not a millionaire.

If you ask most doctors today what they spend a good portion of resources and time, it is not patient face to face care time but electronic documentation, record keeping, and staff to handle insurance justifications and payments – bureaucracy.

Primary medical care, day-to-day healthcare, is now provided by a general practitioner, a family physician, a gerontology, pediatric, or family nurse practitioner, a physician assistant, a registered nurse, and even a pharmacist who coordinate and triage specialist care that a patient may need.

Secondary and tertiary care is harder to find as physicians are cutting their losses and focusing on accepting private insurance rather than Medicare and Medicaid.

We are headed to a single payer socialized medical insurance which will limit doctor visits and access to procedures based on rationed care. The entity that will hold the key to your ability to pay for and receive medical care when you need it will be the federal government, the same bloated, out of control entity that spent your Social Security lock-box savings and has doubled the national debt in eight years of the Obama’s administration.

Obamacare Socialized Medicine Rationing and the Elderly

Healthcare is not a right, it is a service provided by doctors and nurses who went to school to learn how to care for a sick human being. And they expect to be compensated for their services. Surely you would not expect your mechanic who learned how to fix your car, repair it for free, because it is your right to have a running vehicle.

Health insurance is not a right either, it is also a service. Can you control what an insurance company does and what pricing systems they use? Can you control what government does now that they are in charge of your socialized health insurance and healthcare, including the 15-member death panel?

We know the Senate does not care about Americans’ health insurance premiums and the quality of their healthcare. If they did, they would not have passed without reading and then failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), socialized medicine under government control. Passed by Democrats in the dead of night, and deemed by the Supreme Court a tax, ACA became a burden for Americans who were mostly satisfied with their previous premiums and their healthcare delivery. Sure, there were improvements necessary but not an entire overhaul worth trillions.

What good is having a shiny insurance card that says you are entitled to Obamacare but that care is denied to you when doctors are not taking your insurance, the quality of care is very poor, procedures are denied due to rationing and age, and your deductibles shot through the roof?

Like most Americans, who saw their health insurance premiums skyrocket and their care worsen since 2010, I am confused why politicians are forcing this monstrosity called Obamacare on us. Congressmen have exempted themselves from Obamacare and are protected by their own private plans but the rest of us will eventually have to suffer under the socialized medicine of the type that sentenced baby Gard to death in the U.K.

Seniors are already treated like "units" in hospitals. My mom was recently the victim of Obamacare in one of the alleged best hospitals in Northern Virginia. She was kept solely on IV fluids for three days, even though she is skin and bones, so that she would not throw up and force doctors to give her the upper GI and endoscopy tests she needed. Instead, they treated her for a bladder infection which was not the reason why she had been brought to the ER - she was vomiting blood and had stroke level BP.  She was crying for solid food!

Her doctor explained to me that they could not do the upper GI and endoscopy because the radiology group located in the hospital gave priority to outpatients, unless an inpatient was currently bleeding and/or vomiting. She vomited but they ignored her. Was it because she is 85 years old and an Obamacare "unit" and not worth spending the money on, or was it because she is a legal immigrant?

She was starved for three days and her important medicines for conditions like blood pressure and dementia were not administered, causing a serious relapse in her physical and mental condition. This is medical abuse when you tell a patient that comes into the ER with serious symptoms that they cannot have procedures except on an outpatient basis at a later date and withhold important meds that they are currently on.

No amount of protests, complaints, or inquiries on my part made a difference. This is what happens under socialized medicine when bureaucrats who know best make life and death decisions over us and our loved ones.

Mom lived under the boot of communism and escaped to this country in her late forties. The communists stripped her of everything she had ever earned, owned, and saved, including her pension after 30 years of work. She was not even given my dad’s pension. She lived here for over three decades under relative freedom. It is sad that now, in her twilight years, she is made to suffer again and will die under the neglect of socialized medicine that allocates funds to more productive individuals. Mom was productive too in her younger years.

Little Charlie Gard lost his battle with socialized medicine rationing in the U.K. Those who are unable to protect themselves, children and the elderly, are the first victims of socialized and rationed medical care because they cannot defend themselves. The way we treat seniors, the weak, and the most vulnerable speaks volumes of our lack of civilization and compassion. We should protect wildlife and our habitat but it seems that we care more for minnows and polar bears than we do human beings.

Mom lost five pounds she could not afford to lose while in hospital care for three days. They were more worried that she might fall than her actual survival. She was not fed anything for three days except water and IV antibiotics. She was lucky to have gotten out with her life.

It is bad enough that some elderly are physically abused in nursing homes and/or neglected by underpaid and understaffed medical personnel; they must now suffer the indignity of denied hospital medical care in the rationing environment of Medicare and Medicaid that were shortchanged in order to help fund Obamacare, and by the scarcity of doctors and nurses created by Obamacare.

So much for the unaffordable Affordable Care Act that provides substandard medical care and offers expensive insurance premiums to Americans who are now faced with huge deductibles each year, possible loss of insurance, and fines by the IRS for non-compliance.

Socialized Health Care Disguised as Tax

Oh the joy of socialist free stuff
Photo: Wikipedia

It appears that Obamcare is here to stay. Those doctors who grew up with the conditioning notion of utopian “social justice” love it. Those doctors who hate the government intrusion and regulation into their medical practice hate it. The American public is split as well along those lines.

Nobody really believed that Obamacare, deplorably named the Affordable Care Act, would be amended to benefit the wishes of the American people, much less repeal it. Once a bureaucracy has been ensconced and billions and billions of dollars have been spent and trillions earmarked to be spent in the future, it cannot be walked back. The welfare dependency mentality of half of the country will prevent that.

Congress does not represent the middle class that pays taxes for Obamacare; it represents the interests of the major corporatist donors. Half of the country wanted and cheered when the Democrat Obamacare was passed in the dead of night, Christmas 2010, without any input from Republicans.

But Republicans are now in control of Congress and the White House and they are still doing the bidding of the Democrats and of their anti-America constituents – they want that shiny piece of plastic that says they have “free” insurance, it is demanded by their “social justice” platform. Never mind that this piece of plastic is worthless when it comes to providing them with world class healthcare or any healthcare at all once rationing of care commences.

Look at Venezuela’s healthcare if you can stomach the malpractice, filth, blood, decay, bugs, rats, neglect, abuse, and rust in their free clinics. Castro and Chavez never sought medical care for themselves in their own free medical care system, they came to see the best and the brightest doctors in the U.S. or had them flown in.

One of my uncles from Romania died recently of untreated pernicious anemia. The socialized medicine doctors told him to go home because he was too old and resources had to be used to treat younger people, he’s had his run in life. Never mind that, even on a bad day, he could still run circles around these young socialists, planting, tending to, and harvesting a huge garden every year to feed his family.  Had he had the money to give bribes to the government socialized care doctors to convince them to treat him, he would still be alive today.

Obamacare was never “free” health insurance or health insurance at all, it was a tax. At least that’s what Justice Roberts told us. It should have been called the Democrats’ Obama Tax. In the last seven years, it became obvious that people could not keep their doctors, their premiums skyrocketed, the deductibles went through the roof, they spied on your mental health, your gun ownership, and you paid for illegal aliens’ free medical care.

The same people who complained a few months ago that their insurance premiums kept going up and they had such high deductibles that they would never reach their impossible deductibles in any given year in order to use their insurance, now are happy that they are keeping Obamacare.  It’s easy to see how the one-carrier states might cease to cover them by 2018.

Does a government monopoly market and intrusion on every aspect of your life and death work well? Why is a 15-member non-medical panel the ultimate arbiter and decider of your medical care that may save your life but is expensive? Why should they decide your fate? How many cancer patients will be cleared for chemo, for example, when a treatment can cost upwards of $7,500?

Mandatory coverage should take into account the fact that some people deliberately lead a dangerous life that puts them at higher risk of disease. Like any other dangerous activity that is insured, such higher risk patients/customers should be placed in special insurance pools with higher premiums. It is simple economics. People who are healthy and lead a clean life should be rewarded with lower premiums.

Insurance should have never been offered as a condition of one’s employment. This keeps many people in terrible job conditions simply because they don’t want to lose their insurance. Make insurance portable and sell across state lines. The Cobra insurance when employment ceased was expensive and short-lived.

Few talk about reforming the legal system that allows frivolous lawsuits against doctors, making their malpractice insurance very expensive. Nobody talks about all the regulatory compliance with Obamacare that forces doctors to spend an inordinate amount of time on paperwork instead of seeing patients, and hiring extra staff just to keep up with the regulatory paperwork and computer electronic updates.

Dr. Lee Hieb suggested that patients with uninsurable illnesses should be kept on the Medicare system until their death but then the program should be phased out. The free market system used to price insurance tailored to the people’s needs and resources. Many Americans had no insurance but paid reasonable cash fees for care. When catastrophic illness hit, unless they had such insurance, they had to raise funds to pay for procedures.

Dr. Hieb also suggested the replacement of Medicaid with “personal health responsibility,” by establishing a health savings account for people who cannot afford insurance and a separate account for catastrophic health insurance coverage. The money could come from the health exchange subsidies and from other government sources.

According to Dr. Hieb “the federal government has no enumerated power to involve itself in health care at all, Medicare, Obamacare, and Medicaid are all equally unconstitutional.” Few examples exist where a bureaucracy has been repealed unless there was total social and political collapse. http://www.wnd.com/2017/02/4-steps-for-trump-to-undo-obamacare/

To sum it up, when it comes to Obamcare, nothing is happening really fast in Congress, it is the same corporation, different divisions. As a famously quoted phrase said, "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

We can make suggestions until Doomsday, Obamascare is here to stay.

My 30-minute radio talk on Obamacare possible replacements

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2017/02/21/some-ideas-to-replace-obama-care-with-dr-ileana-johnson

My 30 Minute Radio Talk with Silvio Canto Jr. on Obamacare

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2016/09/13/the-latest-about-obama-care-with-dr-ileana-johnson-author

My Own Teeth and Obamacare

Photo: Wikipedia

Every time I travel to my hometown for a visit, relatives take turns asking me if my pearly-whites are the original ones. They even break the personal space barrier for a close-up inspection. The first time the question shocked me but then I understood that it was unusual to be as old as I am and still have my own teeth. Most people have badly made dentures, gaping holes, or teeth so far gone that they should have been extracted years ago.

If you chip a tooth, a private dentist will charge 800 euros to repair the damage.  Apparently nobody wants to go to a state-run dentist because the workmanship is not guaranteed and materials hard to find. This explains why so many people have ugly dentures, cavities, yellow-brown, or missing teeth. I concede that some may have fear of dentists or lack good brushing habits.

Medical care does not include much dental care and certainly few people clean their teeth professionally or wear braces. Dental hygiene is a subject seldom broached in public although there has been a concerted effort to teach people proper brushing and flossing.

Socialized medicine is unable to provide so much advertised free medical care; it sounds too good in theory; but in practice, once the money runs out, the meds are in short supply and access to doctors and hospitals becomes sporadic and difficult.

Do the promise of free medical care and a shiny plastic card get you the best doctors and hospitals? It is a great concept if you have the sniffles -- care is immediate and free. It is not such a good idea if you have something more complex that requires better drugs, more medical skills and training, extended hospital stays, and better hospitals with private or semi-private beds instead of shoddy and dirty wards, or worse yet, gurneys in an ER hallway.

Americans are beginning to find out with Obamacare just how bad socialized medicine truly is. With an insurance card issued by one of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) state exchanges, people cannot get their meds refilled in another state. It’s bad enough that the premiums are much higher than the previous private insurance and the deductibles in the thousands per year. The advice from the medical staff that has no idea how to help such patients is to call their Congressman. Since the law has been in effect since 2010, the chance of reversing this government bureaucratic nightmare is zero.

Certain drugs that are expensive are no longer dispensed by government insurance to all patients; they must have other underlying issues before even a pricey topical cream is paid for. The patient must use cheap drugs instead that could potentially kill their livers. It saves the insurance money, who cares about your life? Do you need expensive chemical mixtures to treat on-going cancer or other serious problems? Too bad, your insurance no longer pays for them.  

There was a reason why foreigners flocked to the United States for medical care because treatment was available quickly and rates of cancer remissions or cures were the highest in the world. Surgical expertise was also the best in the world.

How high are the premiums? It depends how you purchase your insurance and if you are eligible for a subsidy on which, of course, you will have to pay taxes because it is considered income. If you are on Medicare Part B, premiums are $104.90-$335.70 per month, per person. Medicare announced that premiums will have to go up 52 percent in 2016 in order to keep the system afloat. Medicare was stripped of billions of dollars in funding in order to use those billions to fund Obamacare. http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/unhealthy-not-wealthy-and-far-from-wise

People living on fixed incomes such as Social Security are finding out that they are not going to get a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for 2016 because inflation is low. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is reported at 2 percent. Anybody who shops in this economy knows it’s a manufactured number.

Employees stayed in lower paying jobs because they had good insurance. People who previously had good and affordable private insurance coverage, even half-timers, are finding themselves now dumped into the exchanges and having to pick bronze, silver, or gold plans with much higher rates and much higher per person annual deductibles. Chances are, most people, will be hard-pressed to meet the deductibles of thousands of dollars per year before the insurance pays anything at all.

Rates vary based on income, type of coverage chosen, where one lives, and quality of options and service may or may not be adequate. “Now they can at least get overpriced and underwhelming Obamacare policies,” said John Mauldin. He continued, “The worker’s share of premiums for a family policy went from $1,543 in 1999 to $4,955 in 2015, a 321% increase. The employer’s share went up almost as much, from $4,247 to $12,591 (+296%).”

The winners are Americans with pre-existing conditions; before ACA they could not buy insurance at any price. Illegal aliens, who allegedly were not supposed to be covered by Obamacare, are also beneficiaries of ACA.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2014 32 million non-elderly Americans were uninsured. About 10 million people have enrolled in state and federal Obamacare exchanges and approximately 14 million have enrolled in Medicaid. This means that the uninsured rate changed from 16.2% to 10.7% by first quarter of 2015. For less than 6 percent gain in insurability, ACA has disrupted or destroyed the insurance and quality of medical care for a very large majority of Americans. http://kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/

The Heritage Foundation warned us in 2009 why Obamacare was wrong for America. Knowing what was wrong and that there was nothing we could do about it then nor now, provides no comfort to those who are sick or will become sick and in need of medical care. http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/obamacare-top-10-reasons-its-wrong-for-america

1.       Millions of employer-sponsored insurance holders will lose their insurance (88.1 million was the prediction)

2.       Individual mandate translated into less freedom and more taxes

3.       Private health care plans changed in order to conform with ACA standards

4.       The federal government will push any private competitors out of business; as Heritage put it, “the umpire is also the first baseman”

5.       Your health care decision will be made by the fed

6.       Higher taxes will hurt small businesses

7.       Medical decisions will be made by bureaucrats

8.       The Affordable Care Act is not funded

9.       Taxpayers will pay for abortions against their religious beliefs

10.   The ACA was deceptive that is why it was rushed through and not read carefully

Most Americans are going to have to accept inferior medical care because their better plans are no longer approved by the government and do not meet their standards. Garth Kant listed in 2013, “52 reasons Obamacare can’t work.” http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/52-shocking-reasons-obamacare-cant-work/#37SYTKHYUSDfktY6.99

Perhaps people are now paying attention as they are beginning to lose their doctors, their health plans, paying higher Medicare costs, higher private insurance premiums, higher deductibles, experiencing denial or worsening of medical care, paying higher taxes, accepting less working hours, unemployment is growing as employers kill existing and new jobs, and doctors and specialists who accept Obamacare insurance are harder and harder to find.

Socialized Medicine Victims

When the government promises too much free medical care to too many people without making a significant investment in the medical infrastructure, its staff, and its professional delivery, innocent victims of a shortchanged, diluted, and inefficient service are likely to emerge. And the victims will suffer in silence physically or financially, paying for much reduced or unaffordable healthcare.

Add to the poorly planned mix an enormously expensive electronic system that does not work very well and a huge influx of illegal aliens who receive free medical care the moment they unlawfully set foot on our soil, and this overburdened and unnecessarily expensive system became the Affordable Care Act passed by unilateral Democrat support and signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Colloquially known as Obamacare, despite protests from a majority of Americans, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax.

Prior to ACA’s passing, the National Center for Public Policy Research warned the public in 2009 of the “Shattered Lives, 100 Vic+ims of Government Health Care,” but few paid attention in their excitement at the promise of free and better access, “you can keep your doctor, if you like your doctor,” “premiums will go down $2,500 a year per family,” and pre-existing conditions will no longer matter.

Instead of overhauling the arcane insurance system that left those with pre-existing conditions to fend for themselves, and prohibited selling insurance across state lines, the Democrats have created socialized medicine with an eventual one-payer system, putting government and the IRS in charge of our health.

We were assured by our President that, “I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well.”  I agree it does if you have the sniffles. Case after case from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Russia, Sweden, and New Zealand told the stories of patients who suffered and died at the hands of socialized medicine. 

Each case is a chilling reminder that when too few goods are sold to too many people in a socialist system in which medical care is not considered a service but a right, disaster surely follows. As Margaret Thatcher so poignantly reminded us, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The Department of Health in Great Britain considered its system a success in 2005 because hospital waiting lists were below 800,000.

Socialized medicine and one-payer system is great if you don’t mind:

-          Being left blind because you have to wait three years for a twenty-minute surgery

-          Pulling your own teeth because you are in so much pain and there is no dentist available due to severe shortage of dentists; there is a good explanation why Brits have such bad teeth

-          Waiting 18 months to get a hearing aid

-          Being denied a cancer drug because it’s too expensive and you are too old

-          Delivering your baby in a hospital bathroom with your mom helping you

-          Your baby being born in the hospital parking lot because there is a severe shortage of nurses

-          There are no beds in the hospital so whatever emergency you have, burns, delivery, stroke, heart attack, broken limbs, you must wait

-          “12-minute ambulance ride takes nearly three hours – every time”

-          Having your cancer undetected after 50 hospital visits

-          Hospital telling you that you must “come back when you are blind”

-          Being penalized for paying for your own treatment or drugs

-          Being turned away while in labor

-          Flying 5,000 miles to escape National Health System’s wait

-          Suffer mixed-sex ward misery while terminally ill

-          Being threatened that your health care will be taken away if you pay for supplemental care yourself

-          Drowning in hospital bathtub while in labor and left unattended

-          Spending all night on a hospital gurney and ignored

-          Being left on a cold hospital floor in your old age

-          Having transportation refused to and from hospital because you are in a wheelchair

Canadians have been a bit luckier with their healthcare. It has been easy to hop across the border to the U.S. and get their medical needs tended to right away. Free care is a novel and attractive idea if you are an entitled socialist. You have insurance but you can’t get care for serious illness or drugs because they are rationed and in short supply.

The wait lists for MRIs and other expensive procedures can take years. And then there is the dark lottery that Canadian doctors hold; if you “win” the lottery, you lose your doctors. If you protest the lottery, you get bumped from surgery. “You can’t eat, you can’t talk, you can’t move your jaw at all but you must wait three months for treatment.” Some immigrants from Canada fly back to their home countries for life-saving surgeries.

In Australia, an elderly patient waits four years for cataract surgery.  Tonsil removal wait is two years. Ankle surgery wait takes three years. A woman in labor is placed in a closet until a bed becomes available. There is no bed to deliver a stillborn baby. A crushed hand takes 8 hours to treat as dictated by government guidelines.

In Japan a critically injured elderly man is turned away by 14 hospitals. A pregnant woman dies after 18 hospitals reject her.

In Sweden, if you delivered a baby without complications, you are out of the door immediately. Former Prime Minister Goran Persson had a wait from September 2003-June 2004 to have a hip replacement surgery in the hard-to-access Swedish healthcare system. Fortunately, he could have paid approximately $11,500 to have it done privately but he refused.

If you seek a colonoscopy in New Zealand, the wait is two years. Expensive cancer treatments are denied, depending on age, and many die before treatment is approved. A woman with a half-completed surgery became infertile and remained in pain for 18 months. A little boy who crushed his finger in a camping accident was sent home bandaged; his finger tip was only held in place by a flap of skin. Fortunately, his mother drove him three hours to Christchurch Hospital where he underwent surgery and his finger tip was reattached successfully. (“Shattered Lives, 100 Vic+ims of Government Health Care”)

I notice on a regular basis, in a nursing home in an affluent part of the U.S., the neglect for the elderly who are screaming and moaning in pain. They are undertreated due to cost and fear that patients in severe pain will become hooked on drugs. Celebrex, an expensive arthritis drug, for example, is replaced with a cheaper variety that is less effective and the patients’ pain management is supplemented with over the counter Tylenol.

Elderly in nursing homes are lucky if they see their doctors at all or even a nurse practitioner. Most treatment and care are administered by employees from third world countries who speak English which is hard to understand. They are very kind, do a very hard job, and try their best, but their best is not always good enough.

Pre Obamacare, Ralph B. paid Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance premium of $270 quarterly for an underemployed adult child. After Obamacare, the premium is now $300 per month, with $8,500 in network deductible and $13,500 out of network deductible.

Dvaughn’s BCBS premium increased from a $450 a month family premium with $1,000 deductible to $1050 a month with a $3,000 deductible. The new policy does cover more services but the family does not need them or use them.

Retail workers in a major chain store had good private insurance even for half-time employees. Many women worked for lower salaries because they liked the security of a good health insurance program with low deductibles and low premiums. With the advent of Obamacare which mandates outrageous coverage, the same employer had to drop all employees into the health care exchange starting January 2016. Many employees are now looking for jobs elsewhere because they cannot afford the high premiums and the high deductibles of the bronze, silver, and gold plans. And those who are receiving subsidies in the Obamacare exchange are just now finding out that they must pay taxes on the subsidy because it is considered income.

A psychiatrist, Bob E., who practices in Vermont and does not participate in any insurance networks, sees patients who pay him at the time of service. Some can get insurance reimbursement for him as an out of network doctor. Even though psychiatrists are in short supply in Vermont, he does not have a wait list. He experiences more patients who say, “No thank you,” when they learn that he is not in network. They have the money but refuse to spend more on medical care after they “have paid insurance premiums and taxes that are too high.” Dr. Bob E. said, “It seems like another failed public policy to create an artificial financial barrier to a psychiatrist who is available when patients spend months waiting for an appointment otherwise.”

Doctors are having a hard time finding referrals to specialists for their patients because Obamacare pays them less than cost. Specialists do take a few Obamacare referrals; if they don’t, they don’t get paid anything for patients they do see in the hospital. A physician tried to get a second opinion for an infectious disease specialist for his patient and nobody agreed to take him within a 25-mile radius. In his opinion, “ACA is not sustainable; it is a complete sham from start to finish.”

 

Lisa P. tells the story of how her friend has already become a victim of the beginnings of socialized medicine. In need of a refill for her pain management for fibromyalgia, she received spinal shots instead. “Three days later after the injections, she nearly died from a hemorrhagic stroke.” After cutting a piece out of her skull and a second surgery to replace it, the woman is still in a wheelchair and cannot do anything for herself. Once released by her neurosurgeon, she still cannot get regular pain medication for fibromyalgia. With additional pain from back headaches, nerve and muscles due to the stroke, her life is ruined. Thanks to hospital electronic records, her chart is incomprehensible. The new protocol, “don’t give anybody pain pills because we are trying to save the lives of drug addicts,” has certainly turned her life upside down.

Elderly people must take humiliating drug tests so that they can take a half pain pill a day to manage debilitating arthritis and back pain. Pharmacies don’t keep pain pills in stock and cannot tell you by phone if they are out or not. A family member must drive around to various pharmacies in order to get one month’s refill.  Patients already in severe pain must drive each month to a pain management doctor because they don’t write refills for pain medications. And elderly don’t drive, putting undue burden on caretakers. Chronic pain patients are treated just like drug addicts and “decent doctors like street corner drug dealers.” Lisa P. said that “People are suffering for want of cheap and safe medications that have been around for decades.”

Going to a doctor now, if you can find one that is properly trained in the U.S. and not hailing from some third world medical school, is an exercise in being ignored by both the doctor and the nurse. They used to look at the patients and talk to them. Now they are busy typing on their laptops the entire time. Strange and impertinent questions are asked along with pertinent questions that the electronic system sometimes mixes up with someone else’s chart.

Many doctors who had their own practices either retired or joined a hospital or an association of many other doctors in order to deal with Obamacare. Once doctors joined such groups, they are not able to give patients discounts for financial hardship or for cash payment. Doctors no longer have authority over their jobs. Because some prescriptions are expensive, doctors must provide prior authorization to insurance and jump through a lot of paperwork hoops before a patient gets needed medication.

Tricare will no longer reimburse patients who get their drugs directly from outside pharmacies because bases may not carry their needed meds on their formulary.  Patients must now get them through a direct mail service.

The answer to the question, whether it is a good idea to have politicians and bureaucrats decide your medical treatment and whether you live or die, is a resounding no. There is no such thing as free care, someone else must pay for it either through higher taxes, non-use of services, confiscatory premiums, writing-off costs, government subsidies, or denial of needed services (rationing of care).

 

 

 

 

 

Death Panels and the Progressive War on Menopausal Women

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that ten years after Obamacare will be fully implemented, more than 30 million Americans will still be without health insurance. Not to worry, there won’t be enough doctors to deliver proper care or much care at all if you do have insurance. And the dreaded Death Panel that Sarah Palin was disparaged over will also be in full operation.

The Independent Panel Advisory Board (IPAB) is Obamacare’s 15-member board of unelected, unaccountable to the public bureaucrats whose function is to make cuts in order to keep Medicare spending within certain parameters. These limits, starting in 2018, will consist of the rate of economic growth per capita plus one percentage point.

Since economic growth has been very sluggish due to a relatively deep recession, and the size of the economy has been shrinking, with higher unemployment and more discouraged workers than actually reported, Medicare spending will likely be lower, denying patients their much needed care. Additionally, Medicare is being stripped of $719 billion over a ten-year period in order to fund Obamacare.

These faceless omnipotent IPAB bureaucrats appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate will have unaccountable reign over your health. If your medical care or tests are denied, nobody will know if it is because there is no effective treatment for your illness or because one of those 15 people have decided that your life is not worth saving.

Ferrara wrote that “Obamacare requires IPAB to produce proposals to slow the growth in national health expenditures and non-federal health care programs. He continued, “This is a clear mandate to reduce both government and private sector health care spending.” If medical spending is limited even in the private sector, that is a deliberate form of health care rationing. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/how_the_obamacare_death_panel_defies_the_constitution.html

Doctors will be overridden in their medical decisions by people with no medical training and patients may or may not get their needed tests or operations. Whether doctors will be at peace or in agreement with violating their Hippocratic Oath remains to be seen.

Many doctors will have been driven out of business by the low reimbursement rates from Medicaid and Medicare, will have retired, or will have switched to a different field entirely. Hospitals will also have been driven out of business by the massive debt amassed from servicing non-paying illegal aliens, impossible Obamacare mandates, and by low reimbursement rates from Medicare/Medicaid. Many private insurers will have been bankrupted by the financial expenditures to satisfy the health services mandates of Obamacare.

How many people will then pursue arduous medical school training, invest in human capital, invest in new developments in health care, new drugs, and new life-saving procedures if the return on investment is so low and medical care becomes severely rationed? As it is, there is a shortage of qualified medical personnel, but an augmented supply of millions of patients who are demanding care. What good is it if you have health insurance but cannot find a doctor who will accept you as a new patient, accept your insurance, or who is qualified to treat you?

Many Americans have been receiving letters informing them that doctors they’ve been using for years are no longer in the Obamacare approved exchanges and they must find new doctors. Other Americans enrolled in exchanges have had their plans switched two to three times due to the failure of the non-profit insurers to stay afloat in the face of an onslaught of claims eating away at their revenues and reserves, even with billions in federal grant money. Twenty-five of the 26 non-profit co-ops operating under Obamacare have registered losses so far.

If you are unable to receive the same timely and quality medical care that Americans have been accustomed to, if you are told that you can no longer buy the medicines or tests you need, receive proper cancer treatment to save your life, or see the doctors you’ve known for years and trusted, it is Obamacare mandates and its faceless agents reshaping how long you can live and what quality of life you are going to have.

As Dr. Donna Hurlock, a Board Certified Gynecologist, said, there is a “Medicare war against menopausal women” with its new “anti-estrogen policy that it’s hurting menopausal women.” This new policy is based on a 2002 National Institutes of Health study, Women’s Health Initiative, that claimed that estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) “poses excessive risks to menopausal women.” https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/whi/estro_pro.htm

Dr. Hurlock said that eighty years of estrogen use support the opposite conclusion that women on ERT live longer and better functional lives than women that elect not to replace hormones. Post-menopausal women that do replace their hormones “end up consuming fewer medicines than their peers because they don’t develop the many health problems that result from estrogen deficiency, such as sleep problems, high cholesterol, bone loss, memory issues, dizziness, vaginal dryness, etc.” http://fairfaxfreecitizen.com/2015/02/23/medicares-war-against-menopausal-women/?utm_source=Fairfax+Free+Citizen+Digest&utm_campaign=d97702cff7-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_69cf25d58d-d97702cff7-201781813

Medicare’s new policy as of January 1, 2015 is to deny payment for ERT and to substitute hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with “alternative” drugs such as anti-depressants, neurologic drugs, bone density drugs, and vaginal estrogen creams. Each of these “alternative” drugs have a long list of side-effects, potentially more dangerous and more expensive than hormone replacement therapy (HRT), decreasing the woman’s quality of life. To make matters worse, any HRT that includes testosterone has now been labeled a controlled substance and pharmacists must handle it accordingly. Such prescriptions expire every six months, necessitating repeat visits to the doctor.

Dr. Hurlock explained that many insurers are no longer “covering” her patients’ payments for HRT because “a group of ‘experts’ has decided that HRT becomes dangerous as soon as a woman celebrates her 65^th birthday, despite the plentiful literature to the contrary.” In her opinion, these experts are “clearly not making recommendations in the best interest of the patients based on the entire HRT literature.”

When the individuals, who wrote, publicized, lied about, voted on, and passed Obamacare as a tax, will be long gone from public life and forgotten, millions of Americans are going to suffer needlessly and potentially experience a shorter lifespan.

Liberals have created a faux “war on women.” There is a war, but it is a “war on your health,” a “war on middle aged women,” and a “war on the elderly,” all having a common denominator, rationing of care in order to reduce Medicare spending and to stretch the same health dollars to millions more, some of whom have broken into our country illegally. It is a war promoted by the progressive agenda that wants to fundamentally transform our country. They have succeeded beyond anybody’s dreams, with little resistance.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

Middle Class Fleecing with Obamacare

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Virginians to find doctors and secure appointments in a timely manner thanks to Obamacare. After a fierce battle, the bills meant to create state exchanges and to expand Medicaid have died in the House and in the Senate. However, Democrat Governor McAuliffe added Medicaid expansion to his budget amendment. The House removed that language from the budget.

As millions of Americans, who previously had insurance and doctors they were satisfied with and wanted to keep, are suddenly left without insurance, millions others keep losing their new coverage under the much touted Affordable Care Act.

Many Americans became part-time employees without insurance, forcing them to choose plans under the state exchanges. Employers, who could not afford the mandated procedures of the Affordable Care Act, dropped the insurance coverage plans they had previously offered their employees at affordable rates, and reduced employment hours.  

With the new exchange plans, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, people cannot afford to see a doctor when their new plans have such huge deductibles. For most people, it is impossible to meet deductibles in a year and they must pay out of pocket. For them, medical care has now become a very expensive service.  

While Obamacare has helped a statistically insignificant percent of Americans, it has devastated the health care of millions who were previously affording their healthcare premiums, had good coverage, low deductibles and co-pays, and their doctors were available within their residential area or a short travel distance.

Suddenly, millions have found themselves paying double or triple premiums, with deductibles going up from $500 to $5,000 and decreased coverage, with the exception of maternity care for all and contraception. There is something seriously wrong when the monthly health care premium becomes larger than mortgage and utilities combined. How fair is it for the bulk of middle-class Americans to pay health care premiums for illegal aliens and welfare recipients while having to let go of their own health insurance because it has skyrocketed? This is not providing health care for 20 percent of previously uninsured Americans; it is socialist redistribution of wealth.

It is laudable to offer insurance to people previously uninsurable, but forcing other working Americans to pay for it and punishing them through IRS fines is wrong and it is a form of stealing. The law has been written by liberals for liberals, to benefit their Democrat voting constituents to the detriment of everyone else. The concept that everyone should be insured is sound but not through Obamacare.

Medical care is not a right, in spite of what liberals claim, it is a service just like any other service you purchase for a nominal fee. Doctors and nurse practitioners must spend years to train in medical school where tuition and books are very expensive.  Nobody wants to work for free and nobody should have the right to decide how much your remuneration should be.

Those who were previously uninsured due to preexisting conditions have a point. However, those who cried that they could not afford the premiums or chose to gamble on good health should look carefully at their priorities. What is the cost of their Internet, cable, Netflix, cell phone bill, cigarettes, beer, wine, movies, drugs, fancy clothes, and restaurant meals/ fast food?

Taking from those who work to pay for those who do not work is government-sanctioned stealing. Economically speaking, for every day that you have to work to pay for someone else, you are a financial slave to that person. The cheap, subsidized Obamacare policy that you receive through the exchanges is paid for by hard-working Americans, not by your Obama government.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama) said, “We took away the health care system that worked for 80 percent of the people of this country to fix a problem that we today know we fixed for only one percent of the American people. Only 3 million new Americans have gotten on this new health care plan that did not have insurance before, that’s one percent of the American people. So we threw out the health care plan that worked for 80 percent of Americans, to fix a problem for one percent of Americans. And look what it’s done! It’s wrecked lives!” He continued, “This law is fundamentally flawed! This law has victimized the people of America!”

Although there have been 60 attempts to repeal Obamacare, it is here to stay. The Daily Signal wrote about the Nebraska woman whose Obamacare insurance was canceled three times.  Her first cancellation was with Humana who decided to pull out of Nebraska and second and third from the Iowa nonprofit CoOpportunity Health which was liquidated and her platinum plan was no longer offered. She is now covered under a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan.  

The federal government offered $2 billion in loans to nonprofit co-ops created under Obamacare (to meet state reserve requirements) and twenty-three co-ops were formed offering insurance in 26 states. According to the Daily Signal, “more than 520,000 people enrolled in insurance coverage through the co-ops through September.” Their research indicated that all co-ops but one had operating losses, with outlays exceeding reserves. “Claims were eating up all the surplus and reserve [money].” http://dailysignal.com/2015/02/17/one-nebraska-woman-lost-health-insurance-three-times-obamacare/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiu6vOZKXonjHpfsX56uwlX6W0lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ES8djI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

There are more troubling thoughts in this quagmire.  The IRS has our medical records, will collect fines for non-compliance with Obamacare, and is going to demand refunds from those who received too much subsidy under the state exchanges.  But illegal aliens are still covered for free and those with religious objections don’t have to pay a penalty and are given medical care. What a relief!

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015