Monday, November 1, 2010

Ralston: Health care queries for candidates

The October 28, 2010 Orange County Register has published the latest OpEd by Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine entitled, "Health care queries for candidates".

He recommends that voters ask their candidates some of the following:
...[A]sk why all your medical records must be turned over to the government without your permission, as required by the stimulus bill of 2009. The records must be computerized, and if they already are, they must be changed to conform to government guidelines and handed over.

...Ask congressional candidates why the legislation known as Obamacare regulates the sale and purchase of gold.

...Ask the candidates why your physicians will be punished financially if, in treating you, they follow their own judgment instead of new government protocols and "best practices."

...Ask the candidates why they think it is immoral for anyone in the medical arena to make a profit -- except trial lawyers.

Ask the candidates what will happen to the cost of new drugs when, after many years of development and trials to obtain government approval, they must go through yet another lengthy review in a "comparative effectiveness" bureaucracy.

Ask them if a new drug that would help you will be forbidden if it does not help everyone else in the same way.

...Ask them what might happen to terminally ill patients -- many thousands of whom have already died -- while being denied access to these drugs.
(Read the full text of "Health care queries for candidates".)

And if you don't like the answers you get, you'll soon have a chance to let them know.