Wolf: Obamacare Is Worth Getting Angry About

Dr. Milton Wolf has a great new OpEd at the Washington Times, "Obamacare is worth getting angry about".

He makes many good points, but I wanted to highlight this passage:

For the first time in the history of our republic, our government has demanded that every American, upon the condition of breathing, be forced to enter a legal contract with government-approved corporations. Not even King George III dared impose such control. In truth, if a government can force you to patronize companies of its choosing, the fundamental relationship between the government and the individual is irrevocably changed. If it is allowed to stand, there will be no part of your life the government cannot control and no crony it cannot enrich -- with your money.

Isn’t that worth getting angry about?

(Read the full text of "Obamacare is worth getting angry about".)

I don't know whether or not Mitt Romney will be the eventual GOP nominee for the 2012 presidential race. But if he is, our best hope for moving the country in the right direction with respect to health care policy is for Americans to keep up the pressure, letting him know that we want ObamaCare repealed.

Thank you, Milton, for reminding us what's at stake -- it's not just our health care but our basic freedoms.

Armstrong: Our Dead American Medical Association

Dr. Richard Armstrong of Docs4PatientCare has a new OpEd in the 2/1/2012 Washington Times, "Our Dead American Medical Association".

In his piece, Dr. Armstrong highlights a couple of facts that aren't widely known by the general American public:

1) The AMA now represents only 15% of American physicians.

2) They make most of their money from a government-granted monopoly on medical coding, rather than from physician membership dues.

Hence, the AMA is far more beholden to the federal government than to physicians. Is it any surprise that the AMA decided to back ObamaCare despite deep opposition from regular practicing physicians?

And because the public perception is that the AMA "is the voice of American doctors", most people wrongly concluded that there was of a "consensus" of US physicians in favor of ObamaCare when that was not the case at all.

Fortunately, more US physicians are joining other groups that do genuinely represent their interests and their patients' interests, such as Docs4PatientCare.

(Read the full text of "Our Dead American Medical Association".)

Finally, one commenter made the following astute observation:

Most doctors don't dare practice medicine any more.

They must simply fit their patients into templates designed by actuaries and prescribe negotiated, unimaginative, and often dated protocols handed down from the ivory tower regardless of documented dismal success rates. Straitjacketed by the constant threat of malpractice the MD now merely represents a certificate of applied medicine and board certified means guaranteed not to stray from Conn's Current Therapy.

They don't have a license to practice medicine, they have a permit to follow a flow chart. It sickens me.

This is the future of American medicine unless ObamaCare is repealed and we adopt genuine free-market health care reforms.

Coulter And Her Critics

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter recently attempted to defend the Massachusetts "universal" health care plan in her 2/1/2012 column, "Three Cheers for RomneyCare!"

Almost immediately, critics posted rebuttals of her various bad arguments. Here are a few:

Philip Klein: "Coulter's shameful defense of Romneycare".

AllahPundit at HotAir.

Mark Levin: Video rebuttal. (Or download the MP3 version).

Ultimately, Coulter's arguments don't hold water. And plenty of people noticed it.

Quick Links: Ethics, Algorithms, Managed Care

John Goodman: "Money, Medicine and Ethics". (Via D4PC.)

Dr. Jeffrey Parks: "How algorithm driven medicine can affect patient care". (Rigid protocols are no substitute for the rational mind.)

Dr. Rich Fogoros: "Whatever Happened To Managed Care?"

Side By Side: ObamaCare vs. RomneyCare

OHPCenter.org spotted this nice side-by-side comparison of Romneycare and Obamacare from a left-of-center advocacy group.

Rhoads: Fact-Checking Romney on Individual Mandate

In the 1/28/2012 Daily Caller, Jared Rhoads of the Center for Objective Health Policy does some much-needed "Fact-checking Mitt Romney on the Massachusetts individual mandate".

Here is the opening:

During Thursday night's CNN debate -- the final such event before the Florida primary on Tuesday, January 31 -- Rick Santorum attacked Mitt Romney over the individual mandate contained in the health reform legislation passed by Romney as governor of Massachusetts.

Santorum said that Romney's mandate requires individuals to buy an insurance policy "as a condition of breathing." He called it a top-down model that is "no different than Barack Obama’s mandate."

Romney objected to it being called a "top-down model" and contested that the logic behind the individual mandate in Massachusetts is that "if you don't want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill." He noted that under federal law, hospitals are required to treat certain patients regardless of whether the patients have insurance. Romney then followed with, "... [W]e said, no more, no more free-riders. We are insisting on personal responsibility. Either get the insurance or help pay for your care. And that was the conclusion that we reached."

Rhoads analyzes the real truth behind Romney's disingenuous claims.

In particular, Romney employs a faulty concept of "responsibility" to justify government infringements on individual freedoms.

For a proper analysis of genuine personal responsibility in this context, read the full text of "Fact-checking Mitt Romney on the Massachusetts individual mandate".

Blog for Surgery Center of OK

Readers of this blog might also enjoy the blog by Dr. G. Keith Smith for the "Surgery Center of OK".

Dr. Smith's tagline: "I blog about free markets in medical care and pricing."

Here's an extended excerpt from his latest post, "Another 'not making a profit' story":

A nurse with whom I am acquainted told me the following story this morning. A relative of hers was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and a course of chemotherapy was advised. She has a high deductible insurance policy (good for her!) but just after the holidays is a little short on cash. After having received the news of her diagnosis and just having received her first round of chemo, she was told by the cancer treatment facility (owned by a LARGE health system in Oklahoma employing oncologists) that she must show up with no less than $495 at her next appointment or the deal was off: no more chemotherapy for her.

Now those of you that know me or read this blog know that I'm a fan of the free market. TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch). Here at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, we charge for what we do and we make a profit. We just happen to charge about a fifth as much as our hospital friends who claim to "not make a profit." I continue to be amazed and shocked at the strong-arm money grubbing that characterizes these "not for profit" health systems (big hospitals). Come on! Seriously, this woman receives a diagnosis during the holidays of breast cancer and she is shoved against the wall for money? You think my characterization of this is unfair? This shakedown mentality isn't limited to the poor, either. Just ask Garth Brooks.

There's more. The oncologists, previously independent physicians with their own chemotherapy center, were free to make allowances for hardship prior to their sell out to the hospital for which they now work. The fees for their services are now higher than before by virtue of their affiliation with the "hospital system" and their old cancer treatment center is now abandoned. This is important to understand for those of you who think that physician-owned facilities represent a conflict of interest for the owners and that price gouging will be the inevitable result.

The opposite is actually true. Physicians who own their own facilities must also own and claim responsibility for the billing practices of the facility in addition to that of their private office.

This "accountability of ownership," as I like to call it (economists would refer to this as a lack of moral hazard, I think) represents a powerful deflationary effect on prices charged patients. Then there is the compassion factor. The physician-owned facility and its staff (including the billing and business staff) can't aggressively shake patients down for money without tarnishing the image of the physician...

Read the rest of the post for how his facility deals with this issue, "Another 'not making a profit' story".

I thought the discussion of reputation effects and accountability for the physician-owned medical facilities were especially interesting and worth wider circulation.

In medicine as in the rest of the modern economy, the enlightened self-interest of an honest provider of goods and services is the customer's best guarantee of good quality.

(Note: I've only begun looking into the various posts, so this isn't a blanket endorsement of everything on the website. But I am looking forward to exploring it in more depth.)

WSJ Debate on ACOs

The 1/23/2012 Wall Street Journal features this extended debate on the pros and cons of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOS): "Can Accountable-Care Organizations Improve Health Care While Reducing Costs?"

(If the direct link doesn't work, just Google the title of the article).

There's lots of information here, which I am still digesting.