Tag Archives: Care

News

Paul Ryan explains why Republicans are doing what they promised to do

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Rep. Paul Ryan - GOP Ideas Man
Rep. Paul Ryan - GOP Ideas Man

Here’s the video from The Blog Prof.

Paul Ryan is going to do it because he said he would do it.

If you would like to understand what consumer-driven health care is, read this post from the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

If policymakers are serious about real patient-centered, consumer-driven health care reform, they should ensure that their legislative proposals embody six key principles:

  • Individuals are the key decision makers in the health care system. This would be a major departure from conventional third-party pay­ment arrangements that dominate today’s health care financing in both the public and the private sectors. In a normal market based on personal choice and free-market competition, consumers drive the system.
  • Individuals buy and own their own health insurance coverage. In a normal market, when individuals exchange money for a good or service, they acquire a property right in that good or ser­vice, but in today’s system, individuals and families rarely have property rights in their health insur­ance coverage. The policy is owned and controlled by a third party, either their employers or govern­ment officials. In a reformed system, individuals would own their health insurance, just as they own virtually every other type of insurance in virtually every other sector of the economy.
  • Individuals choose their own health insur­ance coverage. Individuals, not employers or government officials, would choose the health care coverage and level of coverage that they think best. In a normal market, the primacy of consumer choice is the rule, not the exception.
  • Individuals have a wide range of coverage choices. Suppliers of medical goods and ser­vices, including health plans, could freely enter and exit the health care market.
  • Prices are transparent. As in a normal market, individuals as consumers would actually know the prices of the health insurance plan or the medical goods and services that they are buying. This would help them to compare the value that they receive for their money.
  • Individuals have the periodic opportunity to change health coverage. In a consumer-driven health insurance market, individuals would have the ability to pick a new health plan on predict­able terms. They would not be locked into past decisions and deprived of the opportunity to make future choices.

And if you’re looking for a nice short podcast on consumer-driven health care, go right here.

If you want a book on this, you can get Regina Hertzlinger’s book (interview here), although I read it, and I found it filled with too many case studies and stories and not enough policy analysis.

UPDATE:

More Paul Ryan: (H/T Hyscience)

And some Michele Bachmann: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

And the House votes to repeal Obamacare, with 3 Democrats joining the Republicans, and no Republicans joining the Democrats.

Related posts

Commentary

What did the early church fathers think about abortion?

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Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions
Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions

This is from Birds of the Air. (H/T Neil Simpson)

Summary:

Recently I came across a reading of the Didache. “The what?” you may ask. The Didache is a book written somewhere in the first or second century. For a long time it was up for consideration as Scripture. It was believed to be the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Eventually it was agreed that the book was an excellent book, but not inspired Scripture. So I was pleased to be able to download this admirable book containing good teachings from the early Church fathers.

The book seemed to be largely a lot of quotes from Scripture. You’ll learn the basic rules of Christianity — “First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself.” You’ll learn that “grave sins” are forbidden, like adultery, murder, fornication, and so on. (They specifically include pederasty in the list.) There are instructions regarding teachers, prophets, Christian assembly, and so on. Lots of the normal, good stuff. But, since this was written sometime prior to 200 AD, I was somewhat surprised at this instruction: “You shall not murder a child by abortion” (Didache, Ch 2).

Honestly, there is no real factual disagreement on abortion. People justify killing the weak the same way as they always do – because the weak are in their way and they are stronger and can get away with it. The politically correct jibber-jabber about “choice” is just to make them (the man and the woman) feel good afterward. Really, abortion is just selfishness taken to the nth degree – you create another human being by recreational sex (fun) and then you kill them in order to avoid have to take responsibility for that new life. It’s like going out and getting drunk then getting behind the wheel of a car and killing someone with the car. It may not be what they intended to do, but it was their decisions that led up to it. They’re responsible. But they don’t want to face the natural consequences of their own actions, and they are willing to do the most heinous crime imaginable in order to do so. Sex makes babies. If you can’t welcome a baby into the world, don’t have sex. I don’t. And the chance of getting a woman pregnant is of the reasons why. (One of the others is that I don’t want to hurt a woman by leaving her after sex – which is why I believe in married sex. I don’t want to hurt anyone, most of all babies.

Given the pro-life practices of the early church, I find it hard to understand how people can think that fornicating (pre-marital sex) and abortion are OK. We were not like that then, and we shouldn’t be like that now. Sex was not a recreational activity then, and it is not a recreational activity now.

Learn about the pro-life case

News

How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?

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First, this one from ECM, which appeared in the leftist UK Guardian. (H/T Secondhand Smoke)

Excerpt:

Blunders by GPs, hospital doctors and nurses jeopardised the health of thousands of patients when cancer was misdiagnosed or not spotted soon enough, according to an NHS report.

Over a period of a year, doctors failed to spot key signs of cancer, tissue samples were mixed up, some patients were wrongly given an all-clear and vital diagnostic tests were delayed because of staff and equipment shortages, the study, undertaken by the NHS’s National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), found.

[…]When 508 cases were examined in detail, it was found that 177 patients were harmed. Two died, 25 suffered severe harm, 52 moderate harm and 88 low harm. Of a sample of 150 patients, 37% experienced delays of up to three months, 38% of more than three months and some had delays of three years. The government estimates that 10,000 die each year because of late diagnosis of cancer. The UK is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer, studies have shown.

The post features tons of alarming examples. There’s socialism. When you don’t have your money in your hand, you cannot expect to be treated properly. You need a choice among providers to negotiate the best deal for your dollars.

Next, also from ECM, this one from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets.

Patients’ groups expressed horror at the “sick experiment” in which NHS managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff “keep out of Accident and Emergency” (A&E) departments after a 999 call has been made.

The tactic is part of an attempt to manage increasing demand for emergency care amid failings in the GP out-of-hours system.

[…]The bonuses are among dozens of schemes being tried out by ambulance trusts across the country as they attempt to improve their emergency response times and help A&E departments meet controversial targets to treat all patients within four hours of arrival.

Another plan uncovered would see thousands of 999 calls currently classed as urgent downgraded so that callers receive telephone advice instead of an ambulance response.

But we’ll soon surpass them, I’m sure.

But wait! Maybe Canada’s single-payer system is better!

The left-wing Montreal Gazette reports.

Excerpt:

Health Minister Yves Bolduc said Friday over-crowding in Quebec’s hospital emergency rooms would be resolved in “four or five years.”

“We have the best health care system in the world,” Bolduc said, while admitting that patients sometimes have to wait for that care.

“All the patients are well treated,” he said.

[…]Quebec still has a shortage of doctors and nurses, he said…

[…]Bolduc announced his newest timetable in response to reports patients are kept for 48 hours and longer in emergency.

As well, relatives are blaming deaths in their families on emergency-room congestion.

From the communist CBC, here’s more:

Guy Morisette, head of the Outaouais health agency, told CBC News that the hospital has worked hard to fix the situation, but recruiting and retaining enough staff remains a problem, and additional solutions such as training personnel and developing new programs are longer-term efforts.

Hospital Average ER Wait Time
Buckingham 20 h 30 min
Gatineau Hospital-Hull campus 20 h 06 min
Gatineau Hospital-Gatineau campus 25 h 36 min
Gatineau-Memorial 17 h 00 min
Maniwaki 10 h 24 min
Pontiac 13 h 12 min
Outaouais average 20 h 42 min
Quebec average 16 h 30 min

Taxing and regulating doctors and treating patients for paper cuts for FREE doesn’t create a shortage of health care at all. Oh, no. And anyway, the politicians just get treated in the USA anyway.

Last, Quebec, Canada’s most liberal province, proposes massive user fees.

Excerpt:

Quebeckers are bracing themselves for sweeping increases in taxes, rates and fees after a provincial budget that also proposes a controversial user fee for health-care services.

By proposing a fee for medical appointments, the 2010-11 budget tabled Tuesday represents a shift in how the province addresses spiralling health-care costs, and could trigger a national debate over conflicts with the Canada Health Act.

[…]The user fee would take the form of a deductible that, according to one proposal, would be capped so that total charges do not exceed 1 per cent of a family’s annual income. It would involve charging $25 per medical visit and be paid on a fee-for-service basis. It was estimated under one proposal that a couple with two children making 10 medical visits a year would pay a maximum of $250 annually.

The government of Premier Jean Charest also announced a new health tax to commence in June, 2010, that will be levied on individuals when they file their income taxes. The “health contribution” will cost adults $25 this year and eventually climb to $200 in 2012. Lower-income families will be exempt. When fully implemented, the new tax will generate $945-million a year.

Ontario already has massive income tax rates, property taxes, surtaxes, sales taxes, municipal taxes and health care surcharges of hundreds of dollars a year. It’s not just that they have no freedom of speech, but they die waiting for health care. (This isn’t the Conservative Party’s fault – they don’t have a majority yet to bring in market reforms to lower the cost of health care, and they don’t have a majority of the Senate and not even close to a majority in the Supreme Court).