The usual response to concerns about the months-long waiting lists for surgery in Canada and Britain is that this is a mere inconvenience, a small price to pay for universal “free” care. If you have a really serious need, you’ll get immediate attention—or so Michael Moore and others tell us. Continue reading
Category Archives: socialized medicine
Myth 4: Infant mortality is lower in other countries because they have “universal” tax-funded medical care, and the U.S. does not.
A number of countries report lower infant mortality than the U.S., but it has nothing to do with the source of payment for medical care. Continue reading
Stop the Senate From Sneaking Socialized Medicine into the Budget Today
URGENT ACTION NEEDED!
Stop the Senate From Sneaking Socialized Medicine into the Budget Today
Contact your Senators NOW – the vote could come any time
[SCROLL DOWN TO BOTTOM OF PAGE TO POST YOUR COMMENTS]
The Senate is voting on amendments to the Budget Bill even as we send out this message, and there is one extremely important vote later today that could help stop socialized medicine from becoming the law of the land.
Sen. James DeMint (R-SC) has offered the “Healthcare Freedom Amendment, SA 853, that would prohibit the government from forcing you into “government-managed, rationed health care.”
WE CANNOT LET THIS OPPORTUNITY SLIP AWAY
Just yesterday, the Senate voted down an amendment from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) that would have thrown a big roadblock in the way of any plans for government rationing through “Comparative Effectiveness Research,” or CER. That was defeated along party lines.
CALL YOUR SENATORS RIGHT NOW TELL THEM TO VOTE “YES” ON THE “HEALTH CARE FREEDOM AMENDMENT,
SA 853 ON THE BUDGET.
The lines are extremely busy, so tell the receptionist you would like to leave a message with the staff member responsible for the budget. Tell them you support the Healthcare Freedom Amendment, SA 853, because it would strip out language that would open the door to socialized medicine. Leave your name and a phone number.
CONGRESSIONAL SWITCHBOARD:
(202) 224-3121
SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE TO COMMENT ON THIS AMENDMENT OR THE BUDGET
TEXT OF SEN. DeMINT’S HEALTHCARE FREEDOM AMENDMENT, SA 853:
SEC. __. POINT OF ORDER AGAINST LEGISLATION THAT DECREASES THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS ENROLLED IN PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE WHILE INCREASING THE NUMBER ENROLLED IN GOVERNMENT-MANAGED, RATIONED HEALTH CARE.
(a) In General.–In the Senate, it shall not be in order, to consider any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance plans, while increasing the number of Americans enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).
(b) Waiver.–This section may be waived or suspended only by an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the Members, duly chosen and sworn.
(c) Appeals.–An affirmative vote of three-fifths of the Members of the Senate, duly chosen and sworn, shall be required to sustain an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order raised under this section.
SENATE VOTES ON HEALTHCARE RATIONING
Efforts to Oppose Defeated Along Party Lines
April 2, 2009 — The Senate had a flurry of voting on amendments to the Budget Bill yesterday, including one extremely important vote that could have helped to stop government rationing of medical care.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) offered an amendment , SA 793, that would have thrown a big roadblock in the way of any plans for government rationing through “Comparative Effectiveness Research,” or CER.
The stimulus bill passed with $1.1 billion allocated for CER to compare the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of medical services. That money sets the stage for a health rationing bureaucracy.
Yesterday on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Kyl and his colleague Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) expressed their concern that CER would be used to justify rationing by comparing costs, rather than effectiveness. Sen. Roberts compared it to giving away the “golden ring” to bureaucrats.
The language of Sen. Kyl’s amendment was simple: it would have prohibited the government from denying care to patients just to save money based on CER studies.
Queues cost Canadians more than $750 million in 2008; more than 30,000 seek treatment abroad
Although the public system seems to save money by restricting access to medical care, private persons pay the cost.
In 2008, an estimated 750,794 Canadians were waiting for treatment after an appointment with a specialist. Using a Statistics Canada finding that 11% of people are adversely affected by waiting for elective surgery, Maureen Hazel and Nadeem Esmail of the Fraser Institute calculate that lost productivity costs Canadians $751 million in 2008.
This does not include the cost of care provided by family members or the non-monetary medical costs of adverse events or death due to treatment delay.
It is difficult to determine how many Canadians seek treatment abroad rather than awaiting their turn, but Hazel and Esmail estimate that more than 30,000 Canadians received care abroad in 2008.
“The calculations provide some insight into the number of Canadians who might choose to stay in Canada and pay for treatment in their home province, if only that province’s government would deviate from the status quo and allow them to do so.” This is a significant economic loss to Canada.
This number represents about 0.8% of all patients in Canada. It is a slight decrease from the 1.2% who went abroad for nonemergency treatment in 2007. The decrease occurred at a time when the median wait time for medically necessary procedures dropped by about 7 days: from 128 days to 121 days between a primary physician’s referral and treatment.
The improvement in wait times is minimal even though the Canadian government is devoting record amounts of tax receipts to the medical system. (Fraser Forum , December 2008).
Additional information:
Universal care striking out in “laboratories of democracy”
Hawaii is ending the only state universal child health-care program in the country, after just 7 months.
The Keiki (Child) Care Plan was designed to offer health care insurance to the children of parents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid or Hawaii’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but are felt not to be able to afford private coverage.
State officials found that families were dropping private coverage in order to enroll their children in the “free” plan In fact 85 percent of the children in Keiki Care were previously in a private, nonprofit plan costing $55 per month. Facing budgetary shortfalls, Governor Linda Lingle pulled the plug on funding.
“All this is a lesson for political leaders in Washington who are drafting plans now to expand SCHIP to children in families earning up to $82,000 a year or more. That expansion would wind up doing what Keiki Care did: mainly crowd out the private coverage that millions of middle-income kids already have,” writes Grace-Marie Turner (NY Post 10/27/08).
According to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, SCHIP crowds out private insurance 60 percent of the time. California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin have turned back from major efforts to approach universal coverage because of the prohibitive cost. Massachusetts officials no longer claim that such a goal is even possible, Turner writes.
Two Massachusetts safety-net hospitals, Boston Medical Center and Cambridge Health Alliance, will be cutting programs because of state cuts of more than $200 million in payments to Medicaid providers (Boston Globe 10/17/08).
Designed to cover 3,500 children, Keiki Care was a small-scale program. Fiscal problems were evident when only 2,000 children had enrolled. Larger programs lead to fiscal disaster (Investors Business Daily 10/20/08).
Tennessee’s disastrous experiment with universal coverage “forced dozens of hospitals out of business, pushed thousands of doctors and other health care professionals out of the state, destroyed any semblance of competitive health insurance market, and nearly drove the state government into bankruptcy,” writes Patrick Poole (American Thinker 1/17/07).
The state budget was in such straits that a state income tax was proposed, precipitating the Tennessee Tax Revolt of 2000. Thousands of citizens swarmed into downtown Nashville, and traffic came to a virtual standstill, as cars blared their horns from 7:30 a.m. well into the night. Legislators abandoned the income tax proposal and fled. Poole described it as the “most exhilarating experience I have been privileged to…witness….” Democrat Gov. Phil Bredesen was forced to dismantle TennCare piecemeal.
People like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who proposed to inflict state health insurance on all residents of California, including illegal aliens, should go to Tennessee if they need a heart valve replaced, suggests Poole, to see first-hand the results of universal health care.
Additional information: