Tell Me, How do you feel now? Sherpa's RX

One thing is for sure. In a recent poll of members of the AMA, granted a pretty skewed poll as tons of AMA members cut up their cards this year........random sample of 6000 physicians from the American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Masterfile, which includes current data on all U.S. physicians.

Excluded were, residents and doctors in US territories. From this data in the New England Journal of Medicine, Keyhani et al found some interesting things. The biggest of these is that a majority of physicians are for a governmental option WITH private options.

Not a surprise, this is what ALREADY EXISTS.

From the study......

"Survey respondents were asked to indicate which of three options for expanding health insurance coverage they would most strongly support:
1. public and private options, providing people younger than 65 years of age the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan (like Medicare) or in private plans

2. private options only, providing people with tax credits or subsidies, if they have low income, to buy private insurance coverage, without creating a new public plan.

3. a public option only, eliminating private insurance and covering everyone through a single public plan like Medicare.

We also assessed the level of physician support for a proposal that would enable adults between the ages of 55 and 64 years to buy into the current Medicare program — a strategy that the Senate Finance Committee has proposed."

But what pisses me off about the article is how it is written....take a listen....

"Physicians in every census region showed majority support for a public option, with percentages in favor ranging from 58.9% in the South to 69.7% in the Northeast. Practice owners were less likely than nonowners to support a public option (59.7% vs. 67.1%, P<0.001),>majority still supported it."

No caveats for the fact that DOCTORS ONLY SUPPORT A PUBLIC OPTION IFF there exists a private industry as well.

What these jokers don't say is precisely that point. Which is why, the press will publish "A majority of doctors support a Public Plan" which may sound like they support single payer.....

They don't. In fact, 3 times as many support a private only plan than a public only plan!!!!

They do acknowledge limitations

"Some limitations of our study deserve comment. First, our response rate was 43.2%, which is modest, though typical of the most recent national physician surveys and surveys in general.

There were no significant differences between survey respondents and nonrespondents in important characteristics, such as specialty, practice location, and practice type.

Second, physicians’ opinions about strategies for expanding health insurance coverage may have evolved during the period of data collection, given the intensive press coverage of the issues."

But in the end, they never, ever mention the fact that a near THIRD of physicians support a private ONLY system and that this number is 3 times the physicians who support a government ONLY plan like Canada or the UK. Thus placing those progressives who demand such, clearly outside of the mainstream of most physicians.....

The only true way to save costs is to start using science and personalized medicine. You will not save costs by covering more people. In fact, I argue that there is no science which truly extols the benefit of enhanced coverage. What should be enhanced is catastrophic coverage.

What bankrupts people? Catastrophe, not a URI.

If you want to nationalize/universalize coverage, stick with catastrophic care. That would make sure everyone was covered when HUGE bills hit.

I am certain this plan would be extremely useful. Enroll everyone in this system and pay out when catastrophe strikes. It works for life insurance. Leave the small time players alone and focus on hospitalization costs, etc.

Continue funding HPSA and increase the loan repayment to 300k over 3 years rather than 85 over 3 years. Watch the doctors come then.......

Give tax subsidies for people who pay for URIs etc or traditional health insurance, which now should cost less as the government/taxpayer absorbs the catastrophic costs.........

That should keep everyone covered and help out with the uninsured. We all know that the major cost to hopsitals is the "self pay" patient with disseminated echinococcus or HIV or esophageal cancer or heart attack.

As for the government and medicare, if you just had a huge boost in revenue by new people coming on board for catastrophic care (To be read as, not pay out for most, and pay out later for some) you could help that insolvency thingy........

The Sherpa Says: Personalized Medicine is a key, rational thinking is the LOCK! I know, my wife just had an ER visit, the hospital charged 6168.00 USD, the insurance paid 800 USD. If she didn't have an insurer protecting her from gouging, she would have had to pay 6168.00 USD. I see it both ways....

I'm All for Change, But this?

I hope you can get a deep understanding of how absolutely and completely worse off we will be with this complicated system. You can say, "well can't the US government track submarines underwater while also tracking missles overhead and STILL collect taxes?" They can, but this is even more complex. Listen, it would be nice to have a cheaper Not For Profit system out there to pay for care.

Remember, having access to health insurance, is NOT having access to healthcare.......

It's having access to health insurance. I don't know if anyone reads Investors Business Daily, I do and on Wednesday I read something which almost made me $h!t my pants. The House bill went public all 1018 pages of it.....

On Page 16 there is something very, very scary on it.........

From IBD (Not to be confused with Crohn's Disease)


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "Health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure



When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left's expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.

AS Jon Belushi said in Animal House

"Holy $h!t"

This is crazy. If this becomes law, it in essence will prevent you as an individual from changing plans, unless of course you go on the government plan. No more individual policies.......EVER

This may not be a big deal for someone in bad health, but for a health 40 year old who wants access to specialists without issues or waiting periods, this could soon become illegal......

The Sherpa Says: If you think that these changes will enable Personalized Medicine, think again.........Besides, the real costs in this system are drugs and hopsitals. Why bother with the providers?