By Bradley Hennenfent, M.D.
Physician & Economist
GCC/Staff
Mar. 4, 2010

Please stop ObamaCare. I have seen the “death panels.” They are Medicaid, Medicare, and the Veterans Administration. They share one thing in common; they are run by the government.

The “death panels” are government bureaucrats who come between you and your physician and, after being fiscally incompetent, ration, delay and deny care.

People who like government programs surely have never had to fight for a patient’s life or health care under these systems. Government health care is better than nothing, but clearly, it is not the best care.

Medicare can deny a patient an antibiotic, even if five doctors recommend it. Medicare can deny a cancer treatment simply because it hasn’t made it on a list yet. Medicare denies patients, to quote Medicare: “regardless as to medical necessity.”

Medicare and Medicaid are no way to run health care. We know government health care is defective. We are the richest, most powerful country in the world.

We have technology now that has never before existed, so let’s create something better than any health care system in existence now.

When Insurance companies succumb to crony capitalism the same thing occurs – “death panels” again. The “death panels” are insurance companies coming between you and your doctor.

On the other hand, insurance companies that work properly are a driving force behind the greatest health care in the world, which we have in America today.

Health care reform seems so easy to us physicians who have seen patients die or suffer because of the health care system.

The solution is to make patients, doctors, nurses, and allied health care professionals more powerful and the Government and crony capitalism less powerful.

Sarah Palin said on Facebook: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Then, President Obama proved Sarah Palin right when he made a deal with Union leaders, so that they would not have their Cadillac Health Care plans taxed like other Americans.

Apparently, non-union members can suffer and die on lower quality health care plans, while unions members “based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’” are deemed more worthy than everyone else – because they are mostly Democrats.

I am not partisan. Both parties are good and bad. Both have good ideas and bad ideas. They are not important to me. Patients are. Socialized medicine is not the best system. Crony capitalism is not the best system either.

The answer is to make patients and health care providers more powerful. This can be done. But the best ideas for health care reform are not on the table yet.

Sarah Palin was called a liar for using the term “death panels” by the New York Times which called “death panels” a false rumor.

Factcheck.org said that the “the phrase ‘death panel’ does not appear in the health care bill that passed House committees…”

The “death panel” comment was called the “Lie of the Year” by Politifact.com.

Needless to say, I will not be trusting those people for any future fact checking. I didn’t see any evidence that they asked the people who would actually know the inside secretive information by which our current “death panels” function – the doctors and nurses.

 

Perhaps the best comment I read on this controversy was on a blog:

“I love all these media moguls saying the bill doesn’t set up that panel. Well no kidding. Bravo, media, give yourself a pat on the back for being so smart. It’s a term, idiots, coined by Palin for the inevitable outcome, not language from the actual bill itself.

Don’t get me wrong, the framework for such a thing is in the bill.”

That blogger, pen-named Uffda, is exactly right. Government health care invariably goes bankrupt as Medicare and Medicaid have.

Government health care is also incompetent, corrupt, inefficient, stifling of innovation, and results in rationing, lines, denials, delays, and the figurative “death panels” that Sarah Palin wrote about.

That’s why socialized medicine is so evil. Crony capitalism is also evil. Stop both those evils and put patients, doctors, nurses, and allied health care professionals in charge, not third parties.

Sarah Palin also wrote that “Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives.

I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.”

I have read Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s articles in the medical literature and I agree with Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin on this issue.

I think he has horrible ideas. The worst part is that he doesn’t understand why, claims he is misquoted, and is taken out of content.

He seems to be a clueless collectivist and I blame him for many of the deaths that occur every day because of the policies he supports. He should not be a “bioethicist” for our NIH.

Sen. Chuck Grassley told us to fear that the government would “pull the plug on grandma.” He was right for all the same reasons that Sarah Palin was right about “death panels.”

Government health care takes Grandma’s health care money in taxes all her life and then when she wants to use it for her needs, it’s too late, it has been redistributed to other people, and her health care is rationed, delayed, and denied by the government.

I know elderly patients. I know they don’t want to die early because of a bad health care system. People want to live.

People fight to live. People are beautiful and uplifting in their struggle to survive.

Obama dismissed “pulling the plug on Grandma” as dishonest. He said:

“I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love who’s aging deteriorate, and have to struggle with that,” Mr. Obama said.

“So the notion that somehow I ran for public office, or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma? I mean, when you start making arguments like that, that’s simply dishonest.”

However, “pulling the plug on grandma,” on grandpa, on mother, father, brother, sister, child, wife, and husband is exactly what occurs under socialized medicine.

It happens under Medicare right now because of bureaucracy, fraud, and waste, and because Medicare stifles innovation, science, and the free flow of information patients need to make decisions.

Obama famously said, when answering a question about a pacemaker in an elderly mother, “”Maybe you’re better off, not having the surgery, but taking the pain killer.”

He scared to death many people who believe that Obama’s bureaucrats are going to take over life and death decisions from patients.

I want to thank you Sarah Palin, “The Greatest Truth about Health Care Reform” was spoken by you in 2009.

We can only hope that you have single-handedly saved us from the “death panels” of socialized medicine, and of Medicare and Medicaid for all. “Death panels” will be created if we create an inept health care system – whether public or private.

I also want to thank Senator Chuck Grassley for telling people to fear “Pulling the plug on Grandma.” He couldn’t have been more correct.

My prescription for patients is to fight “tooth and nail” to have “patient power” health care reform passed. Your life is at stake.

It was widely reported that Danny Williams, head government official in Newfoundland, skipped ahead of the lines in Canada (a government single-payer system) and went to Miami Beach for heart surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He wanted minimally invasive surgery that he could not get in Canada.

“This was my heart, my choice and my health,” Williams was widely quoted as saying. Mr. Williams was right to leave Canada, as innovation and choice slow down, and sometimes disappear, under government health care.

I have written a health care reform plan where all 800,000 doctors would rate medical treatments in advance of need, and where science would determine reimbursement, not politics.

My health care reform plan, “The People’s Health Care Reform Plan,” will lower costs and it will end secret prices. It will also share secret life-saving, inside, medical information, which only doctors and nurses know, with patients.

Nearly 300 people have signed up to redistribute “The People’s Health Care Reform Plan,” which can be seen on Facebook here:

“The People’s Health Care Reform Plan” can also be found here:

 

Here are a couple of bonus quotes:

“The plain fact is that physicians are no longer in control of the U.S. health care system. Indeed, it is a sad day in America when becoming a doctor is no longer a wise career choice except for those who pay no attention to autonomy, respect, or monetary compensation.

After five years in medicine, I left the practice myself, only to become a doctor’s worst enemy…a lawyer. I couldn’t be happier I made the transition, but my wise personal choice reflects a sad day for our society: where becoming a lawyer holds more appeal than serving patients’ most fundamental needs.

We must change this broken system and we must do it immediately.” – www.biklaw.com

“Well said Dr. Hennenfent, every day I spend more and more of my time fighting for insurance approvals, and less time seeing my patients. If the government really wanted to help people and not just buy votes with entitlements, then congress would cut some of the 54 Billion from food stamps, since recent studies have shown 60% of people on welfare are OBESE, and the rates are increasing.” – physician, name withheld by request