One of the more important battles of the next few years is going to be health care reform. I’ve mentioned before I’m opposed to any kind of government run socialized health care system. I have relatives in Canada so my perspective on socialized medicine is a little more direct than most… Suffices to say be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
The Wall Street Journal and American Thinker have both published must read essays on health care recently, if haven’t read them you should.
First is Carol Peracchio’s January 7th essay at American Thinker.com:
Take Two Aspirin and Call Your Congressman in the Morning
When President-Elect Obama nominated Tom Daschle to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he proclaimed the former Senate Majority Leader: “one of America’s foremost health care experts.” Obama stated Daschle will be the “lead architect” of the administration’s health care plan. As a nurse, I am always concerned when the government announces it has plans for our health care, so I decided to investigate Mr. Daschle’s ideas. I read his book Critical: What We Can Do about the Health-Care Crisis.
Senator Daschle wrote his book with 2 other experts, Scott S. Greenberger and Jeanne M. Lambrew. According to the flyleaf, Greenberger is a reporter and consultant. Lambrew is a senior fellow. Tom Daschle, of course, is a former US Senator and now a visiting professor and Distinguished Senior Fellow. The back cover of the book has advance praise from 3 senators, a former White House chief of staff, yet another senior fellow, and a professor/dean at a public policy institute.
To paraphrase a famous quote by Sam Rayburn, “They may be just as intelligent as you say. But I’d feel a helluva lot better if just one of them had ever emptied a bedpan.” Read the rest…
Second is Congressman Tom Price’s Op Ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
The GOP Should Fight Health-Care Rationing
Obama’s HMO deserves principled opposition.
By Tom Price, Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2009
Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of the past eight years was the chance for Republicans to fundamentally reform the terribly broken American health-care system. Access to quality health care has long been a professed priority, yet Republicans have been reluctant to tackle the issue.
As a physician, this is deeply disappointing to me because patient-centered health care is, at its core, conservative. Health care is fundamentally a personal relationship between patients and doctors. To honor this relationship — consistent with Republican ideals — our goal should be to provide a system that allows access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans, in a way that ensures medical decisions are made in doctors’ offices, not Washington.
Republican unwillingness to address the issue, however, has left us facing an emboldened Democratic Party well equipped to push a government-centered health-care agenda. While Democrats are still dangerously misguided in their policies, this time they are prepared to avoid the political mistakes of the Clinton administration. Read the rest…
And finally Scott Gottlieb’s Op Ed from today’s Wall Street Journal:
What Medicaid Tells Us About Government Health Care
Why would Obama want to build on a system with poor outcomes?
By Scott Gottlieb, Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2009
Medicaid provides coverage to poor and disabled Americans, many of whom face the highest burden of chronic disease owing to cultural and socioeconomic challenges. The program beats being uninsured, but it often relegates the poor to inferior care.
Reimbursement rates are so low, and billing the program so complicated, that it is hard for internists like me to get beneficiaries access to specialized care or timely interventions. For my patients as well, many of whom are uneducated or don’t speak English, Medicaid is replete with paperwork, regulations and rejections that make the program hard to navigate.
Now Medicaid is to receive a bolus of federal money, probably as part of the fiscal stimulus plan — the figure whispered in Washington is $100 billion — with no obligation that the program does anything to reverse its decline. Read the rest…
From my perspective one of the problems we face in the health care debate is that a great many people have an unrealistic expectation of what their health insurance should cover. I have private health care insurance and I’m happy with it. It’s not cheap, it costs me roughly $600.00 a quarter and I have to pay $5000.00 deductible in a calendar year.
That’s fine I don’t mind paying out pocket for routine office visits or prescription drugs. All I want from my health insurance is protection from catastrophic expenses and that’s exactly what it provides.
Mr. Setaro,
As a followup to Carol Peracchio’s submission;
I have seen my beautiful wife become entangled in the same. She is the only daughter and youngest sibling that was blessed to have great parents and a father who was a Dentist.
In her first career she was given the opportunity to train at the highest level of Ballet at the American Ballet Theater in Manhattan during the tenure of Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. She is a gifted cook, and quality hostess that can put on a ‘tea’ and has the etiquette and training to be at the White House. She is sweet spirited, caring and kind. She attends Church twice a week as well as special gatherings. A well gifted persona.
That was until the last political election.
Now she is outspoken about what is happening to our country. She yells at the screen and when President Obama comes on TV she will not watch it and will walk out of the room with our senior citizen cats, Bert & Ernie, following her!
I continue to pray……
Respectfully,
Frank J. Selvaggi
—– Forwarded Message —-
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:20:10 PM
Subject: Article: A Nation of Yellers
August 25, 2009
A Nation of Yellers
By Carol Peracchio
The intelligentsia on the left are baffled. It’s written on the faces of the congresspeople facing their previously docile, obedient and blessedly ignorant constituents.
What the heck happened? Who and what ARE these “constituents” showing up at my townhall?
Bob Beckel, appearing on Fox News, dismissed the idea that the crowds at the town hall meetings were “spontaneous”: “[F]or anybody who believes that these things are not organized, I used to do this for a living. I used to get these town meetings organized with my grassroots company.”
Note to David Axelrod: Time to hire Bob Beckel and his grassroots company to get the pro-healthcare reform protestors to the townhall meetings. Whoever’s organizing them now is doing a dismal job.
Since President Obama’s inauguration I have been to two tea parties and a health care protest at our Congressman’s office. I can assure Mr. Beckel that a mere phone call, even from Saul Alinsky himself, would not have been enough incentive to get me there. Why? Because it has to be life or death for me to overcome my phobia of finding a parking spot downtown. And yet, there I was, during rush hour on a hot July afternoon, holding my sign and waving at traffic. Next to me was another Mob Activist — a sweet elderly lady, dressed to the nines in a mint green pantsuit, carrying a neatly hand-lettered sign, an American flag, and over her arm: her handbag.
I can see why Rahm Emmanuel is so petrified.
So what kind of situation compels elderly women and middle-aged nurses, normally very polite people, to brave the horrors of driving into the city to stand in the heat and protest? As a nurse, I’ve observed this 180 degree change in behavior frequently, starting in nursing school. For example, I remember a delightful courtly gentleman admitted for surgery who started snarling obscenities and refusing to take his medications post-op. I asked my nursing instructor about this, thinking perhaps the patient was suffering some kind of neurological problem or medication side effect. The wise instructor explained that the patient was reacting to being completely powerless. Two days earlier my patient was in control of his life. He made his own decisions. Now he was reduced to asking an 18 year old student nurse for help to the bathroom.
One year ago we Americans felt, perhaps naively, that we had some control over our lives. Then last September, we were told the world was ending and the cost of stopping Armageddon was 700 billion dollars. We called, faxed, and emailed Congress. We begged them to slow down. We did everything that had worked so well during the comprehensive immigration reform fight. But it didn’t work last September, and on October 3, 2008, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was passed by Congress. Our representatives tried to explain their votes by telling us they had information we weren’t privy to.
Just trust us.
For the first time, I felt American citizens were powerless.
Next up: Stimulus, or as the Democrats refer to it, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Once again, we phoned, faxed and emailed. There was some consolation when no Republicans in the House supported it. But three Republican Senators ignored millions of us. My sense of helplessness and frustration grew as I contemplated that. 787 billion dollars in pork, vehemently opposed by so many, could have been stopped but for three Senators who arrogantly believed they were in possession of wisdom far beyond their constituents and their party.
On to the Omnibus Budget. Same opposition, same results. But by now the “patient” was starting to get a little acrimonious. On April 15th, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered for Tea Parties. The party I attended had over 1000 people in a very liberal small city. Professionally organized, Mr. Beckel? I don’t think so! The sound system consisted of a bullhorn.
My nursing instructor taught me something very important about my angry patient: Never forget that under the tubes, wires, and dressings is a person. He’s not the “fractured hip in 301 B”. He’s a grandfather, or a retired salesman, or so many other things.
So how did the President and his fellow liberals in Congress and the media react to the tea partiers? It would have been bad enough if they’d just ignored us, steamrolling over our protests. No, they decided to mock us, referring to us as “teabaggers”. A freshman studying Psychology 101 could have told these brilliant strategists that belittling fellow citizens and their concerns is no way to win support. One of the first things nurses learn in caring for the angry patient is to acknowledge their feelings. “I hear how frustrating this must be for you.” It’s much too late now, but sometimes I wonder if President Obama’s agenda might be sailing through if he’d handled his opponents with a little grace and class last spring.
When Cap and Trade passed the House, the game was over. Americans now knew that emails, faxes and phone calls meant nothing to Washington, DC. Like the patient who has pressed the call bell for 20 minutes with no answer, we Americans started doing the only thing we had left.
We yelled.
That’s what the town halls are. We’re Moms, Dads, grandparents, neighbors. When the nurse doesn’t respond, when your kid doesn’t answer, when customer service puts you on hold for the third time, what does the average American do? He yells. We’re a nation of yellers. I like to think that’s how we started, by a bunch of colonials at Lexington and Concord who decided to yell. Like England, the Democrats should be concerned. Once Americans have started yelling, revolutionary things start happening.
Carol Peracchio is a registered nurse.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/a_nation_of_yellers.html