Your doctor is an idiot who will apparently prescribe drugs that are bad for you, but if only the Federal Government had enough power to regulate, then and only then would you be safe from…your doctor.

ps – It’s Bush’s fault your doctor is an idiot. Because we can tie your doctor’s idiocy with Medicare Part D brought to you by Bush.

Wouldn’t it be better if the Federal Government ran all of healthcare, off their outdated computers, with their limited funds, and your permission? There are no idiots there.

My job requires me to try to convince 100s of people to not only use codes the way I want them used, but to figure out what those codes might be based on handbooks/notes/memos that have gone through in the past and may not be readily available.

It doesn’t work, and won’t work until everything is done online and definitions and requirements are right there within the computer and at hand for immediate use.

I know this, I’ve seen it on the most simple requests. I will continue to have a job if only to be the quick connect on the phone when people have questions for years to come.

Which is why this image of page 21 of the form you need to get subsidized coverage cracks me up, along with Dinocrat’s question of the day:

We have a question: considering that half of Detroit is illiterate and 80% of NYCHS college entrants at CCNY lack sufficient reading skills to matriculate, how are the applicants going to get beyond page one, let alone getting to page 21?

Stupid headline of the day:

ObamaCare Turns Three: 10 Disturbing Facts Americans Have Learned

Being the curious person I am, I clicked through to find out what we’ve learned. Not a damn thing. Every single one of the 10 was completely expected by all people I know with half a brain.

Sheesh.

Darleen at Protein Wisdom writing about the CVS employees getting fined for not sharing their weight puts it succinctly.

what the hell did you expect?

This year in Colorado (and in Washington) a law was passed legalizing recreational pot use. All the specifics are being finalized, but yes, basically smoke em if you got em.

Previously marijuana was legal if you needed it for medical reasons and had a prescription.

Today there is a story in the Denver Post about medical marijuana dispensaries going out of business. They “have declined by a third”.

If I were to make a guess as to why – I am just a simple minded college graduate of no name schools – I would suggest it would be because “This year in Colorado (and in Washington) a law was passed legalizing recreational pot use.”.

The Denver Post doesn’t see it that way.
So why are they disappearing?

-regulation in a maturing market place
-consolidation
-quirks in the industry (like school zones)
-lack of bank loans due to Federal laws
-unable to take tax deductions due to Federal laws
-drop in prices
-generally failing of all new businesses

still waiting for my answer…..
-fatigue
-burnout
-lack of capital

I read the whole story and not once does it mention that the reason medical dispensaries are going out of business is because the NEED for medical dispensaries have disappeared for probably 75% of their clients. [I just made up that % but I know plenty of folks who got rx's for dope due to a headache. A headache.]

Nothing to see here, move along.

This just makes me laugh.

In spite of “community rating” insurance companies DO get to charge smokers more.

The new health law rules provide leeway for insurers to charge smokers thousands of dollars more for coverage. They impose a $63 per-head fee on insurance plans – a charge that probably will be passed on to policyholders – to cushion the cost of covering people with medical problems. There’s a new fee for insurance companies for participating in markets that start signing customers in the fall.

In short, sticker shock.

ht James Taranto

They are actually calling it “modified community rating”

With ACR, insurers calculate the Community Rating and can adjust your cost based only on:

Your family size
Where you live
If you use tobacco
Your age

Insurers are limited in how much more they charge for these things. For example, they cannot:

Charge the oldest people they insure more than three times what they charge the youngest person
Charge tobacco users more than 50% more than what they charge people who don’t use tobacco

Sometimes Adjusted Community Rating is called Modified Community Rating.

So, in other words, “We’ll decide what is a true risk and what isn’t.” Look for obesity to make the list next.

I used to think I was naive to the ways of great thinkers and my pea brain just couldn’t grasp the ever so complex thoughts of my betters. I even had a blog entitled “I think therefore I err”. [Don't go try to find it as it's wrapped into this one now.]

These days I am less naive and realize that just because someone is in a position of power or influence does not indicate that he/she is a better thinker.

Let’s talk about contraception for a second.
E.J. Dionne explains the reasoning behind the latest “olive branch” from this administration to Catholic institutions. (charities/schools)

The vast majority of Americans believe that health insurance should cover contraception. [and....?] At the same time, the Catholic Church has a theological objection to contraception, even if most Catholics (including regular churchgoers) disagree with its position. [and....?] The church insisted that its vast array of charitable, educational and medical institutions should be exempt from the contraception requirement.

The church made a mistake in arguing its case on the grounds of “religious liberty.” By inflating their legitimate desire for accommodation into a liberty claim, the bishops implied that the freedom not to pay for birth control rose to the same level as, say, the freedom to worship or to preach the faith. This led to wild rhetorical excesses, including a comparison of Obama to Hitler and Stalin by one bishop and an analogy between the president’s approach and the Soviet constitution by another.

So the reasoning here is that because most Americans like stuff and most Catholics aren’t real devout and paying for birth control is not stepping on your freedom to preach, that really, Obama has been reasonable. He has tried to balance religious institutions with irreligious or less religious users of health insurance. His latest plan?

Under the new rules, employees who want it [birth control] will be able to get stand-alone coverage from a third party. Some of the costs will be covered by small offsets in the fees insurers will have to pay to participate in the new exchanges where their policies will be on sale. It’s an elegant fix.

So apparently there is a whole new insurance group out there that sells insurance coverage to essentially buy what you want. Can I get insurance for shoes? Either that or these costs are offset in fees that Catholic institutions will have to pay to participate in this new insurance plan for employees to buy birth control.
And this does what??
Yet according to Dionne, bishops should be kissing the ground Obama walks on.

What am I missing? There HAS to be something because people who are actually paid to think can not possibly believe this is a reasonable plan…..can they?

In the meantime, do you suppose all those businesses owned by Christian Scientists get to opt out of providing health insurance altogether and instead just opt for a “fee to offset the cost of insurance” to their employees? LOL

In other news a left leaner discovers that starting a small business involves a hell of a lot of red tape. HT Scott

You know, penalized with money or shame or death, not just with their lack of good health.

Why?

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die prematurely from their unhealthy habits?

“faced with the high cost of caring” – and why are faced with this high cost?

Here’s something to note…..if the damn government didn’t require hospitals to see everyone and insurance companies to cover everyone then this problem would just disappear into the free enterprise system.

Hello Citizens…..
How the hell else do you think the government is going to know if you’ve bought health insurance (the proper kind) or not if they don’t a) give you a number and then b) track it through either the IRS? doh

This headline was still in red on Drudge this morning. Really? We didn’t know this?

New Obamacare Tax Form Mandates Americans Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS

Some things are so obvious it seems like they shouldn’t need stating, but apparently they do.

In an article for Newsweek, Laura Biel writes “How much would you pay for 3 more months of life?”
It’s a good question and one each of us should get to answer. However….the more intrusive is the government, the less our answer matters.

New drugs are expensive and she is mostly writing about how little they really do in the big picture for the amount of money they cost. She doesn’t mention how results from new drug use leaps us through to the next levels of research, but nevermind that.
First she disses the drug companies for pricing new drugs on what the market will bear.

She ends the article by discussing the “costs” born by society for these drugs that add a month or two to life at great cost suggesting that if we are going to have a sustainable health system…….

BUT – if you allowed the market approach, then the rich could buy these drugs and get practiced on and the poorer could choose not to bankrupt their families for a month or two of extra time. The insurers could write their rates based on what they are willing to cover and renegotiate as new drugs become mainstream treatment.

Instead we now have a government requiring each of us to buy at least X coverage and politicians who think that every time you mention budgets and medicare in the same sentence you are calling for the death of seniors.

This is the link to the audio file of this article if you care to hear it.
Her first sentence suggests “death panels” are a bad idea while asking questions about costs are not. Yet when you put the government front and center of your health care you end up with these being one and the same.

UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot the blog post that got me thinking I needed to write something. Powerline who is writing on the subject and how it relates to the Ryan plan.

I know I’d rather have the flexibility to shop for an insurance package that is better suited to my likely medical needs in old age (knee replacements will surely come first, if I keep up with reviving my old running habits) rather than be subject to a one-size-fits-all approach the government will be compelled to put in place, and/or the arbitrary rationing decisions of a bunch of bureaucrats.

Amen.