The Current VA Healthcare System Is The Future Of Obamacare by MAC SLAVO | SHTF PLAN | MAY 23, 2014
It was just a couple of months ago that President Obama declared a victory in the battle for affordable health care. “Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked. There are still no death panels. (Laughter.) Armageddon has not arrived. Instead, this law is helping millions of Americans, and in the coming years it will help millions more.” Perhaps Armageddon hasn’t arrived for those who have been allowed to keep their platinum health insurance because of exemptions granted by the administration. But for the rest of us, a Healthcare Armageddon is a foregone conclusion. Economically and financially, the new law will bankrupt an already struggling middle class who has, in many cases, seen a four-fold increase in their monthly premiums. By all accounts, life for those people is going to change dramatically in coming years because as much as 15% of their income will now be taken from them by force in the form of what the U.S. Supreme Court has classified as a mandated tax. For those with the ability to make those outrageous payments and deductibles each year, they have now entered a system run by the very same bureaucrats in charge of our country’s other government run health care programs. To understand the future of socialized health care in America we need to look no further than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As noted in the transcript of Obama’s speech above, the audience laughed when the President mentioned the conspiracy theory surrounding death panels. While the law itself makes no mention of “death panels,” they certainly exist and this fact can’t just be “debunked” as the President would like us to believe.
You could ask the scores of Veterans who were pencil-pushed to the back of the line by the VA in Phoenix and Houston, except for the fact that they died while awaiting the medical assistance they were promised. And while the deaths of these service members is tragic and almost unbelievable, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of our veterans are shuffled around within the system, often times for budgetary reasons or because their physician is just is simply too apathetic to care. If you need real medical care, for example, which often starts with a diagnosis that may include testing like an X-ray or an MRI, it’s common for VA physicians to simply ignore the patient’s need and jump right into prescribing pain medication. There are countless stories like this, where patients literally waited years to receive a real diagnosis, only to see their condition worsen and become inoperable by the time testing was completed because it was ignored for so long. That very system which has ignored those men and women who have put their lives on the line for this country and has promised to care for them is now the same system that’s in charge of medical care under the Patient Affordable Care Act. In fact, if recent history is any guide, the mandates under Obamacare are going to be much, much worse: One conclusion we can draw is an old, familiar one: No matter what the issue or activity, bureaucracy’s first and strongest instinct is to protect itself in the face of a perceived threat. Another conclusion is probably just dawning on those Americans with the wit to see it, because so very few of us have had a brush with a medical system of which government is the sole proprietor: Putting a government bureaucracy in charge of one’s health is a gamble likely to end badly. And yet, if Obamacare stands, that is precisely the gamble each and every American eventually will take. There is no better predictor of the course of a single-payer medical system in the United States than the VA system, because it is a single-payer system. If an enrolled patient needs something done, he or she applies to the government-run system for approval; waits until the government-run system is ready to act; accepts the government-run system’s solution or, if dissatisfied, appeals to that same government-run system for relief. Because the bureaucracy pays the bill, the bureaucracy makes the decisions — when or if treatment will be given, and whether or not the patient has been well enough served. In the VA system, it has recently come to light, scores of patients somehow got stuck on the second step of the bureaucratic flow chart: waiting. Their medical problems apparently were not deemed pressing enough to get them into a doctor’s examining room. The death panels may not exist by name, but they most assuredly exist within the bureaucracy managed by the U.S. government. We’re not making this up, it’s no conspiracy, and it cannot be debunked, as evidenced by the experiences of actual people currently enrolled in the Obamacare system: Obamacare is denied at most cancer hospitals according to a recent Associated Press survey. Only four out of 19 of the nation’s best cancer hospitals who replied to the survey
said they will accept patient’s insurance from all of the healthcare exchanges within their state, in effect excluding most people who are signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. In simple terms: If you get cancer you will not get medical care. This is, by every possible definition, nothing short of a death panel. With the Patient Affordable Care Act, we have no other choice but the health insurance prescribed by the government. And cancer treatment is not covered according to the hospitals that are supposed to provide it! Just wait until you see what happens when these bureaucrats realize that the medical system is underfunded because healthy people, especially young adults, refuse to sign up. You see, Obamacare is, in essence, a Ponzi scheme that requires one group to continually provide funding in order to pay off the needs of another group. Despite that claimed number of 7.1 million Americans having signed up since the program’s inception, a recent report indicates that as many as half of the enrollees missed their first insurance payment. One reason for this might be the exorbitant costs associated with the coverage (not counting the deductibles!). As these liabilities begin to pile up and not enough people sign up to make up the difference, guess what happens. Again, in simple terms, An Instantaneous Collapse of Obamacare Services: First, if you’re “27″, the average premium is $266.20/month or $3,194.40 per year. How many 27 year olds have an extra $3,200 to spend on this? Remember, this is the price that virtually every uninsured 27 year old must be willing — and able — to cough up in order to prevent the model this system is predicated on from collapsing. If those 27 year olds don’t show up, and they won’t, then the system collapses instantly. If they do show up because the government threatens them with fines the economy collapses as $3,200 a year exceeds the average 27 year old’s disposable personal income after mandatory expenses (e.g. food, shelter, etc.) Remember, there are always exceptions but these premiums are averages and over large pools of people the statistical averages are what matters — not the ends of the barbell. While the law may never be repealed and everybody who signed up thinks they still have health insurance, when it matters most there won’t be a doctor on the list who’ll be willing to help you. Why? Because the government will outright deny the medical services because it is broke and they’ll simply refuse to pay the doctor to provide it. That’s what we can call a De Facto death panel. They had them back in the old Communist days of the East Bloc. It wasn’t by name, of course, but rather, by action. People used to stand in hours-long lines just to be seen for an ear infection or to receive antibiotics, unless of course you could throw the doc a little summin-summin under the table. Then you were prioritized. Eastern Europeans and Soviet Russians who lived under the red banner prior to 1989 will tell you, “You don’t go to the hospital to live longer, you go there to die.” This is the same system we now have in place in America, despite the fact that ear wax eating
Congressman Joe Garcia claimed just this week that democrats have proven Communism works. It works great for people like the Congressman who suck off the tax payer teat, enjoy free platinum health care coverage, and dine at premier ear wax eateries around D.C. For the rest of us, however, Communism works about as well as it did for the millions of slaves who eventually tore down the Berlin Wall to escape its stranglehold.
Obama 2008: VA Will Be ‘Leader Of Health Care Reform’ (This Time Obama Told The Truth) by GARTH KANT | WORLD NET DAILY | MAY 23, 2014
It’s one of those promises the president would probably like to forget. In vowing to make the Veterans Administration the model of national health-care reform back in 2008, the outlook for scandal-plagued Obamacare suddenly seems even worse. WND has discovered that during his transition into the White House in 2008-09, President Obama proposed in his “Obama-Biden” plan to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible.” However, instead of fixing the VA, the administration has had to defend its role in the death of veterans by neglect. Meanwhile, WND is reporting that eight years earlier, in a failed run for Congress, Obama unveiled a sweeping health-care plan that modeled aspects of the Veterans Administration’s medical system. The VA problems became a national sensation April 14 when CNN reported that at least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix VA, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list. The discovery of the Obama-Biden VA plan fits a pattern that has come to light this week in which Obama repeatedly warned, or was warned, of serious problems at the VA but apparently did little in response.
In the document labeled the Obama-Biden Plan from the Office of the President Elect, Obama makes a series of promises to veterans, including: • Fix the Benefits Bureaucracy: Hire additional claims workers, and improve training and accountability so that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently. Transform the paper benefit claims process to an electronic one to reduce errors and improve timeliness. • Strengthen VA Care: Make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible. Improve care for polytrauma vision impairment, prosthetics, spinal cord injury, aging, and women’s health. • Fully Fund VA Medical Care: Fully fund the VA so it has all the resources it needs to serve the veterans who need it, when they need it. Establish a world-class VA Planning Division to avoid future budget shortfalls. The Obama-Biden plan seems to have fallen so far short of its promise to “Fix the Benefits Bureaucracy” that the VA itself has admitted 23 vets have died waiting for care, and investigations of possible death-by-neglect have spread to 26 VA facilities around the country. As WND has reported, Obama was warned about severe problems at the VA repeatedly over the years, even before he became president. • WND discovered that Obama was briefed on problems at the VA as far back as 2005, when he was a senator and a member of the Veterans Affairs committee. • In a 2007 speech, Sen. Obama said, “Keeping faith with those who serve must always be a core American value and a cornerstone of American patriotism. Because America’s commitment to its servicemen and women begins at enlistment, and it must never end.” • The Washington Times reported Monday that the Obama administration received notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care. • VA officials reportedly warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the wait times the facilities were reporting were not trustworthy.
• More recently, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., wrote a letter to Obama on May 21, 2013, that warned: “an alarming pattern of serious and significant patient care issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) across the country … (including) failures, deceptions, and lack of accountability permeating VA’s healthcare system … I believe your direct involvement and leadership is required.” • And, WND reported last week that Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., reminded VA Secretary Eric Shinseki that Congress had been informed two years ago that gaming the system at the VA was so widespread, employees would look to get around regulations as soon as the rules were implemented. Democrats have been quick to say the problems were caused by an increase in veterans in the system due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the solution is to increase spending on the VA. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said, “If the VA does not have enough doctors to see these patients, then these problems are a result of a lack of funding.” On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” NBC News chief Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski claimed, “You have a VA that is overwhelmed and under-resourced,” adding, “There’s just not enough money right now in the federal government to fix it.” However, John Merline at Investor’s Business Daily crunched the numbers and found that just wasn’t true. On the contrary, he found the VA’s budget has been exploding, even as the number of veterans steadily declines. VA spending nearly tripled from 2000 to 2013, while the population of veterans declined by 4.3 million. Even more telling, wounded warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan are not increasing treatment costs. Those vets are actually far cheaper to treat than aging vets. A Congressional Budget Office report found that they cost $4,800, on average, in 2010 compared with $8,800 for other veterans who used the system. It also found, while these Iraq and Afghan vets account for 7 percent of those treated, they were responsible for only 4 percent of its health costs. Iraq and Afghan vets, the report found, “are typically younger and healthier than the average VHA patient and as a result are less expensive to treat.” Still, the VA scandal keeps exploding, with no signs of slowing down. VA Secretary Shinseki had testified before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee last week that he was not aware of problems similar to those in Phoenix at other VA facilities, except in isolated cases. But emboldened whistleblowers have now identified 26 VA facilities around the country experiencing similar problems.
Just Thursday, an attorney claimed her client died of neglect by the Seattle Veterans Affairs hospital. The attorney said Donald Douglass had a small spot on his forehead confirmed as cancerous when he went to the Seattle VA hospital in 2011, but it was four months before the hospital scheduled an appointment for him to have it removed — and by then, it had spread, wrapping around a facial nerve and eventually getting into his blood. According to attorney Jessica Holman, “Had he had his surgery timely, he’d be alive today.” In Miami, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida went to a local television station because, he said, the VA told him to stop investigating drug deals on hospital grounds. “People are dying,” Detective Thomas Fiore said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.” Fiore claimed illegal drug deals area occur daily at the hospital, involving, “Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all.” He says he was even stopped from investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy by the official in charge. “I was instructed that I was to stop conducting investigations pertaining to controlled substance discrepancies,” by the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Vincent DeGennaro, said Fiore. The growing scandal could affect upcoming elections, because if the VA problems offer a preview of government-run health insurance, then Republicans may be rapidly acquiring explosive new ammunition in their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Former AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, now with National Journal, said Obama’s poor handling of the mismanagement at the Department of Veterans Affairs could plague his presidency as an all-time low point. “The president has known the VA has been a mess for a long time, and hasn’t done anything to get it fixed,” he said. “It’s gotten worse recently — at least for the last two years, we’ve known we’ve had these problems and nothing’s been done,” said Fournier. However, leading liberals have long touted the VA as an efficient model of government-run health care. New York times columnist Paul Krugman called the VA a “huge success story” in 2011, saying “[I]t’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense.” Krugman added, “Yes, this is ‘socialized medicine’ … But it works, and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of US health care more broadly.” In 2009, his fellow New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, wrote, “Take the hospital system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health system in the United States. It is fully government run, much more ‘socialized medicine’ than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most-cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.”
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