More Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

I was talking with a guy this morning and something came on the news about health care and the Obamacare plan. He said it would be a good idea to have "free" health care. "Free" I said, "it's definitely not going to be free". It occurred to me that a good sized amount of people in this nation are not even remotely tuned into what Obamacare would entail, how it would reduce the standard of care and how much it will actually cost them. It got me thinking that Obama may be able to pull this off with a compliant media abetting him.

We have to make sure that the average citizen understand what he or she would be in store for with socialized medicine. Here's another example of why we have to beat this thing down, burn the bill, piss on the ashes and flush them down the toilet:

Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough, a report says.

Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing.

But the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer.

The average wait is three times longer than is recommended. The three month number is insane and with shock Americans who have grown accustomed to calling a doctor and getting in the same day.

Just another preview of Obamacare.

As an aside, the GOP is finally starting to explain just what Obama plans on doing and it ain't pretty.

Update: Here's some of the side effects Obamacare would bring about.

Health Care Elitism From Obama

From the health care infomercial on ABC last night:

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

Emphasis mine.

Of course he wouldn't make such a pledge because he knows what will happen to American health care should the government control it and he knows it will not be the best in the world anymore for him or his family. Instead he's willing to sentence the rest of us to a world where we have to beg and plead with bureaucrats for simple procedures we now receive upon request and would have to wait months for needed surgery that we could schedule next week under the current system.

We'll have a system whereby those with the means will get the best care from the best doctors while those without will be treated by third-world schooled doctors who will have guidelines and standards dictated to them by the government. In essence, we will have the same non-care they have in Britain. That will be the state of health care in Obamanation.

No thanks.

American Medical Association Slams Obama Health Plan

So far we've had people who've been forced to live under socialized medicine come out against it, businesses come out against it and now the top doctor organization in America slams Obama's plan to nationalize our health care system:

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.

The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors’ group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America’s largest physician organization.

The docs know full-well that under socialized medicine, their pay will decrease, the standards of care will diminish and the government will decide what's best for the patient and not them. A lose-lose-lose situation all around.

These men and women are the best and brightest in the world; people from nations with socialized medicine come here to get treated by them. I think we ought to trust someone with 12 years of schooling in medicine over a guy who got a law degree and served as a community organizer.

If this is what the government wants for us, they better get ready for a serious backlash that will put the democrats in a permanent minority.

Ted Kennedy Cancer in Remission

I find it ironic though that Ted Kennedy has been a hawk on pushing socialized medicine but it free market health care that helped him in this case. In a socialized medicine world akin to Canada or Britain, the average person would never get the care they get in the US. Senator Kennedy was saved by the medical advances we only see in the American system as it's been for generations.

I'm happy for the Senator and wish him well.

More Great Moments in Socialized Medicine

Obama and Daschle have a dream; a dream to make the US health care system exactly like those in Canada and Britain. I guess we have this to look forward to then:

The organs of British donors are being given to private patients from overseas - despite a severe shortage of organs for people in this country.

Documents show that 50 livers from British donors were given to patients from Cyprus, Greece and other countries, even though 259 British patients are waiting for a potentially life-saving transplant.

It means British people with incurable liver disease could potentially die waiting for a transplant when suitable organs have been handed to foreigners.

...Freedom of Information requests have revealed that foreigners pay around £75,000 for the operations. This money is shared between the transplant surgeon, who may get around £20,000, and the hospital trust.

More on the socialized medicine debacles the world over can be found here, here here and here...and oh yeah, here.

Dr. Maj. John Pryor Dies in Iraq

What many people have failed to recognize since the wars in both Afghanistan in Iraq commenced is the reason the death toll is so low when compared to other wars in that we now have a corps of excellent doctors and surgeons (my late cousin Ray having been one) who have been trained to save the lives of those injured in battle. One of these great surgeons was killed in Iraq on Christmas day:

John P. Pryor, 42, of Moorestown, the dedicated leader of the University of Pennsylvania's trauma team and a decorated major in the Army Reserve who wrote eloquently about the painful parallels between battlefield deaths and urban homicides, was killed on Christmas by enemy fire in Iraq while serving as a combat surgeon.

Dr. Pryor deployed Dec. 6 and was with a risky frontline surgical unit when he was killed by shrapnel from a mortar round. It was his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Dr. Pryor, who was experienced and cool under pressure, was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and raised near Albany. He completed surgical training at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and came to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. After a fellowship in trauma surgery and critical care, he joined Penn's surgical faculty and served as director of the hospital's nationally recognized trauma program.

This guy was truly amazing. Consider his actions on September 11:

A technically skilled surgeon with a fierce adventurous streak, Dr. Pryor dashed to the heart of Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, to volunteer his services. He wound up deciphering and filling medical requests that crackled over rescue-team radios.

"I don't think about it every day, but I've had flashbacks," he said in 2002.

And this:

"In Iraq, ironically, I found myself drawing on my experience as a civilian trauma surgeon each time 'mascals,' or 'mass casualty situations,' would overrun the combat hospital," he told NPR last year. "As nine or 10 patients from a firefight rolled in, I sometimes caught myself saying, 'Just like another Friday night in West Philadelphia.'"

Thank you for your service to your country and to mankind Dr. Pryor. As for his family, I wish them some sense of comfort but they should know he died a hero and will be remembered by veterans as such.

Update (1/1/09): Judging by the amount of comments and their content, I would say that Mr. Pryor affected a great many people and touched lives everywhere. Even more reason to extend my gratitude and respect for his service and sacrifice.

Hope For Us Older Athletes

This pretty cool. Perhaps we are about to see a new era in sports with the introduction of the "super gel:"

A flexible but resilient gel that could be used as artificial cartilage to repair ailing joints is being investigated by US researchers. Made from polymers commonly found in shampoo, the water-based gel could help people with joint diseases like arthritis – a disease affecting 46 million people in the US alone.

"You can squeeze it or pull it by 10 times its original length and it still won't fall apart," says Eric Lin of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US. "If you tried to do that with Jell-O [jelly] or any other material that was 90% water it would just fall apart."

Natural cartilage has comparable strength. Its gel mimic – first created in 2003 by researchers at Hokkaido University, Japan – is made by mixing two polymers with water in a specific ratio.

Imagine what it can do for pitchers who now require "Tommy John surgery" or running backs that blow out knees. The debate will rage about any records set by athletes who are surgically repaired with this gel. I'm sure, yet it would be revolutionary to say the least.