Tag Archives: Health-care

News

Donald Trump would expand Obamacare into single-payer health care system

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Let’s take a look at how well a policy he supports – single payer health care – is working in Canada, where it’s been the law of the land for decades.

First, let’s see Trump explain his view on single payer health care in his own words:

When government pays for all the health care provisioning, we call that a single-payer system. And Trump is for it – that clip is from September 27, 2015. In the Fox News debate in August, he said that single payer health care “works in Canada“.

So, let’s go and see what the Canadians are saying about their single payer system, by looking a wide variety of stories from last month from a wide variety of Canadian news sources, covering a wide variety of Canadian provinces.

First, let’s start on the west coast, and then work our way east.

The Vancouver Sun reports on British Columbia wait times:

Median waiting times from referral by family doctor to treatment are 22.4 weeks, or almost six months in B.C., longer than all provinces except those in Atlantic Canada, according to the 25th annual survey of 2,382 medical specialists.

And waits between the first appointment with a specialist and getting treatment are 14 weeks in B.C., the highest since the survey began. The doctors who take the survey are asked to give their best estimates of waits for care.

The government-run CBC, reporting on Manitoba health care:

Manitoba has been given a failing and a near-failing grade for prostate and breast cancer treatment wait times by Canada’s Wait Times Alliance.

The group released their annual wait time report card on Tuesday, giving Manitoba an F for wait times for radiation and curative care treatment for prostate cancer and a D for the same treatments for breast cancer.

Manitoba has received an F for prostate cancer treatment wait times for more than five years, and a D in breast cancer treatment wait times for the past four years.

The Globe and Mail reports on the city of Winnipeg:

New data shows Winnipeg hospitals still have the longest emergency room wait times in Canada.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information says Winnipeg’s six emergency rooms all came in below average on the time it takes 90 per cent of patients to see a doctor after they check into an emergency room.

The average for the Winnipeg Health Region as a whole is 5.7 hours compared to the Canadian average of 3.1 hours.

And the Montreal Gazette reports on the province of Quebec:

Quebec reported the steepest increase this year of any province in wait times for medical imaging scans in Canada — a finding that suggests the public system is being stretched to the limit, a national survey reveals.

The 25th annual survey by the Fraser Institute found that the median wait time in hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in Quebec jumped to 12 weeks this year from eight in 2014. By comparison, the median wait time for an MRI is five weeks in Ontario, unchanged from last year.

Wait times increased slightly for other medical imaging in Quebec, going up from four to five weeks for both ultrasounds and CT (computerized tomography) scans.

Investors Business Daily also wrote about this and had a helpful chart breaking down how long people are waiting for treatment:

Single-payer health care wait times in Canada
Single-payer health care wait times in Canada

Canada also has a well-known doctor shortage. Their way of controlling costs is to limit the number of people who can practice medicine, so less care can be billed to the government. Get in line, and if you die waiting for treatment, that’s great for them – less money to pay. After all, they get to keep all the taxes they took from you during your life, and now they don’t have to give you anything back since YOU’RE DEAD.

Trump says that single-payer “works in Canada”. Does this look like it is working to you? Would you be willing to have 45% of your income go to federal, provincial, municipal income and sales taxes so that you could get in line in a system like this? This is Trump’s ideal, is it your ideal?

If you want to see what Canadian health care is really like on the ground, check out this video of Steven Crowder trying to get health care in the province of Quebec:

That’s what Donald Trump thinks is working. His past statements about being “very pro-choice”, and about same-sex marriage being “the law of the land” and about single payer and amnesty make him out to be a Democrat. He has never put effort into any conservative initiative on any conservative issue since the day he was born. He has been a Democrat, has donated to Democrats, including many, many donations to the Clintons. Only a complete idiot could support a Democrat in the Republican primary, especially when there were so many conservatives who fought and suffered for conservative issues in the past, e.g. – Perry, Jindal, Walker and Cruz.

As for his experience with making money, he inherited all his money, and he is worth $10 billion less today than he would have been if he had just invested his silver spoon inheritance in index funds. He knows less about politics than you do. He has gone bankrupt more times than you have. He is less good at making money than you are. He was born wealthy. He has no idea what conservatives believe. He is not conservative now, never has been conservative, and never will be conservative. You cannot choose a candidate by listening to mere words, you have to look at evidence, you have to look at accomplishments.

News

Is there a downside to celebrating homosexuality as normal?

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Making sense of the meaning of atheism
When disagreements come up, it’s good to look at what the evidence is

This article from Touchstone magazine has the numbers. The “CDC” is the government-run Centers for Disease Control.

It says:

We don’t hear much about the HIV/AIDS epidemic anymore. When was the last time you read an article either online or in a newspaper of general circulation, or saw a report on a television news program about HIV/AIDS? And yet, with no media attention or public fanfare, Mr. Obama’s proposed 2016 federal budget requests almost $32 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment and research, an increase of 3.1% over the prior year. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent decision finding a fundamental, constitutional “right” to homosexual and lesbian “marriage,” there is a deeply dark and dangerous side to today’s American homosexuality. Since the first cases of what would later become known as AIDS were reported in the United States in June of 1981, more than 1.8 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have been infected with HIV, of whom 658,507 have already died. Today, the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) estimates that more than 1,218,400 people aged 13 years and older are living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. Of those, tragically, the CDC estimates that almost 1 in 8 (156,300 or 12.8%) are unaware of their infection. Homosexual and bisexual men who have sex with men, particularly young African-American men, continue to be the most seriously affected by HIV/AIDS. Over the past decade, approximately 50,000 people are newly infected annually. In 2013, the CDC estimated that 47,352 people were diagnosed with HIV infection, and an additional 26,688 people were diagnosed with full-blown AIDS in the United States. Again, according to the CDC, in 2012, notwithstanding medical advances, an estimated 13,712 people with AIDS died.

Although African-Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, but accounted for 44% of new HIV infections in 2012, and accounted for 41% of people living with HIV/AIDS. Hispanics/Latinos account for 20 percent of people living with HIV infection. Although homosexual and bisexual men who have exchanges of body fluids through anal intercourse and other sexual contact with other men represent a very small proportion of the male population in the United States, the CDC reports that they account for 78 percent of new HIV infections among males, and 63 percent of all new infections. Importantly, in a typical year, the greatest number of new HIV infections occur in younger African-American males aged 13-24. Younger black men accounted for 45% of all new HIV infections among African-Americans, and 55% of new HIV infections among all younger homosexual and bisexual men.

We can all think of behaviors that are not good for people. Suppose you notice your friend has started smoking, or maybe is eating too much and not exercising, or maybe’s she’s getting really thin and not eating enough – if you loved them, you would say something. What if they got defensive and they felt bad about being judged? I still think it’s good to gently but firmly tell the truth.

In my office, I have leftists who often tell me to recycle cans. If I don’t recycle cans, nothing bad will happen to me. But strangely enough, the leftists don’t have anything to say about behaviors that really would hurt me, like homosexuality. Secondhand smoke? They will condemn that. But engaging in risky sexual activity? They want to celebrate that. What sense does this double standard make? Tell people the truth about what behaviors might hurt them, but do it in a gentle way. Don’t just tell someone “it’s wrong”, either. Instead, show them the facts and the sources so they can check out the data for themselves.

News

Senate Republicans vote to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal major parts of Obamacare

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Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood

Life News reports on some very good news for conservatives.

Excerpt:

The Senate voted today for a bill that would de-fund Planned Parenthood after it was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies. Hearings have exposed how the abortion company likely violated federal laws to sell the body parts.

The bill would block, for one year, most federal payments to Planned Parenthood. At least 89% of federal funding of Planned Parenthood would be blocked by this bill. The bill would repeal a number of major components of the Obamacare health law, including two of the major provisions that will lead to rationing of lifesaving care — the “Independent Payment Advisory Board” and the “excess benefits tax.”

Senators voted 52-47 (see below for roll call) for the reconciliation bill which would de-fund Planned Parenthood and repeal major portions of Obamacare.

The bill now goes back to the House and will head to President Barack Obama once the House approves the measure. Though Obama will veto the bill, the vote makes it clear that, under a pro-life president, Congress can get a de-funding bill approved with a majority vote that the president would sign into law.

Now, I actually don’t want to look that far into the future, because as long as Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader, nothing is for sure. However, there are immediate benefits to passing this bill and sending it to the White House in spite of that caution:

  1. We now have all the Democrat senators on record about where they stand with respect to repealing major parts of Obamacare, and de-funding Planned Parenthood. This information can and will be used to defeat them in the 2016 Senate races. Republicans face a major challenge to their Senate majority in 2016, and every little bit helps.
  2. Republican candidates for President will be able to use the veto of health care reform and de-funding Planned Parenthood to distinguish themselves from Democrat presidential candidates. Obamacare and Planned Parenthood funding are both really unpopular. I personally know some Christians who think that Obama is pro-life and who think that Obama is in favor of fixing Obamacare. With this veto on record, Republican presidential candidates will be able to clearly show that a Republican president is required in order to fix health care and defund Planned Parenthood.

Look, if you don’t like Obamacare – higher deductibles, higher premiums, fewer doctors, less health care – then Republicans are the only game in town. And now, everyone has shown whose side they are on with respect to funding abortion, too. Going forward, expect the Republicans to be reminding people about these votes and vetoes over and over again.