By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg

Worried that Kaiser Permanente may be letting unlicensed staffers make medical decisions, the state is investigating the giant HMO’s call centers and plans to demand documents that Kaiser has refused to surrender.

The probe began in response to a nurse’s complaints that mishandled calls are leaving Kaiser patients vulnerable to misdiagnoses and delayed care.

The investigation is also shedding light on a 2003 state law that was intended to block just what Kaiser is still doing – using a semi-automated system to let people with no medical training determine how quickly a patient is seen.

I received the following email today from Citizens Against Government Waste; all emphasis is added:

The HillaryCare proponents in Congress are making good on their campaign promise!

Under the guise of helping children without health insurance, the advocates of a government-run, universal healthcare system for all Americans are pushing for a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) - increasing the cost of this program to you, me, and all taxpayers

If they succeed, this would be a giant first step toward making their vision of a socialist, Canadian-style healthcare system a reality in this country.

The House and Senate will consider legislation on SCHIP as early as next week, and it’s urgent that you tell your Senators and Representative to oppose the expansion of SCHIP and the tax increases that would be required to pay for it.

SCHIP was originally designed to help low-income families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid gain access to health insurance for their children. The proposals being pushed by the HillaryCare advocates would increase the SCHIP income eligibility level from the current 200 percent of the federal poverty line (approx. $40,000 in annual income for a family of four) to 300 or even 400 percent of the federal poverty line (approx. $61,950 and $82,600 in annual income, respectively); might allow states to expand coverage even further to other individuals; and might even increase existing benefits to a practically unlimited benefits package.

These proposals could triple spending on SCHIP, from $25 billion to as much as $75 billion over five years, and make more than 71 percent of American children - including many who already have private insurance - covered under either SCHIP or Medicaid.

To pay for this big-government healthcare expansion, its advocates have proposed increasing the federal cigarette excise tax by as much as 156 percent and raising taxes elsewhere. Trust me, this will be just the first of many tax increases to come as SCHIP, like virtually every other entitlement program before it, ends up costing more than expected and sucking up increasing amounts of your tax dollars!

[A]fter the failure of HillaryCare in the 1990’s, the universal healthcare proponents have wised up. They know they can’t impose a government takeover of America’s healthcare system - and the massive tax increases needed to pay for it - all at once without provoking a resounding public outcry. Instead, they’ve adopted an incremental approach, where they will slowly expand existing government healthcare programs until they crowd out private insurance.

The backers of this plan think they can get all Americans dependent on the government for our healthcare before we know what hit us!

Please tell your Senators and Representative to oppose legislation that would expand SCHIP and increase the federal cigarette excise tax, or any other taxes, to pay for it.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Schatz
President

Socialized medicine, by focusing solely on the patients - who, of course, should be the PRIMARY focus - makes no allowance for research and development. R&D is VERY expensive and is currently funded by the profits made by privately owned medical facilities. The U.S. has been the world leader in medical research because our capitalist system makes this very expensive R&D profitable which, besides being good for the patients, is good for the economy.

Socialized medicine strangles R&D. Countries with socialized medicine just ride on the coattails of the U.S. If we also socialize medicine on whose coattails will we ride?

Economic crisis notwithstanding, the U.S. is a wealthy enough country to provide medical care for its people - ALL of its people. The best way to ensure that the poor and uninsured get care is to provide, not a medical system funded and controlled by a government with limited resources, but an insurance program that allows them to get care in the privately owned system.

Don’t miss this very important point - truly socialized medicine does not allow competition by private businesses. They sign up for the government program or they shut their doors. Socialized medicine equalizes healthcare, not by raising the standard of care overall, but by lowering it overall, to the lowest common denominator. It takes away the basic right to choose from whom we get our health care. It will be from the government program or not at all.

Is that really the direction we want to take? Do we want to leave our children a country with third rate medical care and crushing entitlement spending?

I don’t.

By Val Willingham

Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative.

The survey, released this week by the Physicians’ Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.

By ROBERT CARROLL

The McCain health-care insurance tax credit may well be one of the most misunderstood proposals of this presidential election. Barack Obama has been ruthless in his attacks. But the tax credit is highly progressive and will provide a powerful incentive for people to purchase health insurance. These features under normal circumstances should endear Democrats to the proposal.

There has been a lot of rhetoric and misstatements, but what exactly does Sen. McCain have in mind? He would replace the current income tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance with a refundable tax credit — $5,000 for those who purchase family coverage and $2,500 for individual coverage. Mr. McCain would also reform insurance markets to stem the growth in health insurance premiums.

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

The results of a survey in Oregon suggest that the Death with Dignity Act enacted in the state in 1997 does not always prevent patients with depression, a treatable condition, from receiving a prescription for a lethal drug.

The findings indicate that “most people in Oregon who request physician aid in dying do not have clinical depression,” but yet there are “small number of patients with clinical depression who are able to access lethal medications,” lead investigator Dr. Linda Ganzini, from Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, told Reuters Health.

“The Oregon law,” she explained, “requires that if the prescribing physician is concerned that the patient might have depression influencing their judgment, that they be evaluated by a psychiatrist or psychologist. The proportion of requesting patients who are evaluated by a mental health professional has been dropping over the last decade and last year no mental health assessments occurred among the 46 people who died by physician-assisted suicide in Oregon.”

For someone running as the tribune of “change,”Barack Obama showed again in last night’s debate that he sure is comfortable with the status quo on health care. He continued his recent assaults on John McCain’s health reform even though it is precisely the kind of plan that someone of Mr. Obama’s professed convictions ought to support.

The attacks include swing-state TV spots and Joe Biden’s multiple distortions, though the most over-the-top come from the candidate himself. Over the weekend, Mr. Obama called the McCain plan “radical,” “out of line with our basic values” and, in case he wasn’t clear, “catastrophic for your health care.” Since Mr. McCain offered only a once-over-lightly defense of his plan, allow us to give it a try.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is touting a health care reform plan that sounds very familiar. It includes:

The 2006 Massachusetts health care reform plan “expanded the state’s Medicaid program, offered qualified residents financial assistance to purchase insurance, created a new state agency to connect residents with affordable plans and - perhaps the most talked-about change - required all residents with access to affordable coverage to enroll in a plan or incur financial penalties. For employers with more than 10 employees, the law requires that those who do not make a “fair and reasonable” contribution toward worker health coverage, pay up to $295 per employee per year into a state fund.”

And how is that plan working out for Massachusetts?

Well, strictly in terms of coercing encouraging people to get insurance it has been a great success.

Among adults with incomes below 300 percent of the poverty level, the study found uninsurance dropped by almost 11 percentage points, and among adults at less than 100 percent of the poverty level - those eligible for fully subsidized coverage - uninsurance rates dropped by more than two-thirds.

That’s pretty impressive. At least until you compare it to the problems the plan is facing:

And the future is looking a little scary:

The only REAL solution to the health care crisis is to allow the free market to work freely.

Get employers out of the equation - there is NO reason why we should be limited to whatever few (often inferior) healthcare plans are offered by our employers. There is NO reason why our employers should be held responsible for our health insurance (think of it this way…would it make sense for your only affordable option for car insurance to be whatever two or three plans your employer signs up for? Giving you NO choices regarding the amount of your deductible, the amount of coverage, or the areas of coverage, and therefore NO choice regarding the amount of the premium or the reputation of the insurance company?)

Under the current system doctors and patients alike are held hostage by the insurance company, who really calls all the shots. Under universal health care doctors and patients are held hostage by the government, who would really call all the shots. Only in a truly free relationship, where patients can choose their own medical plans, their own doctors, their own course of care, and how much they are willing to pay for it, and where doctors make their medical choices based on what is best for their patients, where they can choose how many patients to care for and what to charge for their services, can the market truly work as it’s supposed to.

Certainly there should be regulations to protect patients from unscrupulous doctors, standards for medical care, and safety nets for the needy. But those objectives can be achieved without creating another government behemoth that will inevitably go the same route as Social Security and Medicare into an unaffordable and unwieldy money pit that is the epitome of inefficiency.