Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How to Survive "Obama Care"

Buried in the "stimulus" package is a bit on health care. It's not making the news in the way it should. Here's a link to the equivalent of a bomb threat to American Medicine. Rationed care is on the way, and the folks who do the rationing will be folks like Lofty wrote about here (and other government 'lifers' who can not be fired and just don't care). So here you go, get to work on these things quickly before the powers that be start watching you closely...

1. Obtain a second social security number and identification card that makes you ten years younger. Keep it well hidden and once you crack 70 years old or whatever the new cut-off for 'extraordinary care' will be you will not be kicked to the curb to die quietly at home. The five hundred dollars you spend for this now may save your life later. And if you doubt that this will happen I have a family member who left the UK twenty years ago because they would not do bypass surgery on her based on... her age. She got it here.

2. Search your genealogy for any links with 'minority' groups. If you are part Cherokee Indian then make a pilgrimage to the ancestral lands, get some pictures with your distant relatives, and then use this special fact to obtain all manner of government benes. Your kids can get into any college they want, and when they try to deny your health care based on your age you can launch into a pre-scripted diatribe about how this is 'just like the trail of tears'. A call can then be placed to your attorney and the media, and you can go on Oprah and cry and be rich.

3. If you smoke, quit. If you can't quit, make sure your wife or husband or partner smokes too. Then claim on all your physical exams in the future that you have 'never smoked' but you have 'asthma' from 'second hand smoke'. This too will allow me to treat you after you reach the age of 70 and have lung cancer. It also makes for a good law suit just in case.

4. Consider moving out of the country or at least positioning yourself near the Mexican border. The Mexicans (so much less evolved than us) will probably still be doing pretty good medicine for money well into this century and a quick trip across the border might save your life.

5. Start now building an 'emergency medicine fund' because there will probably still be all manner of excellent health care for rich folks after Obama care passes... I mean, do you think the congress will limit their access to the best health care available simply because their constituents are so limited? It may be black market or near black market but hey, it's your life.

6. There's really no point under Obama Care to maintain healthy habits once you reach the Logan's Run age so make sure you stock up on cigarettes and alcohol once you are no longer deemed an acceptable risk. Me, I'm smokin' weed like Willy. At least I'll die happy.

In all honesty, I can not conceive of the rationale for pushing this type of plan. It has been tried and has failed in the UK and, as we have detailed on this site, Canada has good primary care, but for those who do not get their brain cancer or breast cancer at a convenient time Canadians may wait until they die for their free care. They come here. That will stop. We won't have anything to offer our neighbors to the north, much less our own population. And notice, if you will, that to the extent that one's age is a determining factor in whether one gets heroic care of not, there is no incentive to live a healthy life. Madness.

26 comments:

  1. I hate spam.

    I feel sick to my stomach. Obamacare, not the spam.

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  2. I read somewhere, maybe here, that some docs are going totally private - hiring themselves out to individuals/families for a set price each year for cold hard cash. I would consider dropping my insurance altogether and paying a little premium for a doc who would make house calls, and actually remember our names, even though we only need the doc once or twice a year. The free market may be able to circumvent BObama. I don't know how that would work for hospital stays or continuing research for new cures or prescriptions. The insurance industry and the political lobby has screwed it up for all of us.

    Or maybe I should be saving my pennies in case I need to fly to Mexico.

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  3. The other thing with all of this is the medico-legal issue. How can health care providers be held liable for "delayed diagnosis" or "delayed care" if health care is rationed and certain services cannot be provided to certain people by presidential decree. Things will have to change. I am surprised the malpractice attorneys have not noticed this...

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  4. aha I knew emr was a wolf in sheep's clothing..it's not to facilitate care it's to keep track of who does what when where and why....a governmental gps to make sure autonomy is squelched and medicine is reduced to cook book protocols. tell me again why I should quit smoking and live to 90?

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  5. two things...

    i tried recently to open a cash for care clinic but was told by many consultants and my attorney that i would fail because while it might be nice to see me in a pinch, there would be no incentive to come back as people withou insurance will go to the ER b/c it's 'free' and folks with insurance will not want to pay me for something that insurance usually covers (more than once).

    i would be happy to establish a concierge practice and i think this is what folks of means will do for their care... and it will be better care than they get now as now they have to get in line.

    finally, re the attorneys and their ability to sue on behalf of patients for malpractice i think you are correct. the government employs a lot of docs and their liability is all capped. interesting point...

    it does seem as all of this is being done hastily and behind closed doors. i am not surprised at this but the point about the trial lawyers... that's surprising.

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  6. 911Doc
    This was part of my point in my post to your last article... the patient with suspected appendicitis and you have to turn down the CT scan because she doesn't meet federal criteria. You can be sure the government will defer to your judgement in the malpractice trial, but will be happy to penalize you mercilessly if you deviate from the "accepted" standard. It is the ultimate in penalty based on outcome.

    I found it predictable that this was not addressed in the bill. Simply put, this bill limit medical care in an environment of unlimited legal liability, and the the health care system will rapidly become unsustainable and collapse.

    The most entertaining part of the whole process will be when the government (mostly lawyers) realize that lawyers are the problem. How does one bite the shark fins that feed you?

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  7. This shit has been in the works for months, and wasn't just thrown together in a time of crises. The left has been waiting for an opportunity to scare the uninformed and the stupid into submitting to their power, and now is their chance. If only Atlas Shrugged were required reading in high school (I am reading it again now) I seriously doubt we would be having this discussion. Sadly, most high school students couldn't make it through the 1200 pages, and most likely the book would be banned by the teachers unions.

    The best recent expanation of why we don't want a nationalized health care system is chapter 3 of Welcome to Obamaland by James Delingpole. He's British and describes in detail the cattle mentality and the waste that goes into the NHS. (We are about to experience the 10-12 years of social relativistic-pc-going-green bullshit that has been dragging the U.K. economy down for years, and I don't like it. Having spent several months in England I can tell you he is spot on. Never had to use "Accident and Emergency" but saw first hand how a couple of mod. sized hospitals in the Midlands worked, or didn't. No thank you.

    Dagny Taggart, we hardly knew ya.

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  8. igloodoc,
    i think you may have a point but it will be moot when those of us on the provider side start telling patient's 'i think we need a ct scan to rule out appendicitis but your congressman doesn't... we are going to do the scan and you may get billed for it and i may get reprimanded or fined but we are going to do it.' the legislators will find themselves in a sticky wicket when they try to rewrite medical texts and substitute protocols for clinical judgement. of course i may have to go to jail, but i'm sure it will be one of those white collar jails where i can brush up on my reading and write a tell-all book. not a big fan of the federal pen however, might have to quit if that's where i'll go. i like my butt just as it is thank you very much.

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  9. I have to confess despite being of caucasian decent to putting pacific islander on every statistical survey. New Zealand is an island in the pacific after all.

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  10. 911Doc
    There is the famous story of the paramedic who patched for nitro on a 9yr old with chest pain... academia is already rewriting the textbooks into books of protocols. We are the last generation of practitioners of the art of medicine. The next generation of docs are the technicians of science of medicine.

    And as many science fiction movies demonstrate, doctors are ultimately replaced by robots. Star trek started with a human and ended with a hologram. Star Wars... all the docs were robots.

    Maybe this is what the legislation intended all along. I could be wrong.

    See ya in jail 911Doc, but I'll bring my own soap, than you very much.

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  11. Okay, I'm a student now and I'm on this like white on rice. To be sure, there's no love lost on government in my house and when I practice I intend to retain my autonomy. So I say to myself, "this is intensely concerning, frightening even." McCaughey at Bloomberg makes some very distressing points, verging on paranoiac. I know the Dems are salivating to implement Single-Payer and there's even a bill on the floor now to do it, but... our journalist in question has some, ehem, interesting affectations of the art. If you've read the article you'll notice the author's liberal use of quotes. McCaughey's inverted commas imply that some of the most concerning quotations are straight from the text of HR 1. However, when searched for, none of these "quotations" can be found in the bill and are attributed to no source. Also, I've read every page she references and I cannot seem to reconcile what she reports and what is actually present in the bill. Now I'm not a lawyer by any stretch but it is not possible to make sense of her statements as they interpret the pages that are referenced. McCaughey is focused fiercely between the lines and I'm afraid she's seeing ghosts. There's no there there.

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  12. Who is John Galt?

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  13. To follow up. Thank god there's someone else out there writing more clearly than me. Check out this cogent rebuttal to the piece in question. Please.

    http://culture11.com/blogs/hcc/2009/02/10/stimulus-bill-health-scare-could-betsy-mccaughey-be-more-full-ofbad-information/

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  14. Regardless of the cogent rebuttal if anyone can convince me that the Big Brother Libs don't want to control your health care, as well as every other aspect of your life except where you place your penis and how many fetuses you kill, I am more than willing to listen.

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  15. Shrodingers Cat, you're absolutely right. They're salivating to do it.
    But this ain't it.

    As you well know, Radio is on fire over this shite. It's the first public debate over this since Clinton and folks are getting on board. The language is strong. Scrub this piss from the Bill.
    Well, it ain't fuckin' there to be scrubbed.

    This article's got everyone pointing and screaming at fabricated demons while there's an a-c-t-u-a-l bill on the floor of the House to bring Single-Payer in through the back door.

    It's called House Resolution 676, The United States Health Insurance Act it is being considered in congress RIGHT NOW. McCaughey is holding the door open it to pass unopposed.

    If public fury isn't enough to block passage of the "Stimulus" what chance do we have if we're all tearing down McCaughey's straw-man when HR 676 comes to a vote?
    F'd

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  16. Thomas is correct ... the only language is the money for EMR.

    Take some phenergan and check out hr676.org "Medicare for All"... if you survive the waves of nausea it confirms what Thomas says.

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  17. If only Atlas Shrugged were required reading in high school (I am reading it again now)

    You are assuming the majority of Americans would actually understand what was being written, and had the guts to change it. You would be wrong on both counts.

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  18. Atlas Shrugged is waiting in my bookshelf. Slogging through Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Getting tedious and tired of small angry mustachioed man.

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  19. Amy,

    Put down Third Reich. Pick up Atlas shrugged. You'll not find a more timely tale.

    T

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  20. If only Atlas Shrugged were required reading in high school (I am reading it again now) I seriously doubt we would be having this discussion.
    'Cat, I love you. Kissy face huggy wumps love you.

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  21. Lynn,
    Mrs. Cat bought the book to read and I took it from her. It has been over 10 years since I read it. Ayn was so prescient. It could have been written today. Just finished Welcome to Obamaland, a must for anyone who still loves what this country used to be. The clinic I am opening will most likely be turned into boutique medicine for those who want what medicine used to be and to bypass the STATE cattle call medicine and prefer not to die waiting for Chairman Maobama to say you can have your tooma removed.

    CAT

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  22. Bah, each and everyday under our dear leader makes me increasingly pissed off.

    First we pass the bank bailouts(Bush's fault. He went socialist at the end of his term) instead of letting the idiotic banks that had poor, unethical business practices fall under(sure, the feds WERE pressuring them to do it, but they should of let them sink). Only redeeming factor is we might get some of the money back sometime.

    Now we have the second "bailout"(should be called the "pork package") of Dear Leader Obama. Thanks to it, our economy will be worse off and only some liberal government employees, green interest groups, and unions will benefit.

    I must admit, I am very disappointed in people my age(I'm 21) for so overwhelmingly voting away their future just because of a con man, like Dear Leader. I am only embolden by the fact that there was a vocal minority of McCain supporters on campus. Brave men and women who do not bow to the liberal idols for money and jobs and instead suffer from being social pariahs. I just hope that one day our liberal friends here on campus will see their foolish mistakes and fight in unity for more freedom instead of this selective freedom that the left offers.

    Till then, I guess all we can do is continue to voice our opinions and resist being silenced by Dear Leader Obama and his thugs.

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  23. Anonymous,

    The docs usually take care of your ilk but I'm in a shoddy mood...

    First off, you're so big and strong behind your Anon mask. Only cowards hide behind anonymity within a free society.

    Second off, I'm amazed with your abilities to present a logical case. Now, I'm no stickler as far as making a completely logical argument but all you did was an ad hominem attack, no real criticism. I'm not so much against ad hominems(heck, they're a staple of life around here) as the lack of thought out criticism to go along with it. So please use your brain and try to make a logical critique of 911Doc's post. If you try, they're likely to answer you likewise in a logical way, m'kay?

    However, I doubt you'll take this kind advice...like all anons your merely a putz who thinks he knows everything and never grasped that the first rule of wisdom is that you know nothing.

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  24. Push away, Sisyphus! Seriously though, good job Wolf, everybody's got to put in their time.

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  25. i'm sorry anonymous, i was forced to delete your pithy comment as it was not submitted on the proper government form, nor is zyprexa on the formulary anymore. before one may obtain a prescription for zyprexa one must first have tried, and failed, less expensive therapy (such as thorazine or haldol) and then one must obtain written approval by the state board of pharmacy therapeutics. all complaints may be registered during normal business hours which are 9-11am monday through tuesday. good day.

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  26. If anyone wants to provide my family with routine, primary medical care I will provide your family with routine,, primary dental care.

    Are you a mechanic who needs a crown? I have a 1970 Suburban with an oil leak. Let's talk. House painter that needs an upper denture. I have a couple upper bedrooms that need painting. I bet we can work something out.

    That's the way I see some of this going in certain rural areas. I know I would be onboard for a barter system rather than having the gubmint start applying limits.

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