09-09-09 O my!

This is a rant.

This is a rant about ObomaCare.

O my!

I apologize for writing so much about Politics lately, but it seems necessary. Besides, I haven't been to a USPSA match for over a month (don't get me started) and I'm getting a little testy.

If you don't want to read about my take on ObamaCare feel free to move on. But not to moveon.org please.
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President Obama had a lot to say today. In the morning he talked about ObomaCare to the children of America (in a broadcast which was controversial, even though the White House swore was not political. In the end he couldn't resist bringing it up during the Q&A period.)

In the evening Obama had scheduled a half-hour speech in front of congress. This as did not go as well as it might have. At one point, Congress interrupted his speech by shouting "Liar". when Obama "took a swipe at Sarah Palin's comment about Death Panels."



"Illegal Aliens":
During the speech, he also gave the lie to charges that the ObomaCare bill would provide free health care to "Illegal Aliens".

Actually, this is true. The bill specifically says that free health care will not be given to illegal aliens. Unfortunately, the bill does not specifically state that free health care will be denied to applicants who can't prove that they are not legally in America, nor does it allow health care workers to inquire about the legal status of applicants, nor does it specify any penalties for illegal aliens who attempt to acquire free health care under this bill.

In other words, there are no negative consequences for Illegal Aliens who apply for free health care under this bill. And no grounds for denial, or enforcement of any implied restriction.

In fact, its all smoke and mirrors and no substance ... not only on this point, but on several others.

"Death Panel":
This subject has to do with the accusation that the ObomaCare bill would allow the nation's inability to provide the maximum quality care for each individual to be undermined by the current economic situation.

And that concept is based on an interesting point.

Currently, you pay your insurance bills and your insurance pays for most procedures and medications, dependent on your ability to come up with the "Co-Pay" tithe.

Under ObomaCare, it doesn't require a great stretch of the imagination to conceive of a situation where the national economy is so strapped for case (either inflation or recession) that it's hunting for a way to minimize the expenditure of available funds.

Is that so hard to believe? How often have you read in your local newspaper that your state government is so strapped for funds that it must reduce "Essential Services"? Usually, this involves understaffing police and firefighters and Educational Institutions, or whatever your state considers a serious threat to your confidence that "We're From The Government, And We're Here To Help You".

At the state level, this is a threat which you probably interpret as meaning "either cops and firefighters and teachers gotta go, or your state senators will have to take a cut in pay. And you know we're not going to take a cut in pay!"

So take that same default bureaucratic stance and move it from the state level to the federal level.
The next time the national budget is 'at risk' (which happens every frickin' year, almost without fail, except for the first term of a new incumbent administration), you can expect to discover that National Health Care or ObomaCaree, whatever you want to call it, will be the Bogeyman with which your president threatens you.

Only, in this case, it's not a straw man. It's the real thing. Historically, countries with a National Health Care System (in England it's NHS, or National Health Service) don't bother to threaten you with cuts in service. They just ... cut the service, and boldly dare you to complain.

They won't listen to you. They don't have to. You, who have already allowed your national government to establish a NHS, no longer are a part of the decision making process.

Think of AMTRACK, the U.S. Postal Service, and any Department of Motor Vehicles office you have ever visited, and you should have a visceral understanding of how a NHS works for you.

So let's look at how NHS (I'm really tired of trying to write and format " ObomaCare") works in nations which have already been taken like the Monkey took the Miller's Wife.

We'll get back to ObomaCare, after we've taken a few pertinent examples from The Brits.

(1.) Sentenced to Death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
...
The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.
...
It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.

It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

Okay, let's look upon this report as a basic Governmental policy that 'some people are just not worth the resource investment required to extend their lives'.

Maybe it's true. After all, Arctic cultures (frequently, if inaccurately, referred to as "Eskimos") have historically abandoned their old people to freeze/starve to death on the Arctic Ice, because they had become to great a burden on the tribe's ability to survive, without providing tangible benefit to the tribe. "...in the past some Eskimos did kill old people when circumstances were sufficiently desperate."

So we're talking about to reverting to a primitive culture which no longer even practices such draconian methods to preserve societal resources? Yes, if we adopt ObomaCare, which is an American adoption of the British NHS.

Oh, of course it's not that obvious. We would only, as do the Brits, counsel them on how much a burden they are on their family, and vaguely wonder whether we can 'in good conscience' reasonably continue to exhaust our 'clan' resources. And this is the kind of "End Of Life" counseling that ObomaCare espouses, in the bill if not in the speeches.

How about other limitations on Health Care?

How about an infant who is born prematurely, and is denied 'extreme measures' because the chance of saving a life is just ... not ... worth ... the ... effort.

(2) Premature Baby Sentenced to Death - today --

Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy - almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatm
...
Guidance limiting care of the most premature babies provoked outrage when it was published three years ago.

Experts on medical ethics advised doctors not to resuscitate babies born before 23 weeks in the womb, stating that it was not in the child's 'best interests'.

The guidelines said: 'If gestational age is certain and less than 23+0 (i.e at 22 weeks) it would be considered in the best interests of the baby, and standard practice, for resuscitation not to be carried out.'

Medical intervention would be given for a child born between 22 and 23 weeks only if the parents requested it and only after discussion about likely outcomes.

The rules were endorsed by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and are followed by NHS hospitals.

The association said they were not meant to be a 'set of instructions', but doctors regard them as the best available advice on the treatment of premature babies.

Okay, so maybe we're making too big a thing of Obamacare. Maybe we can just ignore it (eg: continue as we are, even if we don't subscribe to a Health Care System, maybe even if we don't want to.) Why should we care?

We should care because a Congressman has proposed (congressmen never 'suggest' ... they "propose" that Americans who decline to accept available health care options should be penalized by a fine ... we're talking $3,800 per year.

When we're discussing ObomaCare, we're talking about a National Health Care System governed by Bureaucrats.

What is a Bureaucrat?

1. An official of a bureaucracy.
2. An official who is rigidly devoted to the details of administrative procedure.

Note that we aren't seeing any mention of "value earned for money paid", or "concern for the patient". We're just looking at "administrative procedure", and that is the essence of obomacare, NHS or any other governmentally constructed and administrated National Health Care System.

If they can afford to take care of you, they may. If they can't, or think they can't ... they won't.

Bottom line, folks. They don't care about YOU. They care about "the details of administrative procedure". And as a state employee for umpteen years, I can tell you with some assurance that while the individual governmental agent may prefer to provide a service, the default mode is to find a way by which the agency can evade administrative procedures to that the bureaucracy is not obliged to spend funds which can either (a) be better spent on a better 'investment', or (b) spent on Office Furniture for the Bureaucrats so that next year's budget is not diminished because we didn't spend all the money we were allotted this year.

Why should we get so bent out of joint about this Natinal Health Care Bill, and the Obama Administration generally?

Maybe we should ask Jack Web. Isn't DRAGNET the American Icon that we grew up with?
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