The future of American medicine under HillaryCare or ObamaCare:

Paul Baxter knew he was unwell when he suddenly developed severe pains in his stomach. ‘I felt like someone was stabbing me. The pain was so bad that I was crying,’ he recalls. He was baffled and worried. But his GP put his mind at rest by insisting that it was a bad stomach upset and prescribed some strong anti-indigestion pills.

Seven months later Baxter, 44, a travel agent, learnt the truth. He had testicular cancer, which by then had already spread to his stomach and chest. Despite Baxter suffering serious weight loss and constant tiredness - classic symptoms of cancer - his GP, another doctor at the surgery and staff at his local hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire, had all failed to diagnose his condition.

Just an abberation right? This can be something that happens all the time. The fact is, they don’t know how often it happens. They don’t keep track of that kind of thing. But there are some interesting numbers from “unpublished research”:

Previously unpublished research by the Department of Health and the National Patient Safety Agency watchdog reveals that some patients with cancer have waited for 23 months before their illness is correctly identified and treatment begun. The study also uncovered 1,916 cases in 35 months where a cancer patient had suffered a late or missed diagnosis, an average of 55 people a month. But the agency admits the figure is a serious underestimate.

Fifty-five people a month, not diagnosed appropriately.

So what happens if you get diagnosed with cancer in America, where we don’t have socialized medicine? Turns out, you have a better chance at beating it:

According to the survey of cancer survival rates in Europe and the United States, published recently in Lancet Oncology:

• American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women. [See Figure I.]U.S. Cancer Care Is Number One. fig1
• American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.
• Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.
• For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

These figures reflect the care available to all Americans, not just those with private health coverage. Great Britain, known for its 50-year-old government-run, universal health care system, fares worse than the European average: British men have a five-year survival rate of only 45 percent; women, only 53 percent.

Hat Tip: Say Anything Blog

“There ought to be a law against that!”

From no smoking laws in public places to seat belt laws in private vehicles, there seems to be a law for everything. It reminds me of Ralphie’s brother in “A Christmas Story.” I walk out of my front door, and I find myself wrapped up and knocked over by a multitude of laws, with no recourse but to writhe on the ground screaming, “I can’t get up. I CAN’T GET UP!”

On SheboyganPress.com, there is a question about a typical nanny state law, one that would make it mandatory to wear a helmet if you are riding motorcycle. It reads: “Should Wisconsin require motorcycle riders and passengers to wear a helmet?”

Jim Wolf of Sheboygan, answers it best when he writes:

No. And the state should not require me to wear a seat belt, and the state should not require owners of bars and restaurants to ban smoking, and the state should pretty much just stay out of my life.

Well said, Jim. All of those things are put in place because the state feels that it needs to protect the individual from a bad choice.

A couple of others chime in with the same sentiment:

• No. This should be an individual choice. If someone chooses to ride without a helmet, that should be his or her choice, even though the risk of serious injury or death is increased by the lack of wearing a helmet. We have enough of government entering our lives and making decisions for us.

  Jack Wirtz, Sheboygan

• Government is not my mommy or daddy. It is my decision whether or not to wear a helmet. What next? Force me to wear seat belts, or forbid me to smoke in the tavern? Government busybodies should stop trying to restrict our freedoms on the basis that we are like children and need to be told what is good for us.

  Frank Lubotsky, Sheboygan

These three were the minority on the page however. While there were other comments supporting the law, Steve Carter of Lawton, Okla., nailed the attitude of the nanny-stater best:

We have drunken driving laws because people are stupid enough to get behind the wheel after drinking. We have seat belt laws, because some people aren’t smart enough to figure that staying with a vehicle is safer than being ejected out. Therefore, I think if people aren’t smart enough to figure out on their own that a helmet hitting the asphalt is better than a head, then we, society, need to step in and protect them.

Conservative or liberal, that is the mindset of the nanny-stater. They know what is best for you and have no problem eliminating your choice in the matter.

How arrogant can a person be? (more…)

Remember when I wrote this:

As the state of Massachusetts has shown, along with Great Britain and Canada, socialized health care generally runs a higher cost than is initially expected. In order to meet the financial goals, the quality of care offered to the patient is compromised. If either Democrat candidate wins the 2008 election and enacts a universal health care program in America, there is no reason to doubt that we’ll face similar results here.

Well…I hate to say I told you so, but, I told you so:

Cambridge Health Alliance, a key part of the Boston area’s healthcare network, is facing a potentially “catastrophic” loss this year and is looking to eliminate up to 300 jobs, or about 9 percent of its workforce, in an effort to stabilize finances.
more stories like this

The alliance, which includes Cambridge Hospital, Somerville Hospital, and Whidden Hospital in Everett, says it is being hit hard by the state’s new healthcare reform law, which has left it responsible for providing free care for those without insurance while reducing the hospitals’ compensation for such services.

Soon jobs will be cut, resulting in fewer staff to work with the patients, then you have patients waiting in ambulances outside the hospital for hours.

When the Democrats took over Congress in 2006, I saw this coming. I remember going to work the next day and having a couple guys laughing at me because I was a Republican and they were Democrats.

I said, “You watch. Your taxes are gonna go through the roof.”

“Well, what do you mean?” they asked.

“You just watch.”

I love being right, but in this particular instance, I really wish I were dead wrong:

The Senate rejected calls from both parties’ presidential candidates to take an election-year break from pork-barrel spending as a Democratic-run Congress passed budget plans that would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush.

They had a chance to stop all earmarks, and not even the Republicans voted for it. Fiscal conservatism, my great Aunt Petunia:

The practice of inserting “earmarked” spending into legislation is seen by lawmakers in both parties a birthright power of the purse awarded to Congress by the Founding Fathers.

Earmarks have exploded in number and cost in recent years, accompanied by charges of abuse and public outrage over egregious examples like the proposed “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, which would have cost more than $200 million to serve an island with a population of about 50.

McCain, who has battled with members of both parties over them for years, blamed pork barrel spending for the Republicans losing control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

“This may be the last bastion in America where they don’t get it,” he told reporters after Thursday night’s vote. “Americans are sick and tired of the way we do business in Washington. As president, I promise the American people … the first earmarked, pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk, I’ll veto it.”

I hope he wins and I hope this is a promise he keeps. I actually saw someone write on another website that not all earmarks are bad. Um, yes they are. They are unnecessary spending by the federal government for things that should be paid for by the state or local governments. Sorry, but that just how it is.

The House passed its $3 trillion budget plan by a 212-207 vote. It would provide generous increases to domestic programs but bring the government’s ledger back into the black, but only by letting all of Bush’s tax cuts expire at the end of 2010 as scheduled.

The Senate passed a companion plan by a 51-44 vote. It endorsed extending $340 billion of Bush’s tax cuts but balked at continuing all of them. The competing versions head to talks in which the House is all but certain to accept the Senate’s position endorsing tax cuts for the working poor, married couples, people with children and for those inheriting large estates.

So in the end, rather than cut spending, they increase it, and increase taxes. Increasing spending in areas that James Madison and other Founding Fathers would never have tolerated spending. And to pay for those increases, they increase taxes and then try to tell us they are doing us a favor.

The excess and unnecessary spending is going to destroy this country. It won’t be an outside force. We are doing it to ourselves.

There is a quote, one that has several sources attributed to it, but it is a profound quote. It is necessary to repeat it here as a reference for what is going on in America today. It is generally attributed to Alexander Tytler, but as I noted, the source isn’t definite. It reads:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

I see America on the bridge from apathy to dependence. We are not too far from once again being in bondage.

It is the outrageous spending and the apathy of Americans that is creating this scenario.

Iowa has joined so many other states in telling its citizens they are too stupid to take care of themselves:

Today the Iowa Legislature passed House File 2212, otherwise known as the “Smokefree Air Act.” This bill takes away the rights of business owners to decide what actions can or can not take place in their business. Of course the Iowa Legislature was oblivious to that fact. Now even business owners cannot smoke on their own property. One of the arguments that were used to shove this miscarriage of law down our throats was that it was bad for bar and club employees to be around second hand smoke. My answer to this is that there are other jobs out there, if you don’t want to be around cigarette smoke find another job.

Can anyone explain to me why this is necessary? Isn’t a person smart enough to make a decision for themselves? If you go into a club, and they are smoking, then why can’t you just turn around and walk out? Or not take a job there? Or open your own smoke-free club?

This is supposed to be the land of the free, but it seems to be turning into the land of the swaddled. I don’t need the government to tell me that I should not be around second hand smoke. I can make that decision myself.

In other nanny-state news:

• Peach Pundit talks about Georgia’s fight against obesity with “the SHAPE Act.”
• Secondhand Smoke asks if we are as sick of the nanny state as he is. I know I am.
• An editorial at Courant.com sums up what most of us already think about laws governing a teenager’s behavior: “Parents: Start parenting.“

I try to pace myself on videos, but this one was too funny to pass up.

Is no one responsible for themselves anymore? I am told that things are bad all over America, that people have to choose between food or heat, between food and meds, people who bought houses with ARMs when they knew they didn’t even have a job are losing thier homes…OH WOE IS ME!

Personal responsibility? It doesn’t exist. Take this CNN Piece for instance:

“Veronica McNeil has two kids,” said CNN correspondent Alina Cho. “She recently lost her job. Her husband’s an iron worker and the family is feeling the pinch.”

While McNeil was introduced as struggling financially, she then announced that for the right price she’d buy an unnecessary high-ticket item.

“If I’m here to buy baby stuff and I see a TV at a good sale price, I’ll grab it,” McNeil said.

Cho pointed toward “rising gas and home heating oil prices and Americans losing their homes” for money being “tight.” Unfortunately, Cho entirely missed the personal responsibility angle – if there is something you can’t afford, don’t buy it.

Cho also cited another shopper who complained “it seems like everything I buy is a little more expensive today than it was yesterday.” Still, the man was willing to splurge on a “big TV for the Giants game” because he’s a fan of the team.

(Source.)

Meanwhile, because things are so bad, Congress is offering rebates to the poor, poor citizens, so they can go out and buy a bunch of other crap they can’t afford or don’t need. $193 billion so some jackass doesn’t have to watch the Super Bowl on a regular television. The government is, and has been, reducing the masses to a large collective, a group of dependents.

Give me liberty or give me death? Not anymore. Now it’s, give me a rebate so I can buy that flat screen I wanted. This isn’t what our forefathers died for. This is what Stalin and Lenin dreamed of. A willing group of drones, marching down the road to serfdom.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama plan to institute a universal health care plan when they become president. They pledge to cover every citizen in the United States, but they don’t want us to know one thing: how much it will really cost.

California just had its latest plan for universal health care squashed before it was even voted for. It was not squashed by the RINO governor, but by the Democrats in the California Congress. They looked at the program and saw its fatal flaw. It was just too expensive:

Like collapses in Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, this one crumpled because of the costs, which are always much higher than anticipated. The truth teller was state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who thought to ask about the price tag of a major new entitlement amid what’s already a $14.5 billion budget shortfall.

An independent analysis confirmed the plan would be far more expensive than proponents admitted. Even under the most favorable assumptions, spending would outpace revenue by $354 million after two years, and likely $3.9 billion or more. “A situation that I thought was bad,” Mr. Perata noted, “in fact was worse.”

This reveals that liberal health-care politics is increasingly the art of the impossible: You can’t make coverage “universal” while at the same time keeping costs in check — at least without prohibitive tax increases. Lowering cost and increasing access, in other words, are separate and irreconcilable issues.

With the federal government already $9 trillion in debt, is this really practical? Not in the least, but you can count on either one of these to Saul Alinsky socialists to forget about practicality and implement it anyway, justified by massively increasing the taxes on the wealthy.

It is nothing but socialism and will only make the problem worse, as it has every where it has been tried.

Why do I need a nanny to…

• Count all the calories on a restaurant menu for me?
• protect me from secondhand smoke in my apartment?
• make me wear a seat belt?
• control the temperature in my house?
• keep me from seeing pornography?
• tell me what I can put in my body?
• keep bars smoke-free?
• keep the ice cream truck at bay?
• remind me that McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Hardees are not health food stores?
• tell me when and how to exercise?
• makes sure I get paid a “living wage?”
• manage the number of calories in school vending machines?
• give my kids health care screening, without my consent?
• tell the cook not to use trans fats?
• tell teen age kids they can’t tan?
• protect my kids from just seeing someone smoking?
• tell me how to correct my children?
• keep me from going to an on-line gambling site and putting $100 down on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl?
• encourage me to drink less soda?
• decide how thick my bread gets sliced?
• protect my virgin ears from swear words in a bar?
• tell Santa to wear a seat belt?
• make me look both ways before crossing the street?
• tell me knives are sharp?
• protect my children from birthday celebrations at school?
• make me wear a helmet when I ride a motorcycle?
• make me turn my cell phone off in a movie theater?
• keep my son or daughter from using an aluminum bat?
• protect my kids on Halloween?
• tell me what I can do with who in my house?

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

Seems that diners in the Motor City are not smart enough to choose to eat in a restaurant that offers a non-smoking environment. It seems that employees in Grand Rapids cannot comprehend that they don’t have to work in a place that allows smoking. That has to be the case, that people in Michigan are just stupid and helpless. That’s why the state government feels it needs to tell businesses what they can and can’t do in their establishment:

Smoking in Michigan workplaces, including bars and restaurants, would be banned under legislation passed by the Democratic-led state House.

The vote is a victory for supporters, who have been pushing the measure for a decade.

Isn’t smoking legal? I think it is, right? So why is it that so many governments think they have to ban it in so many places?

Remember the brilliant words of P.J. O’Rourke: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” :

Medicare spends billions of dollars each year on products and services that are available at far lower prices from retail pharmacies and online stores, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times. The government agency has paid above-market costs for dozens of items, a comparison of Medicare figures with retail catalogs finds.

For example, last year Medicare spent more than $21 million on pumps to help older and disabled men attain erections, paying about $450 for the same device that is available online for as little as $108. Even for a simple walking cane, which can be purchased online for about $11, the government pays $20, according to government data.

These widespread price discrepancies, including those for oxygen services, have been noted in dozens of regulatory reports.

The oxygen services he mentions in the last sentence refer to the fact that I personally can go into a pharmacy and purchase a basic oxygen setup for my home, including three years worth of deliveries for around $3,500. The government pays $8,280 for the same deal. No lie.

But adjusting the budget down is dangerous when you are talking about something 43 million Americans are using. The lobbyists associated with companies that make money off Medicare only have to tell seniors that their benefits are being lowered and there is Hell to pay:

“These industries rely on a basic threat: If you mess with us, we can turn the seniors against you,” said former Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, who tried cutting Medicare payments while he was in Congress. “Angering seniors is the quickest route to political suicide.”

And:

While any industry can hire lobbyists, few can marshal tens of thousands of older citizens to accuse politicians of trying to take away their lifelines. That ability, say lawmakers and their staff members, is the real clout of home medical equipment companies and other industries that sell to the elderly.

When Congress proposed cutting oxygen payments last year, for instance, trade groups and companies began warning patients that if the law changed, there might be no one to repair their equipment or provide emergency services.

“I’m scared to death that they are going to cut us off,” said Beverly Karagin of Morning Sun, Iowa, whose husband has used oxygen equipment for about 11 years. Mrs. Karagin wrote her senators and congressman after her oxygen delivery company told her about proposed payment cuts, she said.

“If something goes wrong with the machine and Medicare won’t pay to repair it, my husband could die,” Mrs. Karagin said in an interview. “I told them that this is a matter of life and death.”

Lawmakers say such fears are unfounded. After patients take ownership of the equipment, Medicare pays for repairing machines and backup systems.

Even so, last year “our office received over a thousand phone calls from oxygen patients in two days, and all of them said they were going to die if we passed this law,” said a high-ranking Congressional staff member who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The lobbyists have a lot to lose if they change the way Medicare is funded and distributed. And those running the oxygen companies understand that better than the old folks who are used to keep the money flowing:

Other companies that sell medical equipment have also flourished. More than 114,000 home medical equipment suppliers billed Medicare last year, according to HME News, an industry newsletter. Over 1,500 of them collected more than $1 million. One of the largest oxygen equipment suppliers, the publicly traded Lincare, collected over $789 million from Medicare last year, according to corporate filings.

Large private investment firms have also jumped in. Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a $16 billion private equity group, has invested in numerous companies that profit from Medicare. One of its executives is Thomas A. Scully, who ran Medicare for almost three years, until 2003.

Thank you President Johnson for this Great Society, where my tax dollars can be taken from me and given to an oxygen peddler with an army of scared and angry elderly voters.

Further and further the encroachment continues. First they tell you what you can eat. Then, where you can smoke. They tell you to buckle up and to wear a helmet.

Now, they are coming after your fireplace, all to combat the threat of global warming:

Under the auspices of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, “public hearings” are being held to determine the fate of the family hearth.

Those of us who live in rural areas have a pretty good idea what the outcome is going to be.

Still, in the interest of basic fairness, we’d at least like the decision-makers to employ the rudiments of the scientific method, rather than riding the winds of energy dependence and global warming hysteria, before coming to a final decision.

The scientific method follows a rigid methodology. Ask a question. Do background research. Construct a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. And then, communicate the results.

You are asking political bureaucrats to consider science in making a political decision. Get real.

Meanwhile, centuries of tradition are being tosssed aside for a “crisis” that isn’t real. And he nails it on the head with his last sentence:

We stoke our hearths for two reasons.

First, many rural people burn wood because they can’t afford to heat their old houses with electricity. Many more feel that burning wood does less damage to the planet than increasing their carbon footprint by using so much electricity.

Banning fires would hurt the elderly who live on fixed incomes and the poor in general. It would be an added tax on the rest of us and increase dependence on petroleum.

Second, for many of us, a fire crackling in the fireplace is about a different kind of energy - psychic energy. After a day’s work, is there anything nicer than coming home and having a class of Napa Valley Cabernet in front of a roaring fire?

Rainy Sundays find us stretched out on the couch, newspapers scattered, 49ers on the TV, and a fire roaring in the fireplace.

On wintry school nights, our children used to come down into the living room to do their homework in front of the fire as my wife and I read.

During the energy crisis in California, our family closed the parlor doors and gathered in one tiny room around the fire. it was a scene out of a Jane Austin novel. Five of us read, played chess, did homework and paid bills, in a chilly room heated only by our tiny hearth.

Never was our family closer. The fire was more than a source of heat. It was a mystical, magical magnet of love, warmth and togetherness.

We worry that the real issue here isn’t about health, global warming or energy savings, but about control.

It is absolutely about control. As is all this global warming propaganda.

“The Nature Boy” Ric Flair has joined with Chuck Norris and Ted Nugent in endorsing the Arkansas Bad Boy Mike Huckabee.

First it was martial arts hero and “Walker, Texas Ranger” star Chuck Norris, who appears with Huckabee in his first TV ad.

Then hard-rocking hunting enthusiast Ted Nugent jumped on the Huckabee bandwagon, citing the Republican’s support for second amendment rights.

Now, Huckabee is getting ready to rumble: wrestler Ric Flair, a.k.a. The Nature Boy, is supporting the former Arkansas governor in his bid for the White House.

I personally have already written off Huckabee. I like his support of the Fair Tax, but this is a big problem for me:

It’s really bad Huckabee wants to make fatty foods, smoking, and other similar pleasurable vices off-limits. If not for the mile-wide nanny state streak in him, he’d be a great candidate.

I agree. The nanny-state does not need an advocate in the White House. What we need is a person in the White House who understand we don’t need the government to run our lives and can keep America safer than putting Huckabee’s supporters on the borders.

Hat Tip: The Sundries Shack

Kurt Loder, who you may know from MTV News, is an outspoken Libertarian. This interview was recorded this October at the conference Reason in DC. It’s an interesting anti-nanny-state interview.