Can you trust big government to take care of your health?

Let’s take a look at another story about socialized medicine from the UK, from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

The picture Sarah Fleming took of her husband Stewart is one that will haunt her for ever.

Taken on her mobile phone, it shows him sitting in a hospital cubicle, a hand clutching his stomach, his face a vivid reflection of the agony he was in, as he waited to be seen by doctors.

Tragically, that picture is a heartrending reminder of the circumstances leading up to the railway signalman’s death. It is also a vivid illustration of the turmoil unfolding in overstretched hospital emergency departments.

For the father-of-two, 37, from Rainham, in Kent, had to endure a six–hour wait to see a doctor in A&E at Gillingham’s Medway Maritime Hospital. He had a letter from his GP asking him to be admitted immediately.

He had been to see his GP that day because the antibiotics he had been taking for flu-like systems had failed to work. He was referred straight to hospital. But when he arrived, on December 15, 2008, the hospital was facing an unusually busy period. Staff sickness, a cold weather snap and an increase in GP referrals meant the hospital was under pressure.

He was admitted at 5.30pm, but was not seen until 11.15pm. By then, the mystery virus Stewart had contracted was attacking his heart, kidneys and liver. Despite being transferred to London’s Harefield Hospital, where he was placed into a drug-induced coma, he died on December 27.

And another from the same article:

She was a frail woman who deserved to be treated with dignity and kindness. Instead, Ethel Martin, 91, died after developing deep vein thrombosis having spent 16 hours on a trolley at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

The great-grandmother was admitted to hospital on April 17, 2006, complaining of feeling breathless. Her family were with her when she was put in a curtained-off bay in the overstretched A&E department — the hospital saw 365 patients in A&E that day — at about 5pm.

They returned home in the early hours, assuming she would be cared for, but were shocked when they came back the next day at 9am and found her in the same position. She hadn’t slept because the trolley was so uncomfortable.

After Mrs Martin, of Chorlton, Greater Manchester, was found a bed, her condition deteriorated and she was diagnosed with DVT. She was treated with blood-thinning drugs but died on May 1, following a cardiac arrest.

At an inquest into her death, pathologist Dr Richard Fitzmaurice said lying on her trolley could have contributed to her death. ‘Immobility is a recognised factor in the build-up of deep vein thrombosis.’

A coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure, on the grounds Mrs Martin’s death was the unintended consequence of medical treatment.

Mr. Stewart probably paid into the NHS his entire life before he needed care, and was denied it. That’s wow socialized medicine works. You pay into it. The government takes your money and buys votes from young people, by providing contraception, breast implants, HIV drugs, abortions, IVF and sex changes. When you get old, and need care, then you get in line behind people who have never paid a dime into the system. By that time, you’ll have no money of your own to get treatment from a private hospital. In Canada, you would have to leave the country and pay out of pocket for immediate care. That’s what the left thinks is such a great idea.

Filed under: News, Delay, Democrat Party, Health-care, Labour Party, National Health Service, NHS, Single-Payer, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Treatment, UK, United Kingdom, Waiting List

Ezra Klein on the costs of Obamacare: then and now

Consider this article from Forbes about Obamacare and how it was presented by Ezra Klein, a well-known journalist from the left-leaning Washington Post. (H/T Bernie M.)

Excerpt:

The key thing to remember is that back when Obamacare was being debated in Congress, Democrats claimed that it was right-wing nonsense that premiums would go up under Obamacare. “What we know for sure,” Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber told Ezra Klein in 2009, “is that [the bill] will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” For sure.

In 2009, was Ezra saying that it’s ok that premiums will double for the average person, because a minority of people will pre-existing conditions will benefit? No.

Earlier that year, AHIP, the private insurer trade group, commissioned a report from Price Waterhouse Coopers to analyze the impact of Obamacare on health insurance premiums in the individual market. That report, which I reviewed here and elsewhere, found that the version of Obamacare then being considered by the Senate Finance Committee would increase premiums by 14 to 32 percent, depending on the year you looked at. In retrospect, the PwC report was a bit optimistic.

But Ezra described the PwC analysis as “the insurance industry’s deceptive report,” comparing it to sham research put out by the tobacco industry and Big Oil. Ezra did concede at the time that “buying better insurance will cost somewhat more,” because insurers would no longer be able “to sell a deceptive and insufficient product.”

But high-deductible, catastrophic insurance isn’t cheaper because it’s dishonest. It’s cheaper because it’s more efficiently designed. And it’s precisely that sort of efficiently-designed insurance that Obamacare abolishes.

I blogged about that study from Price Waterhouse Coopers before, too. In fact, I fully explained why specific provisions of Obamacare would necessarily raise health insurance premiums.

Before the 2012 election, I linked to an article from Investors Business Daily, which confirmed that premiums had indeed risen since the passage of Obamacare.

Excerpt:

During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.

But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama’s vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey.

Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370.

What’s more, premiums climbed faster in Obama’s four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.

Despite these facts, the American people went along with the mainstream media and re-elected Obama for a second term in 2012, blocking any repeal of Obamacare.

I think that the American people need to realize that most journalists cannot be counted on to handle research and evidence accurately. Most of them probably never even completed a high school math or science course. They studied journalism. Journalism is not computer science. Journalism is not petroleum engineering. Journalism is not nursing. Journalism is an area where students are graded based on their ability to parrot what their leftist professors tell them to believe.  At best, left-wing journalists are not competent. At worst, they are outright liars. Study after study on media bias has confirmed that left-wing journalists cannot be trusted to report the news fairly. That is not my opinion, that’s a fact.

Unfortunately for us, our failure to fix our little Obama mistake in the 2012 election is going to cost us all dearly – especially young people.

Related posts

• New report on Obamacare claims that premiums will go up 100% to 400%
• Americans finding out the true costs of Obamacare
• New study: Obamacare will raise cost of medical claims by 32%
• Five Guys franchise owner says Obamacare will force him to raise prices
• How the new Obamacare mandates are reducing full-time employment
• How does Obamacare cause medical premiums to rise?
• Obamacare’s new tax on medical devices trickles down to hospitals and patients
• Medical premiums will continue to rise as Obamacare is implemented
• Christian business Hobby Lobby defies Obamacare abortion mandate
• When health insurance is forced to cover more, insurance premiums go up
• Obamacare in action: Denny’s to charge 5% surcharge and cut employee hours
• Papa John pizza CEO: cuts to employee hours likely, because of Obamacare
• A primer on the fiscal cliff facing us in January 2013: tax hikes and Obamacare
• Companies announce layoffs in the wake of Obama’s re-election
• Sally Pipes: how Obamacare causes doctors to quit practicing medicine
• Why do some people oppose Obamacare? What does Obamacare do?
• The full list of Obamacare tax hikes in order from largest to smallest
• California: Obamacare exchanges will raise health insurance premiums up to 25%
• Health insurance premiums up $3,000 since Obama was elected
• Report: Obamacare regulations will cost taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion
• CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022
• Obamacare subsidizes the risky behaviors of sexually active women
• Obamacare begins forcing states to cap and cut prescription drug benefits
• CBO: 20 million Americans could lose employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare

Filed under: News, Costs, Health Care Costs, Health Care Expenses, Health Care Premiums, Health Insurance, Health-care, Mandate, Media Bias, Medical Insurance, Medical Treatment, Nationalized Health Care, Obamacare, Public Option, Ration, Rationing, Socialized Medicine, Waiting List

Americans finding out the true costs of Obamacare

The Daily Caller has a sobering article about the true costs of Obamacare.

Excerpt:

Millions of Americans are receiving double-digit premium hikes. For many people under 30, their health insurance premiums are going up much more — by as much as 189 percent. What happened to candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 promise that every family’s health care costs would go down by $2,500 by the end of his first term? (Costs actually went up by $3,000.)

The Congressional Budget Office projects Obamacare will cost tens of billions more over the next decade than the agency projected just three years ago. Those increases were not budgeted for, and will add to massive deficits.

So much for the promise that the law “will not add one dime to the deficit.”

Millions of workers at places like Wendy’s and Olive Garden are now being preemptively reclassified as part-time, and an estimated 7 million to 20 million employees face the loss of workplace health benefits altogether.

So much for the oft-heard promise that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

[...]Seniors were assured that the new system wouldn’t affect their benefits, despite Obamacare’s $716 billion in ten-year cuts to Medicare (to help pay for the new entitlement).

That promise was broken recently, when the Medicare agency issued surprise regulations cutting Medicare even more deeply than Congress had directed — cuts that target a popular and very successful part of Medicare, one that actually features consumer choice and competition, namely, Medicare Advantage (MA).

Seniors who opt into MA enjoy greater care coordination, disease management for chronic conditions, and on-call nurses available by phone. Those extra services — which in some cases mean the difference between life and death — are now slated for the chopping-block.

Rosemarie Battaglia will be among the millions of victims of these new regulations, which beginning April 1 will effectively shave MA plan payments by about 2 percentage points. On top of prior cuts enacted in Obamacare, that spells an 8 percent cut next year — a level higher than the profit margins for these plans.

Actuarial experts at the American Action Forum predict the cuts will cause between 2 and 5 million seniors to lose their MA benefits, and that MA recipients face health care cost increases averaging $2,235 a year.

When a President makes promises about economic policy, we shouldn’t believe him unless we have reasons to believe that he understands business and economics. We had no reason to believe that Obama understood economics. And, when given the reins of the economy, he’s proven that. Instead of electing people who sound nice in speeches, we should be electing people who have shown that they know how to solve the problems we’re facing in the economy. A track record of success at creating jobs, reducing the costs of health care, improving health care quality and choice, etc. should have counted for more than rhetoric. We chose the rhetoric and now we’re getting the screws.

Related posts

• New study: Obamacare will raise cost of medical claims by 32%
• Five Guys franchise owner says Obamacare will force him to raise prices
• How the new Obamacare mandates are reducing full-time employment
• How does Obamacare cause medical premiums to rise?
• Obamacare’s new tax on medical devices trickles down to hospitals and patients
• Medical premiums will continue to rise as Obamacare is implemented
• Christian business Hobby Lobby defies Obamacare abortion mandate
• When health insurance is forced to cover more, insurance premiums go up
• Obamacare in action: Denny’s to charge 5% surcharge and cut employee hours
• Papa John pizza CEO: cuts to employee hours likely, because of Obamacare
• A primer on the fiscal cliff facing us in January 2013: tax hikes and Obamacare
• Companies announce layoffs in the wake of Obama’s re-election
• Sally Pipes: how Obamacare causes doctors to quit practicing medicine
• Why do some people oppose Obamacare? What does Obamacare do?
• The full list of Obamacare tax hikes in order from largest to smallest
• California: Obamacare exchanges will raise health insurance premiums up to 25%
• Health insurance premiums up $3,000 since Obama was elected
• Report: Obamacare regulations will cost taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion
• CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022
• Obamacare subsidizes the risky behaviors of sexually active women
• Obamacare begins forcing states to cap and cut prescription drug benefits
• CBO: 20 million Americans could lose employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare

Filed under: News, Barack Obama, Big Government, Business, Costs, Coverage, Death Panels, Debt, Deficit, Democrat Party, Economics, Economy, Government, Government Spending, Health Insurance, Health-care, Healthcare, Medicine, Nationalization, Obamacare, Premium, Rationing, Recklessness, Regulation, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Spending, Subsidies, Unemployment, Waste

How privatization turned the worst-performing NHS hospital around

From the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

[T]he most successful of the “drastic” experiments put in place is that much-hated bête noire of progressives and Obamacare supporters everywhere: privatization. The Mail Onlinereports that Hinchingbrooke Hospital, “The first NHS trust to be operated entirely by a private company has recorded one of the highest levels of patient satisfaction in the country.”

In other words, the Brits were so desperate to fix their crumbling health care system, they experimented with the private market and it is outperforming government-run health care without breaking a sweat. Hinchingbrooke was, like so many hospitals in the UK, about to go under when a private company called Circle Holdings was awarded a 10-year contract to run it. This is the first time such a company has been given control of an NHS hospital and the results will not come as a surprise to anyone who understands free enterprise.

As the Mail Online goes on to report, “The company running the trust has slashed losses at the hospital by 60 per cent and will soon begin to pay… debts built up over years of mismanagement.” Though will be no surprise to free market advocates, it has been a real eye-opener to the NHS. Privatization isn’t the dirty word it once was in the much-maligned health system: “The takeover deal … is seen as a blueprint for the future of many NHS trusts. The George Eliot Hospital in Warwickshire is already considering adopting the model.”

It will also come as no surprise to those who believe the market provides the most efficient health care delivery model that, in addition to dramatically improving the financial prospects, privatization has improved patient satisfaction. Before Hinchingbrooke was taken over by Circle Holdings, patients had a very low opinion of the hospital and the care it provided. Now, this perception is dramatically improved: “Patient satisfaction has risen to 85 per cent, placing Hinchingbrooke in the top six of the East of England’s 46 hospitals.”

I took a look at the UK Daily Mail article and found an interesting section:

Patient satisfaction has risen to 85 per cent, placing Hinchingbrooke in the top six of the East of England’s 46 hospitals. The feedback is calculated by asking families and patients whether they would recommend the hospital, then weighting the answers compared to local peers.

Previously the trust was among the lowest ranking for satisfaction.

Figures also show that Hinchingbrooke has risen from being one of the worst performing trusts to one of the best under the private firm’s management.When Circle took over, the hospital was consistently near the bottom of the 46 trusts, with many patients waiting more than four hours in A&E.

It now tops the list for short waiting times, seeing 98.2 per cent of patients within the required window.
The hospital also ranks fifth for the proportion of patients with suspected cancer having tests within a fortnight.

Before the takeover it had missed targets every month since June 2010.

It now treats 89 per cent of cancer patients within 62 days, beating the 85 per cent target.

Circle saved millions of pounds a year by cutting out arduous paperwork and middle management.

Under the former ownership, a lengthy form had to be filled out every time a lightbulb needed changing, in a process that often took more than a week.

The group, which runs independent hospitals in Reading and Bath, inherited debts of £39million with the project.

The hospital had been expected to lose £10million last year, but this has been whittled down to  £3.7million by the Circle group.

It made up the deficit from its own coffers, rather than taxpayer funds, and is expected to break even in the current year.

Do you think that we might consider privatizing Medicaid and Medicare, since we know that privatization is good for health care consumers and taxpayers? Of course not, because privatization is bad for politicians, who want to retain control of health care. Privatization is good, but we’re not going to get it unless we vote the socialists out.

Filed under: News, Consumer-Driven Health Care, Doctor, George Eliot Hospital, Health-care, Hospital, Medicine, National Health Service, NHS, Patient, Privatization, Service, Single-Payer, Socialized Medicine, Taxpayer, Warwickshire

Report: Patients receiving poor care at NHS hospital

A damning report on the state of government-run health care in the UK, found in the leftist New York Times, of all places.

Excerpt:

Shockingly bad care and inhumane treatment at a hospital in the Midlands led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths and stripped countless patients of their dignity and self-respect, according to a scathing report published on Wednesday.

The report, which examined conditions at Stafford Hospital in Staffordshire over a 50-month period between 2005 and 2009, cites example after example of horrific treatment: patients left unbathed and lying in their own urine and excrement; patients left so thirsty that they drank water from vases; patients denied medication, pain relief and food by callous and overworked staff members; patients who contracted infections due to filthy conditions; and patients sent home to die after being given the wrong diagnoses.

[...]The report into what has been called the biggest scandal in the modern history of the health service found that many of the problems were due to the efforts of the hospital to meet health-service targets, like providing care within four hours to patients arriving at the emergency room. It also said that in its efforts to balance its books and save $16 million in 2006 and 2007 in order to achieve so-called foundation-trust status, which made it semi-independent of control by the central government, the hospital laid off too many people and focused relentlessly on external objectives rather than patient care.

Patients have to be cared about in a for-profit system, otherwise, no one will get paid. In a socialist system, patients pay first and then hope to get care later. Although there are many hard-working doctors and nurses in the NHS, you can’t separate the care that a patient gets from the reward that doctors and nurses get, otherwise, they lose their incentive to care for patients.

But an even bigger problem is that when government runs health care, all kinds of things start to get covered that are not really health care, as the government begins to use health care as a way to buy votes. Suddenly, patients with real health care needs have to get in line behind people who want sex changes, breast implants, IVF, elective abortions and so on. There just isn’t time to give everyone care when the people seeking have no incentive to live responsible lives and make responsible choices in order to avoid risks that may require care. I do believe that the majority of NHS doctors and nurses mean well. They want to serve and help others. But when patients have no incentive to be responsible, there will be too much demand for care, and there will be shortages. When prices are health below market value, demand surges and a shortage will occur.

Here’s a bit more about the NHS health care problem from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

This week, the  scathing report on the Stafford Hospital  Scandal — after abuse and neglect led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients — said ‘fundamental change’ was needed in the NHS. It condemned ‘failings at every level’ and contained 290 recommendations for reform. However, Robert Francis QC’s report was merely the latest damning indictment of the health service.

In November 2012 the Care Quality Commission found that ten per cent of hospitals and  15 per cent of care homes weren’t treating their patients with respect. Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, warned that cruelty and neglect  had become normal in some hospitals and care homes.

[...]Reports in 2011 from Age UK and The Patients’ Association exposed some horrendous instances of abuse and neglect — not only enforced incontinence and unanswered buzzers, but patients left hungry and thirsty or in soiled bed-linen.

Another reason for these shortages is bureaucratic red tape. Government-run enterprises are inefficient:

Talking with a cross-section of hospital staff, older nurses told me where they feel the problems lie. They say it is not so much a question of cruelty and neglect — although they acknowledge that this can exist — but more that ward culture has changed.

In the past, the patient’s comfort and needs came first, but now it is all too easy for elements of patient care to be missed as nursing staff focus on paperwork and meeting targets.

Should we have government-run health care? Let’s look at how it works in other countries and decide using the evidence.

Filed under: News, Government, Health-care, Medicine, National Health Service, NHS, Report, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Stafford