Liberals eat their own
Jun 28, 2009 Political
In the run up to a vote on a healthcare bill that would break the bank, (at least the one that exists in liberal minds), several Democrats are finally beginning to have reservations about where the money is coming from- questions they truly should have voiced six months ago, when all this tax and spend action began.
Ben Nelson, Diane Feinstein, Mary Landreiu, have all been the targets of MoveOn. org and other socialistic organizations, including the SEIU, the union that does the cleaning in hotels, empties the trash, etc. This would be richly entertaining, but for the deadly seriousness of the situation our government finds itself in- besieged by special interests on the left. Lobbyists are creating attack ads against the members of their party that these Special Interests have deemed to not be in sufficient lockstep with the more liberal and socialistic among them.
The attacks — ranging from tart news releases to full-fledged advertising campaigns — have elicited rebuttals from lawmakers and sparked a debate inside the party over the best strategy for achieving President Obama’s top priority of a comprehensive health-system overhaul.
The rising tensions between Democratic legislators and constituencies that would typically be their natural allies underscore the high hurdles for Obama as he tries to hold together a diverse, fragile coalition. Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of “true health reform,” but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.
In recent days — and during this week’s congressional recess — left-leaning bloggers and grass-roots organizations such as MoveOn.org, Health Care for America Now and the Service Employees International Union have singled out Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Arlen Specter(Pa.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) for the criticism more often reserved for opposition party members.
washingtonpost.com
I don’t know- did it not used to be that a person’s opinion was their own, and while one might disagree, one also respected the freedom to express said opinion? Well, apparently, according to MoveOn.org, not so much anymore. If a member of the Democratic Party is suspected of not toeing the party line very tightly, they are targeted for punishment. How communistic of you, comrade- I am sure your fellow travelers are wondering if the path they have chosen is worth the deceptions they have been playing on the American public.
The Web-based MoveOn.org plans to run ads this week against Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) over the issue.
“The Democrats were voted into office to fix this problem,” said MoveOn political advocacy director Ilyse Hogue. “It is absolutely our job to hold them accountable.”
One Democratic strategist who is working full-time on health reform was apoplectic over what he called wasted time, energy and resources by the organizations.
The strategist, who asked for anonymity because he was criticizing colleagues, said: “These are friends of ours. I would much rather see a quiet call placed by [Obama chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel saying this isn’t helpful. Instead, we try to decimate them?”
washingtonpost.com
Now that some of the Democratic party is beginning to have doubts, we will see the true nature of this beast we now call Liberalism. As the surrogates for Hussein, the MoveOns, the SEIUs, the ACORNs of this world ramp up their hate to whip their fellow dupes in line, the rest of America will be witness to the raw power grab this has become, as these people do all they can to subvert the Constitution by making laws designed to go around the Constitution’s true intent.
Will enough people wake up and heed the call to action, the urgent need to come together to save our Constitution? The Constitution has been there for us, in good times and bad, it has saved us from our excesses before, but never before have we been put to sleep with rampant consumerism, sitting in front of our flat- screen TVs, tuning out the real world, because it doesn’t fit into a half- hour sit- com.
Thomas Paine wrote of kings and royalty, “Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
Strong words- he could as easily have been talking about our “royalty” of today- the liberals who are pushing this suicidal agenda.
They are indeed, Legends In Their Own Minds, nightmares in ours.
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: bankruptcy, healthcare, liberals, socialism
Government Healthcare- Yeah, That’s The Ticket
Jun 21, 2009 Political
Hussein wants everybody to get healthcare, and to that end he is willing to tax you to death, no matter how much money you make, in contravention of his promises- but then, who really believes this serial liar ever tells the truth?
All of this trouble for healthcare just like the VA- oh joy! There are some who tout the VA as a much improved healthcare facility, and that the level of care has improved so much that it rivals private care. Oh really?
For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off.
Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate.
It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear.
He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators said.
The revision may have made Dr. Kao look better, but it did nothing for the patient, who had to undergo a second implant. It failed, too, resulting in an unintended dose to the rectum. Regulators knew nothing of this second mistake because no one reported it.
nytimes.com
This is just one example of a VA mistake, and I am not saying all VA doctors or procedures are so horribly flawed, but there are enough of them to fill a portfolio, even just at this one hospital.
Two years later, in 2005, Dr. Kao rewrote another surgical plan after putting half the seeds in the wrong organ. Once again, regulators did not object.
Had the government responded more aggressively, it might have uncovered a rogue cancer unit at the hospital, one that operated with virtually no outside scrutiny and botched 92 of 116 cancer treatments over a span of more than six years — and then kept quiet about it, according to interviews with investigators, government officials and public records.
The team continued implants for a year even though the equipment that measured whether patients received the proper radiation dose was broken. The radiation safety committee at the Veterans Affairs hospital knew of this problem but took no action, records show.
nytimes.com
One has to wonder- the hospital did nothing to correct the damage, nor did they discipline the Doctor- they didn’t even fix the machine that would have regulated the radiation dosage. That’s malpractice on a grand scale, but then they are the government and they are here to help, right?
The 92 implant errors resulted from a systemwide failure in which none of the safeguards that were supposed to protect veterans from poor medical care worked, an examination by The New York Times has found.
Peer review, a staple of every good hospital, in which colleagues examine one another’s work, did not exist in the unit. The V.A.’s radiation safety program; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates the use of all nuclear materials; and the Joint Commission, a group that accredited the hospital, all failed to intervene; either their inspections had been limited or they had not acted decisively upon finding problems.
Over all, the implant program lacked a “safety culture,” the nuclear commission found. Dr. Kao and other members of his team, the commission said, were not properly supervised or trained in what constitutes a substandard implant and the need to report it. Dr. Kao declined to comment for this article.
Virtually none of the substandard implants in Philadelphia were reported to the nuclear commission, meaning errors went uninvestigated for weeks, months and sometimes years. During that time, many patients did not know that their cancer treatments were flawed.
nytimes.com
There should have been a peer review, but this being a government- run facility, the “peer review” was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But the chief regulator is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Serious accidents involving radioactive materials must be reported to that agency, which has the power to investigate and levy fines. Congress receives an annual list of those accidents.
After learning of Dr. Kao’s error, V.A. officials thought that because he had revised his surgical plan while still in the operating room, the mistake did not exist. The nuclear commission agreed, on the ground that doctors needed freedom to revise their surgical plan depending on what they found during surgery.
Yet this case did not involve a new diagnostic interpretation: it was an implant mistake, causing the patient to return for another procedure.
nytimes.com
It constantly amazes me when left wing morons claim that government really works well, and that government healthcare will improve our lives. How? By implanting radioactive pellets everywhere but where they might actually do some good? By cutting off the wrong appendage? All of you people who might be concerned about that should know that the government is rarely able to be sued- it likes to wrap itself in the flag of “Immunity” from lawsuits, and I am sure that this would continue to be the case as we go forward.
But I guess that all the C- med students have to practice somewhere, I just think that our service men and women deserve more from our government than that.
Heck, the rest of us deserve more than this, come to think of it.
Just say no to government healthcare.
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: healthcare, malpractice, VA hospital
Health Care- Really?
May 11, 2009 Political
It looks like health care reform is the next shoe to drop in Barama’s quest for total control, and the tax hikes he will have to enact will be huge, and not just on the top earners, but on down the line, as there will be such costs that the amount will bleed down to the lower tax levels. This is inevitable, and perhaps it will come about, but it should make us pause and think- think about the past.
When you (and I) were young, we had no insurance- we sat at home, and suffered through myriad colds, sore throats, strep throat, scrapes, bruises, and many mostly minor ailments that today, if we have insurance, we go see the doctor for. In the last twelve years, I have seen the doctors more than I ever had before.
A part of this is the process of getting older and having parts go out on me- just flat wear out from thirty- odd years of hard physical labor, and a part of this was unexpectedly surgical. But about two years ago, I said, “enough!”- I had had cancer surgery, and was clear, and the insurance companies had a deal where you (and I) had to be free of cancer for five years before they would think of insuring us again. After the five years had passed, I applied again, but was told that now the rule was ten years. When ten years had passed, I found that they would cover me, except for cancer, and the cost was way too high for basically no coverage. Enough!
So, in a funk, I began to think back to my youth and my family’s past. My father was not poor- not rich, but not poor. Still, we had life insurance, property insurance, and auto insurance, but we did not have health insurance. Doctor’s visits were considerably cheaper than they are now, and there was an x- ray machine in the office, and the doctor knew how to read said x-ray, all for no additional charge. I know this because I was in construction, and had to be x-rayed for fractures once. The total costs for that visit- $60.
Now, if you go to a doctor, you pay that doc, then get referred to a radiology clinic, where you pay another charge to the clinic for the use of the facility. Then you get at least one bill from any doctor who happened to walk by your x-ray and felt like they should be paid. Then you have to go back to the first doctor, so he can tell you what the x-ray tech said about the x-ray. Now, I don’t know about you, but that is about three steps too many, and at least two too many hands out for your (my) money.
This isn’t streamlining anything, or cutting costs, and a lot of this is the fault of the insurance industry, but let’s not omit the Physicians and their education, or lack thereof.
The insurance industry routinely pays half of what a physician or clinic or hospital charges- they “settle” for half, and the various healthcare industries have learned to charge twice what the visit is worth, which is truly tough on those who have no insurance. Yes, there are some doctors who know this, and when you say you are “self paying”, they drop the amount of charges, in order to accommodate the lack of insurance. Other clinics will charge an uninsured person outrageously. They just do not care.
The fact that there is a two tier system, where doctors charge a real price and an inflated price, means trouble in River City- there should never be a two tier system. The insurance companies are getting soaked by high prices, and they are allowing this. When you add the unnecessary trips- the colds, the minor coughs, the muscle sprains and aches that only time will heal- that add to the insurance costs, well, its only logical that sooner or later we would have a problem with the cost of insurance. The more you use something, the more it will cost.
When you have auto insurance, you do not take your car in for a minor scratch, you either repair it yourself, or you live with it,because that scratch does not impact the use of your car. The same could, and should be said of minor ailments. We are overusing the health insurance option here, and then we wonder at the price.
Some of us need insurance, some need it less, and some need hardly any at all. I went without insurance for thirty years at least, because I was young, I was healthy, and my immune system was something else- I had no colds, no coughs, no really bad infections during that time. I was fortunate, to be sure, but this is true by and large, for most young people, and that’s the way it should be. With the exception of dental insurance, young people need less insurance as a general rule than others.
The fact remains though, that in general, we, as a people are overusing the insurance option, and we need to learn to use it less. Perhaps then, the companies could charge us less, especially if the hospitals would charge real world prices, and the doctors could learn to read x-rays themselves, and cut out the middleman.
By the way, Doctors can score a C- on their finals, and still hold your life in their hands- and they get mad when I ask them what their final grade was- I guess I have no bedside manner.
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: double-billing, healthcare, insurance