Archive for January 19th, 2011
GROUND REPORT – GEORGIA: How Obamacare impacts doctors
Here’s a great take on Obamacare we got today from a medical transcriptionist in Georgia.
Dear HillBuzz,
I know I’ve written about this before, but it bears repetition. As a medical transcriptionist, I was opposed to Obamacare from the start. I’ve watched for years as doctors have had to work harder and harder to make ends meet, to get insurance companies to pay the bills that they are contracted to pay, and to get the government to reimburse them for taking Medicare and Medicaid patients. The overhead in a doctor’s office is stunning, between medical malpractice insurance and the reams of paperwork required for reimbursement for services already rendered, not to mention the many costly medical instruments necessary to do the job. Most of us folks get paid in a timely manner on a monthly or bimonthly or even weekly basis for the work we perform. Doctors, most of whom come out of school loaded down with debt, are not afforded this luxury. Lawyers have been feasting off of doctors and insurance companies for years with frivolous lawsuits. (Hmmm…how many politicians are lawyers?). While a doctor should always be held responsible for negligence, and a patient should have recourse should this be the case, it is important to remember that doctors are human, and medicine is as much an art as it is a science. Sometimes mistakes will be made. A doctor should not have to order 100 tests to be assured that he/she will not be sued for negligence. This is a major contributing factor to the problems in our medical system today. And while idiots in the press kept telling us Obamacare would manage costs “like it does with Medicare” (while supposedly ridding the systemic abuses in Medicare and using that money to cover Obamacare???!!!), I’d like to point out to these same idiots that the government does not manage costs – it simply refuses to pay them, which leaves the individual doctors to cover them.
How do you think the doctors do that? By raising their rates, because insurance companies also use their power to lower the rates at which doctors get reimbursed for services. This means that there is double-tier and even triple-tier billing (3 different prices for the same procedure depending on how the patient is covered) happening in the medical business, which leaves it ripe for abuse. If a person doesn’t have insurance, they are billed at the maximum level, because there is no negotiation happening on behalf of that patient. The system is not working for the patients or the doctors, and while it cries out for reform, Obamacare does little to address the very real underlying issues that are collapsing our health care system. I have been a transcriptionist for 19 years. Currently, I am alarmed at the number of doctors I see fleeing the profession. These are caring doctors whose hands have become shackled in the doctor-patient relationship by a third party, the government. For years I’ve heard abuse heaped upon doctors by patients, journalists, lawyers, etc. about how rich doctors are and how getting medical treatment is too costly. I’d like to know how many of these same complainers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives, first educating themselves and then paying off that education, for a vocation that primarily helps others and also employs others. Yes, doctors have generally been well compensated for their efforts, but after all that hard work dealing with blood, gore, mess, intimate body parts, and numerous crazy people on a daily basis, why shouldn’t they be?
Another issue resides in the problem of employer-provided insurance. When someone else is paying the bulk of your bills, you are not cost sensitive. Therefore, you are more likely to allow the doctor to run numerous tests, because you are not bearing the brunt of the cost. I am not an economist, and I certainly do not have the answers. However, I can see when something is being done for political gain only, and this was clearly the case with Obamacare. This was a power grab. It was not about helping the poor. It was not about “fixing” the system. This bill is loaded with pork and all kinds of unrelated elementsthat reek of control, loss of privacy http://avoiceintothevoid.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/obamacare-monstrosity/ abuse of private citizens by our government. No wonder Nancy Pelosi didn’t want anyone reading it first!
Better Civility Through Ignorance: the MSNBC motto
Dr. King iotacon portrait by Andy Rash
Can someone out there translate this into Latin: Better Civility Through Ignorance.
It should be the motto of MSNBC. I almost want to learn how to stitch embroider so I can put this on a pillow and send it to Chris Matthews…after I’ve taped it to a bus seat all day and let vagrants and the mentally ill fart into it.
Only then would it be Chris Matthews-ready.
“Better Civility Through Ignorance” is a line Ed Morrissey used in this article at HotAir about Al Sharpton ginning up the Race Industry to call the entire state of Arizona RAAACIST this week — because Al Sharpton believes Arizona does not recognize Martin Luther King Day.
Problem is, Arizona’s been recognizing it since 1992. A full seven years before NEW HAMPSHIRE made it a paid holiday, and eight years before UTAH first celebrated it.
And the holdup for states adding Martin Luther King Day? Not RAAAAAAAACISM, but state budgets. Adding one new paid holiday meant sticking taxpayers with millions of dollars a year in added costs, for all of those new paid days off for state and city workers.
Arizona never had anything against Dr. King…but it just didn’t have the funds to pay people to have his birthday off work.
I am not a Martin Luther King scholar, but I enjoy listening to the man’s speeches. I never get tired of his word choice and find his writings to be some of the most beautiful of the 20th Century. He was a remarkable man who in a just world would have lived to be a hundred years old. I remember on the campaign trail back in 2008 when Hillary Clinton told her story about meeting him, when she was still in school, and what that meant to her. I wish all of us could have met him and shared a few words, because there has not been anyone like him since…especially not in the black community, where Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Henry Gates pass as “leaders”.
Dr. King would be ashamed.
Ashamed of Al Sharpton, not Arizona…and I bet he would not have demanded anyone get paid to take a day off and sit on their butt on his birthday.
Martin Luther King Day should be a day of service, where people do something good for their communities. Children should be in school that day, learning about Dr. King and reading his speeches aloud. THAT would be a marvelous way to honor him, instead of giving kids another day to sleep in and the Post Office an excuse to loaf and not deliver the mail.
Why not have a day set to honor Dr. King in which he’s actually celebrated, and his good works echo into new generations?
You know it's bad when political cartoonists are making fun of our national debt.
This cartoon says it all.....
This cartoon appeared in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution. The cartoonist is Mike Luckovich who is fairly liberal (as most political cartoonists are) but I also find him to be pretty honest and very funny. If he is poking fun at Obama and the state of our national debt (and our debt to China) then you know things are bad.
Entertainment Weekly’s reason “The King’s Speech” won’t win the Oscar: it’s too Obama ’08 and people are over that Kool-Aid
The Olympian zenith of unmitigated hubris: Obama's styrofoam temple to himself in Denver 2008
I note often how much politics and entertainment overlap — and how foolish Republicans forever are for trying to ignore Hollywood, just because most people there are indeed brainwashed Leftists without any real clue what they are talking about on a personal level. Despite what you may feel about the actors and other talking heads in the entertainment industry, it is INDEED an industry, subject to market forces like everything else. Hollywood studios risk millions of dollars while charting the ebbs and flow of public demand, and careers are made or broken anticipating the wants and needs of the general public often years in advance.
“Zeitgeist” is a word-a-day-calendar favorite bandied about by people who more often than not don’t know what it actually means, but discovered it one fateful night with a “z” and a whole lot of vowels plunked in front of them during Scrabble.
In this EW.com piece, the author makes an interesting case for why “The King’s Speech” won’t win the Best Picture Oscar this year, despite being an excellent film (one I have not yet seen because my boyfriend Justin says it “looks boring” and, being the dead of Chicago winter, I just haven’t been motivated to leave Buzzquarters for much of anything, most especially something I’d have to drag him protesting to). It’s the sort of movie the Academy usually loves — because there are a lot of British people in it, and it’s set in the past — but EW.com’s take is that “The Social Network” will win instead…due to the zeitgeist of 2011.
If “The King’s Speech” had been released in 2008, or even 2009, it would have won…because EW.com believes people were still high on the Kool-Aid that made them believe “words matter”, and that a movie about a man learning to become an orator should be celebrated on a national scale. The Lamestream Media relentlessly pounded the public all through 2008 with the meme that Obama should be president because he was such an “inspiring motivational speaker”. They did this, clearly, because Obama had no record of accomplishment, no firm ideas for how to solve the nation’s problems, and nothing else to offer save for the speaking style of a black preacher (which he borrowed from cassette tapes he’d memorized of Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United in Chicago).
Since it was RAAACIST to admit there was nothing particularly exceptional about Obama’s TelePrompTer-assisted performances (because there are tens of thousands of black men putting on the same show, for free, every Sunday at a church somewhere near you), and the “journolists” of the media elite so wanted to “make history” with a black president (so THEY could be the ones to cover this “history-making” occurrence, landing themselves a place in the history books as well, being cited as first-person sources for any future tomes on Obama’s ascendancy), Obama cruised to victory on a wave of Kool-Aid drenched, undeserved accolades.
A movie about someone giving speeches to adoring crowds would have had a similar lift on Academy Awards night, according to EW.com…but not so today, as the public has seen that sometimes words are indeed “just words” and the man behind the TelePrompTer is indeed just a man…not the Lightbringing god-with-a-small-g Oprah promised was “The One”.
Whatever the Hell that meant.
For any Republicans reading this who still insist entertainment news isn’t worth your time, or that you just don’t care which picture wins the Oscar as you don’t care about movies anyway, try to look at the bigger picture here.
In 2008, the only thing Obama had as his selling point was the propaganda image the Lamestream Media pushed for him…and that was 80% based on his “electrifying speeches”. We saw in 2010, on the midterm election campaign trail, that Obama often had trouble drawing more than 200 people to events in Democrat bastions like Cleveland, Ohio. If a sitting Democrat president can’t get more than 200 butts off their couches and into auditorium seats in CLEVELAND, on a day of the week when neither the Indians nor the Browns are playing and it’s not 40 degrees or below, then something is seriously wrong with that president.
Obama ran in 2008 with the full force of the media behind him and a vast national “romance”, as EW.com put it, with his oratory. EW.com now believes Obama’s performance in office, and the reality of life in “The Golden Age of Hope and Change”, has diminished the romantic appeal of speechifying…so much so that a movie about a man giving speeches will be eclipsed by one about a couple of guys screwing around on the Internet.
What does that leave Obama to campaign with in 2012?
His record of accomplishment?
His kept promises?
His wife’s spending restraint during tough economic times for all of us?
If the speechifying no longer enraptures the lotus-eaters and Kool-Aid-drinkers, then what’s Obama 2012 going to run on?
What think you?
Obamacare’s Impact on Doctors
How can you get more people to watch this video?
What other videos do you know of that clearly show the impact of Obamacare on doctors?
Are you a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional opposed to Obamacare who could write a GROUND REPORT from your perspective on the impact of Obamacare on doctors? If so, write us at HillBuzz@gmail.com and we’ll give you this forum to speak your mind on the subject.
What are other ways you could help educate the general public about the impact of Obamacare on doctors?
ACTION ITEM: Recall Sheriff Clarence Dupnik effort underway…what can you do to help?
ABC News reports that the Pima County Sheriff is subject to recall by citizens who’ve lost faith in the office holder’s abilities to uphold law and order in Arizona.
The Facebook page for a Recall Effort directed at removing Clarence Dupnik from the office of Sheriff now has 1,000 members.
National Review Online has its own take on Recall Efforts in Arizona.
What are some ways YOU can encourage a Recall of Clarence Dupnik today, if you are one of the millions of Americans who believe, as we do here at HB, that Dupnik behaved in a highly partisan and reprehensible way in the aftermath of the horrific shooting spree Jared Lee Loughner went on in Tucson earlier this month.
Who are the movers-and-shakers in Pima County, Arizona who could be lobbied to back a Recall Effort? Think about this logically. In every county, there are big donors to the political parties, elected officials, respected business people, and “community leaders” whom people look to for direction on a regular basis. These are the people who need to be pressured to get behind an effort to dump Dupnik.
I don’t know Pima County, so the first step in recalling Dupnik should be identifying who these people are. The next step is getting their addresses. After that, I suggest sending these people postcards telling them what a national embarrassment Clarence Dupnik is.
Clearly, people who actually live in Pima County have a much larger say in the matter, but it’s been my lifelong experience that “community leaders” aren’t thrilled to receive tens of thousands of postcards from coast to coast telling them what an embarrassment their community has become to the country at large because of one man, with a bronze star, who forgot he’s supposed to be a sheriff and not a partisan-charged Democrat party operative in love with the microphones set before him.
Democrats in Virginia trying to stop investigation into Climategate emails
Let’s recap what we’re up against on a daily basis in this country:
* the media is controlled by the Left and reports only on things that harm conservatives and help Democrats
* Democrats abuse their power to prevent investigations into corruption, graft, voter fraud, and other abuses that help Democrats
* the Cocktail Party GOP establishment refuses to call either Democrats or the media on any of this, because they are afraid of being called RAAACISTS!, “big meanies”, or other names that would jeopardize any Lindsey Graham/John McCain-style lavish attention the media could potentially give these people
The perfect storm created by these three factors explains 95% of the bad things that happen to America on a regular basis.
In Virginia, right now, TODAY, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investigating the Climategate emails that prove collusion amongst “scientists” to create the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam that came perilously close to tanking the world’s economy in a massive wealth redistribution scheme engineered by Al Gore, George Soros, the Chicago Machine, and other villains on the Left.
Democrats in the Virginia state legislature are working to shutdown this investigation, because its findings would damage Democrats and drive yet another nail into the AGW cult’s coffin.
The media, predictably, is not reporting on this.
The Cocktail Party GOP establishment is not raising Hell about this investigation being stunted.
It’s business as usual in the American political world.
But, we ask the question: Does it have to be?
What can YOU do, in your own way, TODAY, to make people aware of Democrats’ efforts in Virginia to shut down the Climategate investigation?
You are not expected to grab a pot and pan and head to the streets to bang loudly about this on street corners…but just imagine if millions of conservatives out there started putting a little energy, in practical ways, towards educating others about what Democrats are up to and what the Cocktail Party GOP establishment lets them get away with unchallenged. All of that energy adds up…climaxing in a tsunami of activism.
In 2011, isn’t it time you found your niche in all of this? Only YOU can determine what that niche is, but there has to be SOMETHING you can do to start demanding, every day, some sort of accountability from the elected officials in this country that keep hiding things Democrats don’t want investigated.
What’s just ONE THING you think you can do to make people aware of what’s happening in the Virginia Assembly to thwart Attorney General Cuccinelli’s Climategate investigation?
