Tag Archives: Health Care Reform

News

NHS patients giving birth in waiting rooms

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From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

Women are being forced to give birth in a hospital waiting room because there are not enough beds in overstretched maternity units. Expectant mothers are going through one of the most agonising ordeals of their lives in a crowded seating area, while other patients look on. Campaigners last night warned that such an appalling standard of care is putting the health of women and their babies at risk. King’s College Hospital, in South London, has admitted that mothers ‘regularly’ go into labour in the maternity unit’s waiting room as there are not enough beds. Managers said the department is often so full that some women have their babies in the seating area – with nothing more than a temporary screen to protect their privacy. The hospital admits the unit is severely overstretched and there are not enough beds to cope with the increasing birth rate of the catchment area. But critics warn that the dire situation will soon be commonplace up and down the country as increasing numbers of hospitals close their maternity units to save money.

Remember Donald Berwick is Obama’s health care guy, and he loves the NHS. He wants the NHS for YOU!

 

News

If insurance companies complain about Obamacare, they get sanctioned

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Want to know how the Obammunists are responding to businesses who complain about having to raise helath care premiums on their employees (or drop coverage completely)?

From Yahoo News. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won’t tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

“Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They’d lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

This sort of shows the level of economic ignorance present in the current White House. They require more things to be covered, like pre-existing conditions and covering children until they are 26, and then they expect that there will be no “unjustified rate increases” in the cost of health care plans. Huh? You might as well put a bunch of zombies in charge of the country. Who doesn’t understand that if insurance companies have to cover more claims, then the cost of premiums will increase? It makes no sense that premiums would stay the same – the money has to come from somewhere!

Ed Morrisey writes:

Rarely have we heard a Cabinet official tell Americans to stay out of political debates at the risk of losing their businesses.  It points out the danger in having government run industries and holding a position where politicians can actually destroy a business out of spite.  It also demonstrates the thin skin of our current administration, where Hope and Change means keeping your mouth shut and pretending that everyone is happy while businesses slowly circle the drain.

This administration is the most anti-business administration in history. We’re losing jobs and wealth at a precipitous rate. They don’t know what they are doing, and their threats only scare businesses even more. It’s government by ignorant bullies.

News

Obamacare’s impact on ER wait times and low-wage workers

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First, ER wait times. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

As the number of insured people goes up while health care reform takes place, the long waits and crowded lobbies at emergency rooms are anticipated to increase as well.

“We’re starting out with crowded conditions and anticipating things will only get worse,” American College of Emergency Physicians president Dr. Angela Gardner told the Associated Press.

Nearly 32 million more people will have health insurance as a result of changing health-care laws, and about 16 million are to be added to the Medicaid system, but that apparently won’t keep them out of the ER, the AP reported.

“Just because we’ve insured people [that] doesn’t mean they now have access,” Dr. Elijah Berg from Boston told the AP. “They’re coming to the emergency department because they don’t have access to alternatives.”

[…]Since 2006, when it began offering government-run health care to its residents, Massachusetts has been considered the test model for the federal health changes, requiring health coverage for everyone, but data has shown visits to the ER have continued to rise since the Massachusetts law took place.

ERs are already overly crowded, with the biggest users being those under the federal Medicaid plan. Many doctors limit the number of Medicaid patients that they see because of the low rate of reimbursement from the government.

Here’s what should have happened. Voters should have looked at Massachusetts and Tennessee and seen what government control of health care does to health care. Universal coverage increases demand, but supply stays the same because of onerous certifications, taxes and regulations that block new entrants. Somewhere along the line there will be a shortage. And that means waiting lists, abortion, denial of care, and eventually euthanasia in order to keep costs down.

But there’s more – from the Heartland Institute.

What about Obamacare’s impact on low-wage workers? (H/T Rob)

Excerpt:

The requirements of President Obama’s new health care regime could penalize low-wage workers and cause a further slowdown of hiring for positions at chain restaurants and other small businesses.

White Castle, a national fast food chain, recently announced it would slow planned expansion in the United States and curtail hiring at its numerous restaurant outlets thanks to Obama’s law, which the chain says will cut its earnings in half.

According to a White Castle representative, the requirement that employers pay a $3,000 fine to the federal government for every employee whose out-of-pocket cost of health insurance exceeds 9.5 percent of their income will destroy their business model.

[…]Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a health care analyst at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, says much of this process is out of the employer’s control.

[…]Furchtgott-Roth says this aspect of Obamacare is part of a larger trend toward government pricing low-skilled workers out of the U.S. economy.

“The burden of all these Obamacare provisions is going to fall more on America’s low-skilled workers—the workers at White Castle, Burger King, and so on. Because their labor will become more expensive for companies to use, we’re going to see more mechanized solutions, a trend that is already happening in Europe,” Furchtgott-Roth said.

Well, some of these people who don’t pay income taxes are certainly going to be getting a wake-up call. Larger companies like John Deere, Verizon, Valero, Caterpillar, etc. already announced that they were going to be taking huge hits to their bottom line as a result of Obamacare. All these good intentions and high-minded blabberings don’t amount to any benefits for American working families. Happy-talk wins elections, but it doesn’t pay the bills or feed the children.

Next time, we need to be more diligent at looking at what actually happens in other countries and even in our own states when people try to nationalize health care in order to provide universal coverage. We can have universal coverage – we just need to let people choose what level of coverage they want and we need to make market reforms to the health care industry. Choice and competition works better for consumers. That’s real health care reform.