Tag Archives: Nationalized Health Care

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New study finds that contraceptive use increases abortion rates

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Here’s the article from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Abortion advocates often promote contraception by claiming that as contraception use increases, the number of “unwanted” pregnancies and therefore abortions will decrease. But a new study out of Spain has found the exact opposite, suggesting that contraception actually increases abortion rates.

The authors, who published their findings in the January 2011 issue of the journal Contraception, conducted surveys of about 2,000 Spanish women aged 15 to 49 every two years from 1997 to 2007.  They found that over this period the number of women using contraceptives increased from 49.1% to 79.9%.

Yet they noted that in the same time frame the country’s abortion rate more than doubled from 5.52 per 1,000 women to 11.49.

Mary also sent me this story from Life Site News about the morning after pill.

Excerpt:

A poll has shown that as many as one fifth of all young women in the UK have used the morning after pill (MAP) in the past year after “unprotected sex.”

A Co-Operative Pharmacy survey of 3000 people found that 20 percent of women aged 18 to 35 took the “emergency contraceptive” pill last year. The same group said they had typically used the drug, which only acts as a genuine contraceptive in some cases, when they had had sex after using drugs and/or alcohol.

The poll further found that up to 250,000 women had used the drug two or more times during the year. One in fifty 18-21 year-olds said they used the MAP as their normal form of contraception. One sixth of the women surveyed said they had contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

While a National Health Service spokesman warned that the MAP fails to protect women from sexually transmitted diseases, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has long warned that the medical community is simply not telling women what MAP really is, or what it does.

The morning after pill, a large dose of the same hormones used in contraceptive pills, can either prevent ovulation or prevent the implantation of an existing embryo in the uterine lining.

“Very few women will know precisely when they ovulate,” SPUC said, “so, if they take the morning-after pill, they will not know whether it has prevented conception or caused an abortion.”

Once upon a time, men were men, women were women, and they got along with each other using strict rules of courting under the watchful eyes of their parents. Then feminism came along, pushed primarily by female writers, scholars, lawyers and legislators. These feminists all agreed that marriage was bad, courting was bad, chivalry was bad, and chastity was bad – because they involved “unequal gender roles”. Men and women are identical in every way, they claimed, and women ought to be able to have recreational sex like men and not get pregnant, and focus on their careers like men and not feel the need for marriage and children. And here we are, thanks to feminism. (I mean third-wave feminism).

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When you let Democrats control health care, they close hospitals

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From the Weekly Standard. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Under the headline, “Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals,” Politico reports today that “Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments.” Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but that exactly what Obamacare is doing.

Kenneth Artz of the Heartland Institute explains, “Section 6001 of the health care law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals (POHs) from starting up, and it keeps existing ones from expanding.” Politico adds, “Friday [New Year’s Eve] marked the last day physician-owned hospitals could get Medicare certification covering their new or expanded hospitals, one of the latest provisions of the reform law to go into effect.”

This little-noticed but particularly egregious aspect of Obamacare is, by all accounts, a concession to the powerful American Hospital Association (AHA), a supporter of Obamacare, which prefers to have its member hospitals operate without competition from hospitals owned by doctors.  Dr. Michael Russell, president of Physician Hospitals of America, which has filed suit to try to stop this selective building-ban from going into effect, says, “There are so many regulations [in Obamacare] and they are so onerous and intrusive that we believe that the section [Section 6001] was deliberately designed so no physician owned hospital could successfully comply.”

Artz writes, “According to Russell, the AHA, along with Sen. [Max] Baucus (D-MT) and Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), are responsible for the language in Section 6001.”  But the responsibility for all aspects of the overhaul primarily lies with outgoing-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and, particularly, Obamacare’s principal champion, President Barack Obama.

This is just like letting the Democrats control energy policy. They block coal production, oil drilling, oil refining and construction of nuclear power plants. What happens where there is less power being produced and demand is increasing because of India and China? Well, supply decreasing, and demand increasing = SHORTAGE = HIGHER ENERGY PRICES. And that’s exactly what they’ve done with health care.

Meanwhile, new conservative House majority leader John Boehner has introduced a bill to REPEAL OBAMACARE. (H/T ECM)

News

UK patients denied treatment as “public option” system makes cutbacks

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From the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Hundreds of thousands of NHS patients are being denied routine procedures as dozens of trusts cut back on surgery, scans and other treatments in order to save money, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found.

Trusts around the country are refusing to pay for operations ranging from hip replacements, to cataract removal and wisdom tooth extraction.

The health service is also tightening restrictions that prevent patients undergoing procedures for lifestyle reasons.

Smokers and obese patients are being denied operations until they change their habits and trusts are delaying surgery and non-emergency treatments, the Telegraph has found in the most comprehensive snapshot of NHS cuts yet.

The cuts – which include the cancelling of MRI scans and x-rays – are taking place in defiance of the Coalition.

Ministers are determined that front line services should be protected and the savings needed can be found from management costs and efficiencies.

But there is growing evidence that NHS managers are sacrificing patient care instead.

Doctors and nurses said the ‘grim’ results undermine the ‘myth’ that front line services are being protected and warned they were just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

The situation is predicted to get worse as the NHS struggles to save £20bn over the next four years.

Although ministers have pledged to protect the health service budget and provide a real terms increase, it will not be sufficient to keep pace with growing demand and increasing costs.

In addition from April next year the amount of money hospitals receive for each type of treatment will be cut by 1.5 per cent raising fears that managers will refuse to provide treatments that they make a loss on.

As part of the investigation, The Telegraph had responses from almost one in three primary care trusts.

Cuts were uncovered in 20 out of the 145 primary care trusts in England. Fifteen PCTs have said they are not cutting services and 11 were still undecided.

[…]Dr Mark Porter, Chairman of the British Medical Association’s Consultants Committee, said: “Each of these examples undermines the myth that the NHS has been protected from the financial crisis. These are all services that patients value.

“They are by and large not being axed for clinical reasons, but as an inevitable consequence of the massive cost savings that have been imposed on the NHS.

“Despite the continuing claims of real terms increases for the NHS, the reality on the ground is very different. The scale of the financial challenge facing the service is such that this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

Making health care “free” for patients and preventing people and businesses from making a profit on providing health care leads to higher demand and lower supply. The net result is a shortage. It’s the law of economics.