Adele Ferguson - Speaker Pelosi’s health bill: it’s a turkey

 

November 19, 2009



NOW THAT the super duper trillion dollar health care plan has passed the House, I await with trepidation an explanation from someone I trust as to exactly what’s in it.

All I’m sure of at this point is that it is 1,990 pages long, weighs 19.6 pounds and creates a government run insurance plan, aka “public option,” that the Senate says makes it dead on arrival there, plus a ban on government funded abortions.

So why do I care what’s in the House bill if it is as moribund as Sonny Corleone after he got waylaid at the toll booth in “The Godfather?”

Because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama both want the public option and the ultimate bill will be drafted by the House and the Senate which has a bill of its own that has none. But Majority leader Harry Reid says he’ll put one in that allows individual states to opt out if they choose.

I’ve seen a lot of conference committees at work and it’s wise to know who is bringing what to the table. I know a health care bill is the No. 1 heart’s desire of the president and he will sign anything that makes it to his desk so exactly what’s on the table matters. He told us if we liked our present health care insurance plan we could keep it. I don’t know if that will be in there. He said if we liked our current doctor, we could keep him or her. I don’t know if that will be in there. He said this plan wouldn’t cost more. Wanna bet?

I am on Medicare with a supplemental policy and the fact that Medicare funding is being reduced $5 billion does not inspire confidence in what’s to come. Also disturbing in a rundown of the House bill in the Wall Street Journal by Betsy McCaughey, chair of the Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths, is word that Medicare is being changed from a fee for service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, to what’s called a “medical home.”

A PRIMARY care provider manages access to specialists and diagnostic tests for a flat monthly fee. The bill also specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as their primary care provider.

It happens that I see at some time or other eight different doctors.

An internist is my primary care provider.

I also have a heart doctor, a skin doctor, an eye doctor, an ear doctor, a foot doctor, a knee doctor and whatever they call the doctor that does colonoscopies.

I make my own appointments but under Section 1302, Pages 672-692, says Ms.

McCaughey, I’d have to work through my primary care provider.

How is this not going to cost more if the new referral fee is added to what the specialist charges? And it isn’t just freeloaders running to the emergency rooms instead of buying insurance that raise health care costs.

One of my doctors prescribed a gel for me to put on my nose to reduce any redness he said was caused by my Celtic background.

I took it to my pharmacist who asked, “Do you know how much this costs?” I said no. “$156,” she said. I suppose I get a whole gallon for that, I said, “No,” she said. “You get two ounces.” Does my nose look red? I asked. “No,” she said. Well, then skip it, I said, but why does the doctor prescribe such an expensive product?

“They don’t know,” she said, meaning they don’t know or care about cost because an insurer pays it.

Remember the time some service club celebrated Thanksgiving by taking a bunch of turkeys up in a plane and threw them out, the goal being folks on the ground could catch themselves one when they came flying by? Unfortunately, no one knew turkeys can’t fly and they all hit the ground with a thud. The Pelosi health bill is a turkey and it can’t fly.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340)

 

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