• Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

    From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Mon Feb 18 05:17:13 2019
    XPost: alt.politics.usa, alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.politics.democrats

    “Health service is chaotic and dysfunctional, says NHS chief Lord
    Prior of Brampton,”
    - The Times (U.K.)

    --
    Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?
    A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 30 21:05:01 2020
    XPost: alt.politics.usa, alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.politics.democrats

    ‘Before ObamaCare went into effect, the private marketplace offered us
    a wide range of relatively inexpensive plans.’

    Joe Biden has been running an ad in which he says he can’t imagine what
    it would be like to have a child with cancer and no health coverage. I
    don’t have to imagine. Under the health “reform” championed by Biden
    when he served as President Barack Obama’s vice president, I live that
    reality every day.

    Twice over the past three years, ObamaCare has had no plans to sell us
    that covers little girls ravaged by cancer or recovering from that
    ordeal — and it might leave us floundering again.

    In November 2015, my wife got the most dreadful call a parent can get.
    The doctor knew why our daughter Colette, then 2 ½ years old, hadn’t
    been feeling well: Blood work had revealed leukemia.

    Thanks to ObamaCare, we were already in financial straits. In 2014, the
    law had eliminated a great plan we had had for years. Before ObamaCare
    went into effect, the private marketplace offered us a wide menu of
    relatively inexpensive plans that covered specialist care, even out of
    state.

    Afterward, however, all that was left were increasingly costly plans
    with fewer benefits. Premiums swelled. In 2017, I took my family into
    the ObamaCare marketplace to escape at least the crushing premiums.

    But things were about to get much worse than expensive. In mid-2017,
    President Trump merely suggested scrapping massive ObamaCare subsidies
    to ­insurance giants that only delivered lousy care at ever-greater
    cost. In response, every insurer in northern Virginia with a family
    plan pulled out for the following year.

    That is, except one. But Cigna Connect wouldn’t cover Colette at ­Inova Fairfax, the one hospital in the region with a pediatric cancer ward.
    Under ObamaCare, our daughter was effectively without coverage for
    cancer.

    Panicked, we called the politicians, the media and Cigna. We retained
    an attorney. Nothing changed. No full policy coverage from Cigna.
    Without options, I shut down part of my consulting business and started
    work at a friend’s organization for its group insurance — and got
    saddled with monthly premiums far in excess of what we could afford.

    Thanks to the publicity and some strong-arming by Sen. Mark Warner (D-
    Va.), Cigna agreed to cover the hospital — but it was too late for us.
    Then, for 2020, we purchased a better plan from ­Anthem, newly returned
    to the ObamaCare marketplace. We thought we might be done with
    insurance crises.

    How naïve. In mid-March, with the novel coronavirus sweeping the
    country, Colette’s cancer doctors told us Anthem had decided that, in
    two weeks, it would no longer cover her clinic. Once again, thanks to ObamaCare, we were left without coverage for our daughter recovering
    from cancer.

    Perhaps the marketplace would grant us a waiver to buy the Cigna plan
    still for sale in our ZIP code? Nope. So, like in 2017, we were forced
    to turn to Warner, to bully Anthem into its covering the clinic — at
    least through April 1, 2021.

    After that? Who knows.

    Open enrollment for next year starts Nov. 1. I could beg Warner to gear
    up for another round of veiled threats to a private company, to force
    one to cover us. Perhaps President Trump could issue an executive order prohibiting the insurance companies from pulling out of the market
    midyear, leaving children stranded.

    But none of these is the right long-term answer. We must repeal
    ObamaCare and put into the hands of Americans real, automatically
    renewable insurance products curated to individual needs. Too many
    Colettes will suffer, and possibly die, waiting for the personal
    carve-outs only a few of us can ever get anyway.

    To solve the inherent instability of ObamaCare, the state could just
    take over all medical facilities. It’s called single-payer. But then we
    would all be at the mercy of the same government bureaucracy that has
    been working for years to slowly kill my daughter.

    And that has taught us a lesson. Turns out there is a nightmare worse
    than one’s watching cancer brutalize one’s little girl. It’s having
    Obama’s law — which his vice president rightly claims as his own —
    collude with the disease against her.

    Mr. Biden, you might try imagining what that feels like.

    --
    Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?
    A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Wed Sep 27 04:42:12 2023
    XPost: alt.politics.obama, alt.politics.usa, alt.tv.pol-incorrect
    XPost: alt.politics.democrats

    One of the world’s most celebrated socialized medical systems is doing what socialized medical systems do: limiting patient care. Pending work stoppages could mean that the worst is yet to come for patients of England’s National Health Service.

    For obvious reasons, American politicians seeking an even greater federal
    role in U.S. health care avoid discussing the staggering privations under Marxist regimes in places like Cuba and Venezuela. Instead, pols like Sen. Bernie Sanders (socialist, Vt.) point to government-run health systems within largely free, developed economies. But the U.K. is another example they’ll
    want to avoid.

    Josephine Franks reports for Sky News that senior doctors, called consultants in Britain, will be joining their less experienced colleagues in withholding treatment:

    Consultants and junior doctors are set to strike for several more days
    this week and early next month, bringing more chaos to the NHS after
    several months of walkouts and delayed appointments...

    A health chief said the NHS is in “uncharted territory” due to the
    strikes, with thousands of patient appointments expected to be
    cancelled.

    Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said this
    week’s strike action “can’t become the status quo”.

    Sadly it can. If there’s one brutal lesson of government-run health care it’s that things can always get worse. Turning doctors into unionized government bureaucrats brings a host of problems, including the fact that politicians,
    not patients, decide what doctors are paid. This is of course a problem in
    the U.S. as well. England is a sort of preview of just how badly government management can mangle the incentives to provide medical services—and the duty to provide care. Ms. Franks continues:

    On the picket lines of the March strike, junior doctors told Sky News
    why they were striking and described having to borrow money off family
    for medical exams, watching colleagues leave for better paid jobs abroad
    and how they were struggling to pay rent.

    If anyone asks Mr. Sanders to comment, no doubt he will rail about the
    British government not spending enough, just as his answer to every question about U.S. health care involves a greater burden on taxpayers and fewer free choices for consumers.

    But adopting the Sanders model for decades in the U.K. has led to a system
    that is now in constant crisis, with a plague of cancelled appointments and procedures. Jane Kirby reports in the Independent that “the NHS
    Confederation, which represents all NHS organisations, said increasing
    numbers of patients, including cancer patients, are seeing their appointments rescheduled more than once due to strikes.” Ms. Kirby adds:

    Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the organisation, said: “This is
    likely to be the biggest walkout the NHS has ever seen, will cause
    serious disruption, and put patients at the highest level of risk in
    living memory...”

    Don’t say you weren’t warned.


    --
    Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?
    A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)