Universal Health Coverage

[Haggis@wk]

If the government can force you to buy health insurance, can it force you to buy a gun?

It can force you to use one (draft)

Not since 1973 and one of the reason we went to all volunteer was that many draftees didn't. The question stands;

If the government can force you to buy health insurance, can it force you to buy a gun? Or a car? or a house? or...? anything?

If the Constitution doesn't matter why did they labor over it?

[Shapley]

The Constitution mattered for a while. Lincoln altered our conception of it during his term, changing us from a union of States to a federal power. FDR changed our perception from 'general welfare' to 'individual welfare', beginning the demise of freedom as we knew it. It's been a gradual shift ever since, as the 'entitled class' created by FDR's programmes grew larger and more powerful, demanding an ever-growing access to the treasury. Even after they emptied they emptied the Treasury, they just camp by the door and grab the revenue as it comes in.

[Haggis@wk]

Philadelphia Inquirier, 2010;

Almost all the shortages are generic drugs, Hansen-Flaschen said, an apparent reflection of the fact that there are fewer manufacturers of such medications, which generate less profit than do brand-name drugs. With few producers, any breakdown in manufacturing or shortage of raw materials can trigger widespread shortages.

Earlier this month, responding to a shortage of chemotherapy drugs in Minnesota, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) wrote to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg asking that the FDA intervene to "ensure that patients have access to the medications that are essential to their health and well-being."

As it is, the FDA has few tools to resolve shortages. It cannot, for instance, order drug companies to make more drugs.

More from the CBC-

A study released this week by the Canadian Pharmacists Association highlighted serious concerns over a lack of generic drugs and commonly prescribed medications, like penicillin.

Mandated price reductions produce drug scarcity. Who could have seen that one coming?

[dai bread]

Shop around. Try India. That's where my proton-pump inhibitors come from.

[Haggis@wk]

We had to pass it to find out what’s in it.

ObamaCare stops construction of 45 new hospitals.

[analog]

Wow, Haggis.

If anybody should own the hospitals it's the doctors.

What a payoff to investment houses and insurors. They have no Hippocratic oath to be helpful.

a.

[Shapley]

Apparently, that was part of the price to get the American Hospital Association's support for the bill. The AHA does not like the competition from the Physician-Owned Hospitals, many of which were created in response to the perceived monopolies of the big hospitals.

http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/conte ... -Hospitals

[Haggis@wk]

Babies who are born at 23 weeks should be left to die, says NHS chief

This is why the U.S. infant mortality rate is always higher than Europes. We consider any baby born at 23 weeks as potentially viable and thus we count those births. Europe doesn't even count children born at 23 weeks or less when they report their infant mortality rates.

[piqaboo]

Its down to 23 weeks gestational age now? Wow!
It was 25, I believe, when Altoid was born.

[Haggis@wk]

Urban and suburban areas have lost a quarter of their hospital emergency departments over the last 20 years, according to the study, in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In 1990, there were 2,446 hospitals with emergency departments in nonrural areas. That number dropped to 1,779 in 2009, even as the total number of emergency room visits nationwide increased by roughly 35 percent.

Conditions in emergency rooms may be worsened by the new health care law. The law will expand eligibility for Medicaid and those beneficiaries turn to emergency rooms for care, because many physicians do not accept Medicaid payments.

Emergency rooms are required by law to provide treatment regardless of ability to pay. People will have coverage, but it seems there will be nowhere for them to go.

[Shapley]

The availability of rapid ambulance transport, and the costs of operating small, underutilized ER's in rural hospitals vs. transport to the well-staffed and well-equipped medical centers is the factor in our area. Not only ER's, but entire rural hospital facilities have either closed or been converted to satelite clinics (sans ER services) for the big hospitals.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Maybe we need some free market competition in medical services.

[Haggis@wk]

Dutch mobile euthanasia units to make house calls

I guess I should be shocked, but I’m not.