Sick man with TB -- visibly sick -- and on a "Do Not Board" list flies from Philly to San Fran.  And you want to put the Federal Government in charge of health care?  They can't even read a list.

Read the full details here.

Showing that there are no real boundaries to the research monies thrown at medical science -- especially in the United Kingdom, apparently -- Slashot provides news from the BBC that a team of reasearchers has determined that the G-Spot Doesn't Appear to Exist.

I would love to know how you research that.

The Mayo Clinic is dropping Medicare patients in Arizona because the government "pays too little".

Nice job, Barry.  You hail them for delivery high quality and low cost, and they say "up yours".

Read more here.

Nice Job, Harlem Hospital Center.

Answer Me This, Oh Proponents of National Health Care:  how can a government which is now facing its second major recall of H1N1 vaccine, after having a period of substantial delay in delivery of said vaccines, be trusted to run an entire health care system?

How can a government that cannot pass all of its spending legislation in twelve months be trusted to run an entire health care system?

According to CNSNews.com, Rep Bart Stupak is facing serious pressure from President Hopeychange and San Fran Nan no to speak out on the egregiously mislabeled “abortion compromise” in the Senate health care bill.  It seems President Hopeychange and San Fran Nan are deathly worried that the so-called compromise on abortion language will not pass muster in the House (where apparently, some are still willing to call a turd a turd), and thereby torpedo the one initiative President Hopeychange has been able to push through Congress in 2009.

Unlike the great Senate Whore Ben “Cornhusker Con Man” Nelson (Dumbass, Nebraska), Bart Stupak is not willing to fold so easily.  President Hopeychange is facing serious resistance to his plans to nationalize and thereby destroy the most productive health care system in the world. There is overwhelming public resistance to his plan, and it only was able to get out of the Senate by buying off Senate Whores like Chris “What Special Privileges” Dodd, Mary “Louisiana Purchase” Landrieu, and Socialist Bernie Sanders.  He knows that an overwhelming majority of Americans are not willing to have federal dollars pay for abortions, either directly or indirectly.  That is why the Hyde amendment remains so popular nearly three decades after it was first attached to Medicaid and Medicare funding.

He knows that his party’s obsession with protecting the “right” of women to kill their unborn children may very well kill his desire to inflict America with a nationalized health care system that will end up killing people.

From his mouth to God’s ears.  Keep the faith, Congressman Stupak.

The mantra from the left is that special interest groups in the health care industry are responsible for blocking health care reform in Congress by paying and organizing “right wing” groups in an attempt to “astro-turf” the issue.

The problem is, that is one big fat lie.  Make sure you read “Obama Buys the News” by the National Center for Public Policy Research.  Yes, they are a right of center group.  But this article, by Matt Patterson (no relation, I think) contains FACTS, not FICTION.

Salient Paragraph #1:

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is one of the largest lobbying and trade organizations of drug manufacturers in the United States.¹⁰  Billy Tauzin, president and CEO of PhRMA,¹¹ has claimed that earlier this year he made a sweet deal with the White House on behalf of his drug companies:¹² In return for "political and financial support for the President's health care initiative,"¹³ the President "wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail,"¹⁴ according to the Los Angeles Times.  Tauzin is not coy about this deal: "The White House blessed it," he said emphatically.¹⁵

Please note that Billy Tauzin used to be a Republican.  A pretty conservative one at that.

Salient Paragraph #2:

In July, 173 of 326 commercials, or 53 percent, were PhRMA company advertisements.  In August, 176 of 321 commercials, or 54.8 percent, were PhRMA.  In September, 156 of 293, or 53.24 percent, were PhRMA commercials.  Of the eight days in October analyzed, 45 out of 80 commercials, or 56.25 percent, were PhRMA company ads.

Salient Paragraph #3:

The grand total?  In the 98 days of ABC World News programming analyzed from June to October, the broadcast featured 1,102 commercials, 597 of which were PhRMA member company advertisements, representing 54.17 percent of total commercials aired.

And let’s not forget that ABC denied the organization Conservatives for Patients’ Rights the opportunity to purchase advertising during the Obama infomercial on June 24, 2009, all the while as ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith said, “ABC News is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue”.

Diversity?  Not on your life.

Several weeks ago, while I was travelling in Ohio’s Amish Country, there was an article in the Baltimore Sun by Kelly Brewington and Jamie Smith Hopkins about some research out of Dartmouth College’s Center for Health Policy Research showing that urban teaching hospitals like Johns Hopkins Hospital and University of Maryland Medical Center are far more costly in delivery of care than the national average.  There was much huffing and puffing about the article, with administrators at both facilities trying to justify the costs.

But as usual, there are problems with the reporting.  The biggest one:  the report analyzed the rates paid by Medicare, not the actual costs of delivery.  The researchers apparently chose to interpret the rates paid by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) as the cost for delivery of care.  I challenge that assumption.

One might ask why I challenge the assumption.  It’s quite simple, because it is one of my chief complaints about health care in general in the United States:  not one consumer has a clear idea of what the prices that hospitals and the services and practices associated with them actually charge.

[more]

You cannot enter a hospital in the United States and ask for a price list.  I know of no hospital (or doctor practice for that matter) which publishes “list prices” for procedures and services.  That is because our system of health insurance in this country is intrinsically socialist (if not fascist) in nature.

Our health insurance is provided (generally) by our employer or the government.  They provided a limited list of plans.  The plans, which are really nothing more than large membership groups of physicians, labs, and patients, determine what physicians and labs we use.  The plans negotiate what they will pay to these physicians beforehand, just as they negotiate what they will be paid by our employers beforehand.

We have situations where two consumers, both customers of the same insurance company, will pay two different rates for the same services to the same physician or hospital.  That is a fact.

Never as the patient are we afforded with a list of prices before the fact. Never.  Never are we afforded the opportunity to see and approve an estimate (like we might be with auto repair).  Never are we afforded the ability to compare prices OR the value proposition between cost and quality.

So I question the methodology of looking at the cost of health care by looking at what practitioners and facilities are paid. 

Furthermore, the study did not look at the fact that the cost of health care delivery in Maryland includes the overhead associated with “bad debt”, or non-paying consumers of health care.  This goes beyond the cost of the bill to include finance charges to carry that debt as well as the processing costs – including financial counseling in some instances – to recover that debt.  That is because Maryland is unique in the United States in using an “all-payer” system for financing health care, guaranteeing access to all Marylanders (and our sizeable illegal population).  While the study compared Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center to the Mayo Clinic, the Mayo Clinic does not have the albatross of Maryland General Hospital hanging around its neck, either.

Personally, I think that hospitals in Maryland should be required to file an annual report that lists – by CMS code – the cost for each procedure, medicine, and service provided.  The Maryland Hospital Association, working with the Healthcare Cost Review Commission, should provide a standard format to determine what cost means (typically, it should include materials, facility costs, and labor costs I would think).  That would provide health care consumers in this state the opportunity to compare the costs for procedures across facilities.

Facilities that truly have higher costs – but also have better outcomes – can justify those costs if they publish the actual cost.  Those that can’t should be closed, or restrict their service list to those areas where their prices are competitive.

Finally, it would have been appropriate for the Baltimore Sun to look at other hospitals in the state.  Its not just teaching hospitals that provide health care in the state of Maryland.