CHECK YOUR HEALTH

There’s a lot going on out there. Don’t get too confused though. Answers can be found if one cares to find them and the absolute truth can be distilled using two parts common sense, one part investigative reading and just a basic understanding of economics.

Free health care for everyone sounds great. I would love it. Think of how good that would be.

You get a bad sore throat so you pick up the phone and dial. On the other end, a friendly, knowledgeable man schedules you an appointment for the next day. You head down to the doctor’s office, one you have been to many times before, and wait just 15 minutes before being seen. A friendly assistant comes out to retrieve you and you go straight in to see your doctor. She asks how the family is and how your job is going. After all, you’ve been seeing this doctor for years. She’s practically a member of your family herself. It’s comforting to be in such good, familiar hands. After taking your vitals and asking a number of questions, the doctor prescribes you a mild antibiotic and a cough suppressant and sends you on your way. As you leave, the receptionist smiles at you and says, “Take care.”

No co-pay. No anything. It’s free. Completely free. Then you go to the pharmacy to get your medication and that’s free as well. The pharmacist promptly fills your prescription and hands it to you with a smile. You are all set. Just like that, you have taken care of yourself and it didn’t cost you a dime.

OK, now, when I count backward from 3, you are going to wake up from the trance you are in.

3....2....1.....

You get a sore throat so you pick up the phone and dial. On the other end, you reach an automated system that prompts you for your social security number and a code that lets the automated system know what your most recent “health status” is based on your prior visits and most currently updated health history. You’d like to speak to an actual person but you cannot reach one. The automated system tells you which doctors are available in your area and you must choose one. You make your choice based on convenience and wait, on hold, for the system to spit out an appointment time.

“What?”, you say. "That’s six weeks from now. And I've never heard of that doctor."

You hang up. This just won’t work. You’ve been coughing your face off and can barely function at your job. So, you head down to the emergency room. There they won’t make you wait a month to be seen and you can at least get a prescription.

When you walk into the hospital, you can’t believe your eyes. There are people everywhere; in chairs, sitting and laying on the floor, standing up against every wall. The place is packed. There are people in the hallways and outside as well. Those with severe chronic illness, people bleeding from injuries, women in labor and sick children are all intermingled with others who appear to be healthy or at least not visibly ill. Where did all these people come from?

Your head pounding, you try to get someone to help you. Hospital workers frantically try to attend to the throng of patients. They want to do it by priority of need but there is a strict protocol that has to be adhered to that causes additional confusion. No one seems to be in charge. The staff members are yelling at one another. The scene is chaos.

Finally, you stop one of the nurses.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry but, I’m quite sick and I have a very bad soar throat and fever. Is there any way I can see a doctor just to get a prescription?”

The nurse replies curtly, “You look alright to me. If you want, you can come back tomorrow. But there’s no guarantee you’ll get in to see a doctor.”

The nurse runs off.

You cannot be seen. You cannot get help. You will just have to wait.

This is the reality of a government run health care system. You want it? Well, this is what it will be like. And wrong, it’s not free. It’s coming out of your paycheck in the form of taxes. The services, infrastructure, bureaucracy and medication must be paid for. Those things don’t just materialize. They have finite costs and those costs must be covered. The health care bill now being proposed by Congress and the Obama Administration does not explain these costs or how they will be addressed. You think there's waste in the system now? Wait until the government is running the show.


THE POLITICS

The White House streams the message that they want everyone’s input; Republicans and Democrats, experts and citizens, doctors and nurses. Not true. The administration does not want to hear any voices that don’t reflect their own. Obama hasn’t met with Republicans as promised. Instead, he has tried to marginalize the Tea Party movement and has attacked Fox News and other critics of the so-called plan.

Apparently, having a countering viewpoint on perhaps the most ludicrous piece of legislation ever seen in this country makes you a radical, a racist and a hindrance to progress.

Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarret have recently referred to “lies”, “misinformation” and “distortions” without a single reference to anything specific. If you are going to call someone a “liar”, it would be prudent to say what they’re lying about. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is not held to this standard.

Spin and lies are actually much more commonplace throughout the Obama Administration itself than on any major media outlet. The President has called the Swine Flu (or H1N1) a National Emergency. The administration has done everything possible to keep the Swine Flu scare in the news in order to drive home the need for a government run health care system. H1N1 is no more lethal than the regular flu, the one we get every year at some point.

According to CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden; "Many millions" of Americans have had swine flu so far. Really? Many MILLIONS? I checked with the CDC. This statement doesn’t make any sense.

From April through the end of August there were 9,079 reported cases of hospitalizations for H1N1. Of those, there were 593 deaths nationwide. What the CDC doesn’t add are the preexisting conditions or ages of those dead. But that’s almost irrelevant here.

From the end of August to mid-October there were 4,938 lab-confirmed flu cases resulting in 292 deaths. That’s total flu-related cases, not just H1N1. Now, according to the CDC itself, between 5% and 20% of the U.S. population gets the flu annually. The CDC clearly reports that more than 200,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized from flu-related complications each year and about 36,000 people die from these complications.

So, how in the hell is this year’s flu special? It seems to me that H1N1 is not that dangerous. Do the math.

If there were just over 9,000 cases of H1N1 from April to August with 593 deaths during that period, it’s hardly a national emergency. That would make it far below average in terms of the entire year. Remember, the average is 3,000 deaths per month. From April to August around 110 people per month died from the H1N1 strain. Where did the Director of the Center for Disease Control come up with “many millions” of American having H1N1? This is an invented number. In order to know that people definitely had the flu, let alone the H1N1 strain, they would have had to be lab tested. “Many millions” of Americans have not been lab tested positive for the flu, H1N1 or otherwise. This is rhetoric, plain and simple.

So, who is spreading misinformation?

It’s obvious this "pandemic" is purely political. Obama’s daughters weren’t even vaccinated against H1N1 until just last week after a few of the news outlets ran stories about that fact. When asked why the Presidential daughters weren't vaccinated, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the vaccine was “not available to them based on their risk.”

Can you believe he actually said that? And they pay this guy a salary? Come on.

The Centers for Disease Control recommended that all children ages 6 months through 18 years of age receive a vaccination against the H1N1 flu virus going back to last spring. I guess Gibbs doesn’t use Google before these press conferences.

The Presidential daughters didn’t get vaccinated because there’s not a national emergency.

Last Saturday, Obama said "As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic.”

Hear that? The government will take care of this problem, rest assured.


INSURER PROFITS

One of my favorite parts of the Obama spin cycle is the populism that bleeds its way into almost everything the administration talks about.

As part of their justification for this idiotic health care legislation, the White House and a number of Congressional Democrats have made digs about the profits of the health insurance companies. For your information, health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. This is enough to keep them in business and not much more. According to the bastion of truth and accuracy, MoveOn.org, the health insurers are blind and careless profiteers who rake in the dough while “the bodies pile up”.

Not true.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she was “very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." She applauded the attention being given to insurers’ “obscene profits."

The industry's overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never surpassed 8 percent during the Bush years. These can in no way be considered “immoral” or “obscene” profits.

Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership from Maryland stated; "Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants. Their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed." Sounds evil, doesn’t it? Premiums have doubled. Yeah, well so has the cost of my chocolate ice cream, rent, clothing, and almost everything else I can think of. Congratulations, you just pointed out the obvious. The cost of care went up so the premiums increased. (They conveniently won't tell you that, with the government plan, costs will go up and they'll be raising taxes and rationing care to cover those costs. The health insurance companies will be out of business so, too bad, you'll have to pay. Catching on? Now, they can always justify raising taxes because the cost of health care is always increasing. Brilliant.)

Health insurers posted an average 2.2 percent profit margin last year. HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent.

Obama claims that the public option would force private insurers to cut back profits and restrain premiums to compete with the government. According to the President, this would "keep insurance companies honest.”

Right. Just to put that in perspective...

The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin;

Network and other communications equipment, 20.4 percent;

Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent;

Yahoo, 5.9 percent;

Hershey, 6.1 percent;

Clorox, 8.7 percent;

Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent;

Construction and farm machinery, 5 percent;

Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent.

So, in keeping the health insurers’ profits “honest”, how much money would it be fair for them to make?

Hopefully enough to keep the one million plus people in that industry employed.