More Lies, Evasions and Falsehoods

There you go again, Mr. President. Once more President Obama played fast and loose with the truth as he hoped to convince people about the health care plan. Let's take rationing which he says won't happen. He also told America that people with insurance won't be affected. Bull. The concept of rationing is totally unknown to Americans. People have never had to deal with rationing, except for the elderly during WWII and gas rationing in the 70s, and therefore most have no idea how it will really affect them.

I became curious after hearing that over 40 million people will be suddenly insured and seeking medical attention. Wow. Seemed to me that would affect us all. With very little effort I was able to find the most recent 2006 census reports showing the number of insured and uninsured people by state and the number of doctors. I could then determine how many people with health insurance, on average, are there for each doctor and then what would be the effect of adding in all the uninsured people. Here is the table I created:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlQpxl73ztModC11MzFYUXhFOGZ1cDhjYjNSU1JrTGc&hl=en (to access the table see the directions on the right.)

On average, there will be 59 more people for each doctor if the health bill is passed. Ha, and you thought the wait was long now! But look at the states who will gain 80 or more people per doctor (highlighted in red on the table) versus the states who will add just 35 or less people per doctor (highlighted in blue). The states with the biggest burdens are primarily in the South while those least affected are in the Northeast and Rust belt. While states like Mississippi, with large number of poor and few doctors will have an additional 117 people per doctor after the health care bill is passed Northeast states like Massachusetts will have only 22 added people per doctor. No wonder Ted Kennedy is all for it! It will barely be felt in his state.

What this shows is that rationing will be unequal; heavily punishing Southern states which just happen to be more conservative states while the solid blue states will have little rationing. In many ways it is very much like the school system where states like Texas and New Mexico are burdened with large numbers of immigrants, legal or otherwise, whose children are overcrowding their schools. These same crowds will now be found in their doctor’s office once the health care bill is passed. So the cost will be unequally spread throughout the US and further dividing red states from blue states. And rationing will become a way of life for those in the South if the bill is passed.

Then there were Obama’s continuous remarks last night that we pay more for health care but get the same quality of care as other countries who pay $6,000 less per person. Earlier this week, a woman wrote a compelling article and later testified that the exact opposite would happen to special needs children. Her example struck home as she was the mother of a child with Cystic Fibrosis. As the Aunt of a beautiful young girl with CF I am well aware that the current life expectancy is 37 years old. This woman who testified told Congress that in Ireland, where there is national health care, the life expectancy of CF children is only 27 years old. That is what national health care will do – take 10 years off the already shortened life because they don’t have access to the best medicines, doctors and treatments. And in Britain, none of the 38 cystic fibrosis centers in Britain reported that they received enough funding to provide government-recommended levels of care for patients.

Finally, in her article http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/For-special-needs-patients-nationalized-health-care-will-make-things-worse-50815062.html she includes the following chilling statements: Obama has specifically said that the “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill” and therefore there will have to be some kind of “difficult” and “democratic conversation” that will take place to give “guidance” as to what patients will receive life-sustaining, and expensive, treatments.

I’m sorry but that sounds like Nazi Germany, not America. And it scares me and should scare you. Sure, you might be healthy today, but you never know about tomorrow. Three months ago I had a 10 hour emergency surgery to save my right leg damaged by blood clots. I wonder if I had been rushed to the hospital after the health bill had passed if some government official might have instead made the "difficult" decision to provide a shorter, easier operation by simply chopping off my leg instead.

And even if you are healthy for your entire life you most likely will still be old some day; so do you or your loved one really want to be at the "mercy" of the government?