Normulator’s Blog

Universal Health Coverage --- Call It Socialized Medicine

Lawrence R. Huntoon, MD, PhD

It's another Post you have to highlight to read. Right click and drag like as if you were going to copy it.

One of the biggest myths being propogated today is the absurd notion that "people can't see a doctor without having insurance." The truth is office visits are relatively cheap, well within the means of most people. The problem is most people don't budget anything for their annual medical care. And, then when a problem arises, any expense greater than zero "isn't in the budget."

The other problem is that insurance really isn't insurance anymore. It is pre-paid health care. True insurance is intended to prevent financial disaster in the face of an unlikely event. Most people, however, have come to expect first dollar coverage for everything including very common and likely events like routine doctor office visits. "Covered'' employees don't realize it's their money going to pay for this "wonderful" non-bargain of first dollar coverage. It's not a "free" benefit provided by their employer as most employees believe. These costs are essentially hidden from employees. Money their employer wastes in purchasing first dollar coverage or inferior managed care coverage for the employee is money which would have been the employee's salary to spend as they choose.

The reason most people obtain their health insurance from their employer is because of tax discrimination. During World War II, our government enacted wage and price controls. Employers couldn't attract better workers by offering higher wages, but were allowed to offer health insurance as an untaxed benefit. Although World War II ended 54 years ago, this same tax discrimination policy remains in effect today. This atrocious policy discriminates against the working poor, part-time employees, employees working for small businesses that don't offer health insurance, and the self-employed. Those who obtain their health insurance through their employer, purchase their coverage with pre-tax dollars. On the other hand, those who purchase their health insurance on their own, purchase it with after-tax dollars --- a huge difference. In fact, the uninsured actually end up paying what amounts to a tax penalty for being uninsured.(1) It is estimated that "a family in the bottom fifth of the income distribution pays about $450 more in taxes than insured families at the same income level. For families in the top fifth of the income distribution, the tax penalty is $1,780."(1) The analysis goes on to say that "on the average, uninsured families pay about $1,018 more in federal taxes each year because they do not have employer-provided insurance. Collectively, the uninsured pay about $17.1 billion in extra taxes each year because they do not receive the same tax break as insured people with similar income. If state and local taxes are included, the extra taxes paid by the uninsured exceed $19 billion per year."(1)

Where, we must ask, is the compassion for these overtaxed, hard-working people? This is clearly a government-created problem. What we don't need is more government (nationalized health care) to "fix it." What we need is to get government out of our wallets so people can have their own money needed to purchase and own their own health insurance. The other thing the pro-socialist "crisis mongers" fail to tell people is that only one-third of the uninsured are chronically uninsured.2 For the other two-thirds, it is only a short, temporary condition, "half of all uninsured spells will last less than six-months. Three-fourths of them will be insured within 12 months. Only 18 percent of all last for more than two years."(2)

Those who brandish the "crisis" of the uninsured to promote socialized medicine also often fail to tell people that uninsured doesn't necessarily mean poor. In fact, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) tells us that "a third of the uninsured households earn more than $30,000 a year and 10 percent earn more than $50,000."(2) That's at least 40 percent of the so-called "uninsured" that could well afford a $45 office visit or health insurance.(2) We need to get away from the concept that "someone else," big government or insurance, needs to take care of our every need.

The other adverse consequence of this tax discrimination is that it led to cost inflation of medical care. Everyone came to believe that we were spending "other peoples' money" (OPM). And, when you're spending OPM, the sky is the limit. Patients have been told that they are getting "free" insurance from their employer and quite naturally came to expect everything they wanted or desired, whether of marginal benefit or not, would be "fully covered." Likewise, the physician who "participated" in insurance and was paid directly by the insurance company for everything with OPM, had no disincentive to hold down costs. The patients came to view these "participating" physicians as "good" and "compassionate" because the physicians would accept their insurance and the patient would have to pay little or nothing out of pocket, not realizing that OPM was actually their money all along.

Both patient and participating physician, therefore, contributed to this disrupted market where both buyer and seller were insulated from costs thus leading to uncontrollable cost inflation. The problem of cost inflation was further compounded by the cost of government regulation. Government mandates increase the costs of health insurance tremendously, and the mandates are often for things that most people don't want or need. Yet, they are forced to pay for the "coverage." "These mandated benefits included wigs for bald-headed women (Minnesota), pastoral marital counseling (Vermont), and community sperm bank services (Massachusetts).(3) In New York state, most health insurance premiums doubled as a result of state-mandated community rating. This has made health insurance especially hard to afford for the young and healthy who are, in effect, punished by the state for being young and healthy and for not engaging in unhealthy behavior. State mandates, which were purportedly instituted to "help" people, have thus had the effect of pricing many people out of the health insurance market. This, however, is predictably what happens when we look to big government to "help" us.

Indeed, "universal coverage," nationalized health care, or socialized medicine, regardless of what you choose to call it, is not the same as medical care. All of the citizens of Canada, for instance, have "universal coverage." What they often don't have, however, is the medical care that they need when they need it. That is why we see Canadians crossing the border into the United States in droves to obtain the health care that they can't get when they need it in their own country. Their government rations access to health care and thus attempts to control costs by making MRI scans, radiation oncology, bypass surgeries and many other health services largely unavailable to their own people. Is this the egalitarian's view of compassion and social justice?

We Get More of What the Government Subsidizes

Government programs also breed highly destructive dependence. How destructive? Well, I once took care of an alcoholic patient who bragged that his government disability checks allowed him to purchase better quality whiskey than he could afford to buy when he wasn't considered disabled because of his alcoholism. The government thus subsidized his alcoholism.

During his hospital stay, I pointed out his government subsidized habit had damaged his liver, his pancreas and his brain. He was slowly but surely killing himself with alcohol, bought and paid for by the government. After much discussion with the patient, I convinced him to give up alcohol, but there was a problem. Although the patient was willing to give up alcohol, he wasn't willing to give up the government checks. You see, if he gave up alcohol, he would lose his disability status, and would have to do something drastic like work to obtain money. But, he reasoned, why work when the government will give him the money to spend doing something that he liked to do? This spontaneous "experiment" in addiction medicine proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. As powerful as addiction to alcohol is, it pales in comparison to the addiction to government money.

Yes, we need health care reform, but it needs to be based upon the principles of individual freedom and individual responsibility. And, there are many options out there. Most people could purchase a high deductible indemnity insurance policy at a lower price than they would pay for monthly managed care premiums. That's right --- a much higher quality of health care at a lower price! Imagine, having the freedom to choose the doctor or hospital you want to go to, being able to go to specialists without denials, delays, and gatekeepers. And, the money saved by purchasing a high-deductible catastrophic policy could be set aside in a special savings account to pay for deductibles. The money saved by purchasing a high-deductible policy could also be used to pay for the insurance premiums.

Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) allow people to put money aside and take a tax deduction for keeping and controlling their own money. The MSA earns interest year after year tax free and if not spent by retirement age can be converted into a pension fund. Think of all the money you and your employer have turned over to insurance companies since you started working, and how much a young worker would have accumulated after 45 years of investment in a MSA. Those in favor of nationalized health care, of course, don't want to give you control of your own money. Government elites feel that they can better spend your money for you. This is the real message that they don't want you to hear.

And, last but not least, there is charity. No hospital ever turns any patient away because of lack of funds. Hospitals and the physicians on call at those hospitals are required by law to treat all patients presenting to the emergency department irrespective of ability to pay. And we do it all the time. It's a total myth that you can't come to the hospital because you "don't have insurance" or "can't pay." Charity is something that should involve churches, not big government. What big government does, confiscating money from all, including the minimum wage earner, and redistributing it based upon some social engineering scheme, isn't charity. It's legalized plunder. True charity comes from the heart, not from forced "contributions." Most churches and charitable agencies understand the dependency trap of big government programs. They understand that it does no good in the long run to give a man fish for his dinner. This does not help him. To help a man, you must teach him to fish. The goal should be to help a man back to his feet so he can support himself and his family, not to trap them in a cycle of dependency. That is what dignity and self-esteem are all about. That is what true compassion is all about. The Amish don't have "insurance coverage," yet they have existed for centuries via a charitable tradition of voluntarily sharing others' burdens and medical expenses. This same concept has been implemented via other churches and religious organizations in conjunction with MSAs and has been proven by AAPS members like Dr. Alieta Eck and associates to be a much more affordable alternative to traditional health insurance.

I find it very sad in a country where men and women have died fighting to preserve our freedom and have died fighting off socialism and communism that some are now considering socialized medicine as a solution to improving access to health care.

Lenin once said that "medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism,'' and I believe those who are promoting "universal coverage" via government-run and government-controlled medicine know this. What they hope is that the public won't find out the truth. There is nothing compassionate about socialism. This is why the AAPS gives a high priority to educating other physicians and the public about the truth of socialized medicine. That is why AAPS should be joined and supported by all physicians!

References

1. Are the uninsured freeloaders? National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis No. 120, August 10, 1994.
2. Goodman JC, Musgrave G. Patient Power. Excerpted from: Problem: The rising number of people who lack health insurance. National Center for Policy Analysis, 1992.
3. Printz D. We need MSAs now! Medical Sentinel 1996;1(2):5.

Lawrence R. Huntoon, MD, PhD is president of AAPS and a practicing neurologist in Jamestown, New York.

Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 2000;5(4):134-136. Copyright ©2000 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

http://www.imao.us/archives/009966.html

There have been many rumors about Senator Barack Obama, so I thought I'd check on how which ones are true if any:

Obama is happy when his head isn't stuck in a bucket.

RUMOR: Obama is an enlightened space alien sent to save humanity.
STATUS: False
All evidence points towards Obama being a below average man who his wife stopped asking to do chores around the house because he was always getting his head stuck in the mop bucket.

RUMOR: Obama tried to bomb the Pentagon.
STATUS: False
That was his friend.

RUMOR: Obama felt we got what we deserved on 9/11.
STATUS: False
That was his other friend.

RUMOR: Obama was once a hired goon for the Aquaman villain Black Manta.
STATUS: False
While Obama has served on a number of committees and attended a fundraiser hosted by Black Manta, Obama has never worked for him. His campaign has on numerous occasions called it out of bounds to draw connections between Obama and the terrorists, hatemongers, and supervillians he happens to hang around with in his spare time.

RUMOR: Obama has great judgment.
STATUS: False
In recent cognitive psychology study, Obama was shown two of the same type glasses filled with liquid and agreed that each has the same amount of liquid. He then watched as one was poured into a tall, thin glass. When asked which glass had more liquid, he pointed to the taller glass.

RUMOR: Obama once bowled a perfect 300.
STATUS: False
Obama once bowled a 3, which some consider to be the perfect number in a non-bowling context.

RUMOR: Obama is a member of radical black separatist groups and considers himself racially superior to all others.
STATUS: False
He does not consider himself racially superior since he's half white.

RUMOR: Obama can fly.
STATUS: False
Obama is subjected to the laws of gravity the same as anyone else, something he found out the hard way when he put on a red sheet and jumped off the garage at the age of thirty.

RUMOR: Obama has read War and Peace six times.
STATUS: False
Obama is barely literate.

RUMOR: Obama has super-strength and is immune to bullets.
STATUS: False
Obama often has his wife open the jar of marinated artichoke hearts for him. He is scared of guns and anything else that makes a loud noise.

RUMOR: Obama cares about the average man.
STATUS: Somewhat True
Obama cares about people who shop at Whole Foods and laugh at the religious whom he mistakenly believe to be the average man.

RUMOR: Obama is a teenage mutant ninja turtle in disguise.
STATUS: Indeterminate
While Obama does love pizza and shouts cowabunga on occasion, there is no known evidence of his ninja or turtle skills.

RUMOR: Obama would be a great presidential candidate.
STATUS: False
I'm not even sure where that one got started.

Uploaded By 903music

1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;

2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;

3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:

This email comes in three parts:

Part 1

In just one year .  Remember the election in 2006?

 Thought you might like to read the following:

 A little over one year ago:

1) Consumer confidence plummet;

2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon;

3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);

4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses);

5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars;

6) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.

America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

Remember it's Congress that makes law not the President. He has to work with what's handed to him.

Quote of the Day........"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.  I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." -- Barack Obama

Part 2:

Taxes... Whether Democrat or a Republican you will find these statistics enlightening and amazing.

 www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

Taxes under Clinton 1999                   Taxes under Bush 2008

Single making 30K - tax $8,400             Single making 30K - tax $4,500

Single making 50K - tax $14,000          Single making 50K - tax $12,500

Single making 75K - tax $23,250          Single making 75K - tax $18,750

Married making 60K - tax $16,800       Married making 60K- tax $9,000

Married making 75K - tax $21,000       Married making 75K - tax $18,750

Married making 125K - tax $38,750     Married making 125K - tax $31,250

Both democratic candidates will return to the higher tax rates

It is amazing how many people that fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever. If Obama or Hillary are elected, they both say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts and a good portion of the people that fall into the categories above can't wait for it to happen. This is like the movie The Sting with Paul Newman; you scam somebody out of some money and they don't even know what happened.

PART 3:

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

Boy am I confused.  I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.

I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them.  I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.

1.      $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.     Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2.      $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.     Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3.      $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.     Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4.     $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!     Verify at:  http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5.      $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.     Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6.  $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.     Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7.  30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.     Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8.  $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.   Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9.  $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10.  The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens.  In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US     Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11.  During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries.  Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.     Verify at: Homeland Security Report:  http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12.  The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of  between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."     Verify at:  http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13.  In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.     Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14.  "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."     Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. 

Are we THAT stupid?

Trident shadowing boat-load of bombs

Chinese arms dispatched to Mugabe rejected by ports
– so far
April 24, 2008

By Gordon Thomas
Reposted from the G2 Bulletin with permission - The G2 Bulletin is a subscription only news source.

Robert Mugabe

LONDON - A floating arsenal of weapons and bombs dispatched by China in a rust-stained tramp freighter to the pariah state of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe now is being shadowed by Britain’s most powerful submarine, a nuclear Trident.

Freighter officers are desperate to be allowed to unload their cargo of 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades, 2,500 mortar rounds and three million rounds of ammunition for Mugabe’s army, intended to be used to further cow the country’s starving population.

But it has been turned away by dockers in the South African port who branded it “a ship of shame,” as well as ports in Angola and Mozambique.

(Article Continues Below)

Now as it wanders around the South Atlantic, the An Yue Jiang, which began its voyage five weeks ago from the Chinese port of Ningbo southwards into the Pacific and across the Indian Ocean, the Beijing Ministry of Defense has been trying to find an African country which would allow it to unload the lethal cargo.

Intelligence sources in London have confirmed that secret approaches have been made to Equatorial Guinea, Benin and the Ivory Coast. But so far none has allowed the ship to dock and offload its weapons.

Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman in Washington, said: “We think that under the present circumstances and the current political crisis in Zimbabwe, now is not the time for anyone to be increasing the number of weapons and armaments available to that country. We will press African nations to refuse the Yue Jiang docking rights or to face worsened relations with the United State.”

Naval intelligence sources in London have said the possibility “cannot be ruled out” that the ship could make the journey to Venezuela, whose maverick leader, President Hugo Chavez, has a good relationship with China and is an opponent of the United States.

“Chavez is a skilled player on the international stage and he could say he was offering to refuel the ship on humanitarian grounds. The weapons could then be transferred to a Venezuelan registered ship and repackaged for Zimbabwe,” said one ship’s broker at Lloyds, the world’s largest shipping broker.

Meantime, the Trident — one of four in the fleet which is based in Faslane on Scotland’s Clyde — is on patrol.

For three months, the black-hulled submarine will be at sea. At 450 feet long and weighing 16,000 tons, the leviathan hull is covered with sonar-absorbing anechoic tiles.

From the depths of the ocean it trails a 1,000-yard-long communications wire. That wire is used to receive and send short burst communications.

The Trident’s role is simply that of a watchdog. But its presence can only reinforce the mood in Washington and London that the shipment of arms must be recalled to China and plans to send further shipments abandoned by the Beijing regime.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/girl-17-killed-in-iraq-for-loving-a-british-soldier-816301.html
.Source.

A 17-year-old Iraqi girl was murdered by her father in an honour killing after falling in love with a British soldier she met while working on an aid programme in Basra, it has been claimed.

Rand Abdel-Qader was stamped upon, suffocated and stabbed by her father, then given an unceremonious burial to emphasise her disgrace. Police released her father without charge two hours after his arrest.

"Not much can be done when we have an honour killing case," said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police. "You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn't hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten."

A total of 47 young women died in honour killings in the city last year, Basra Security Committee told an investigation into Ms Abdel-Qader's case by The Observer. This is believed to be the only case of an honour killing involving a British soldier.

The MoD had no official advice for troops on how to behave with Iraqi women. The serviceman involved would not have been told that any relationship with her could put her life at risk, the paper said.

Ms Abdel-Qader, a student of English at Basra University, had struck up a friendship with a 22-year-old British infantryman known only as Paul five months before her murder in March.

She was believed to have last seen him in January, and the pair, whose relationship was innocent, only ever met while working at the aid station. The soldier was helping deliver relief to displaced families as part of his regimental duties. Ms Abdel-Qader was a volunteer worker.

On the day her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, was told of their friendship by a friend, he accused her of having an affair with a British soldier and killed her in front of his wife, Leila Hussain, and their sons.

"I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life," Ms Hussain said. She then left her husband and has since divorced him. She has received threats from her husband's family and is in hiding. She now works for an organisation campaigning against honour killings.

List of Islamic Terror Attacks For the Past 2 Months