Category: The Best Healthcare in the World

Rand Paul, idiot protector of the special interests

~ Dr. S. ~ 1 Comment

That’s the thing about pandering: It often makes you look really, really stupid.

Sen. Rand Paul doesn’t think the Supreme Court gets the last word on what’s constitutional.The Kentucky Republican belittled the high court’s health care decision as the flawed opinion of just a “couple people.”

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional.”

Funny story, Rand: That thing you said in a press release that doesn’t make a law constitutional? “People on the Supreme Court declar[ing] something to be ‘constitutional’”? Turns out, that’s exactly how we here in the United States determine whether or not a law is constitutional. And we’ve been doing it that way since the 1700s.

So, to review, the Supreme Court, not embarrassing junior senators from Kentucky, determines what is and isn’t constitutional. For more information, see Article III of the Constitution.

‘Democrats should come out swinging’

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Michael Tomasky dreams on about how Obama should react to a SCOTUS ruling overturning the ACA:

Let’s say the court overturns the mandate by a typical 5-4 vote, but leaves the rest of the law intact. What must the Democrats do? The main thing is all about tone. I can just picture already what I fear I will see: Obama coming out to a press conference with his head down, speaking in a dour monotone, still trying to point out the silver linings but in a way that sends the message to anyone listening that he’s really apologizing for them, and muttering that he is now “calling on the Congress to act” (this has become my least favorite Obama phrase) and get busy working on one of the alternative approaches that will still keep the law alive—which is nothing more than a punchline, really, because everybody knows Congress isn’t lifting a finger.


No, a thousand times no! He needs to stand up there and get mad. The law may be unpopular, but he and the Democrats are stuck with it, and being stuck with it, they need to stick by it. Almost never before in American history has a Supreme Court taken a law duly passed by the people’s representatives and in just two years’ time invalidated it. If that isn’t legislating from the bench, what is? Mr. Cool needs to get Hot. Against unanimous and ferocious opposition, and in the face of blatant lies about what this bill would and would not do, he and the Democrats came up with a way for people with cancer and diabetes and what have you to get the treatment they need and not be either turned away or gouged. He’s proud of that, he ought to say, and by God, he’s going to fight for it. That provision of the law is wildly popular—85 percent supported that, in a late-March New York Times survey. If you can’t play offense with 85 percent of the people behind you, I give up.

Personally, I think it’s a crappy bill that has a lot of downside for anyone who doesn’t have a lot of money, but whatever. It won’t break my heart if the mandate is overturned, because Republicans will simply defund the subsidies and it will be worthless, anyway.

The new doctor

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

She’s very nice, the first visit took an hour. I talked to her about my thyroid and asked if she’d feel comfortable taking over the monitoring. She said yes, and asked why. “Well, you know that personality type that endos have?” I said.

She snickered and said, “You mean ‘asshole’?”

She was actually more current on the newest thyroid range than the endocrinologist, is open to alternative treatments and has been in practice for 20 years. I told her I really don’t like to take medicine, and I avoid radiation as much as I can, so if she wants me to take something or have a test, she needs to convince me there’s a really good reason. She didn’t seem to have a problem with that; I think I’m going to like her.

Turns out the practice has been open for almost two years, but the hospital system refuses to advertise it. (Which is why I never heard of it before.)

Transparency

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

How on earth can you shop around when no one tells you what anything costs? Answer: Profit!

One of the main criticisms of consumer-driven health care is that, today, consumers have no way of figuring out how much a particular health care service costs. Indeed, one of the reasons that health care is so expensive in America is because people have no idea what they’re paying for it. Hence, it’s important for reformers to encourage hospitals and doctors to become more transparent about the prices they charge for these services. But an Arizona bill to do just that was killed—by the state’s Republican legislature.


Yesterday, Chad Terhune of the Los Angeles Times told the story of Jo Ann Synder, a woman who was charged $6,707 for a CT scan, after she had undergone colon surgery. Her insurance plan, Blue Shield of California, billed her for $2,336, and paid for the rest. But Snyder was shocked to discover that, if she had paid for the scan herself, out-of-pocket, she would have only had to pay $1,054.


“I couldn’t believe it,” she told the Times. “I was really upset that I got charged so much and Blue Shield allowed that. You expect them to work harder for you and negotiate a better deal.”


Los Alamitos Medical Center, Terhune found, charges $4,423 for an abdominal CT scan. Blue Shield’s negotiated rate is about $2,400. But Los Alamitos told Terhune that its cash price for the scan would be $250.


In Arizona, a state senator named Nancy Barto (R.), who chairs the senate’s Health Care and Medical Liability Reform Committee, sponsored a bill, SB 1384, targeted directly at this problem. The bill would require health care facilities to “make available to the public on request in a single document the direct pay price for at least the fifty most used diagnosis-related group codes…and at least the fifty most used outpatient service codes…for the facility.” Doctors would be similarly required to publish the direct-pay prices for their 25 most common services.


The idea is that patients who have health savings accounts need to know what various doctors and hospitals charge for their services, so that they can shop for value when they need care.


Sen. Barto’s bill passed the Arizona Senate, but it died in March in the state’s House of Representatives, where Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee refused to send the bill to the full House for a vote. (Republicans control both houses of the Arizona state legislature, along with the governorship.)
“Do we want free market health care?” Sen. Barto asked in a recent blog post. “Then why have common sense reforms that will produce one been opposed, defeated and/or vetoed at the legislature for the last 2 years—even though we have a Republican Governor and Republican supermajority?”


It’s a good question. “The short answer,” she writes, “is swarms of lobbyists. The longer answer is legislators succumbing to lobbyists on issues that should be rather plain.”

U.S. health care costs more, delivers less

~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

by Odd Man Out
I’m shocked by this story. You would think our drugs would be more effective, they cost so much more than the same drugs in civilized countries:

A study of 13 industrialized countries released Thursday showed Japan spends the least on health care, while the United States spends the most without providing superior care for the money.


The United States spent nearly $8,000 per person in 2009 on health care services, more than Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland.


Japan spent the least — $2,878 per capita in 2008 — according to the report by The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that promotes improved health care in the United States.


US health care spending amounted to more than 17 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, while Japan’s was under nine percent of GDP.


“Japan operates a fee-for-service system, while offering unrestricted access to specialists and hospitals and a large supply of MRI and CT scanners,” said the report.


“Rather than containing costs by restricting access, Japan instead sets health care prices to keep total health spending within a budget allotted by the government.”


In contrast, the US system is beleaguered by higher prices, more readily accessible technology and widespread obesity.


The United States had among the highest rates of potentially preventable deaths due to asthma and diabetes-linked amputations, and showed average rates of in-hospital deaths from heart attack and stroke, it said.


Common prescription drugs cost one third more in the United States compared to Canada and Germany, and were more than double that paid for the same drugs in Australia, Britain, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

The DOJ’s jihad on medical pot

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment

The world’s most ridiculously named law enforcement organization — the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms — is only one of many federal agencies participating in the crackdown on medical marijuana centers, something that many Barack Obama supporters couldn’t have imagined happening when they elected him. More here.

Planned Parenthood ruling snuffed

~ odd man out

Just hours ago we reported that a Texas judge yesterday issued a preliminary injunction preventing cutoff of women’s health funds to Planned Parenthood. But hey, this is Texas we’re talking about. Today another judge, this one an outspoken Barack Obama foe, weighed in. Here’s what happens when a yahoo judge doesn’t even pretend to be nonpartisan:

Last month, Republican Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith pitched a tantrum in open court, demanding that the Department of Justice respond to some imprecise political rhetoric by President Obama in an attempt to embarrass the president. Today, the staunch Republican judge raised further doubt about his ability to separate politics from the law by suspending a decision benefiting Planned Parenthood just hours after it was handed down by [Judge Lee Yeakel]…


Several things are significant about this very brief order. First, Judge Smith is a court of appeals judge, and it is very rare for an appeals judge to act alone in this way. Federal appeals courts almost always act as three judge panels, and for very good reason. Judge Yeakel is no less a federal judge than Judge Smith, and he is no less competent that Smith to interpret the Constitution. A court of appeals’ legitimacy generally flows from the fact that it brings more minds to a legal question than a trial court — but this cannot happen when a single judge acts alone…


… More importantly, it’s unlikely that Smith gave his order much thought at all before handing it down. Judge Yeakel handed down his order weeks after this case was filed, and he produced a 24 page explanation of why it was justified. Smith spent, at most, a few hours — and he offered no explanation whatsoever.