The tragedy of socialized medicine

I get a lot emails from people -- jokes, news, all the weird stuff that goes viral. A couple weeks ago I got a link to a YouTube video, part of a Mark Levin radio show from November, 2011. A brain surgeon called in and told Mark about a conference he'd been to with others in his specialty, apparently hosted by what is laughingly referred to as the US Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS -- Heavy Horse Shit?). You can look it up. It's still on YouTube and runs about four minutes.

See, the way it goes with health care under socialized medicine is that doctors really don't have a lot to say about the treatment they give patients. There are several agencies within HHS that will review standard, customary, whatever, therapies are available for whatever can go wrong with the human body. From this stack of possibilities, these committees will pick the therapies that seem most appropriate, according to statistical data, which is already being collected and crunched. They already do this in Europe. You have First Line responses and therapies, Second Line if the First line doesn't work, possibly even a Third line.

So if you find a lump in your neck and go to the doctor, all he has to do is look up on his computer (ideally this info will be on the Internet), exactly what tests to give you and how to treat you. If your doctor strays away from these guidelines, he can be fined $100,000.00 for his first offense. Second time, he goes to jail.

Your doctor may know you better than the bureaucrats in Washington and may have better and more effective ways of treating you, but that doesn't matter. The feds are paying for it -- SOCIALIZED MEDICINE -- so the feds call all the shots. Get it?

So anyway, this brain surgeon goes to this conference with HHS in Washington, and what's under discussion? The guidelines for neurosurgery under Obamacare -- socialized medicine.

So this surgeon just wanted to tell Mark Levin that, for one thing, the feds don't think of recipients of socialized medicine as "patients," or even as "humans," really. No, HHS refers to us as "units." And "units" 70 years old or more who come in with something like a stroke -- what does HHS prescribe for their treatment? "Comfort care."

That is to say, wrap them in a warm blanket and wait until they die.

Of course, that's only for the mooches who are on Medicare. Not for the brightest and the best who buy their own private health insurance.

Before you stand up and crow about that, go find out what a private insurance policy costs per year for people over the age of 70. Unless you're in a labor union, in which case your bosses have got the Comrade by the short hairs and have exerted enough pressure there to get the Comrade to force every other American taxpayer to fund their Cadillac benefits.

But for the other 94% of us who are not in the UAW or SEIU, we'll pretty much be stuck with Medicare. Medicare has pretty much crowded out other insurance for the elderly. People my age have paid for it for most of our working lives -- funding it for our grandparents and parents.

And now we're stuck with -- being wrapped in a warm blanket until we die.

Discussing this with a friend, she noted, "But we'll all be in that same boat." Yeah, well, it's nice to have friends. We can hold hands, wrapped in our warm blankets until we die.

And it's not like it's going to stop with the over-70 crowd.

How long before the invincible 30-somethings, with knees and hips ruined by jogging and no resistance to viruses due to a failure to eat anything but carbs (without a face), begin falling apart? This will occur about the time the last of the few remaining private insurance carriers are folding -- due to employers moving their workers to "the government program."

How will HHS ration for sports injuries? After all, much like the COPD and lung cancer that results from smoking tobacco, sports injuries are largely self-inflicted. In other words, you were asking for it, dude.

Meanwhile, hospitals will be folding, too. Already Medicaid and Medicare payments to these institutions do not cover their costs. The feds can order them to lower their prices, in which case they'll be forced to close.

When Medicaid came to Chicago in a big way, five large hospitals that had served the inner city shut down within about three years. They took so many indigent and welfare and Medicaid patients, and had so few privately-insured patients to carry the load, that the hospitals had no choice but to shut down.

And here's another consideration. I believe this year or next, we'll all be seeing a 2.5% increase in our withholding taxes -- this to pay for healthcare. Your employer will pay much, much more -- either to buy insurance for you from a private carrier, or in penalties for not insuring you at all. Here's a hint: the penalties are a lower amount than the price of insurance. That alone guarantees that only the Executive Suite will be covered by private insurance -- either by the employer or because they're the only ones who will be able to afford it.

So -- over-taxed, private insurance driven out of the market, hospitals closing. Oh, and lest I forget, one doctor announced that according to one or another recent poll, about 35% to 40% of doctors now working are planning to leave practice with the arrival of socialized medicine. They'll either retire, look for teaching jobs, or do something else all together. They aren't fully reimbursed for their services under socialized medicine (or Medicaid and Medicare), and the new socialized medicine law prohibits them from owning businesses outside their practices -- like blood test labs, x-ray services, etc.

So... here we are. Merrily on our way to ruin.

I think of that vicious bitch Pazzo Pelosi and drooling moron Dick(head) Durbin crowing about how the American public is just going to L-O-O-O-O-O-V-E socialized medicine, and I can't find words to express the insult and the rage. They are so stupid they don't understand how very stupid they are.

So thanks, you brainless idiots. Thanks a lot. And may you end up in wrapped in a warm blanket, choking on your own puke. Until you die. And I dearly hope that's before the next election so we can replace you with legislators who will repeal your blockheaded policies.

In other words, Save the Republic.