Congress has cloaked the proposed workings of the government takeover of health care in as much secrecy as possible.Not that they went to a lot of trouble to do it.
Much of what Gov't Care is meant to do was hidden in plain sight in over 1,000 pages of HR 3200 text that Democrats believed would never be read by themselves or anyone, particularly if they succeeded in passing that bill within an Obama-mandated period of 2 weeks. More of the secret life of ObamaCare was hidden in the Senate's nearly 900 page committee draft.
The assumption that Americans wouldn't bother to inquire about how "rebuilt" health care would affect them was a bit premature, and more and more of us are poring over these documents as each day goes by.
These bills are difficult to digest; the more Americans learn about ObamaCare, the more questions we have.
A very important group was not consulted about "rebuilding" American health care: practicing physicians. The operative word here is practicing. I am not referring to elitist euthanasia proponents in the Obama administration who have concluded that society must be improved by various methods that will effectively shorten the lives of the elderly and the disabled of every age, even our honored disabled veterans. I am referring to doctors who do the hard work of saving and extending people's lives and helping the sick and injured recover and, if those patients cannot recover, offer them as much comfort as possible in their last months and days. In other words, doctors who respect life and people's desire to keep on living to the very end.
One by one, Americans are realizing that they are coming to a time when they need to explain that their human desire to stay alive is not only perfectly natural, but also honorable. Life is sacred, most of us believe, and the belief that life is sacred was a prime motivator for the authors of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
A centerpiece of American medicine has been our medical technologies and equipment. Under ObamaCare, who will be deciding which medical facilities have high-tech diagnostic and treatment equipment? Who will be deciding who gets to be treated with that life-saving equipment?
Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., writing at Labvirus.com has drawn back the curtain on what awaits those of us in need of medical technology after it becomes rationed under ObamaCare:
Let’s say I practice at a hospital that does not have a scanner. The only one allowed in town is at the medical university. My patient needs a scan rather urgently. Under the Obama plan, I would first have to apply to the regional government office for permission to see if there is really a need-and, of course, I will be speaking to a young person with no knowledge of neurosurgery. They search the long list of indications and finally agree-that is, after a number of phone calls and endless pleading.
Not to worry, though. There will be scanners at prestigious university hospitals, like the Harvard Medical School, available for the use of Barack Obama's academic friends and supporters (if not for Cambridge cops and their families).The next step is that I have to have transportation approved from my hospital to the anointed scanning center. More haggling, searching the thousand of pages of regulations and hanging on the line waiting to be transferred to the next bureaucrat in charge of transportation ensues. Finally, all of this is approved. But then I discover that the waiting list at the university is very long and my patient will have to wait behind the university’s urgent cases. Meanwhile my patient is deteriorating steadily. No amount of pleading will move the process forward-it all falls on deaf ears. I know this because I have experience similar frustrations, even with the limited regulations in place now.
If my patient is still alive, they are finally transferred to the regional scanning center, where they spend hours waiting in the hallways to be scanned. Then I have to arrange for them to be transported back to my hospital. Now, the report for the scan will take days or even weeks to be read, since the doctor reading the scan will have a stack of scans to review from his own institution as well as all surrounding hospitals and doctor’s offices. This is how it works in Canada and England.
The only reason the Canadian system survives is because the medical system in the United States cares for many of their really sick patients. The US scanners in the boarder states work overtime scanning Canadian patients because the wait to be scanned in Canada is so long. We act as the Canadian government’s relief valve, but then what is going to happen when we are strapped with a similar system?
And, without doubt, there will be scanners dotting the landscape of Washington, D.C.
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