SCHIP: For The Big Hospitals, Not The Children?

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XmfKVfRMAKQUuRbb of 9:36PM August 08, 2009

+1

soundtracks of AL 7:39AM July 17, 2009

Who do you trust more to manage your care -- your doctor or some hospital bureacrat who is solely compensated and motivated by profits?
It is amazing to me that doctors (I am not one!) are so much he subject of distrust when they take an oath to provide proper care and treatment and how folks in Congress like Pete Stark are so willing to limit their ability to practice medicine and own the tools of their trade.
Most community and for profit hospitals are poorly run, are rampt with the potential to infect you and score very low on patient satisfaction scales. Worse, they charge the government, insurance comapnies and the sick the highest prices when compared with competing doctor run hospitals.
It is no small wonder the big box hospitals are trying to get Congress to do their dirty work!

Pete Kent of OH 2:27PM February 02, 2009

I think you accurately presented the facts about the "political struggle" that has surfaced again, this time, as section 623 of House Bill 2. As I suspect you know, the issue of mistrust of physicians in the House of Representatives stems back as far as the 1980's. Representative Pete Stark (D, CA) has made his career on generating legislation that is based on mistrust of our physicians in America, the very same people who take an oath of honor, after many years of formal education (16 years for me) and training, which by design, teaches self sacrifice and the importance of making decisions based upon what is best for others.
Larger hospitals, in an effort to snuff out competition, are responsible for the longtime vilification of the physician-owned hospital industry. They argue that physician-owned hospitals siphon off their patients and drive up utilization of medical services by performing non-essential surgical procedures. I have treated Medicaid, Medicare, insured and uninsured patients alike for 20 years without discrimination, and like my colleagues, will continue to do so until I retire. No physician would prescribe unnecessary surgery to patients for personal financial gain. This notion alone is demeaning to all physicians. Yes, we physicians can profit financially from the legitimate risk and work required to own and operate surgical hospitals. Nonetheless, our principal interest remains in higher efficiency, safety and lower cost, resulting in more desirable care for patients. The physician owned hospital model is the best-equipped alternative to provide this quality of care. If the law being pushed now had been in effect years ago, both the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, known worldwide as among the finest hospital facilities, would have been prevented from ever opening.
I conclude with an appeal and a question upon which to reflect. Please inform the public that physician-owned hospitals are an important vehicle for delivering low cost and safe surgical care for all Americans. Remember that these specialty hospitals are subject to the very same regulatory and quality standards as all hospitals are. I am confident that you and your readers see through this effort by the lobby of wealthy "big business" hospitals to stamp out smaller, legitimate, higher quality competition. Please don’t allow special interests to squelch American ingenuity. President Obama staked an important part of his campaign for election on the promise to eliminate such unfair and illogical influence of our lawmakers. I propose to you, that if Mr. Stark, et.al. would have followed Mr.Obama's principles focusing on regulating Wall Street and the "self-referral" practices of the banking industry rather than creating laws in distrust of physicians, that our country would now be standing on more more solid financial footing.
The question: Can we afford NOT to trust the physicians of America to drive the quality of health care to Americans?

feliss of PA 8:35AM January 26, 2009

Matthew Bandyk's point about this weakness of the SCHIP's bill is valid, but there's a much stronger reason to fight it.
SCHIP will be mainly funded by a 200% tax increase on most smokers, but there's more to it than that. It also incorporates a truly MASSIVE tax increase on one of the poorest of the poor minority groups in the entire country, a group that's poorer on average than blacks, hispanics, senior citizens, or single mothers. I'm speaking of smokers who cannot afford to buy regular cigarettes but who are honest enough to avoid the black market by simply buying loose tobacco and rolling their own. - - - - -
This minority group will be hit with a TWO THOUSAND PERCENT TAX INCREASE over the next few months if Obama signs the SCHIP bill: taxes on roll your own loose tobacco will go from just over a dollar a pound up to almost twenty-five dollars a pound. This tax increase will pour huge amounts of money into the black market, increasing law enforcement and prison spending, and send more money into supporting the next terrorist strike on America. - - - - -
This bill should NOT be supported until the taxation to support it is shared among ALL Americans who love children... not just smokers. - - - - -
Michael J. McFadden, Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

Michael J. McFadden of PA 6:55PM January 16, 2009

Right now there are big-box, non-profit hospitals declaring bankruptcy all over the country because of the way they are managed. (see www.thehospitalfiles.com for more information). Does it make any sense for the United States Congress to shut down over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals just because physicians own and operate them instead of the bureaucrats?
Of course not.
But Senator Reid is being asked to do just that. What he does is really up to you. The bureaucrats have hired a small army of big-shot Washington lobbyists to work over our Congressmen and Senators. Its not even another emergency bail-out. This is just old-fashioned, Washington insider stuff: bureaucrats trying to buy political influence to stop the hospital reform movement started by physicians acting on their medical oath to put patients first.
Unbelievably, its a California Democrat, U.S. Rep Pete Stark, who wants bureaucrats, not physicians, controlling every hospital in America. As you might expect, Congressman Stark has done very well for himself as the champion of the American Hospital Association which represents the bureaucrats. That's how it's worked in Washington for a very long time.
Who knows whether Senator Reid even knows what Stark is trying to do, let alone the harm it will do? The AHA bureaucrats sure aren't telling.
The physicians are, well, physicians, not politicians. They're hoping that the Congress will wind up doing the right thing ... somehow.
But we know better, don't we? There are times when, as voters and citizens, we've just got to pick up the phone and tell our Congressman and Senator, "no way."
This is one of them.
During the campaign Barack Obama said he could bring change and reform to Washington, but he needed our help to do it.
After he won the campaign President-elect Obama told us that we must all work together for change and reform.
Starting right now.
The Congress is going into session weeks before President-elect Obama will be sworn in. That's why Congressman Stark has been told to shut down hospitals operated by physicians right away, before our new President moves into the White House.
That's why we need to tell the Congressmen and Senators who work for us that we support physicians, not bureaucrats and so should they.

br_gal of AZ 5:58PM January 15, 2009