This is the most corrupt administration of my lifetime. Transparent corruption.

On March 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm, RetFireman said: #84

Do you even know what the purpose of a clinic is? Do you understand the difference between what a clinic is for vs. a private physician as well as an ED or hospital in general?

Fair questions, but if I can get you back on point, address your own words quoted from your BLOG.

“Our ED’s are over worked and filled to the brim now with people who should be going to a clinic or their private physicians.”

While you attempt to try and make it appear that I have agreed with you, I have done anything but. You also have completely ignored what I had said concerning emergency services etc., and what the entire process will do to the number of physicians and other allied health professionals.

You still are attempting to simplify the issue, which plays well for the uneducated and uninformed, but you will be hard pressed to find anyone who actually works in the medical field who is backing Universal Healthcare.

The best examples of this is the above example of the VA, and the next best would be Kaiser Permanente. Add to that the plan that Obama and the Dems have of repeatedly denying treatments based on age and potential for a positive outcome and you have nothing more than legalized government euthenasia on a massive scale.

But then. when people in the former Soviet union or other Socialized Medice having countries would need specialists and advanced care, they never did it themselves, did they? No. They did then as they do now…they send them here, where we have physicians and medicines that are far and above anywhere else. Why? Because the doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical companies are able to be compensated for their hard worl and extra efforts in becoming specialized and experts in their fields. Where will people then go once said incentives are no longer available and the brain surgeon is making the same amount of money as the guy who is removing warts?

From the Chicago Tribune, Feburary 19, 2009: When a stray pit bull attacked 12-year-old Dontae Adams last August, tearing a chunk of the boy’s upper lip from his face, his……

The clinic solution seems so simple and elegant, but it will never work. You will have a colossal problem recruiting physicians, nurses and other health care professionals to go to crime-ridden urban areas. You will also have the problem of excessive bureaucracy and galloping unfunded mandates that are typical of government-run programs. Who wants to deal with that? I don’t.

My office is not too far from the border with a country that has a large socialized medicine system that many liberals in the US adore. Too bad they do not bother investigating that system more carefully, or they would see the gaping cracks and horrible outcomes associated with socialized medicine. Fully 30% of my patients come across the border to pay cash for their care. Another third of my patients have commercial insurance which pays lower than Medicare/Medicaid. Then you have the Medicare/Medicaid patients for the last third. It is the over-the-border cash patients who keep my practice running. They are unable to access care in their own countries because of idiotic rationing guidelines that deny care based solely on superficial considerations. Many of them have been dumped by their own doctors because their system is so overloaded that physicians are having lotteries to determine which patients they will no longer serve. Is THAT the model you want for the US?

Before you have another Howard Dean trying to socialize our system ever farther, ask yourself if you really want to wait four months just to take care of your broken hip.

I remember with not so much fondness the pre-holiday VA dumps. It was never pretty when the family brought to our “urgent care” (VA didn’t have emergency rooms at that time, although they have changed that attitude) their gravely ill veteran parent for a weekend in the wards. Sickening.

To Hitcharide’s points-

If you are a veteran, and you are getting “appointments” at your VA for services that are outside a 30 day window, you need to call your Congressman. This all to common VA practice, where they will book you on “paper” until 28 or so days before your appointment, is a way to avoid a Congressional reporting mandate. Instead of making the problem obvious to Congress (because the higher-ups will lose their bonuses if they don;t meet the metrics), they “adjust” the records to show they meet the mandate. They are mandated to deliver care within 30 days. Of course, the only losers are the VA’s patient population, our vets. Who really cares about their care for duty related injury or illness, right?

The VA, like many of our bureaucracies, have found a way around the laws by manipulating the information gathering. Oh, by the way, if you do call your Congressman to report such an event, the local VA will simply say:

“I have no idea what Mr. (your-name-here) is talking about. He is not booked in our system. BUT, we do have an appointment open tomorrow that he can have.”

I agree fully with your statements. The VA and DoD have long had socialized medicine. Access to care is their greatest issue. And if it is an issue for such a small population as this, imagine the nightmare on the entire US legal and illegal population!

So while our President begins to explain to the American public that we can’t have everything in health care treatment and we’ll have to except federal government decisions on what we can and can’t do, where we can and cannot be admitted, and who your physician is, the wealthy of the world will be taking advantage of the best healthcare hospitals and universities in the world – - right here in the good old USA.

Don’t bet that access to these hospitals will be open to all Americans under the “National Health Plan”….they won’t. You can bet, however, that they WILL be available to members of Congress and the other chosen few.

This action will not be ‘transparent’… it will be like all programs the democrats and Obama are forcing upon the American people … done in the dark of night and finished before anyone even knows what happened. That’s what Obama means by ‘transparency.”

On March 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 pm, RetFireman said: #77

Because it is not that simple. There are far larger issues at stake here than just what is being told. That is the simplistic view. The simplistic view makes it all look like Candyland where everything works smoothly, everyone is taken care of etc.

I agree, very few things are that simple. Yet, quoting from your own BLOG you apparently agree that Clinics are part of the answer.

“Our ED’s are over worked and filled to the brim now with people who should be going to a clinic or their private physicians.”

And that is the focus from my post #75.

Having people go to Clinics, vice taking up space and time in an emergency room, not to mention the expense, is a bad thing?

We can expand the discussion, as you did in your BLOG, but the unanswered question remains. Clinics to supplement Emergency Rooms. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

Yes, Clinics are not the answer, but they are part of the solution.

People are getting medical care but they aren’t getting it in the EMERGENCY ROOM, they are getting it in Clinics.

Because it is not that simple. There are far larger issues at stake here than just what is being told. That is the simplistic view. The simplistic view makes it all look like Candyland where everything works smoothly, everyone is taken care of etc.

However, that is the view held by two types of people:

1. Those that have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to actual healthcare issues,

or

2. Those that DO know and are keeping the realities and truths of the matter hidden in order to push forward yet another Socialist agenda point.