How Did Healthcare Get Into this Mess?

It's time to unload the paperwork burden from doctors

Okay, I know if I say Obamacare is a bad idea, my friends on the left are going to jump me and say I don't understand what it's like to be without healthcare and I hate the poor and want children to die.

First, I'm the poster child for the person without healthcare.  I have to get mine through the few doctors who will even accept someone without health insurance.  I have to pay through the nose so they can afford the two clerks and the confiscatory malpractice insurance and they can't tell their insurance guy they even treated someone like me or they could lose their malpractice insurance. Someone like me who is poor is expected to be lawsuit happy.  I don't sue docs for honest mistakes, but they don't know that, so I pay the price for the greed of others.  I should be singing and dancing over the coming of Obamacare.  I'm not!

How in the world did we get into this mess?  Once upon a time you could go down to the doc, pay for what you needed and move along.  Sometimes doctors took pity on patients who were in financial trouble and gave them free treatment to tide them over.  An OB/GYN once saved my wife's life by donating his services to do a surgery that removed a volleyball sized tumor when we were temporarily without health insurance.  He can no longer do that. It's against the law because it's seen as a discriminatory practice for the doctor to choose to not charge some needy patients and charge others patients who can pay. Apparently only the government is allowed to give things away these days.

That's unfortunate because it prevents physicians from doing what they studied all those years to do - help sick people.  The problem with health care started in two areas. 

•  First, as a wealthy nation we were able to treat ourselves with all sorts of evil delights from fried Twinkies to five nights a week fast food. It's little wonder our lifespans didn't climb as fast as we thought it should, even though it's nearly doubled over just the past century. 
• The second problem was that we expected medical science's technological miracles to keep up the pace they started out at with wonder drugs, penicillin and amazing new surgeries. If they had no answers, we didn't believe them. If they tried something and failed, we assumed they were being malicious.

What happened next was we got mad if the doctors couldn't cure us of everything simply because we expected them too. After all the media made the new medicine men seem like magicians. If they failed us, we sought a way to punish them. A burgeoning crowd of newly minted lawyers looking for work obliged. Juries decided to give lottery level winnings to people who sue hospitals and the race was on. With more lawyers than a society could afford, they started going into politics until the legislatures and congress were so full of lawyers, you couldn't throw a lobbyist without hitting one.

Lawyers passed laws or refused to pass laws in order to protect their quite lucrative business of suing doctors and hospitals. To protect themselves, everyone in the medical business got insured and, as everyone knows, the medical systems circled the wagons and got themselves another bunch of lawyers. Then the government got into it and instead of making things better added a lot of paperwork and whole new federal agencies stuffed with bureaucrats, lawyers and poli-sci majors.

With all these lawyers and bureaucrats to feed, guess who paid at the pump for their fodder?

That's right. You and me. So tell me how adding more government and more trained lawyers and politicians to this mess is going to make it LESS expensive. The meme is that evil insurance companies shouldn't make evil profits off sick people. One guy even told me NOBODY should make profits off of sick people.

And why not? Lawyers do. Doctors do. Hospitals do. Even the government does - how else do you think they'd be able to pay all those new Obamacare bureaucrats. It would be a lot cheaper if healthcare was between you and your doctor, but that ain't happening anymore. It hasn't happened since the days of house calls and paying for a doctor's visit with live chickens. Too many people have stuck a hose into the medical industry and are siphoning off consumer dollars.  Like pirates driving up the cost of shipping, these medical industry parasites drive up the cost of healthcare year after year.

For every doctor and nurse actually practicing medicine, there are 50 clerks, administrators, managers, lawyers, politicians, IRS agents, bureaucrats and hangers-on taking a piece out of the sick person's wallet. They are all making a "profit".  Don't believe it?  Ask any of them if they are working as volunteers?  The bureaucrats know the cash cow is nearly drained, that's why they have gone to the government for funding.  Like one liberal told me once, if a government program runs out of money, they just go get more printed. That's why the IRS is being given the power to reach into your bank account under Obamacare and withdraw money without your permission to pay for your healthcare. Where else did you think all that money was coming from for the hundreds of thousands of new Obamacare bureaucrats?

They tell me that Conservative's don't have a plan to fix healthcare.  We actually do.  The plan is to QUIT TRYING TO FIX HEALTHCARE!  Butt out. Get the government out of the healthcare business as much as you can. Make lawsuits less lucrative. Restore the ability of doctors to do pro bono work and to manage their own practices without interference.  How's that not a plan?

Government is not the solution to every problem, especially when it comes to healthcare. I should be able to go down to my doc's, pay 30 or 40 bucks directly to him and get my blood pressure meds re-upped. After all, I can go down to that evil Wal-Mart and buy three month's worth of my prescriptions for ten bucks apiece. But nooooooo. My doc has to charge me $125, do a lot of unnecessary tests to protect himself in case I decide to sue him and pay two extra clerks to do the paperwork on my "case". The tests themselves can cost me another $250. I can't afford that. I have a friend who's a doc who absolutely retired in sheer frustration at having to charge his patients so much money when he knows he could do the same job for a third the cost or less.

And the leftists who love Obamacare, all seem to want to shut down my WalMart to boot. That's stupid! Wally World's $4 generic prescription drug program has done more to help poor people like me with their prescriptions than the federal government ever did‼

If the feds would stop meddling and let docs go independent and make their own decisions about how to care for their patients, you'd see a huge change. It'll be painful for folks to have to start taking responsibility for their own healthcare, but it just may inspire them to get off their duffs and do a little roadwork or eat a vegetable once in a while. There's nothing for bringing a little frugality to healthcare like having to pay for things out of your own pocket.  Best way in the world for stopping waste and fraud - to let consumers make their own decisions about which doc and which healthcare system they want to patronize.

Sheesh!
 

© 2013 by Tom King

I've Met God. And Trust Me, You Guys Aren't Him!

More Wrong-Headed Propaganda From the Left

(c) by Tom King

A friend posted a picture with a map that claimed that New York wants it's citizens to have health care and not assault rifles and that Texas wants its citizens to have assault rifles and not health care.  I pointed out in my response that New York is almost bankrupt and that Texas has a balanced budget and a surplus. Look, the idea that Texas doesn't want its citizens to have health care is preposterous. It wants it's citizens to have jobs so they can have healthcare. And if you are sick you can walk into any hospital and get treatment in Texas.

Also, you can walk into a shopping mall in Texas with the intent to shoot a lot of people and there's a damned good chance somebody's going to shoot back at you. It happened in San Antonio two days after Newtown. You didn't hear about it because he didn't kill 30 or 40 unarmed people.

I was immediately told that what I said was untrue.  I asked, "What part?"
 
Was it that Texas has a balanced budget?  I know that's correct. It's one of the few states that does.

Was it that New York state is in financial trouble? It has one of the highest per capita debts of any state in the country.

Was it the story I included about the shopping mall shooting?  Here's the story.  The officer followed the shooter into the mall and put four bullets into him.  Death toll - 1 shooter.  One person was wounded.  Handy to have armed folk around. And the off duty officer was a woman, rather deflating some recent claims by the left that women can't handle firearms well enough to defend themselves. Being armed is a Texas tradition. We like to be able to hold off a bad guy for the 20 minutes to an hour that it takes the deputies to get there.

Was it that you can get medical treatment in Texas if you can't afford it?  I can tell you from personal experience.  I've had three major surgeries on the public dime in the past five years because I was in trouble and couldn't afford it. My fellow citizens generously helped me.  My credit is wrecked because I couldn't pay my part, but then that's because I'm taking care of a disabled wife and trying to make a living freelancing in this horrific economy that the government keeps meddling with and making worse. 

I should be the poster child for Obama supporters in Texas or anywhere else because I'm well and truly below the poverty line right now. I should welcome him as a saviour. So why don't I?

It's because I am trying to dig myself out on my own. I'm not asking the government to give me a handout. I don't want food stamps or to be on welfare. I want the government to do what it is supposed to - defend this country from external threats, enforce the laws that are supposed to insure a level playing field for everyone trying to make a living and to support themselves.  I want them to protect my liberties.

I want them to leave their hands off my first amendment rights. I want them to keep their hands out of my pockets and everyone elses. I don't need them to rob from the rich to support me. They take an obscene "cut" off the top when they do. I don't want them to interfere with freedom of speech, the press, assembly or religion or the right to bear arms, all of which seem to have been placed on the table lately. 

I don't want the IRS to tell my pastor what he can and cannot say in the pulpit. I want them to quit selling themselves to the highest bidder and protect small business in America and provide a place for it to grow. I want them to leave powers to the states that are not enumerated by the constitution and quit meddling. I have no guns in my house because I have family members with mental health issues. It would be stupid for me to keep guns here. But why should my neighbor lose his means of protecting his property?  Even though I don't have a dog in the hunt, his right to keep and bear arms is part of the package. If this government decides it can arbitrarily take away one of my neighbor's rights, even though it won't directly affect me,  I must stand with him, for my other rights and his will soon be in danger too. The government has never shown any inclination to stop taking anything once it has it's hand in your pocket (or holster).

I've lobbied in the Austin state house. I know members of the legislature and senate. The idea that the Texas legislature doesn't "give a damned" about poor people is absolutely preposterous. Most conservatives in the state legislature believe that if you keep the engine of business running, that communities are better off, more people have a job and fewer people suffer poverty. I know from experience that this is true.  When business does well, it spreads the wealth to the less fortunate. We got a food stamp budget cut from Washington of $800,000 in Texas because the food banks were doing such a good job of feeding the poor, we didn't need it anymore.  The bureaucrats nearly had a stroke.

Having been in the nonprofit sector working with poor, disabled, homeless, people with disabilities and even ex-convicts, I have received a world of help from local business, corporations and wealthy individuals and helped create programs that provided real help to struggling families and individuals without chaining them to the "system" and making welfare slaves of them.

I've been 'in the system' once and had a hellish time getting back out. The welfare system taught that you have to be careful not to take certain jobs, not to make too much money and not to deviate from the program or you'd lose your benefits. The system is pernicious in the way it treats you like a second class citizen, systematically humiliates you and makes you beholden to the government.

Food Stamps can provide help, but it's way better from the poor guy's end to get a couple of bags of food from a local food bank to tide him over till he gets a job. It's better to hook up with a community based nonprofit that knows your town and knows what resources can get you real help - that can think outside the box to solve your problems.

My friend's characterization of the Texas government and the legislature in particular is wrong and colored by an ideology that trusts government in a way our forefathers never did. They wrote the constitution to limit government for that very reason. They say power corrupts. Well, that's simplistic. Absolute power doesn't necessarily corrupt, but it draws corruptible people to it like flies to poop. The only ones who can be trusted with power are those who drop it like a hot potato once they've done what they had to with it.

I admit it. I'm a conservative. I trust people to manage their own affairs. I do not trust an arrogant elite who believes they can sit around a table in Washington, DC and plan the affairs of 350 million of their fellow citizens and something as complex as our economy and do so effectively. It would take God to do that and I've met God in my travels.  The US Government and all of the bureaucrats in it, put together aren't nearly as smart as Him.

I'm just sayin'.

Tom King