----- Original Message -----
From: Theattle Thompson
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 10:21 PM
Subject: A serious read you won't forget from a doctor



Is this truly what the American citizens voted for??





Subject:

An Indianapolis doctor's letter to Sen. Bayh about the Bill (Note: Dr. Stephen E. Frazer, MD practices as an anesthesiologist in Indianapolis , IN )
Here is a letter I sent to Senator Bayh. Feel free to copy it and send it around to all other representatives. -- Stephen Fraser

July 23, 2009

Senator Bayh,

As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the health care bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government's proposed involvement in the patient-physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a health care system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we need to fix our health care system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.

I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self-insure!!

Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you. You have no choice!

Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.

Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals' finances & a 'National ID Health card' will be issued!

Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for elective funds transfer.

Page 65 Sec 164: Is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in unions & community organizations: (ACORN).

Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the 'Exchange.'

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans -- The Govt will ration your health care!

Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. (Translation: illegal aliens.)

Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups (i.e. ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. (AARP members - your health care WILL be rationed!)
Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid eligible individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. (No choice.)

Page 12 4 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt monopoly.

Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association - The Govt will tell YOU what salary you can make.

Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto-enroll employees into public option plan. (NO choice!)

Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part-time employees AND their families. (Employees shouldn't get excited about this as employers will be forced to reduce its work force, benefits, and wages/salaries to cover such a huge expense.)

Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option will pay 8% tax on all payroll! (See the last comment in parenthesis.)
Page 150 Lines 9-13: A business with payroll between $251K & $401K who doesn't provide public option will pay 2-6% tax on all payroll.

Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay.)

Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of the GOVT HC Admin.. will have access to ALL Americans' finances and personal records.

Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." (Yes, it really says that!)
Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors. (Low-income and the poor are affected.)

Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors: It doesn't matter what specialty you have trained yourself in -- you will all be paid the same! (Just TRY to tell me that's not Socialism!)

Page 253 Line 10-18: The Govt sets the value of a doctor's time, profession, judgment, etc. (Literally-- the value of humans.)

Page 265 Sec 1131: The Govt mandates and controls productivity for "private" HC industries.

Page 268 Sec 1141: The federal Govt regulates the rental and purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!

Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever the Govt deems preventable (i.e...re-admissions).

Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors: If you treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -- the Govt will penalize you.

Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. (The Govt tells doctors what and how much they can own!)

Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion. (The Govt is mandating that hospitals cannot expand.)
Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have the opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. (Can you say ACORN?)

Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: The Govt mandates establishment of=2 outcome-based measures. (HC the way they want -- rationing.)
Page 341 Lines 3-9: The Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. (Forcing people into the Govt plan)

Page 354 Sec 1177: The Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of 'special needs people!' Unbelievable!

Page 379 Sec 1191: The Govt creates more bureaucracy via a "Tele-Health Advisory Committee." (Can you say HC by phone?)

Page 425 Lines 4-12: The Govt mandates "Advance-Care Planning Consult." (Think senior citizens end-of-life patients.)

Page 425 Lines 17-19: The Govt will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. (And it's mandatory!)
Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: The Govt provides an "approved" list of end-of-life resources; & nbsp;guiding you in death. (Also called 'assisted suicide.')

Page 427 Lines 15-24: The Govt mandates a program for orders on "end-of-life." (The Govt has a say in how your life ends!)

Page 429 Lines 1-9: An "advanced-care planning consultant" will be used frequently as a patient's health deteriorates.

Page 429 Lines 10-12: An "advanced care consultation" may include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. (AN ORDER TO DIE FROM THE GOVERNMENT?!?)

Page 429 Lines 13-25: The GOVT will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. (I wouldn't want to stand before God after getting paid for THAT job!)

Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end-of-life! (Again -- no choice!)

Page 469: Community-Based Home Medical Services = Non-Profit Organizations. (Hello? ACORN Medical Services here!?!)

Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover marriage and family therapy. (Which means Govt will insert itself into your marriage even.)

Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, and rationing those services.


Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.

Furthermore, if you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor-patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.

Respectfully,

Stephen E. Fraser, MD

Dear Reader,
I urge you to use the power that you were born with (and the power that may soon be taken away) and circulate this email to as many people as you can reach. The Power of the People can stop this from happening to us, our parents, our grandparents, our children, and to following generations.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND BETSY MCCAUGHEY.

Watching Betsy McCaughey lie about Barack Obama's health care legislation is a little bit like watching Aretha Franklin on stage: It's not as good as you remember, but you have to admit that she's still got it. So too with McCaughey, who I was planning to ignore. I'm too young for nostalgia. But then Limbaugh grabbed her column, and so did Fox news, and of course Drudge, and last night, chatting with an acquaintance who works on the Hill, he got a call from his left-leaning mother who'd heard the stimulus was going to destroy her health care. Indeed, as the Wonk Room shows, the right wing noise machine is almost giddy over her reemergence:

Betsy McCaughey first came to prominence for a New Republic article entitled "No Exit." The conceit of the piece was that unlike everyone else, McCaughey had pored over every page and paragraph of the massive Clinton health bill and come back with a clearer view of the legislation's contours than anyone had previously presented. And what she'd found was worrying. "The law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better," McCaughey wrote. "The doctor can be paid only by the plan, not by you." Hence, "No Exit." You were trapped in the system.

McCaughey, it turned out, isn't a very good reader. Section three of the Clinton health legislation ("Protection of Consumer Choice") held that, "nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services.” But in a policy debate, it's more important that your opinions prove convenient than accurate, and McCaughey's argument was certainly convenient: She got first one cover story in The New Republic and then a second. George Will picked up her views, as did the rest of the right wing media and legislative infrastructure. And this wasn't a "provocative" argument. It was simply wrong. It argued that the legislation said X when the legislation said not-X. It remained an enduring black mark on The New Republic's reputation. When Frank Foer took over as editor, among his first acts was making amends. “We recanted that story in the first issue and apologized for it," he says. It was that bad.

McCaughey, unsurprisingly, is back again, with an editorial in Bloomberg. In it, she warns that provisions of the stimulus bill "are dangerous to your health." In particular, she tells of "one new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, [which] will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."

Sigh. The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not a new bureaucracy created in the stimulus. Bush signed it into office in 2004. it has a web site, a director, and, presumably, a phone line, which could have been used by McCaughey or Bloomberg to check the next fact: That it will "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."

You'll be shocked to learn that, no, it doesn't do this, either. McCaughey is darkly conflating two things: One is medical health records. That's what the NCHIT oversees. It's a coordinating authority that helps "guide the nationwide implementation of interoperable health information technology in both the public and private health care sectors, to the extent permitted by law; and provides comments and advice at the request of OMB regarding specific Federal health information technology programs." In other words, it's helping the private sector move your medical records from manila envelopes to computers, and trying to help the private sector settle on a single standard so the records can be shared among different providers. That way, if you have an emergency and are taken by ambulance to the hospital, your primary care doctors can e-mail them your information immediately so you don't die from a drug allergy they didn't know about. This is all about a decade away from happening, incidentally.

Meanwhile, the thing McCaughey is actually talking about, or trying to talk about, or trying to lie about, is comparative effectiveness review. The stimulus bill funds increased research into the value of different treatments. This sort of research goes on every day, all the time. Foundations fund it, as do universities and even pharmaceutical companies. Not only isn't it sinister, it's not even particularly interesting.

As for McCaughey's broader claim, nothing in the bill, nor in the structure of the federal government, gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the capacity, funding, authority, or mandate to monitor the medical profession's treatment decisions and decide if they're appropriate. There may come a day when that data is used to make coverage decisions, but that day is not today, and nothing in the stimulus brings it any closer. Indeed, doing so would be a question not of data collection but of payment reform (you'd have to change payment rates to reflect the research). There is nothing on that in the bill. McCaughey is simply lying, much as she did in 1990s. And, like in the 1990s, her lies are convenient, and they're being amplified by opportunistic rightwing outlets. But this isn't the 90s. And the thing about nostalgia tours is they never last very long, and they're never as effective as the original.

Posted by Ezra Klein on February 12, 2009 11:08 AM | Permalink

(Been blocked for having a reasonable response, ugh)

I listened to the interview. I went to the website.



I am looking into the claims, but I can make a few obversations right off the bat.



1# the 500 billion cut in patient care benefits, stands out as odd considering that this is a plan to provide more benefits, and one would pretty safely assume that benefits might move from one institution to another, which is a net balance in status quo services for those already on entitlement plans. It would be all to easy to ignore the 500 billion of additional services and only look at one part of the ledger that shows 500 billion coming off the books to make this claim.



#2 Mandatory end of life consultation. Hmmm. Spinning at its best. No one is going to come in and convince your grandmother to choose some faster cheaper way to die. Period. Anyone CLOSE to elder care and has ANY idea of the choices one has to make at that time in life understands what Hospice is and how it works THIS VERY DAY. That will not change in this plan. This is just a provision to make sure people have had a chance to make their choice known ahead of time. Studies show that once you make your plans ahead of time, that you are 90% more likely to have them fulfilled. Most patience do not want to leave the choice of DNR and feeding tubes up to any bureaucrat.



This VERY ISSUE is one that GIVES YOU POWER over others, GIVES YOU CHOICE, and some would rather use it to demonize the healthcare reform then allow it to be understood for what it is.



#3 Denying care based on age? Complete speculation. We have a better chance of securing care with more regulation then with leaving it up to private healthcare insurance. Private Ins does this now. the VA, SS, Medicare does not. Pot, Kettle, Black.



#4 I will look into the page 16 claims of No outside healthcare. This flies in the face of the nature of the healthcare reform itself. More than likely poor wording and major spin to get this point from the opposition.



Now for Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel. I am trying to locate the 1996 Hasting report where he has made his controversial statements. This is no easy task, the search function on the site is a bear, and there are many reports from 1996. One has to bear in mind WHAT the Hastings Center IS. Its a Bio Ethics research institute. Where they debate the ethics of medicine and ask the hard questions and wrestle with them. In these settings you will find all manner of odd, compelling, appalling and complicated arguments. One has to take the statement in actual context. Was it in rebuttal to another argument. Was it part of a train of thought necessary to prove a greater point was untenable.



Taken at is face value, sounds horrible. Ask the Dr. now want he thinks of care for the elderly.



More to come.