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Group to offer $15.5 billion proposal for universal health care in Md.

By Laura Smitherman

November 12, 2008

Health care advocates plan to unveil today an ambitious $15.5 billion proposal for universal health care in Maryland that would increase payroll taxes to pay for coverage for low-income residents and create a quasi-governmental insurance pool.

The Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, with health policy experts from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, crafted the proposal.

The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide
By: Sally C. Pipes

There is an interesting article in the current issue of Arkansas Times (photo credit) on tort reform. It is written by Doug Smith and titled “Fewer medical malpractice suits, but is that a good thing?” It discusses Act 649 which was passed in 2003 as Arkansas’ attempt at tort reform. I recall how insurance companied were fleeing Arkansas in the years prior to this Act being passed. I have noticed that my malpractice cost has stabilized.

David Wroten, executive vice president of the Arkansas Medical Society, said there'd been a major change in the medical malpractice market in Arkansas, although, he said “We don't know all the reasons why.” Only a couple of companies were writing medical malpractice insurance before Act 649, he said, and now there are nine. Rates have declined “in some cases,” depending on factors such as the insured physician's specialty, but not across the board. The biggest physician malpractice carrier in Arkansas, by far, is State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Corp., with about 70 percent of the market. “Their premium increases have dropped to nothing, or 3 percent,” Wroten said. “Their claims have been cut nearly in half.” He said the reduction in claims was due in large part to Act 649's requirement that an “affidavit of merit” be filed within 30 days of the filing of a malpractice lawsuit. The affidavit, saying there's reasonable cause for the lawsuit, had to be signed by a physician practicing in the same specialty as the defendant. It was supposed to be a defense against frivolous lawsuits. Lawyers said there were already many such defenses.

Richard Ralston, executive director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine asks this question in his latest OpEd:

Stopping Dr. Statism

By George F. Will
Sunday, October 26, 2008; B07

On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health-care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism.

Proposition 101, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution:

"Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type.

No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan."

What do those people who oppose Proposition 101 favor?

Some support legislation sponsored by the Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives. It would establish a severe single-payer system, proscribing private health insurance in the state and requiring almost everyone not on Medicare to enroll in a state health-care program.

Under that program, a state commission would stipulate the menu of services and medications and could even decide which hospitals could add which technologies.

I wanted to profile a comment that a rep for The National Dialogue on Health Information and Privacy left on our site:

"We are going to invest in information technology to eliminate bureaucracy and make the system more efficient."
- Barack Obama, October 15, 2008

Science fiction has a pretty good record of predicting the future. So the quote from Robert A. Heinlein's To Sail Beyond The Sunset rightly predicts where we are heading. Think about the culture of entitlement, gov't giveaways, free health care, world wide whining, and how democracy ties it all together.

"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'

  "Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."

  (To Sail Beyond the Sunset, 227)

Arizona a Prime Example of Financial Ruin by Medicaid

"In 1987, ... just over 10 percent of the state's budget was dedicated to Medicare expenditures. By 1992 that percentage was 17.8, and by 2006 it was 22.2."

http://www.heartland.org/publications/health%20care/article.html?articleid=23723

Written By: Matthew Smith

Published In: Health Care News

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

---------------

"Medicaid is the primary culprit behind state and local governments' bleak financial outlook, according to an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) review of data recently released by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The financial security of local governments will "rapidly deteriorate in less than a decade," said Michael S. Greve, John G. Searle Scholar at AEI and coauthor of "As Arizona Goes, So Goes the Nation: How Medicaid Ruins the States' Fiscal Health."

Tripling of Costs

According to the report, released in mid-July, Arizona is facing a general fund budget shortfall of more than $1.3 billion in its $10.9 billion budget--a predicament largely caused by the state's expansion of its Medicaid programs, which have grown dramatically as a share of the state's overall expenditures.

In 1987, the report notes, just over 10 percent of the state's budget was dedicated to Medicare expenditures. By 1992 that percentage was 17.8, and by 2006 it was 22.2.

In fiscal year 2000, Arizona spent $463 million on Medicaid, and in FY 2009 that figure is projected to be $1.5 billion. That's "a threefold increase in less than a decade," the report notes.

Speeding Ticket Money

Doctor held liable for punitives for treating patient competently

From Point of Law.com

"I don't usually post about trial court decisions -- they have a high
variance, that is typically narrowed on appeal. They are often the
fodder for demagogic politicians of every stripe. I usually take them
with multiple grains of salt.

But this New Jersey Law Journal report is, I think, worthy of larger
notice. It describes a jury verdict from Hudson County, for $400,000,
against a physician who treated his patient competently.

His failing was to refuse to hire, at his own expense, an interpreter
so that he could adequately communicate with his deaf patient.

Why didn't the patient come with her own interpreter (hired at her
own expense)?

Because she doesn't have to, according to federal law
as interpreted by the courts. Her lack of verbal skills is a
disability that others must palliate at their expense.

More obscene still is that the defendant's malpractice liability
insurance does not usually cover such liability, because the care
actually given to the patient was quite appropriate.

The plaintiff claimed that she repeatedly asked her Jersey City
rheumatologist to hire an American Sign Language interpreter. The
doctor responded that as a solo practitioner, he couldn't afford the
estimated $150 to $200 per visit an interpreter would cost, given
that Medicare paid him $49 for each visit.

Affordable Health Care
by Walter Williams (October 22, 2008)

Excerpt:

"One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care?

Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute's annual publication, "Waiting Your Turn," reports that Canada's median waiting times from a patient's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, depending on the procedure, averages from five to 40 weeks. The wait for diagnostics, such as MRI or CT, ranges between four and 28 weeks.

According to Michael Tanner's "The Grass Is Not Always Greener," in Cato Institute's Policy Analysis (March 18, 2008), the Mayo Clinic treats more than 7,000 foreign patients a year, the Cleveland Clinic 5,000, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats 6,000, and one out of three Canadian physicians send a patient to the U.S. for treatment each year.

If socialized medicine is so great, why do Canadian physicians send patients to the U.S. and the Canadian government spends over $1 billion each year on health care in our country?.."

Full Article: http://www.CapMag.com/article.asp?ID=5326