Medicare for All? Rep. Dan Crenshaw Questions Fundamental Flaws of Single-Payer Systems...

aka "socialized medicine."

It won't work.

Today's Medicare doesn't work.

My mother worked in the medical field and when Medicare first came on the scene she said, "It won't work."

She was right.

Millions of people who have paid their entire life and continue to pay after reaching Medicare age do not have doctors. Medicare is not "free."

I'm one of them.

When I first reached the age for Medicare and was forced onto the program (yes, my little cabbages - you will be forced) my husband's doctor took me on as a patient.

Within about one year he retired.

Guess what?  I have not had a doctor since - close to seven years. The best I can do is a physician assistant, and while they're nice ladies, they're far removed from an actual doctor.  My husband was also shifted to a completely incompetent PA who did her best to kill him. 

After spending several days on the phone I got lucky and was able to find a doctor for my husband who is doing a great job. Unfortunately, he is not taking anymore Medicare patients. My last PA quit.  If I need treatment for something I have no one call.

Doctors cannot afford to treat Medicare patients.  It's as simple as that.

The only way Medicare for All will work is if you force doctors to treat everyone.  There's that word "force" again.

How long do you think most doctors will consider staying in the profession when they are forced to work.  Didn't we free the slaves?




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Remember that 716 million they stole from Medicare so we could sign up hundreds of thousands on Medicaid?...

if you're on Medicare - pay attention.

Not knowing this could cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

As an aside, I'm not a big believer in overpriced physical therapy. 

If video doesn't show up - go HERE

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Mark Levin and a rant: I'm sick of people attacking Medicare and Social Security...

when this government wastes trillions of dollars on nonsense.

Allow me to repeat:

 I (unfortunately) am on Medicare.   I did not have a choice.  And neither did a bunch of other seniors.

We did not ask for this.  We were forced.  We paid in an entire lifetime of funds, as did our employers. Now they call this an "entitlement."  Let's make this clear.  It is not an unfunded entitlement.  I paid for it.  And furthermore, it's not, and never has been, "free."  I still pay.   I pay a premium every month and I pay extra for Medicare Advantage.  What part of that is so hard to understand?

Please explain to me why these two programs are the first to be demonized??  I'll tell you why.  Because our government, the one that claims it "cares", spent that money.  The money we all paid in month after month, year after year, is gone.  Gone!

I keep hearing that to fix our economic problems, we have to slash Social Security and Medicare.  How about instead we cut welfare to illegal immigrants, unwed mothers, fake disability claims, aid to foreign countries, subsidies to "green energy, and payouts to unions?"

Postal workers retire with huge pensions.  What did they do to receive that?  They provided poor and over-priced service, that's what.  Notice anyone demonizing them?

Do I think that SS and Medicare should be reformed?  You bet I do!  If my payments to SS for the past 52 years had been wisely invested, I would be a millionaire today. 

Today,  I was having fun cooking lobster tails, and whole lobsters at one of our local grocery store.   I instructed people on how to cook, clean, and serve lobster.  I'm 67 years old and earn way over the minimum wage, because I provide a valuable service.

All you younger whippersnappers who make fun of the little old lady or man who greets you at Wal-Mart, or in my case, serves you lobster, we are the future.  Minimum wage?  We deserve it, and deserve to receive more.  Because we're worth it!!


More:

Capitalist Preservation:  And another thing about Social Security...

An emergency room doctor speaks out...

and it's not pretty.

On Oct. 2 of this year, I posted about the fines being levied against hospitals if they re-admit a patient within 30 days of discharge.  Grouch at Right Truth, an ER doctor, tells us how this is working in the real world. 

From The Grouch at Right Truth:

Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have "expanded" the rule to include re-admissions for any reason. So if you're in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg.......too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg.  Read the rest

Thanks to Maggie's Notebook  for bringing this to our attention.

Woodward: Obama Proposed Cutting Medicare By Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars

unfortunetly, you'll have to listen to Morning Joe and What's Her Name, too.

Why isn't this getting more attention?...

because, trust me - this will have really bad ramifications for everyone, not just seniors.

Medicare Fines Over Hospitals' Readmitted Patients

As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. The penalties are part of a broader push under President Barack Obama's health care law to improve quality while also trying to save taxpayers money. read the rest

Just exactly who is being served by the government fining hospitals as much as 125K, or more, for doing their job?  Do they really think that the reason people are sometimes readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge is because of the ineptitude of doctors or, good heavens, to make more money?  Check out the rate of Medicare reimbursements to instantly disabuse yourself of that notion.

Here are the likely outcomes of this new insanity from the Obama administration.

• In order to avoid fines, sick patients will not be admitted to a hospital.  
• Hospitals will start to refuse to see Medicare patients.
• Even more doctors will not accept Medicare.
• Sick patients will be shuttled off to secondary care sites even though they may need to be in a hospital
• Teaching hospitals will be hardest hit which will slow down innovation and research.
• Poor people will be allowed to die.
• The hospital being fined will have to spread the cost so all health care costs will rise which means your $50.00 aspirin will now cost $60.00 and your insurance rates will rise like yeast on a hot day.

This is your future on Obamacare.  

More:

Obama's new Medicare rules will kill patients but they sure do sound great!

Will Obamacare Play Games With Your Actual Life?

Medicare and contraceptives...

let's keep this simple.

The Annual Notice of Changes for 2013 for True Blue Medicare Advantage Plan just hit the mailbox.

Here's just one change:

Diabetes Program and Supplies:

2012 You pay 0% of the cost for Medicare-covered diabetes monitoring supplies.
2013 You pay 10% of the cost for Medicare-covered diabetes monitoring supplies.

I'm not a diabetic so I never paid much attention to what was covered and what wasn't.

Due to Obamacare, seniors with diabetes who have paid into that wretched system their entire lives, and who continue to pay hundreds of dollars per month in premiums, and if working still pay a Medicare tax, will pay a 10% co-pay for their diabetes monitoring supplies.   Got that?

But Obama thinks that the Sandra Flukes of the world should receive birth control pills for "free" with no co-pay and to not do so constitutes a "war on women."  Want to know what's really going on?  The 10% seniors are paying for their diabetes supplies will help pay for all the "free" birth control for the loser women of the world who actually think they're getting something for "free." 

In what world does this make sense?


More:

Conservative Hideout 2.0:   ObamaCare Damage: Health Insurance Premiums Rise Under Obama

The "War on Poverty"...

is just another way to say "people who vote the Democrat ticket." 

Democrats:  The party of deadbeats. 

Paul Ryan in Florida: Full speech on Medicare...

good job, Paul.

FULL SPEECH: Paul Ryan talks about Medicare at the Villages

Mitt Romney: 716 BILLION (with a B) cut from Medicare...

is the real Mediscare.



More:

Washington Post:   Romney’s right: Obamacare cuts Medicare by $716 billion. Here’s how.

Bruce McQuain:   What part of “health care is a finite resource” does the left not understand?

American's for Tax Reform:   Obama Loots $716 Billion from Medicare

Jammie Wearing Fool:   Reminder: Obama’s Massive Medicare Cuts to Kick In January 1

WSJ:  John C. Goodman: Why the Doctor Can't See You

Obamacare must be repealed...

not tinkered with or "fixed", but completely repealed. 


Obamacare's Five Tax Increases That Most Hurt Seniors

The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on families and employers. Here are the 5 tax hikes that most hurt seniors.  read the rest

House Will Kill Obamacare's Medicare Rationing Panel This Week

The U.S. House of Representatives this week will vote to eliminate the unelected Medicare rationing panel passed as part of the jobs-killing Obamacare law.

The U.S. House of Representatives this week will be voting on H.R. 452, the “Medicare Decisions Accountability Act of 2011.”  This bill would repeal the Medicare rationing board known as “IPAB,” and is part of a full repeal of the jobs-killing Obamacare law.  read the rest

Medicare is a mess...

and anyone who thinks otherwise either doesn't have to deal with Medicare or hasn't been paying attention.

Other then the time my mother was raising her children, she worked in the healthcare field.  She started out after college in secretary positions to medical practices overseeing the office staff and billing.  When she returned to work in the 1960's it was to update the entire medical records department in a major hospital in the Houston medical center setting up the coding for all the files - a job that took over six months with a staff of four.  She later became the assistant administrator of that hospital and resigned that position to be executive secretary for the x-ray department.

My mother understood how healthcare worked and when Medicare was first proposed she declared it a mess and predicted it would eventually lead to wrecking the healthcare field.  My mother was very smart.


From Reason.com

Medicare Whac-A-Mole 
Why health care price controls always fail

 House Republicans, you may have heard, are trying to “end Medicare as we know it.” And well they should—Medicare as we know it is the nation’s biggest fiscal disaster. For years members of Congress and the executive branch have been trying, and failing, to find ways to restrain the growth of government health spending on seniors. Medicare is a $500 billion program on track to become a $1 trillion program before hitting insolvency in 2024, even under the rosiest projections. The program looms as a threat not only to itself but to the budgetary health of the nation. It is the single largest driver of long-term federal debt. read the rest

and

From: Questions and Observation

Medicare’s Doctor (and patient) trap

 

 

The feds want your health records...

that should work well.

Led by quasi-Catholic Kathleen Sebelius. 

Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s  health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.
This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us. read the rest

My doctors office is already in compliance with the "everything in the computer" thingy.  That means when I visit the doctor, as I did last week, the majority of the time is spent with him pecking at the computer while asking me questions.   After about 30 minutes of this I wanted to scream, "Would you mind looking at me instead of the computer screen."


Expect it to get worse...    

Medicare and ObamaCare...

both in trouble.

RightKlik:   Obamacare: 6 Pages of Law Become 1,000 Pages of Regulation

we're in big trouble.

Hot Air:   And the winners of the first Obamacare payout lottery are … not the taxpayers

and more from The Blaze:
 
What Arrangement Potentially Poses Big Threat to Medicare & Obamacare?

and

more on Medicare from Paul Ryan

My question:  What part of clusterf*** does the loony left not understand??

Medicare is not free...

Maggie, over at her famous Notebook,  has a enlightening article about Medicare and the perceptions many people have about the cost.  She wrote in response to Deficit Commission Co-Chair Republican Alan Simpson, who lauded the “Greatest Generation” and slammed those who are on Medicare, or will be in not too many years, as “the greediest generation.”  Once again we have a member of this administration, up to and including the current president, who finds it perfectly acceptable to insult and demean citizens.  

"We had some favorite forty-somethings over for Thanksgiving dinner who were shocked to learn that those on Medicare actually pay for coverage. They thought it was free – for life, and we can’t blame them. If you listen to the discussions about Medicare, I believe the goal is to give the impression that coverage is free. It isn’t free and it isn’t even almost free. During the discussion over turkey, dressing and the best sweet potatoes to be served on any table, anywhere, it was determined that a couple will pay just under $700 per month per couple for coverage." read the rest including Maggie's common sense solutions

This hits rather close to home.  My husband started receiving Medicare a little over a year ago and I will be on Medicare starting December 1st.  In the past, other than for about 8 years working at Costco, we have paid for our own private insurance.  It was high deductible and so we paid for all our appointments, check-ups, etc.

We're not real excited about being on Medicare but the way the system is devised, only the extremely wealthy can self-insure.  One of my husband's students is a doctor who accepts Medicare patients and has agreed to be our doctor.  It is doubtful if we could find a doctor within 100 miles who would be willing to take on any  Medicare patients.  And why should they?!  Medicare doesn't pay them squat and is trying to cut that amount by 23%.   It's beyond comprehension why any doctor would treat Medicare patients. 

I was a bit shocked to read in Maggie's article that there are actually people who think Medicare is free.  Trust me - it's far from free.  If we opted for prescription coverage (which we didn't) it would be costing us about  7 to 8 hundred dollars per month.  This is in addition to the amount of money we've contributed since the beginning of Medicare.  The only insurance payment that was ever made on my behalf was wrist and hand surgery while I worked at Costco.  I'd say the insurance company did just fine,  considering they received approximately $10K per year for 8 years and only had to pay for a few operations that totaled about 3K.

Aside from the common sense approaches presented by Maggie, another area of health insurance that should be addressed is employer-provided coverage.  It is time for this anachronism to be stopped.  Individuals and families should provide their own insurance rather than have it tied to employment.  Employers are not "giving" you anything when they provide benefits.  It is factored in as part of your salary.  It is not "free."

More:

The Foundry:   Time to Clean Up the Medicare Doctor Payment Mess
Jammie Wearing Fool:  Democrats' Scheme to Fund Obamacare By Gutting Medicare Like a Fish Proceeds Apace 
The Blog Prof:  Obama - the Black Knight of socialized medicine
The Lonely Conservative:   SEIU Dumps Insurance Policies for Workers’ Kids




 While cruising around the internet looking for some figures I stumbled upon Dr. Wes. 

Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC is a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist (doctor specializing in heart rhythm disorders) practicing at North Shore University Health System, Evanston, IL and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. He entered the blog-o-sphere in November, 2005.

His "letter to patients from June of 2009 is priceless.  Be sure and read the comments - they're a real eyeopener:

An Open Letter To Patients Regarding Health Reform

Dear Mr. and Ms. Patient,

It has come to my attention that in order for you to enjoy success as patients in the new era of health care reform, you must start working now to prevent illnesses that might befall you. Do not, under any circumstances, eat or drink too much. Fast food might as well be considered illegal. Exercise three, four, five times a day, even if it means take time off from work. It goes without saying that you should not smoke. The government has data that demonstrates how you have become fat, lazy, and a huge burden on our health care system. Your non-compliance threatens the very fiber of our economy. Even employers realize this, and are using calculators to figure your financial burden to them.  read the rest  (link fixed - sorry)

Obama to Bypass Senate to Name Health Official. So What Else is New?

The New York Times reports that Obama, in his usual sneaky way, will appoint  Dr. Donald M. Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid.  This is a man who thinks the medical system in Great Britain is the bee's knees and medical rationing is the solution to all our problems.

In two decades as a professor of health policy and as a prolific writer, Dr. Berwick has championed the interests of patients and consumers. At the same time, he has spoken of the need to ration health care and cap spending, has supported efforts to “reduce the total supply of high-technology medical and surgical care” and has expressed great admiration for the British health care system. 

via: Memeorandum 

Related:

The Massachusetts Health-Care 'Train Wreck'

The future of ObamaCare is unfolding here: runaway spending, price controls, even limits on care and medical licensing.  read the rest

H/T Memeorandum 

Your Future on ObamaCare

Wichita Witch Hunt

The Justice Department wages war on pain relief.

No good deed goes unpunished when a private citizen is up against the federal drug warriors--those members of the Department of Justice who have been seeking, with increasing success in recent decades, to effectively control the practice of pain relief medicine. read the rest

H/T Instapundit

There is nothing about this story I find at all hard to believe. In 1982, the year my mother died from cancer that had metastasized to her bones, her doctor (bless his heart), prescribed Percodan to control the pain.

During this time her doctor was called before the pharmaceutical board three times to explain the large quantity of pain medication he prescribed.

According to him it would go something like this:

Pharmaceutical Board (PB): "So Doctor, can you explain the large amount of Percodan you are prescribing for patient A?"

Doctor (D): "Why yes. You see patient A has cancer that has spread to her bones and it's very, very painful."

PB: "I presume Doctor, you are aware Patient A could become addicted?"

D: "Since I don't expect Patient A to live too terribly much longer, that was not a factor when making my decision."

PB: "Are there alternatives you could be prescribing?"

D: "Hmmmmmmmm, yes. I could give her acetaminophen with codeine, which wouldn't work. Or I could give her morphine which would render her completely zonked and unable to have any awareness of her final months. I was sorta saving that for later when it was the last alternative."

PB: Well Doctor, we'll let it pass for now, but we've got our eye on you.

My Mom was gracious enough to die before the pharmaceutical board yanked the doctor's ability to prescribe pain medication for his patients or the DEA threw his sorry a** in jail (for being a wonderful doctor!)

How the government thinks: (I know - that's an oxymoron)

My Mom lived with us until her death. My husband and I were her primary caregivers. In her final few weeks I was desperately in need of a bit of help. I made it quite clear when I asked Medicare for a visiting nurse, a practical nurse was all that was necessary. Just someone to bathe her, give her breakfast, and stay with her while I did a few hours work at my hair salon.

Did I get help? Sure. A registered nurse who was paid approximately $10.00 more per hour. I repeatedly told them I didn't need a registered nurse. But guess what? The bureaucrats had decided they wouldn't pay $10.00 less per hour for a practical nurse. Only a registered nurse was covered.

Some of the time the nursing service didn't have a registered nurse to send. What did I get? A practical nurse who was "working as a registered nurse" and billed to Medicare at registered nurse rates. The practical nurse was unable to legally give injections, so it was my responsibility to give my Mom her morphine before I left for a few hours. And we wonder why Medicare is nearing bankruptcy?

Are these the folks you want making your health care decisions?

Related and Important:

Gateway Pundit: Media Silent As Obama Slashes $1.4 Billion From Medicare to Heart & Cancer Docs