January 3, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Today's #ObamacareFail: Don't Have Any Babies
Turns out the genius designers of the Obamacare website forgot to include a protocol for updating your coverage to reflect basic life changes like, for example, having a baby. Maybe they figured after taking in Pajamaboy, no one would ever want to have kids again, or, equally likely given liberal ideology today, they think everyone will choose the contraception and abortion options from their menu. From the AP: WASHINGTON (AP) »
Happy New Year: Another Obamacare Triumph In Sight
Remember how Obamacare was supposed to result in fewer wasteful visits to emergency rooms? Yeah, yeah, I know: only a liberal wonk detached from reality—their natural habitat—could think that. Well guess what? Looks like it's already failing. From the New York Times today: Access to Health Care May Increase ER Visits, Study Suggests Supporters of President Obama's health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would »
November 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Today's #Obamacarefail
So the "Navigator" geniuses running Obamacare have been referring people in New York to call . . . a cupcake shop: Thanks to ObamaCare, New Yorkers can now get health insurance with rainbow sprinkles. In yet another bungle for the botched government insurance rollout, the state Health Department has mistakenly listed numerous non-health-related business as enrollment sites — including a Brooklyn cupcake shop that has been besieged by callers. "I »
The Obamacare Failure Rolls On
In today's #Obamacarefail news, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius confessed that many employer-sponsored health care plans will also be terminated because of "nonconformity" with the new rules. So it won't be just the 5 percent of individual health insurance purchasers who may lose the health care plan they have, and Jay Carney will need to come up with a new bogus talking point. Hmm: be interesting to see what happens if »
November 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Annals of Government Medicine, Venezuela Edition
The Associated Press reports on the state of health care in socialist Venezuela: Doctors not allied with the government say many patients began dying from easily treatable illnesses when Venezuela's downward economic slide accelerated after Chavez's death from cancer in March. Doctors say it's impossible to know how many have died, and the government doesn't keep such numbers, just as it hasn't published health statistics since 2010. Almost everything needed »
October 5, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Government Medicine Is Politicized Medicine
News coverage of the rollout of the Obamacare exchanges was dominated by technical issues that were embarrassing to the administration. As Steve wrote this morning, these are not mere glitches but reflect the hubris inherent in the idea that government can effectively run something as vast and diverse as America's health care system. But there is, in my view, an even more fundamental objection to government control over health care: »
May 2, 2013 — John Hinderaker
In his press conference the other day, President Obama spoke disapprovingly of the government intruding between a woman and her doctor. This was trademark Obama hypocrisy, since under Obamacare, the government will be involved in virtually every health care decision, with the possible exception of abortion. If that counts as health care. Fortunately (for us, not them) the British system serves as a warning about the realities of government medicine. »
February 21, 2013 — John Hinderaker
For a surprisingly long time, the British were proud of their system of socialized medicine, apparently because it was considered egalitarian. Now, however, a series of scandals in the National Health Service has focused attention on how low-quality government medicine is. The National Health Service has been rocked by one report after another of appallingly bad care, with many Britons demanding that NHS officials be criminally prosecuted. Personally, I don't »
January 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Telegraph previews a report on an investigation into the Stafford Hospital scandal in the U.K.: The Sunday Telegraph understands that the report on Stafford hospital, where up to 1,200 people died needlessly in appalling conditions, will call for an overhaul of regulation to ensure poor managers are weeded out, and better training for nurses and healthcare assistants. The chairman, Robert Francis QC, is set to deliver a damning verdict »
December 22, 2012 — John Hinderaker
A National Health Service hospital in Great Britain has paid claims by 38 patients or their families, and has apologized to all of them for the grossly negligent care it provided. The Telegraph headlines:"Hospital apologises to 38 families for appalling care that saw a patient starve to death." An NHS hospital has apologised to 38 families after a patient starved to death and it left other dying people screaming in »
December 4, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Socialized medicine seems to lead inexorably to the callous treatment of patients. That currently is the foremost complaint that Englishmen have about their National Health Service. It is very much as though your loved ones were being cared for by postal workers. One thing about the NHS, however: it distributes its lousy health care in egalitarian fashion. It isn't just the poor who are ignored and left to die miserably, »
November 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Daily Mail reports on a worthy addition to our annals series: Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial "death pathways." Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults. But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young »
November 14, 2012 — John Hinderaker
From Britain's National Health Service comes the latest example of what happens when you run health care like the post office: "Bullying, cowardly doctors left my baby to die like an abandoned animal, says grieving mother." A mother has described how her baby was left to die "like an abandoned animal" after hospital doctors repeatedly ignored her desperate pleas for help. Paula Stevenson begged doctors to act as her one-year-old »
With President Obama's re-election, it is generally assumed that Obamacare is here to stay. Which means that pretty soon, your health care will be run incompetently, like the postal service, and with an agenda, like the EPA and the Department of Energy. Where does that lead? Britain's National Health Service has shown the way. The NHS operates like a smoothly-oiled machine, except that every now and then–well, much of the »
Recent investigations have revealed hospitals administered by Britain's National Health Service to be veritable houses of horrors. Here is the latest shock headline: Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards. Hospital conditions under socialized medicine appear to be trending toward the medieval: Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today. The death toll was »
September 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Bailing Out Obamacare: Sarah Palin Was Right
I missed this piece from Steven Rattner (who was a key figure in the Obama auto bailout) when it appeared in the NY Times a couple weeks ago. Tacitly acknowledging that costs are going to soar out of sight, Rattner opens with this frank admission: "We need death panels." Jonah Goldberg wonders: When can Sarah Palin expect her letter of apology?" Rattner goes on to back away from "death panels," »
July 12, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Daily Mail delivers the news of another inspirational example of government medicine in England, much of it packed into the headline: "Elderly patients are being 'deprived of food and drink so they die quicker and free up bed space', claim doctors." The practice in issue goes under the delicate name of a "care pathway." Like the stairway in the Led Zeppelin song, it's a pathway to heaven. The Daily »