A note by Maynard
You probably heard today’s clips of Obama at a Democrat fundraiser.
Obama credited his signature economic recovery package with putting more than two million Americans back to work and with cutting taxes for families, small businesses and students. And he singled out the anti-tax tea party movement that fanned out across the country Thursday to hold demonstrations and rallies marking Tax Day.
“I’ve been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes,” the president said, noting the numerous tax cuts pushed by his administration. “You would think they’d be saying thank you.” [If you listen to the audio, you’d hear Obama chuckle and pause for a big laugh at this point.]
Obama…lauded the passage of the sweeping health care legislation, which he praised for cutting the deficit and putting reforms in place that would offer coverage to more Americans.
“For all the sound and fury and all the scare tactics… the law doesn’t hand more control to the government,” the president said, “it gives it back to you, the American people.”
So in Obama’s world, we are ingrates for not appreciating that Obama has created two million jobs, cut taxes, cut the deficit, and given us all health care. Obama is “amused” when people open their eyes and see rising joblessness, higher taxes (everything but income taxes have gone up, with the greater burden falling on the poor), permanent huge deficits, and diminished access to healthcare — all accomplished through political thuggery and in violation of lawmaking traditions and the Constitution.
Obama is being nicer than the rest of the Democrat leadership, who rain filthy insults (racist! fascist! Nazi! shill!) upon anyone that challenges the validity of Obama’s weird little fantasy. Bill Clinton just connected the Tea Partiers to Timothy McVeigh.
Our Chief Executive stands before the nation and boldly recites big lie after big lie after big lie. It’s shameful that the Democrat party machinery circles the wagons in defense of the indefensible. You would hope that his own people would scream in disgust. This is the dysfunction of politics. Just as the Republicans mostly rubberstamped George Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility (with a few notable holdouts, including John McCain), the Democrats fail to stop to Obama’s suicidal lunacy. As we accelerate into the coming catastrophe, is there no one left in Washington who will stand up for America?
(For those people who still believe that Obama has indeed given us healthcare, albeit at a punishing cost, check the latest news: “Twenty-eight U.S. states are considering expanding the authority of nurse practitioners because of a looming shortage of primary care doctors likely to worsen as the country’s new health care reform offers coverage to millions more people.” In other words, your health care just got downsized.)
How is it that liberals, particularly in Hollywood, swore that there was no causal link between free speech in the form of Heavy Metal music and a depressed teenager tragically taking his or her own life yet the peaceful gathering of Americans exercising that same Constitutionally protected right are potentially responsible for some disturbed individual committing an act of murder? I’m as confused as they are.
Simple, Pangborn: because libtards live in their own little alternate reality, where logic is completely different than it is here. Either that, or they’re lying, either to themselves or everyone else.
Or both. It’s hard to tell with them.
My husband is a Physician Assistant (PA), and I am a nurse, so I believe I know whereof I speak. For routine care, physical exams, management of chronic conditions such as CHF, high blood pressure, or diabetes, a nurse practitioner or PA can give excellent care. They are trained rigorously and usually specialize. They know their limits and will refer to a physician when necessary. If the choice is no one monitoring a diabetic, or a nurse practitioner in a nurse-managed health clinic, the patient is much better off with the nurse practitioner. No one is suggesting they practice outside their scope of knowledge or expertise. It seems these providers must work twice as hard to prove they are half as good as physicians. I’m no fan of Obamacare, but please, don’t fear monger this issue. So many patients with chronic conditions get NO care. Uncontrolled diabetes can ravage the body before it kills, and in the process cost many thousands of dollars in hospitalizations and expensive treatments such renal dialysis.
Being relatively ignorant about the levels of medical training, I hesitate to opine as if I knew what I was talking about. But common sense does validate the idea that most medical service can be administered by someone with reasonable skills and practical experience, which will serve as well or better than a specialist with a PhD. So in a vacuum, the sort of changes discussed in the article I linked might well be for the best. However, my point is the change is coming about not because it’s the right thing to do, but because ObamaCare is in fact a rationing system for medical service, with the government deciding who gets cared for and who doesn’t. This will, one way or another, work out to our detriment. Under such circumstances of government control, allocations are ultimately made out of political considerations rather than what’s good for the patients. Not to mention that the government has no business and no Constitutional basis to be rationing health care. This is just another way the government is taking control of the people.
On the matter of government interference and rationing, you and I agree 100%! Thanks for the clarification.
this is actually a 2 part reply.
hi iris! we gotta start a MedTAMs. i’m a PT, my son is going to be an RN and my son in law is studying to be a PA. i think we are on the same page with scope of practice issues. i am always impressed with standard of care issues. i am concerned about the system pushing practitioners into the fuzzy zone because physicians aren’t around for the quick referral. ongoing care, no problem. its the weird situations i worry about. anyone can get the routine ground balls. its fielding the hard line drives that separates the good from the exceptional clinicians! my sense is that deathcare will force patients to either wait excessively for a scarce doctor to make a diagnosis or passively wait for the clinical condition to change (usually for the worse) to make an easier diagnosis. its what made kaiser a verb.
maynard,
i know i may sound like a broken record but people keep forgetting what the typical medical experience is. infants are at risk for everything. healthy kids turn into healthy adults. most illnesses are easily addressed. get older and the body has a tough time fighting off everything. the hard cases, regardless of age, the one that are one or two standard deviations away from the mean, are the outliers. they can be very difficult to diagnose, cure or treat. they are often genetically influenced and beyond humankind’s influence. think about our influence over the volcano in iceland. in isolation, they are often not cost effective. but you gotta do something.
they do shed light on our real motives.
back in the proverbial day, difficult medical cases gave rise to the faith based hospitals that would treat these cases e.g. st jude’s. just look back into our history who built out first hospitals. then they gave rise to the shriner’s hospitals. the medical world felt good and would volunteer some time of their time and expertise to do this. the docs i work with do this with our patients. they make their money on private pay clients and practically go pro bono (medicaid rates) for our kids.
conversely, obama death care puts every doctor, medical practitioner or vendor on the “you get paid 20% of what you charge cause i say so” list. how do you survive? make it up on volume? try to have PAs or NPs or RNs do triage then treatment for you to get the easy patients off your “to do” list? very workable for easy cases, but god help you if you are really sick. so that is the rise of death panels. docs obligated to treat so the death panel will give them permission to not do what is best for the patient, because of the cost.
in a borrowed Hot Air tradition, exit question. what if you got stuck with the ER shift and the ER patient is from “not insurance land”. we are bound to treat the patient even if he’s from casa de elsewhere. shall we accept some form of government compensation for services rendered (emergency MediCal here in cali) and feel the full force of “ohh, you accepted government money so you must play under urkel’s government rules” or…
actually, i’m not sure if there is an “or”.
can someone give me an alternative?
rick?