Tag Archives: Doctor

News

Is it a good idea to give the government money to run health care?

1 Comment

Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail, which shows how socialized medicine is working out in socialist Europe. (H/T Memeorandum via ECM)

Excerpt:

A ‘man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute.

His social worker says sex is a ‘human right’ for the unnamed individual – described as a frustrated virgin.

His trip to a brothel in the Dutch capital’s red light district next month is being funded through a £520million scheme introduced by the last government to empower those with disabilities.

They are given a personal budget and can choose what services this is spent on.

This is what happens when taxpayers hand their own money to bureaucrats to spend. When you have your money in your hand, you use 100% of that money to buy things you want because you need them – like breast cancer exams. But when you give a bureaucrat your money, their goal for spending that money is to buy votes so that they can keep their job and to feel good about themselves. And what makes them feel good about themselves is equalizing life outcomes. They don’t think that anyone should have to face the unhappy consequences of their own decisions.

In some provinces of Canada, sex changes and in vitro fertilization are taxpayer-funded. Abortion is taxpayer-funded in every province. That’s socialized medicine. Equalizing life outcomes by transferring wealth from a person who has money to a person who has a felt need.

Here’s a comprehensive article from The American Spectator that explains what we can expect from our version of socialized medicine, i.e. – “Obamacare”. (H/T ECM)

News

New study analyzes the legalization of euthanasia in Belgium

2 Comments

Wesley J. Smith analyzes a new peer-reviewed paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

First an introduction to euthanasia:

Belgium has followed the Netherlands in jumping off a vertical moral cliff by embracing legalized euthanasia.  The awful consequences that I predicted are now coming to pass; a steady increase in the number of cases, inadequate reporting, and a large percentage of non voluntary euthanasia deaths.  Thus, I am anything but surprised by the study I analyze below, which echoes an earlier one reported here at SHS, that nearly as many Belgian euthanasia killings are non voluntary as of those that are voluntary (the concept of “voluntary” in this context being highly problematic, but let’s not deal with that here).

Why might that be? Euthanasia consciousness rests on two intellectual pillars–that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, and radical individualism in which we all own our bodies and have the absolute right to do what we wish with it, including make it dead.   But interestingly, the latter idea–often reduced to that most effective of all soundbites, “choice”–turns out to be far less robust than the acceptance of active killing as a proper method of ending suffering.  In other words, once a society accepts killing as the answer to suffering, the request element becomes increasingly less important as doctors assume they are doing what is best for the patient by extinguishing their lives.

But does the new research paper justify his concerns? The paper finds that nurses administered life-ending drugs without the patient’s consent in 120 cases, as compared with 128 cases where the patient requested the drugs.

The paper says:

When the patient can no longer communicate, nurses are, by the nature of their work, more directly confronted with the patient’s suffering and may therefore wish to take a more active role in life-ending acts. We also have to consider that the administration of life-ending drugs without the patient’s explicit request may have included situations of terminal sedation or an increase in pain alleviation, in which the delegation by physicians to nurses to administer the drugs is considered common practice. Finally, although about half of the nurses’ reports indicated that there was no explicit request from the patient, it should be stated that the physicians and nurses probably acted according to the patient’s wishes.

The paper is here. (PDF)

News

MUST-READ: How Obama reduces the supply of medical care

Leave a comment

I had written about the so-called doc-fix before, which is the problem of doctors being underpaid by the government for things like Medicare and Medicaid when they provide services to patients. Obama chose not to “fix” these low reimbursements in his health care bill, in order to hide the true costs of socializing medicine. But he has a plan now to fix the problem of government-run medicine not reimbursing doctors adequately.

And it isn’t what you might think.

From Laura at Pursuing Holiness. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Conservatives were outraged by the chicanery of separating physician payment increases from the health care reform (that’s three lies for the price of one) bill Congress recently rammed through.  The “doc fix” was separate legislation so that physician payments could be increased without adding to the total cost of the main bill, so that Democrats could dishonestly claim the bill reduced the deficit.  Now, however, we are seeing the real “doc fix.”

Some Idaho orthopedists grew weary of the low reimbursement rates the government gave them for caring for worker’s comp patients.  So they got together and agreed not to treat those patients anymore.  They hoped that their boycott would force the Idaho Industrial Commission to increase the fee schedule – their payments.  While they were at it, they decided to stop working with Blue Cross of Idaho – also a notorious underpayer – until a better deal could be negotiated.  Unions behave this way all the time, and it’s often very effective.

In a similar case in Colorado last February, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in and charged the doctors with price-fixing.

Those doctors lost, and if they want to continue to work as physicians, they will do so at the prices set by the government.

Now the Obama administration has stepped it up a notch. The FTC only deals with civil complaints. In order to deal with the Idaho orthopedists, Obama sent in Eric Holder and the Justice Department, which is at liberty to file criminal charges.  You see, those Idaho orthopedists collectively agreeing that they had enough and weren’t going to take it anymore, were actually engaged in two antitrust conspiracies.

Read the rest. This is another first class post by Laura, and a great find by ECM. (Laura also sides with me on women taking responsibility for their own actions, which is why men like her)

So, it sounds like the Obama administration is heading towards Canada’s system where the private practice of medicine is a criminal offense. Doctors will not be able to set prices for their services. A patient giving money directly to a doctor, without government approval of the price (price controls), will become illegal. That’s the way that socialists roll.They love to fix prices.

And do you know what happens when doctors make less money than government clerks but have to work 80 hour weeks? That’s right – you have a shortage of doctors! Just like in Canada! And do you know what happens when there is a shortage of doctors? That’s right – you pay for the privilege of dying on a waiting list. (Unless you want an abortion, IVF or a sex change, I guess – because that’s politically correct in Canada)

This is why there are waiting lists in every country that has tried socialized medicine. Fewer doctors means fewer claims to the government – rationing. It’s the real way that government cuts costs. Well, that and euthanasia. Once government starts to regulate the practice of medicine, and to fix prices, you choke off the supply. And then you have to start killing people to avoid bankrupting the system, without or without their consent.