Socialized Medicine Drug Dispensing

One example of how ineffective socialized medicine drug dispensing is in the military:

Prior to the Covid-19 lockdown, prescriptions had to be manually carried to the military facility pharmacy to be filled and the wait was on the average one hour.

Now, because of the viral lockdown, doctors can send the prescription to the pharmacy via fax or computer. However, the patient must go to the said pharmacy and personally request that the prescription be activated and wait a couple of hours minimum to have the prescription filled and dispensed if the drug is on their formulary. If it is not on the formulary, the prescription must be transferred to an outside pharmacy and the cost can be expensive or prohibitive especially for retired veterans on a limited income.

Expensive drugs are never on the formulary and the patient must bear the brunt of most of the cost. At least they can get the drug if they have the money.

Some drugs that are taken for a long time can be filled by mail but, in the case of emergency drugs for sudden illness, the drugs must be purchased at the pharmacy.

Socialized medicine worked the same way under the socialist countries ruled by the ineffective Communist Party. The difference was that drugs were ALWAYS in short supply and high demand, or not available to the masses. Those said masses could avoid the shortage by buying on the black market from outside sources, however, most people were too poor and had little resources to buy at such expensive prices. Salaries were relatively equal and small in all professions.

So far, we have avoided that shortage and non-availability fate in this country but for how long?

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.

For-Profit Hospitals Are Compatible with Universal Health Care

The Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank released a study today which found that “based on experiences of other countries, for-profit hospitals and insurers are compatible with universal health care.”

The study analyzed the universal health-care systems of six countries – Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Bacchus Barua, senior economist at Fraser Institute and co-author of “For Profit Hospitals and Insurers in Universal Health-Care Countries,” said that “Contrary to the way they are often perceived in Canada, for-profit hospitals and insurers are part of high-performing health care systems in other countries.”

One of the reasons that prompted the study was the misperception that a private, for profit medical facility is “incompatible with universal-access health care.” Yet, according to the authors, “poor access to medical services and middling outcomes and safety despite high spending” seem to plague Canada’s health care system which appears in need of reform.

The study highlighted the numbers of hospitals in countries with universal healthcare:

-          Sweden has 77 public, 3 for-profit and 3 not-for-profit  (n/a)

-          France has 928 public, 688 private not-for-profit, and 1041 private for-profit (2012)

-          Switzerland has 61 public,  82 private not-for-profit, and 150 private for-profit (2013)

-          Germany has 833 public, 1,040 private not-for-profit, and 1,356 private for-profit (2012)

-          Netherlands  has zero public, 180 private not-for-profit, and 79 private for-profit (2012)

-          Australia has 753 public, 115 private not-for-profit, and 477 private for-profit (2011)

In Canada private for-profit parallel insurance is not allowed and only a small number of private for-profit hospitals can be found. In the countries studied, the authors found that all “have incorporated for-profit hospitals and insurers into their universal health-care policy framework.”

Universal access to health care is the “principle that all citizens (or residents) can obtain health-care services irrespective of income or pre-existing health status.” A public hospital or clinic is owned and operated by the government with various degrees of efficiency or inefficiency. A private hospital is owned by an individual or a group and it can be either for-profit or not-for-profit. In the case of private not-for-profit hospitals, any kind of profit is reinvested in the hospital or clinic.

The six countries in the study were chosen based on the following criteria:

-          The countries “share a common goal of access to high-quality care, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay” (I note that access to high-quality care does not necessarily mean delivery of high-quality care.)

-          Spending a proportion of GDP on healthcare comparable to Canada’s expenditure

-          The countries “provide similar or superior access to, and quality of care, in comparison to Canada’s health-care system across a range of metrics”

-          Public data is readily available

The metrics criteria included the number of physicians, nurses, MRI units, CT scanners, hospital beds, same or next-day appointments when sick, wait time for specialist appointment (4  weeks), wait time to be treated when sick (2 hours or more), wait time for access to doctor or nurse (6 days), wait time for specialist appointment (2 months), wait time for elective surgery (4 months), post-operative sepsis, retained surgical item or unretrieved device fragments left in a patient after surgery, COPD hospital admission, uncontrolled diabetes admissions, asthma admissions, ischemic stroke 30-day in-hospital mortality, colorectal cancer five-year relative survival, cervical cancer five-year relative survival, and breast cancer five-year relative survival. http://fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/for-profit-and-insurers-in-universal-health-care-countries.pdf

The authors describe the types of primary and secondary coverage in each country and how the insurance and the medical costs are being paid – either by direct tax levies, tax surcharges, or government-mandated insurance in which case the government heavily regulates the single insurance-provider and determines salaries of medical personnel, doctors, nurses, and the cost of each procedure, of doctor’s visits, and of medications.

Barua said that, “Clearly, based on the examples of the industrialized countries, private for-profit hospitals and health insurers are compatible with universal health care.” Nadeem Esmail, the study’s co-author, added the “Private for-profit hospitals and insurers support some of the best universal access health-care systems in the developed world – systems superior to Canada’s timeliness, accessibility, and outcomes despite similar or lower health expenditures.”

The Fraser Institute study seems timely as 12 of the 23 Obamacare co-ops that were meant to provide “lower cost health insurance not driven by the profit motive,” are failing so quickly after the implementation of the not-so-affordable 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), costing taxpayers $1.2 billion in defaulted loan payments. A long list of patients must now struggle to find health insurance comparable to what they had before and must find new doctors.  As the New York Post is quoted, “Add 250 New York cancer patients on the long list of victims of ObamaCare’s lies – just one more snapshot of the program’s ongoing death spiral. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/260948-obamacares-predictable-collapse

Who thought that it would be a good idea to “fundamentally transform” and destroy the healthcare of 85 percent of Americans who were happy with their insurance carrier, their affordable premiums, their doctors, their healthcare, their hospitals and clinics, so that 15 percent of Americans, who were either already insured under Medicaid, voluntarily not insured, had pre-existing conditions, or in this country illegally, would have insurance? Would it not have been cheaper to buy insurance for these 15 percent of uninsured, implement tort reform, and allow the sale of health insurance across state lines?

Robbing $716 billion from Medicare (from our elderly population) in order to pay for ObamaCare’s costly implementation was a bad idea, especially at a time when our national debt exceeds the GDP and is thus unsustainable. http://dailysignal.com/2012/08/01/obamacare-robs-medicare-of-716-billion-to-fund-itself/

What good is having expensive bronze, silver, or gold Obamacare insurance through state exchanges if the care is not available and sketchy; nobody can afford the huge premiums even with subsidies; the co-pays are large; patients cannot find doctors and specialists because many have retired or are not accepting Obamacare;  and an insufficient number of new doctors were trained. And is it insurance or is it a tax? It depends on who you ask. At the end of the day, kiss your good medical care good bye and put your worthless plastic card back into your wallet.

As far as the rest of the developed world is concerned, where are their elites going to fly to in order to get the best medical care in the world once America becomes full victim of socialized medicine? Who is going to study medicine if the rewards become so slim and the government will regulate their salaries, services, and fees? And, since Congress and their staff have exempted themselves from Obamacare, how and where are they getting medical care?

 

 

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).

 

 

 

 

 

Guide to Staying Alive and Healthy under Castro Care

Coming in contact with the “new and improved” American Castro Care for the masses that squeaks like a rusty wheel wrapped in cellophane and tied with a red bow, I realize that quality healthcare for American citizens and their undocumented brethren, who crossed the border illegally or were brought here by our government to fulfill the quota of Democrat voters and to alter the “racially unjust” and “bigoted” profile of sleepy little towns, might soon be a thing of the past.

If you take a handful of antibiotics before you have a medical procedure, your chances of survival double, especially if you know that your doctor’s handshake to improve his/her bedside manner passed to you all the germs from the previous eight patients because surveys say that doctors only wash hands after every eighth patient they touch. Very reassuring, isn’t it? But, it could be worse.

And then there are the foreign nurses and orderlies who come from third world countries where soap and water are scarce and sanitation is hard to grasp, especially since bacteria and viruses are invisible to the naked eye. Too much washing is bad for human skin and not part of some cultures. Who are we to judge, liberals ask rhetorically. Hand-washing may be against their religion as well.

You better thank your lucky stars that you get freshly cleaned and bleached sheets. As Marean Menghelie wrote, in eastern European socialized medicine, you could find yourself wrapped in a sheet with Crayola graffiti, with dried up blood that does not belong to you, ketchup stains when ketchup is not served in the hospital cafeteria, motor oil stains from the previous patient who cut his finger in an auto shop, suspicious yellow stains, or even dried-up vomit if you are really lucky.

And don’t dare to use the shower or the bathroom on your own, especially if you are hooked up to a tree of life with glucose and other happy drugs that can stop your heart. Why take the chance to pull the needle right out of your vein and spray the walls with a spritz of fresh blood.

Always ring the bedside button. When nobody shows up, and they seldom do, try to crawl out of bed carefully so as not to set off the bed alarm and watch out – the floor is really hard. If it rings anyway, hurry up to the bathroom and lock the door. There is always a young college student in nursing school assigned to babysit you and force you into compliance with hospital rules.

Menghelie suggested that you should be careful what you eat from the socialized medicine hospital offerings. Smell it suspiciously, wait for other patients in the ward to try it first, and consider eating only if nobody croaks right away.  Better yet, don’t eat at all. If you wanted to eat, you should have gone to a restaurant, not a hospital.

If you must have a procedure, you have to bribe the doctor (it is expected) to make sure he/she does an extra good job and you emerge alive. Watch to make sure they put the bribe money clearly labeled with your name in an envelope and ask, in case you don’t make it, if there is a refund policy payable to the family for burial expenses.

Menghelie even recommended a nice payoff for the RNs, the next in line to make sure you are properly sedated and cared for after surgery. Bring proper amount of cash as they are not ATMs to make change. It is good insurance that they will smile, give you shots properly, or draw blood on the first try without bruising your entire arm. Make sure, he advised, you bribe two nurses so that the second shift won’t leave you thirsty, in pain, or with your diaper wet.

Socialized medicine is great and it works well in the small bankrupt countries of Europe when you have the sniffles or the flu. It will work wonders for our 308 million Americans, give and take a few million undocumented arrivals that the government does not seem to be able to count accurately.

Dental care in socialized Europe is another story. There is a reason why so many Europeans don’t smile. It’s not that daily life is harder or that they are in a perennial bad mood. They are just either sporting gaps in their pearly browns or yellows or have ill-fitting dentures.

Aren’t you glad that the U.S. is going to finally join the rest of the civilized world? What took us so long? We’ve been overpaying for services, good doctors, and good insurance for so long. How could we have been so ignorant for so long? Lucky us that the ‘wise’ progressives came along to set us straight and give us Obama Care!

I can give you lots of savvy advice but it suffices to say that it would be better if you could stay healthy and away from doctors and dangerous pharmaceutical products that tend to cause more harm and mortal danger than the actual disease. And take your vitamins. You are going to live as long as God intended you to live no matter what you do.

Hospital Closures under ObamaCare

Photo courtesy of Lazar Dinu
Colentina Hospital Patients 1989

A remarkable photograph taken by Lazar Dinu in 1989 shows patients from a hospital in Bucharest, overjoyed that the communist dictator was gone and they would be able to find drugs in pharmacies, doctors would treat them without bribes and would not kill them during simple surgeries, hospitals would be modernized and actually heal patients, and happiness would be restored.

I wrote about socialized medical care in communist Romania in my autobiographical book, “Echoes of Communism,” (http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Communism-Lessons-American-Choice/dp/1456535080/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419872185&sr=1-1&keywords=Echoes+of+communism) and in a recent article on ObamaCare. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/68532

Judging by the comments of Romanians today, twenty-five years later, not much has changed.  A few private hospitals were built, the bureaucrats and politicians are getting rich off the EU funds that are supposed to go into health care, a Palestinian doctor wants to install a monopoly over healthcare, state-run hospitals are still dirty, deficient, money run out early in the year, doctors and nurses still take bribes to care for patients, patients are still housed in wards and cared for by their families, drugs are more easily available when bought out of pocket, and medical insurance pays modest and inadequate sums for various procedures and for drugs.

If you might think the situation in Romania is bad because they have to overcome 44 years of communist totalitarian dictatorship, you would be right, however the socialized medical care in many EU countries is not much better. Take for instance Ireland - their overworked doctors and nurses are wonderful but conditions in some hospitals are dreadful.

The patient named Maureen I described in my previous article (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/68077) had to share a room recently with five men. One was 94 years old and had dementia, shouting incessantly, and another was a mental patient who kept his clothes piled on the floor, while two security stood guard at the door in case he became destructive or dangerous.

There was one bathroom for all six patients, with no rails to hold on to and the shower did not work. The entire room stunk to high heaven. There were two holes in the wall where the rail had been. Maureen was lucky that a kind nurse gave her a sponge bath each day.  On the day Maureen’s husband was visiting, one of the men urinated into the water jug. 

Family members were told not to alert the media in case their loved ones needed to be hospitalized there again.  One visiting family member who wanted to speak to the media was asked not to do so.

The hospital was supposed to be closed down but people marched and it was kept open under these horrible circumstances. People felt that a hospital with such ghastly conditions was better than no hospital at all.

Apparently co-ed wards are now the norm. When wards are full, it is common to keep patients on gurneys in the hallways. Most doctors come from third world countries and have limited training. There is not enough money for adequate medical staff or hospital administration. Medical personnel are frustrated because they cannot provide proper care to all patients.

If you are lulled into a false sense of security because this cannot happen in the United States, think again. ObamaCare is causing a wave of small hospital closures across our country. According to Paul Bremer, “Eighteen acute-care hospitals across the United States shut their doors in 2013. At least 12 more hospitals have closed this year in rural areas alone. More are getting out the plywood to nail over windows and barricades for doors.” http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/obamacare-blamed-for-killing-hospitals/

Small and mid-size hospitals are closing in inner cities and rural areas with a disproportionate number of Medicare/Medicaid patients.

Reasons for closures are low reimbursements rates, bureaucrats telling doctors that some patient services are “not medically necessary,” physician practices heavily dependent on government reimbursement, ObamaCare regulations that are too expensive to implement, high out of pocket expenses for the insured under ObamaCare, causing less people to go to the hospital, and economically depressed rural farming towns where locals cannot afford to go to the doctor or to the hospital.

Additionally, California hospitals are in danger of closing their doors due to the overwhelming influx of illegal aliens who are treated for free and have their anchor babies delivered free at huge costs to taxpayers.

Madeleine Pelner Cosman wrote a five-page report titled “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine,” in the spring 2005 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in which she stated that “84 California hospitals are closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system.” http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf

Lee Hieb, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, wrote, “Today, all over America, small and mid-size hospitals as well as hospitals in inner-city, poor areas are closing.” In her book, Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare, Dr. Hieb said that “Events happening now give us some idea of what medicine will be reduced to in the future.” http://www.naturalnews.com/048141_Obamacare_hospital_closures_health_care_system.html

For people like me who survived the maltreatment and lack of proper medical care under socialized communist healthcare, there is no surprise; we know exactly what is coming. If Americans would only listen to the voices of reason and experience! If something sounds too good to be true in this “fundamentally transformed America,” it is going to be rationed and miserable.