Rodmond Huska, a man from Winnipeg, Manitoba, became ill with a bladder infection in May while visitng Colorado. He passed away on June 24, still in Colorado.
Why didn’t Rodmond go home? Winnipeg hospitals had no bed to put him in. Instead of spending his last month with family and friends, Rodmond and his family spent it fighting with Manitoba’s health care system so that he could go home.
There’s an interesting pushback against nationalized health care, coming from the state legislature in Arizona and the governor’s office in Texas. Meanwhile, state legislators across the country have also expressed their concern. Now, the idea of state action has taken root in Utah.
In "Fannie Med? Why a 'Public Option' is Hazardous to Your Health," there is an interesting admission by the White House regarding President Obama’s promise to Americans that they will not lose health care that they are happy with.
It’s not surprising that Americans don’t believe the president when he says that they will be able to keep their coverage. Even if the Congressional Budget Office weren’t reporting on reform proposals, in the past, Mr. Obama — and many members of his government – have been strong supporters of implementing single-payer health care, similar to the system in Canada, in the United States — even if they have to bring it about slowly through creation of a public option.
The UK’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to reduce the number of steroid injections to treat chronic back pain for which the cause is not known. The reason? NICE hopes that the new policy will help get health care costs in its public system under control.
In this video, an undercover camera goes along on the attempts of three men to get health care in Canada.
Actual nurses and doctors told the guys filming a few interesting things:
The video’s a bit silly, but the insight you get into what is “the norm” in the system by listening to Canadian medical workers makes it well worth watching.
One of the common misconceptions about health insurance is that health insurers, like auto insurers, can drop their clients at any point if they become too risky. In fact, health insurers must honor their plans with their policy-holders as long as the customers are up-to-date with all payments and contractual obligations.
The Washington Policy Center has released a three-part video set on health care reform.
Highlights include a shot of the actual health care bill — over 1,000 pages (no wonder there is concern it won’t be read!), an excerpt from a list of what the current legislation would pay for — including street lights and farmers’ markets — and a practical list of solutions for health reform that would avoid many of the problems of the current reform plans.
Many Americans believe that the high costs of health care are bringing about more instances of bankruptcy across the country, especially as the number of uninsured Americans rises in the recession.
According to Brett Skinner of the Fraser Institute, however, there is no evidence that this is the case — or at least, there is no evidence that reducing the number of uninsured Americans and further socializing the health care system would limit bankruptcies.
CNN Money reports on the five freedoms Americans would lose if the current congressional health care reform plan were put through:
These freedoms are significant for one very important reason: The freedoms to choose what’s in your plan, to choose a high deductible plan and to benefit from the lower health care costs incurred by someone who lives a healthy life are all freedoms that lead to choices that promote lower health care costs. Losing these freedoms in the process of reforming health care would push up health care costs even though the purpose of the reforms is to bring these costs down.
Proponents of Obamacare believe that reforms to the health care system can bring down or eliminate unnecessary costs in health care and that by facilitating these changes, the government can bring overall health spending under control and create economic stimulus and universal insurance coverage in the process.
Marianne Skogh is an 83-year old Swedish woman who suffered from spinal stenosis.
Skogh waited over a year to see a specialist under Sweden’s public health care system, only to be told that, though the pain and numbness in her legs was something that could be treated, she was too old to undergo that treatment.
Two Michigan legislators, Rep. David Camp and Rep. Fred Upton, have signed a pledge being circulated by Let Freedom Ring regarding the passage of any health care reform legislation.
The pledge that these representatives has made is a small but significant one: They have promised that they will not vote on any health care legislation unless they have read it. They have also committed to making legislation available to the public before voting.
In his latest column for Reason Magazine, John Stossel brings up an important point about health reform cost predictions:
What will the actual price tag be for a plan estimated to cost $1.5 trillion? Let’s hope Americans don’t have to find out.
With the recent Rasmussen poll that suggests 53 percent of Americans are at least somewhat opposed to congressional plans to reform health care as the latest evidence that Americans are skeptical of governments’ plans to take on a greater role in that sector of the economy, it’s curious that President Obama continues to push for health reform before the fall.
Senator Carl Levin thinks that President Obama needs to proceed with caution on health care reform:
Sen. Levin has an important opportunity to push for the kinds of reforms that do help to lower the costs of health insurance: opposing community ratings systems, pushing for interstate competition in health insurance and lowering or removing coverage mandates that push up premiums.
The New York Times reports that Massachusetts will be cutting care for over 30,000 legal immigrants in the state. Although they hold green cards, they’ve done so for less than five years and as such, these taxpayers will no longer qualify for the benefits afforded to the rest of the state — though they’ll continue to pay for them.
America’s new cap-and-trade system for energy as a result of the Waxman-Marxley legislation is designed to reduce energy use. It does this by increasing the price of energy through rationing — that is, putting a cap on energy use. After this cap is in place, the market must readjust to a new, higher cost of energy.
Some materials from the Grand Rapids Health Care Roundtable are now available online:
America’s 45 million uninsured are often touted as the main reason that the government needs to introduce a public health insurance option and overhaul the health care system.
There is considerable doubt that there really are 45 million chronically uninsured Americans. In Michigan, although Gov. Jennifer Granholm says that there are 1.1 million, some (like former Rep. Bruce Caswell) have estimated that the number is more like 200,000. Nationally, it’s been found that many are not American citizens, some already qualify for Medicaid but don’t apply, and some simply have other priorities.
NICE, or the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, is a British authority that is in charge of making sure that the country’s national health care system uses “best practices” to “root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere.”
What are the differences between health care in Massachusetts, a state that has implemented many of the President’s proposed health care reforms, and Georgia, a considerably less regulated state?
Much like the health care systems in other countries with socialized health insurance markets, costs are higher and wait times are longer in a more regulated state.
John Goodman, one of the best writers on health care policy, wrote an interesting piece on the social cost of health care reform.
As Gregory Mankiw explained in a recent New York Times editorial, if we want to shift costs, we do not need monopsonistic buying power. We could simply impose a tax on all the providers and use the proceeds to subsidize the health care purchases of patients. Good for patients and bad for doctors, perhaps. But since the gains and losses cancel out, the benefits for society as a whole are nil.
More myths debunked last week in this column by George Newman in the Wall Street Journal. My favorite excerpts:
In other words, you can keep your current plan if it (and the company offering it) is still around. This is not a trivial qualification. Proponents have clearly learned from the HillaryCare debacle in the 1990s that radical transformation does not sell. What we have instead is what came to be dubbed “salami tactics” in postwar Eastern Europe where Communist leaders took away freedoms one at a time to minimize resistance and obscure the ultimate goal. If nothing else, a century of vain attempts to break the Post Office monopoly should teach us how welcoming Congress is to competition to one of its high-cost, inefficient wards.
Shikha Dalmia had a brilliant column in Forbes last week, reprinted at Reason this week, on “Obama’s top five lies” about health care:
You can read why you ought to regard these claims as dubious by reading her full column.
