Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[TheMercenary]

Nancy's Nazi Shock: Did She Forget the Bush Years?
By John Leo
Nancy Pelosi is shocked by the presence of some swastikas at protests against Obamacare. Who ever heard of such a thing? Well, any mildly alert American old enough to remember the anti-war protests of 2003-2007. Images of George Bush with a Hitler mustache and a Nazi uniform was everywhere at swastika-choked marches and rallies. "Stop the Fourth Reich-Visualize Nuremburg," said one sign at a Hollywood march. "The Fuhrer already in his bunker," said another. Lots of Nazi regalia appeared at protests in Pelosi's San Francisco as well.
On far-left Internet sites, where basic Bush-Is-Hitler commentary became too familiar to attract attention, Bush aides were quickly assigned Nazi roles; Tom Ridge was the new Himmler and Colin Powell became Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; Ari Fleisher, Karen Hughes and Karl Rove were all Josef Goebbels figures. Some thought Vice President Cheney was the most important Hitler figure - he commands "storm-trooper legions," said famous crackpot Lyndon LaRouche.
One fevered lefty connected Bush to Nero as well as Hitler, saying "Nero burned Rome, Hitler burned the Reichstag and Bush burned the World Trade Center."
An even more inventive commenter managed to link Rove to Josef Mengele, the depraved Nazi doctor nicknamed the Angel of Death: "Bush made up stories about John McCain, just as Josef Mengele conducted medical experiments on children in Auschwitz." What?
Donald Rumsfeld was the new Rommel. The Action Coalition of Taos, New Mexico, however, thought Rumsfeld was the real Hitler, since, like Adolf, he had a mountain retreat. In an op-ed published in Florida, Air Force veteran Douglas Herman, disagreed, saying Rumsfeld was more like Goering, because both men had been fighter pilots.
Mainstream commentary featured Nazi references too. Both Senator Robert Byrd and billionaire Democrat George Soros said Bush reminded them of Herman Goering.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Al Gore used the term "brownshirts" (Nazi street thugs) to refer to Republican computer teams assigned to respond to criticism of Bush and the Iraq war.
Vanity Fair magazine nominated Richard Perle for the Goebbels role, running photos of both men under the headline "Separated at Birth?"
New York Times columnist Frank Rich managed to work in a reference to a famous Nazi filmmaker. He said a Showtime program on 9/11 was so favorable to Bush that it is "best viewed as a fitting memorial to Leni Riefenstahl."
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, sociologist and novelist, depicted Bush as a Hitler figure who carried American over to "the dark side."
Federal appeals judge Guido Calabresi offered a comparatively mild Nazi reference, saying the Bush's rise to power was reminiscent of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, with the Supreme Court pushing him into the presidency with the Bush v. Gore decision.
Bush reminded the left of non-Nazi villains as well. He was depicted as Attila the Hun, serial killer Ted Bundy, Mussolini, Ahab, Hannibal Lecter, the Anti-Christ and Frankenstein's monster (on the cover of the British edition of book by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman).
As far as we know, Nancy Pelosi never complained about any of this. Maybe she didn't notice.
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John Leo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He edits Minding the Campus, the Institute's web site on America's universities, and is a contributing editor to the City Journal.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ars_97812.html

[TheMercenary]

http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/s...ke_nazis_they/


In Nacy's own words :Pelosi: Town Hall Protesters Are "Carrying Swastikas" the video:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...swastikas.html

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ars_97812.html

Still waiting on the link that "...Franken is bigger pedophile than MJ ever was".

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Still waiting on the link that "...Franken is bigger pedophile than MJ ever was".

Keep waiting. MJ is dead.

[Trilby]

The "death panels" are already here
Sorry, Sarah Palin -- rationing of care? Private companies are already doing it, with sometimes fatal results

By Mike Madden

Aug. 11, 2009 | The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."

Coverage of Palin's remarks, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's defense of them, over the weekend did point out that the idea that the reform plans would encourage government-sponsored euthanasia is one of a handful of deliberate falsehoods being peddled by opponents of the legislation. But the idea that only if reform passes would the government start setting up rationing and interfering with care goes beyond just the bogus euthanasia claim.

Opponents of reform often seem to skip right past any problems with the current system -- but it's rife with them. A study by the American Medical Association found the biggest insurance companies in the country denied between 2 and 5 percent of claims put in by doctors last year (though the AMA noted that not all the denials were improper). There is no national database of insurance claim denials, though, because private insurance companies aren't required to disclose such stats. Meanwhile, a House Energy and Commerce Committee report in June found that just three insurance companies kicked at least 20,000 people off their rolls between 2003 and 2007 for such reasons as typos on their application paperwork, a preexisting condition or a family member's medical history. People who buy insurance under individual policies, about 6 percent of adults, may be especially vulnerable, but the 63 percent of adults covered by employer-provided insurance aren't immune to difficulty.

"You're asking us to decide that the government is to be trusted," Gingrich -- who may, like Palin, be running for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012 -- told ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday. But as even a quick glance through news coverage of the last few years shows, private insurers are already doing what reform opponents say they want to save us from. (The insurance industry, pushing back against charges that they're part of the problem, said last month that "healthcare reform is far too important to be dragged down by divisive political rhetoric." The industry has long maintained that its decisions on what to cover are the result of careful investigations of each claim.) Here is a look at a handful of healthcare horror stories, brought to you by the current system. It took Salon staff less than an hour to round these up -- which might indicate how many other such stories are out there.

-- In June 2008, Robin Beaton, a retired nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, found out she had breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy. Two days before her surgery, her insurance company, Blue Cross, flagged her chart and told the hospital they wouldn't allow the procedure to go forward until they finished an examination of five years of her medical history -- which could take three months. It turned out that a month before the cancer diagnosis, Beaton had gone to a dermatologist for acne treatment, and Blue Cross incorrectly interpreted a word on her chart to mean that the acne was precancerous.

Not long into the investigation, the insurer canceled her policy. Beaton, they said, had listed her weight incorrectly when she bought it, and had also failed to disclose that she'd once taken medicine for a heart condition -- which she hadn't been taking at the time she filled out the application. By October, thanks to an intervention from her member of Congress, Blue Cross reinstated Beaton's insurance coverage. But the tumor she had removed had grown 2 centimeters in the meantime, and she had to have her lymph nodes removed as well as her breasts amputated because of the delay.

-- In October 2008, Michael Napientak, a doorman from Clarendon Hills, Ill., went to the hospital for surgery to relieve agonizing back pain. His wife's employer's insurance provider, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthCare, had issued a pre-authorization for the operation. The operation went well. But in April, the insurer started sending notices that it wouldn't pay for the surgery, after all; the family, not the insurance provider, would be on the hook for the $148,000 the hospital charged for the procedure. Pre-authorization, the insurance company explained, didn't necessarily guarantee payment on a claim would be forthcoming. The company offered shifting explanations for why it wouldn't pay -- first, demanding proof that Napientak had tried less expensive measures to relieve his pain, and then, when he provided it, insisting that it lacked documentation for why the surgery was medically necessary. Napientak's wife, Sandie, asked her boss to help out, but with no luck. Fortunately for the Napientaks, they were able to attract the attention of a Chicago Tribune columnist before they had to figure out how to pay the six-figure bill -- once the newspaper started asking questions, the insurer suddenly decided, "based on additional information submitted," to cover the tab, after all.

-- David Denney was less than a year old when he was diagnosed in 1995 with glutaric acidemia Type 1, a rare blood disorder that left him severely brain damaged and unable to eat, walk or speak without assistance. For more than a decade, Blue Cross of California -- his parents' insurance company -- paid the $1,200 weekly cost to have a nurse care for him, giving him exercise and administering anti-seizure medication.

But in March 2006, Blue Cross told the Denney family their claims had exceeded the annual cost limit for his care. When they wrote back, objecting and pointing out that their annual limit was higher, the company changed its mind -- about the reason for the denial. The nurse's services weren't medically necessary, the insurers said. His family sued, and the case went to arbitration, as their policy allowed. California taxpayers, meanwhile, got stuck with the bill -- after years of paying their own premiums, the Denney family went on Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid system.

-- Patricia Reilling opened an art gallery in Louisville, Ky., in 1987, and three years later took out an insurance policy for herself and her employees. Her insurance provider, Anthem Health Plans of Kentucky, wrote to her this June, telling her it was canceling her coverage -- a few days after it sent her a different letter detailing the rates to renew for another year and billing her for July.

Reilling thinks she knows the reason for the cutoff, though -- she was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2008. That kicked off a year-long battle with Anthem. First the company refused to pay for an MRI to locate the tumors, saying her family medical history didn't indicate she was likely to have cancer. Eventually, it approved the MRI, but only after she'd undergone an additional, painful biopsy. Her doctor removed both of her breasts in April 2008. In December, she went in for reconstructive plastic surgery -- and contracted a case of MRSA, an invasive infection. In January of this year, Reilling underwent two more surgeries to deal with the MRSA infection, and she's likely to require another operation to help fix all the damage. The monthly bill for her prescription medicines -- which she says are mostly generics -- is $2,000; the doctors treating her for the MRSA infection want $280 for each appointment, now that she's lost her insurance coverage. When she appealed the decision to cancel her policy, asking if she could keep paying the premium and continue coverage until her current course of treatment ends, the insurers wrote back with yet another denial. But they did say they hoped her health improved.

-- Additional reporting by Tim Bella

[DanaC]

I must say we're all fascinated over here with this debate. British officials and diplomatic staff are walking a very fine line between countering the blatant lies without actually getting involved in your debate.

The comment about Stephen Hawking was particularly amusing. The claims that patients over the age of 60 (or was it 65?) not being allowed heart bypasses was also, by the way, a complete lie.

The gap between recovery rates for American cancer patients and British cancer patients was exaggerated, though we don't have as good a record on survival rates. Whether that is due to budgetary concerns or cultural differences in how and when we access medical care is an argument for people with greater expertise than I.



There are occasions when the system fails, or when the regulatory body does something stupid (as with the case of Lutin treatment for age-related macular degeneration). But then again...the regulatory body is not a private profit making company and when a suficient case has been made that their decision was faulty a new decision can and often is taken: importantly though, it is taken for everyone. The fight for Lutin treatment has now been won, the case made and a new decision taken on allowing its use in the NHS. For every case with clinical need and likely effectiveness. In each of the cases above, where the insurance companies have been persuaded or forced to reassess their decision it is a reassessment for that individual alone. Anyone else encountering the same illogical (in healthcare terms, obviously not in profitmaking terms) decision will have to have that fight all over again.

I am amazed at just how skewed the view of the NHS is over in America. We have higher average life expectancy and pay far less for healthcare. There are certain clinical areas in which we do not shine (cancer treatment for one; though massive strides have been and continue to be made). There are also clinical areas in which we do shine (paediatric care).

Overall I think we get an excellent health service, and we get it way cheaper than you do. There is a tiny minority of people who cannot get the treatment they feel they need for their condition (for instance certain cancer drugs have been seriously limited on the basis that it is not deemed sensible to spend 80k on a single patient if the likely result is an additional 6 months of life) who seek that treatment privately and end up forfeiting their right to continued NHS treatment for that condition. They have a heavy burden and it is very sad. I wish there was something we could do for them. Top up care is not allowed under our system. Private care is allowed and does not disqualify in and of itself from NHS care: but you cannot combine private and NHS treatment for a condition or ilness.

There are gaps. But it really is not the living hell the right wing politiians claim it is.

From the Washington Post in response to the Hawking claim:

As Bookman noted, "Of course, that same Stephen Hawking who wouldn't have a chance in the United Kingdom was in fact born in the United Kingdom, has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom and lives there still today, at the ripe old age of 67. (He was in fact hospitalized earlier this month.) Hawking is, you might say, living, breathing proof that these people are first-class fools."

Ever wonder what the reform debate would be like if conservatives approached it with a shred of intellectual seriousness?

and Hawking's own response:

"If it wasn't for the national health care we have in the UK...
I would have had to rely on private insurance companies...
And my illness would have been declared a pre-existing condition.
I wouldn't be alive right now..."

[Shawnee123]

I like that quote, Dana. Thanks for this post.

[DanaC]

On a much more personal note: I have chronic eczema and also have asthma. How much would it cost me per month, I wonder, for high-end corticosteroids, various prescription emolients and two different inhalers, if I had to pay for them myself? Certainly, no insurance company would be likely to help with that as they are both pre-existing conditions. This of course would likely also apply to the semi-regular anti-biotics and occasional trips to casualty for breathing difficulties that are too serious for a simple inhaler. If I were to show symptoms of skin cancer, the eczema (which increases the risk of skin cancer and also makes it harder to spot) would mean it would be entirely possible (and if that list of cases Bri posted is in anything other than a list of rarities) for an insurance company to deny coverage on the grounds of the pre-existing condition.

I spent a childhood in and out of doctors' surgeries and hospitals. I still have to seek medical help on a very regular basis. The NHS has taken care of me and continues to do so. I can, if I want to (and I do when things are bad) buy a 3 month pre-pay prescription for £27. It covers me for any NHS prescription during that period. That's it, that's all I ever have to pay. (except dental care for which we do have to pay towards the cost of treatment).

[Undertoad]

Yes and here's the catch. Most of the meaningful treatment Hawking has received will have been developed through a massive investment in research and development in the USA. Most ALS research happens in the USA.

And if you google for british als research you will find some research being done in British Columbia, Canada, and ALS meetings held in the British Virgin Islands.

Hawking is alive because the American health system offers incentives for the discovery of new treatments.

[Undertoad]

Dani I doubt any employer-based insurance is going to deny that pre-existing condition, and via most prescription plans your copayment would be about the same. It's really the uninsured who are hosed, and some of them are covered via various medicaid situations. The current debate is mostly whether the feds should cover the uninsured differently. No proposal is anywhere close to an NHS-style solution.

[Trilby]

The thing is, UT, that the insured of this country ARE paying for the uninsured. The homeless have heartattacks - and get coronary bypass surgery - as well as their broken bones set, psych visits and meds, all of it. Someone is paying for this ---- and it's the gainfully employed and insured of this country. It's like dept. stores passing along the cost of shoplifting loss to the buyer. Why not try to even things out and give the uninsured some less expensive pre-emptive care instead of paying for that big heart surgery?

[Undertoad]

I'm OK with it, except

...we don't want to break the system that goes for those new cures

...seems to me we do want to break the diseconomies created by insurance vs. healthco battles

...any large bureaucracy in memory makes things more expensive, not less, and so we need to have the cost-savings part of this explained better

...the house can't seem to write a bill that doesn't include circle jerks for everybody in their sight, which makes expensive bureaucracy more likely.

[Trilby]

I see your points and agree. I am just dismayed by all the Medicare recipients out there bemoaning "government health care" when that is exactly what they have. Medicare and Medicaid pts are allowed (and encouraged) to take part in clinical trials which helps with the research end of things.

As far as large bureaucracies go---they don't get much bigger than the mighty insurance companies we have now.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

.... No proposal is anywhere close to an NHS-style solution.

You get it.

Others, particularly, among the conservative talking head circuit, don't get it...either because they just dont understand the difference between proposals for universal coverage as opposed to a single payer system or more likely because they want to use "European socialism" as a wedge issue, along with the "death panel" fear-mongering.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Yes and here's the catch. Most of the meaningful treatment Hawking has received will have been developed through a massive investment in research and development in the USA. Most ALS research happens in the USA.

And if you google for british als research you will find some research being done in British Columbia, Canada, and ALS meetings held in the British Virgin Islands.

Hawking is alive because the American health system offers incentives for the discovery of new treatments.

Much of the basic R&D has been, and continues to be, underwritten by NIH to some extent. Many trials for new drugs are subsidized or underwritten by NIH.

Big government in action.

[Undertoad]

For the partisan right, the debate must now not be about what is actually proposed. That would clarify it, and thus make it less scary, and pinpoint the debate to the proper points. But the White House has overestimated its ability to manage the message and manage the issue. They should stop now before the muck gets too deep, agree that the public needs more time to digest, scrap the House bill and put together an Obama bill that is short and precise and can be more easily argued about.