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ObamaCare versus TrumpCare

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By: Veronica Leighton

 

Number one in many people’s agenda and minds in the “changing of the guards” in the White House soon (our deadline could not wait for the transition of the presidency) is the health insurance issue. The most controversial ObamaCare is still ending up controversial together with President Obama’s departure, while President Trump is promising “health insurance for all.” For many people, Obamacare resulted in perhaps five times as many losers as winners, with some people saying that “the people who are terrified about losing their ObamaCare coverage are the ones at greatest risk of losing their lives if ObamaCare is perpetuated.”

Big question is, “What If Sick People Lose Their ObamaCare?” Here’s a very interesting treatise from Jane M. Orient, M.D., current president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

“As Republicans contemplate repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”)—seriously, not just as a political gesture—alarms are sounding about millions of individuals losing coverage. So soon we have forgotten about the millions who lost coverage they had had for years because ObamaCare outlawed it.

ObamaCare resulted in perhaps five times as many losers as winners— even counting just those who ended up with more expensive or less desirable coverage. If you count the taxpayers, the tally of losers is much higher. But with government largesse, the losers—the ones who have their earnings taken away—are “forgotten men.”

Anyone who has government-funded benefits taken away, on the other hand, becomes a victim.

The best poster children are cancer victims. They face a premature, particularly nasty death. Who would deny someone’s mother or 4-year-old daughter the chance of a cure, even if the chemotherapy costs more than $100,000?

ObamaCare would. Exchange plans have excluded the best cancer hospitals from their narrow networks. Medicaid would. It might call the treatment “experimental” or “not cost-effective.” Medicare would, possibly just because the patient is “too old” or “too young.” Unless the particular victim can be featured in a PR campaign to “save ObamaCare,” she might be “better off with the pain pill,” as President Obama put it.

And let’s not forget how the FDA has driven the costs of drug approval sky-high, suppresses therapies that have no prospect of turning billion- dollar profits, and protects manufacturers against competition when the drug is about to go off patent. The anti-leukemia drug Gleevec, for example, cost $26,000 per year in 2001, a price called “high but fair,” considering the cost of research and the need for profits. It is $146,000 a year today, but the introduction of cheaper generics in the U.S. is being delayed.

Why can such prices be sustained? Because third parties sometimes pay them. One ObamaCare plan reportedly pays $10,488 per month for Gleevec, from a pharmacy with which it apparently has an arrangement, although it might be available from Walgreen’s for $4,400, and from other pharmacies for still less. What would the hapless patient do if her Exchange plan went out of business (maybe because Republicans took away its subsidies or maybe because it just failed)? One option would be to go to India and buy a year’s supply of a generic version of Gleevec for $400. (The cost of manufacture is $159.) In fact, the manufacturer might well give her the drug to buff up its image. But drug companies really love the third-party payment schemes, just like big hospitals do.

Do the designers of ACA—which would be more aptly named the Unaffordable Care Act—really care about cancer patients? Such patients may be useful props for lobbying, but they don’t help achieve the reformers’ stated goal of maximizing “population health.” Prolonging the lives of sick people reduces the average health score. Money spent on Gleevec is diverted from reducing disparities, achieving “quality” quotas, and paying for the information technology and administrators to “document” all that (and sell the data). The current “healthcare delivery” system, including entitlement programs (e.g. Medicare and Medicaid), is about the redistribution of wealth and the control of medical care, which enables control of the population. The idea of comprehensive third-party payment for all medical care (all that is allowed) destroys medicine—the care of the sick—while placing unsustainable burdens on the economy.

The people who are terrified about losing their ObamaCare “coverage” are the very ones at greatest risk of losing their lives if ObamaCare is perpetuated.

Real reform would put patients back at the center and demote insurance companies to their proper function of reimbursing subscribers for the costs of unexpected catastrophes. Costs would plummet, and innovation would soar.

While the free market is building much better facilities, some patients will be caught in the transition. But we should be concerned about their actual care, not their coverage. They can be helped in many ways, without destroying arrangements that work for the 99 percent. Perhaps a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for those helping to pay for their treatment?

What if we said that those who like their government medicine can keep it? Just let the rest of us go.” ###

Jane M. Orient, M.D., obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989. She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Since 1988, she has been chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Pima County (Arizona) Medical Society. She is the author of YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Healthcare, and the second through fourth editions of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. She authored books for schoolchildren, Professor Klugimkopf’s Old-Fashioned English Grammar and Professor Klugimkopf’s Spelling Method, published by Robinson Books, and coauthored two novels published as Kindle books, Neomorts and Moonshine. More than 100 of her papers have been published in the scientific and popular literature on a variety of subjects including risk assessment, natural and technological hazards and nonhazards, and medical economics and ethics. She is the editor of AAPS News, the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, and Civil Defense Perspectives, and is the managing editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. ****

In time with the changing of the White House officials, we also witnessed in our Chicago Fil-Am community the kick-off celebration and induction of the new Philippine Independence Week Committee 2017 officers headed by Overall Charperson Lourdes Livas last January 14, 2017 at the Avalon Banquets Elk Grove Village.

Ms Livas, an effective leader, will be working hand in hand with the following officers: Chairperson-Elect: Lourdes Mon; Recording Secretary: Leilani Magana; Corresponding Secretary: Meg Advento; Treasurer/Budget: Edwin Pineda; Auditor: Auring Galimba; PROs: Yoly Tubalinal, Mariano Santos & Veronica Leighton; Immediate Pas Overall: Mercy Matousek; Executive Advisers: Faye Mendiola, Brenda Stevens & Anita Rosa,

Highlighting the gala event in June celebration are the following beauty queens: Mrs. Philippines: Geraldine Gaden; Miss Philippines: Joy Hunter; Mrs. PIWC: Rosalina Gardner; Miss PIWC: Kimberly Agus; Mrs. Illinois: Doreen Magbanua; Mrs. Chicago: Mel Tolledo; Little Miss Philippines: Baomi Polintan; Little Princess Philippines: Alpha Juliane Ramos.

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Consul General Generoso Calonge swearing in the new officers of 2017 of Philippine Independence Week Committee, L-R: Leilani Magana, Meg Advento, Edwin Pineda, Auring Galimba, Veronica Leighton, Lourdes Mon, Lourdes Livas, Mercy Matousek, Brenda Stevens & Faye Mendiola.

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Standing, L-R: Immediate PIWC past Chair Mercy Matousek, Vel Guffey, past chair Brenda Stevens, Chairperson Lourdes Livas & Liza Vasich; Sitting, L-R: Cora Guzon, Chair-elect Lourdes Mon, ConGen Calonge and Ellen Tan (past chair).

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PIWC Mrs. Chicago 2017 Mel Tolledo (right) with VT Publisher Veronica Leighton (left) at the Kick-off party of the Philippine Independence Week Committee on January 14, 2017 held at the Avalon Banquets Elk Grove Village.

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