Tag Archives: Health-care

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New study: health insurance premiums will rise 55% to 85% under Obamacare

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From National Underwriter. (H/T Don Surber)

Excerpt:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) could cut the number of uninsured Ohio residents by 790,000 in 2017, but it also could increase premiums for the 735,000 residents who have individual coverage by more than 55%.

Consultants at Milliman Inc., Seattle, have included those projections in a forecast report prepared for the Ohio Department of Insurance.

The Ohio department commissioned the report to help regulators know what to expect in 2014, when major PPACA provisions are set to kick in, and a few years further along, in 2017.

PPACA opponents are still fighting in the courts and in Congress to block implementation of PPACA.

If the act takes effect as written and works as drafters expect, PPACA is supposed to require major medical insurers to sell policies that meet minimum benefits requirements on a guaranteed issue, mostly community-rated basis starting in 2014. Individuals and employees at small employers are supposed to be able to buy coverage using tax credits through a new system of health insurance exchanges.

Today, about 10 million non-elderly Ohio residents have some kind of government or commercial health coverage or go uninsured. About 15%, or 1.5 million, were uninsured in 2010, and that percentage could drop to 7.1%, or 712,000, in 2017, the Milliman consultants estimate.

The Milliman consultants suggest that the total number of people covered by insured and self-funded group plans could fall to 5.4 million in 2017, from 6.1 million in 2010.

The number with some kind of individual commercial coverage could increase 735,000, from 350,000.

The percentage with some kind of government coverage, or coverage provided by a private insurer but paid for in whole or in part by the government, could increase to 31%, from 20% in 2010.

Although the percentage of residents with coverage could rise by about 7.9%, the price of individual health insurance coverage might rise about 55% to 85%, excluding the impact of medical inflation, the Milliman consultants predict.

How can this be… it’s named the blah-blah-blah… AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. I swear – if that nutcase in the White House passed a bill banning Christianity, he would call it the Christian Freedom of Religion Act.

Repeal and replace Obamacare.

News

Greek men deprived of provider role commit suicide in record numbers

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From the Wall Street Journal, a reminder that recessions hit men the hardest. (H/T Tom)

Excerpt:

]Gross domestic product in the second quarter was down more than 7% from a year before, amid government spending cuts and tax increases that, combined, will add up to about 20% of GDP. Unemployment is over 16%. Crime, homelessness, emigration and personal bankruptcies are on the rise.The most dramatic sign of Greece’s pain, however, is a surge in suicides.

Recorded suicides have roughly doubled since before the crisis to about six per 100,000 residents annually, according to the Greek health ministry and a charitable organization called Klimaka.

[…]Suicide has also risen in much of the rest of Europe since the financial crisis began, according to a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which said Greece is among the hardest hit.Suicide has also risen in much of the rest of Europe since the financial crisis began, according to a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which said Greece is among the hardest hit.

[…]A suicide help line at Klimaka, the charitable group, used to get four to 10 calls a day, but “now there are days when we have up to 100,” says a psychologist there, Aris Violatzis.

The caller often fits a certain profile: male, age 35 to 60 and financially ruined. “He has also lost his core identity as a husband and provider, and he cannot be a man any more according to our cultural standards,” Mr. Violatzis says.

Heraklion, commercial center of the island of Crete, has had a spate of such deaths.

[…]Victims once were typically adolescent males or old people facing severe illness, and in normal times suicide cases often involve a mixture of factors including mental illness, says local psychiatrist Eva Maria Tsapaki.

But the economic crash has created a “new phenomenon of entrepreneurs with no prior history of mental illness who are found dead every other week,” she says. “It’s very unusual.”

Hans Bader had a recent post about Obama’s stimulus bill that is relevant.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A logical place to have financed road and bridge repairs would have been Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package. But the stimulus package was purged of most investments in roads and bridges, and filled instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that building and repairing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

Christina Hoff Sommers points out that “of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men,” because men “predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007.” But when some administration officials floated the concept of “an ambitious . . . stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams” as a way of “reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy,” “Women’s groups were appalled,” asking “Where are the New Jobs for Women?” and denouncing what they called “The Macho Stimulus Plan.”

As Sommers notes, the Obama administration quickly knuckled under to this pressure, replacing its recovery package with an $800 billion stimulus package that instead “skews job creation somewhat towards women” by spending money instead on social services like welfare that are administered mostly by female employees.

As a 2009 Associated Press story reported, “Stimulus Funds Go to Social Programs Over ‘Shovel-ready’ Projects.” A team of six AP reporters who have been tracking the funds find that the $300 billion sent to the states is being used mainly for health care, education, unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other social services.” Or, as another AP report put it, “Stimulus Aid Favors Welfare, Not Work, Programs.”

The stimulus package also repealed welfare reform, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted. (In 2008, Obama ran campaign ads claiming to support welfare reform, even though he had sought to undermine welfare reform as an Illinois legislator. The stimulus package largely repealed the 1996 welfare-reform law.)

Men: don’t vote for this man in 2012.

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Should Christian doctors be forced to act like atheists at work?

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The UK Telegraph has this interesting article.

Excerpt:

The General Medical Council is asking medics if it should “regulate doctors’ lives outside medicine” in a review of its guidelines on ethics.

Currently it would only be a disciplinary matter if behaviour after hours affected a doctor’s work or brought the profession into disrepute, or if they imposed their views on others.

Some respondents to an online consultation have already said they would be unhappy if health professionals “supported racist organisations” or those that “promote conflict”, or “advocated religious fundamentalism”.

[…]The GMC is to launch a full consultation on a review of its Good Medical Practice document in October.

It comes as the watchdog prepares to investigate the case of a GP in Margate, Dr Richard Scott, who is accused of upsetting a patient by offering to pray for them.

The GP says their conversation turned to religion after they had finished discussing medical options, and that he asked permission to raise his Christian beliefs with the patient, who is of another faith.

But the GMC sent him a warning letter, claiming his comments had “distressed” the patient and “did not meet with the standards required of a doctor”.

Dr Scott refused to accept a written warning, however, and so the GMC’s Investigation Committee will consider the case on Thursday and Friday, which could lead to a fitness to practise hearing.

A GMC statement on the case said: “The Committee will consider whether it is appropriate to issue Dr Scott with a warning in light of his alleged inappropriate expression of religious beliefs during a consultation, which distressed his patient.

“It is further alleged that Dr Scott subsequently confirmed, via national media, that he had sought to suggest his own faith had more to offer than that of the patient.

And this gets extended to cases where pro-life medical doctors and nurses are forced to perform abortions against their conscience. It’s not just evangelism that is threatened, it’s the freedom to not murder at the state’s bidding. This pressure to comply with the state doesn’t come out of nowhere – it occurs when the state is in control of an industry and there is nowhere else for Christians to go to find work. And it is stronger for those who work in government monopolies. Although the UK has protections for NHS doctors, things are worse in Canada and the US. Nurses in Calgary, Alberta and in New York, New York have had to perform abortions against their will.

If you are a doctor in a government-run single payer health care system, then you have a choice of one employer – the government. In the West, that government will likely be secular, and the main job of that government will be to get themselves re-elected. Conservative political parties will be able to get re-elected by delivering national security and economic growth. Even moderate conservatives like George W. Bush can deliver unemployment rates of 4.4% and 160 billion dollar deficits – so the voters re-elect conservatives because they have jobs and because they are safe. But liberal parties can’t produce jobs or balance a budget – like with Obama’s 9.5% unemployment rate and his 1.7 trillion dollar deficits. Liberals screw up the economy, and then they have to resort to bribing the electorate with government spending in order to be re-elected.

So what goodies do the liberal parties provide? Well, take health care. There is a block of voters who want to be able to engage in risky activities that make them feel good, and then get out of them by having the government take their neighbors’ money to pay for their medical bills. (Or, their neighbor’s children’s money, to be more precise, since it is much more politically acceptable to run up 1.7 trillion dollar debts than to embrace pro-growth economic policies that would lower the unemployment rate, as with Bush’s tax cuts). For example, may liberal voters want the government to provide things like taxpayer-funded abortions, so that they can engage in reckless premarital sex without being burdened by the consequences of their own choices. And the liberal party buys their votes by transferring wealth from other taxpayers to pay for these abortions.

Now, when these liberal parties go before the voters, they don’t talk about wanting to provide taxpayer-funded abortions to liberal voters. They tell sob stories about people who need medical treatment but who can’t afford it, or about hungry children who have less to eat than other children. Boo, hoo, hoo, they explain. They play on people’s fears and emotions, and, for some ignorant voters, that works. Even many Christians who decide who to vote for based on their emotions and peer pressure will fall for this – they are too busy watching “Dancing With the Stars” to read about reducing health care costs through consumer-driven health care or improving educational outcomes through school choice.

So many people vote to expand and empower government to fix problems, instead of relying on the free market. They forget about how Wal-Mart provides goods to poor families, and how Amazon.com provides a huge variety of goods to consumers at low prices. Having the government shuffle money around just seems to make more sense for them – it’s much simpler for them to understand than complicated things like Adam Smith. Wealth redistribution calms their fears and makes them feel “compassionate” – even though they are using other people’s money to solve problems instead of solving problems themselves with charity. But to be able to ensure that hospitals perform abortions free of charge for the whiny voters, government has to be big enough to have oversight over the daily operations of health care providers.

How do Christians fare in a health care system that is run by a secular government? Well, in the private sector, if a Christian doctor loses his job, he can find another job. But for Christian doctors in a government-run single-payer health care system, there is nowhere to run – you have to leave the country entirely. So many Christians will feel pressured to just settle with the secularists and perform the abortions. And the ones who resist are just crushed by the state.

And this is exactly what happens in Canadian hospitals, in their single-payer health care system, which liberal politicians and voters admire so much.

Many Christians vote for single-payer health care, or its precursor “Obamacare”, without knowing where this leads. But if Christians vote for bigger government, then they will find themselves losing the freedom to profess Christianity in public, as government grows to regulate and control the economy. When the secular government controls everything, anything in Christianity that they disagree with becomes a target. Again, we have already seen this in Canada. A secular government is good for Christians, and we support that, but it needs to be limited and respectful of human rights and human liberties, including the right to own property and the right to express your religion in public.

Helping people isn’t the government’s job, it’s your job. Stop trying to resolve your fears and uncertainties about life by making the government into God. Government shouldn’t have that power. It’s not their job to help others – it’s your job. It’s not their job to provide you with happiness in this life by taking your neighbor’s money, either.

A very good book to read about this is “The Road to Serfdom”, by F.A. Hayek. There is a free abridged version of “The Road to Serfdom” here, and it is number one on the list of books that all conservatives should read, according to the conservative Human Events.