by John Stossel

At a town hall meeting this month,President Obama talked about his “investment” in electronic medical records:

When everything is digitalized, all your records — your privacy is protected, but all your records on a digital form — that reduces medical errors.  It means that nurses don’t have to read the scrawl of doctors when they are trying to figure out what treatments to apply.  That saves lives; that saves money; and it will still ensure privacy.”

Really?  It will “ensure privacy”?

Anyone who feels confident that the government is competent enough to control and protect your medical records should check out these two recent developments. Salon.com reports that Arlington National Cemetery, which calls itself “our nation’s most sacred shrine,” is having difficulty keeping track of the dead.

“Despite nearly 10 years and countless dollars spent on computerizing its operations, the cemetery still relies mostly on paper burial records that in some cases do not match the headstones. ‘There are numerous examples of discrepancies that exist between burial maps, the physical location of headstones, and the burial records/grave cards,’ the cemetery admitted in a 2008 report to Congress.”

And then there was the news that NASA admits it probably erased the historic video of the first steps on the moon:

“It’s unclear exactly what happened to the Apollo 11 tapes, but (NASA engineer Richard) Nafzger said they likely were saved for a few years and then erased and recorded over, something that is not unusual for space missions.

As for why someone failed to recognize the historical significance and save the tapes, he didn’t have a good answer. ‘Boy, do we wish they’d done that,’ he said.”

So do we.

by Mike Tennant, LRC Blog

Among the countless horrors our Dear Leader wants to visit upon us with his health care “reform” bill is this: ”grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents, and adults through the use of evidence-based interventions. States may use funds to implement interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force, such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers, or home visits.”

“The bill lists eight specific ways that states may use federal grant money to carry out immunization-promoting ‘interventions.’ Method ‘E’ calls for ‘home visits’ which can include ‘provision of immunizations.’”

In other words, whether you want your kids (or yourself) to receive certain vaccines, the state can forcibly administer them in your home.

Anyone think that Big Pharma won’t back this bill 100 percent?

Infowars.com

If the government mandates a series of flu shots this fall — so far they are only “recommending” the shots — you can expect to get a dose of thimerosal (mercury), formaldehyde, detergent, MF-59 (an oil-based adjuvant), and other toxins.

Incidentally, if you believe the government will not kidnap you at gunpoint and lock you in a concentration camp and possibly force you to take these toxins, check out Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003. It states that the government has the authority to establish “regulations providing for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases,” including diseases at that time “not yet isolated or named.”

Of course, the government will decide if you have a deadly disease or not.

the_truth_about_the_flu_shot (PDF)

by Allison Bricker, the Smoking Argus Daily

The “opposition” party in the House, i.e. the Republicans, have unveiled a flow chart illustrating the potential tangled bureaucratic red-tape mess that awaits Americans should President Obama’s plan to nationalize health care become law.

Quite frankly, anyone who supports such a system is nothing less than a thief. A thief too chicken-shit to steal directly from our family so thus they employ government thugs to conduct their thievery and call it “taxation”. Why should our family’s health be secondary to someone who chose to abuse drugs, alcohol, eat low quality fast food, not wear a seat-belt, smoke, ride a motorcycle without a helmet, or any of the utter litany of other personal decisions which have a specific effect on an individual’s health?

Are we supposed to feel guilty for any of the above who chose to make poor decisions related to their own health? Is our family somehow responsible for a complete stranger in some other state, county, town, etcetera who after eating a lifetime of fast food has developed diabetes and also needs Viagra to combat their erectile dysfunction?

Does our own children’s health care take a back seat to a the millions of high risk behavior young adults who end up mangled after some extreme sporting event?

Yet those who seek government health care keep whining, how dare we be so selfish as to desire to ensure the health of our our own family first. According to them we should remain quiet as these irresponsible, dependent, wards of the nanny state force their way into our private bank accounts with the help of pull peddling government bureaucrats.

If anyone is operating under the fantasy that a trip to the government health care clinic will somehow be fundamentally different from a trip to the Department of Motor vehicles or any other bloated alphabet soup bureaucracy, perhaps they should stop by a VA hospital or ask the veterans how great Uncle Sam is as “Doctor in Chief”.

Honestly, this really is not a difficult proposition to understand. Just ask yourself what happens when a radio station offers free gas giveaways or any other highly prized “freebie”. The result of course, lines around the block and many of those who were not in line first end up receiving no benefit at all, thus leaving them with a net loss in gasoline due to the time wasted idling.

The same rules of supply and demand apply to health care, which is thus why one result of government run health care are people waiting unacceptable times for time sensitive health services such as dentistry, cancer therapies, et al.

Moreover, please do not misconstrue my disdain for government managed health care as a philosophy of turning a blind eye to those in need. Once, when the economy was humming along, my income reflected such, and we had a sizable savings, our family helped several long time friends with rent, food, and basic necessities some for close to a year.

We enjoyed having the opportunity to help those who we personally knew and were invested in their well being. Additionally, it also made it possible for us to withdraw those resources when in one particular instance, our friend ended up squandering our help by refusing to look for a job and instead chose to endlessly play video games for close to seven months.

However, now things are different. Our life savings exhausted after needing to retain an attorney in order to secure justice from the courts during a three-year legal battle, and with a substantial reduction in my income from an overall decline in business at my employer, we now find ourselves the recipients of some charity from a close personal family friend who is not independently wealthy.

This is how we as Americans help each other. Americans are not stingy, we the People help one another, ’tis an example repeated continuously from one coast to the other. Family helping family, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends, strangers helping strangers.

What we do not do is steal from each other, or ask government to do so for us, and pretend our needs somehow outweigh those of the other person or group, thereby justifying the theft.

Perhaps I am alone in my vision of America or the “more perfect Union”. Nevertheless the America to which my allegience lies is an America who does not torture, does not wage aggressive interventionist wars, spies on her own people, or pretends to redefine the word theft as health care.

Nor shall I ever claim citizenship to the Neo-America which attempts to justify the aforementioned. To that bastardized amalgamation, I shall forever remain a vocal enemy of the state.

Don’t tread on us.

The costly truth about Canada’s health care system

by John Stossel

President Obama says government will make health care cheaper and better. But there’s no free lunch.

In England, health care is “free”—as long as you don’t mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over.

Obama insists he is not “trying to bring about government-run healthcare.”

“But government management does the same thing,” says Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. “To reduce costs they’ll have to ration—deny—care.”

“People line up for care, some of them die. That’s what happens,” says Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure. He liked Canada’s government health care until he started treating patients.

“The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house.” “You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! Just wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! Just wait six months.”

Polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren’t sick when the poll-taker calls. Canadian doctors told us the system is cracking. One complained that he can’t get heart-attack victims into the ICU.

In America, people wait in emergency rooms, too, but it’s much worse in Canada. If you’re sick enough to be admitted, the average wait is 23 hours.

“We can’t send these patients to other hospitals. Dr. Eric Letovsky told us. “Every other emergency department in the country is just as packed as we are.”

More than a million and a half Canadians say they can’t find a family doctor. Some towns hold lotteries to determine who gets a doctor. In Norwood, Ontario, 20/20 videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor.

Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery “elective.”

“The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live,” she said.

It’s true that America’s partly profit-driven, partly bureaucratic system is expensive, and sometimes wasteful, but the pursuit of profit reduces waste and costs and gives the world the improvements in medicine that ease pain and save lives.

“[America] is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment,” Dr. Gratzer says.

“Literally we’re surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years. You’ve got to pay a price for that type of advancement.”

Canada and England don’t pay the price because they freeload off American innovation. If America adopted their systems, we could worry less about paying for health care, but we’d get 2009-level care—forever. Government monopolies don’t innovate. Profit seekers do.

We saw this in Canada, where we did find one area of medicine that offers easy access to cutting-edge technology—CT scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laparoscopy, etc. It was open 24/7. Patients didn’t have to wait.

But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Animal care is the one area of medicine that hasn’t been taken over by the government. Dogs can get a CT scan in one day. For people, the waiting list is a month.