Mad as Hell Doctors Kick Off National Tour for Universal Health Care »
Posted By Tumultuous 2 months, 3 weeks ago in Political NewsToday six dedicated Oregon physicians take the message of Universal Health Care "on the road" in their branded Mad as Hell Doctors Motor Home. Their destination: Washington D.C. Their goal: to start a citizen movement that will send a message to the White House and Congress. That message: Single payer is the solution. We demand it now.
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Tumultuous
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Tumultuous2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Much more "true" grassroots than the "Tea Party Express", I hope that the "Mad as Hell Doctors" are able to counter the corporately financed "Tea Party Expess" with the intelligent promotion of National Health Care.
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If the "Mad as Hell Doctors" can generate a fraction of the media coverage that the sensationalized "Tea Party Express" receives, it will be considered a success.
The "Tea Party Express" is a traveling three ring circus. It amounts to entertainment for the masses of misguided extremist sheep and is designed to promote hysteria.-
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Natureboy2 months, 3 weeks ago
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"I hope that the "Mad as Hell Doctors" are able to counter the corporately financed "Tea Party Expess" with the intelligent promotion of National Health Care."
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A red herring. The teabaggers are fighting Obamabaucus "reform," which bears no resemblance to single payor.
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Georgia502 months, 3 weeks ago
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Not true. Everyone outside the government's claws and jaws will benefit if universal health care (read: ramped up government power) does not succeed.
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If Obama is so concerned about peoples' well being, let him start with his own poverty-ridden brother.
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BB642 months, 3 weeks ago
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You know, I'm confused. One minute Obama is slamming doctors for over prescribing, the next the doctors are all clamoring to join the bandwagon. I employ 2 physicians in our medical equipment group. Neither want to reenter private practice. The costs associated with that are huge. If they did, malpractice costs over $200K per year, even though neither was ever involved with a claim much less sued. If you limit the pay of doctors, you will see more people leaving medicine for other careers. You will have the same shortages you see in the UK.
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Another problem I have with this is single payers never reduce costs. If you set pricing for everyone to be equal, why would anyone improve a procedure further their education or anything. Single payer stagnates most things. We see it in industry. We see it in business. We see this in entertainment. Why does government feel they can do better? They haven't. Been to the Social Security recently? How about the DMV? VA? Taken someone for Title 19? Our government does is great at creating more and more government jobs.-
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moxxxxxxxxxx2 months, 3 weeks ago
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"If you set pricing for everyone to be equal, why would anyone improve a procedure further their education or anything"
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Doctors aren't entertainers, manufacturers, or producers of material goods for profit. Doctors operate from a Code of Ethics requiring them to serve people by providing quality healthcare. Doctors are promoters of health for all people. There will always be good people called to medicine to serve the people over profit. The ones who are in it for the money will leave, and good riddness, only then will medicine get back to its real purpose. The very issue of using profit and money to promote healthcare and research is the very reason we are in a healthcare crisis. It is difficult for some to believe that there are people who operate from higher levels of moral principles by placing people over profit. healthcare is one area that benefits from such beliefs. -
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riverat2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Another thing--The only programs that haven't been looted by greedy execs are the government ones. Think S crisis (still Paying) Banks and insurance scandal (Paying) Mortgage crises (Paying). Has any greedster got ahold of your Social Security? Civil Service pension? NO!
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lloydm652 months, 3 weeks ago
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Here we go again,a failed health plan wants the whole nation to share the misery.Moxxxxx do I understand you want doctors to spend twenty four years,and a quarter million for an education,and then work for less than a plumber,or store clerk.Your a low life disgraceful bottom feeding slimy creep.Get out of my country,your stinking the place up.
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moxxxxxxxxxx2 months, 3 weeks ago
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You must be joking? Doctors have and always will have the highest level of prestige in America.
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Did you forget how healthcare and medicine was provided before for profit insurance corps interferred? Before for profit market principles were introduced by business professionals demanding doctors refer to their patients as customers not patients. Healthcare was succesfull when it was not rooted in for profit mentalities. When insurance corps actually insured patients and PAID doctors for their services instead of micro managing and dictating how doctors treat their patients. Before insurance and pharms corps doctors CONTROLLED healthcare. Government insurance is going to bring us back to the point when healthcare was controlled by doctors. No more skimming off the pot for insurance corps who provide NOTHING other than middleman control.
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Georgia502 months, 3 weeks ago
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From their web site: http://www.madashelldoctors.com/ ("Meet The Doctors" tab)
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Dr. Hochfeld: "...we have a broken, non-system implemented around profit....it represents a health crisis, it's also a fiscal disaster that threatens the solvency of our government. ...some form of single-payer is the only solution."
Then why, if we remove homicide and suicide from mortality stats, is American health care better than Canada's? Why are 5-year cancer survival rates better in the US on an order of magnitude (than Europe or the UK) and still much better than Canada's? And how in the hell can this creature look himself in the mirror and talk about fiscal anything while supporting Obamacare? Is he delusional? Never heard of medicare/medicaid?
Dr. Uphoff: In our current system "people are way down the list of priorities. I want to change that and I think the best way to do that is through a single-payer system."
So the FACT that in the UK, a young woman cannot get a PAP smear until her mid-twenties means THOSE young women are THE priority, right? Pregnant women in Canada waiting 11 months to see an Ob/Gyn...maybe THEY are the priority, right? When the budget trumps profit, THE BUDGET BECOMES THE PRIORITY YOU CLOWN !!! AND SOME DAMN BUREAUCRAT MAKES THE DECISION INSTEAD OF AN INSURANCE EXEC. So? The improvement is exactly WHAT for the patient?
Dr. Ottaway: "I'm mad as hell because I think every United States citizen deserves health care."
No. Every citizen deserves what THEY plan, educate, and work for. Which is how, by the way, YOU can to YOUR conclusion. So if you want YOUR conclusion to be realized, then YOU provide what others refuse to provide for themselves. Oh yeah...google this: black women breast cancer. You will find ample evidence that even those WITH insurance coverage who test POSITIVE for cancer REFUSE the treatment that could SAVE their lives. YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID. And since when is every illegal alien who crosses the Rio Grande a citizen of the US ??? Show us a plan for CITIZENS ONLY. Then we'll talk.
Dr. Gorman: "I'm mad as hell because America has the best nurses, the best hospitals, and the best doctors in the world, but they are all hobbled by an insurance industry that places profit before people."
Pity he didn't stop with the first clause, which is rather the point. But still...there's no such thing as placing profit before people. Profit exists for the benefit of people. The problem is that the health care insurance market is insulated from the market by employer human resource departments. ELIMINATE employer-provided insurance, not health insurance. And stop blaming PROFIT when a true market scenario doesn't exist in the first place. Oh yeah...and no one is keeping you from providing YOUR services at a price THE PEOPLE are able to pay. Hmmmmm....don't see you making that observation. Wonder why?
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pboccuti2 months, 3 weeks ago
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11 months for a prenant lady to see an OBGYN? I think that is an outright lie. Humans are only pregnant for 9 months. So this lady never saw an OBGYN before she gave birth? I highly doubt it .
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And for your statement "there is no such thing as placing profit before people". You have to be completely delusional. It happens all of the time. I have a personal experience with this practice. On April 27th my 32 year old sister had a brain aneurysm that ruptured. She spent a month in the Temple University Neuro-Surgery Intensive Care Unit. She had to have 40%of her skull removed. The surgery to reconstruct her skull was not scheduled until August 24th. After her stint there she was transferred to Magee Rehabilitation Center. She was in Magee for 2 months before her insurance company, Blue Cross, gave an ultimatum to the doctors at Magee, transfer my sister to a cheaper nursing home or send her home until the surgery to reconstruct her skull. How can a person who is missing half her skull, who is paralyzed on her right side and has extreme trouble speaking be fit enough to come home?
My sister was transferred to Chestnut Hill Lodge nursing home for 3 weeks. In those 3 weeks, my sister lost all the gains she made at Magee. Blue Cross did not want to pay for 3 more weeks at Magee, where she was getting the best care and rehab in the world. They transferred her to a body warehouse, where she sat all day and cried. You see, Blue Cross was worried about their pockets instead of the care of one of their Customers. The kicker is that my sister had to personally pay 50% of her insurance premiums.
It is all greed and you cannot say differently. If you honestly think that Insurance Companies, health and car alike, really care for their Customers, then you are sadly mistaken.
Why is car insurance mandatory but health insurance not? The reason is because "there is a such thing as placing profit before people".
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Georgia502 months, 3 weeks ago
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Meet the Doctors, cont'd...
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Dr. Blaylock: "I'm mad as hell because health care in America has become a web of business entities." (The remainder of her position appears a bit more restrained, and she acknowledges that government health care is not a panacea.)
I don't understand what is so pernicious about business entities. That includes all proprietorships, LLCs, Corps, and government regulated enterprises. We have laws. Are they breaking those laws? Can we fix the perceived problems with added laws or penalties? Sorry but "business is evil" is not going to cut it.
Dr. Metz: "I'm mad as hell because I'm an optimist. I believe that for every problem, there is a solution. And for the problem of our broken health care system, the solution is single-payer."
Hmmm. An optimist who believes he has stumbled upon the only solution, which is not a solution or a problem solver wherever it's been implemented, and he's so optimistic he sees no need to consider any alternative viewpoints whatsoever.
I'd be mad as hell, too, if I had all the answers and EVERY SINGLE DAMN SOUL on the planet didn't agree with me. Grow the hell up, Doc.
Dr. Huntington: "I'm mad as hell because Americans are not getting the information they need to make an educated decision about health care. The reality is that a single payer system has been working in other countries for decades and it can work here. But there is so much other influence, such undue corporate influence, that the truth doesn't penetrate."
Oh where to begin. Information? The clowns in DC DEFENDED the fact that they did not read or need to read the bill! And this illiterate "doctor" has the audacity to lecture the American people about who is or is not informed? What corporate influence does he refer to? GE is on board. GE's networks are one-stop brainwashing clinics for government health care. Wal-Mart is on board. Other major corporations have signaled to Obama they're on board. Now who's informed and who's not?
You see, people, WE THE PEOPLE are informed. A stethoscope around someone's neck doesn't mean they know everything or have all the facts. But if they claim they do, and we don't, they better pony up real fast.
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Georgia502 months, 3 weeks ago
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Meet the Doctors, cont'd...
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3rd and final...
Dr. Eusterman: "So let's be honest: the current health care system we have is terminal. And these 'options' that keep coming out of Washington are like prescribing aspirin for a tumor."
I actually agree with this M.A.H. doctor, though perhaps not for the reasons he might imagine. And I think his analogy needs reversed: Obamacare is like prescribing radiation therapy for a scratch.
Dr. Seward: "Many are facing a choice between good care and bankruptcy. ...there is a proven system of medical insurance that has been test-driven by every industrialized nation in the world. It's called single-payer. And just because the government runs it doesn't make it Socialist. Are fire and police socialist?"
It says he's a doctor of internal medicine, so excuse him for pontificating as if you're a kid and he's a pediatrician. Every industrialized nation with single-payer also rations health care. Only it's done by government bureaucrats, not doctors or insurance companies. And so far, socialists and communists have not staked their existence on common welfare topics such as roads, bridges, fire and police protection. But their many manifestos DO single out government health care as THEIR objective for THEIR agenda. That is because it gives them tremendous power and leverage over the people and has nothing to do with the delivery of health care services.
Dr. Sapir: "I'm mad as hell because most of my patients have no insurance and must wait four months to receive an appointment for a physical, and as long as a year to see a specialist. I'm mad as hell because rather than deal with the root cause of illness...blah...blah...blah."
Well, I have to admit...if this idiot runs an office that is so inefficient it takes his staff 4 MONTHS just to give patients an appointment, government health care admittedly would be a step up FOR HIM. But let's humor the doc. He wants to add 47 million people to the system, add NOT ONE MORE DOCTOR, and thinks his patients will have to wait LESS ???? As for root cause of illness, let's face it, America. Our biggest problems in the area of cardio-pulmonary and cancer are LIFESTYLE- AND DIET-RELATED! MOST of these problems can be fixed by eating better and taking a walk! WE are our own ROOT CAUSE in hundreds of thousands of cases of preventable death each year. Regardless of the system we have today or tomorrow, YOU CAN'T BLAME THE SYSTEM FOR YOUR BAD CHOICES. K? -
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ettucatk2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Oregon, the state that refused to treat a woman with cancer because it was too expensive, but sent her a letter offering a "death pill." Is this the best the Obama thugs could come up with? They really dig deep to come up with their worms.
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ettucatk2 months, 3 weeks ago
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ABC NEWS BLOWS THE ROOF OFF Obama's Marxist Government Takeover of Health Care...
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video
ABC News 20/20 Tells it like it is About Obama’s anti-Care …
http://wadesayswhat.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/abc-n... -
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moxxxxxxxxxx2 months, 2 weeks ago
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Georgia "Profit is what motivates the providers of goods and services to perform and deliver so well that you and I will agree to part with our money in exchange for perceived value."
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Profit does work for MATERIAL things that aren't necessary. It doesn't work when a person's life depends on the goods or services. Allowing a person to suffer or die so another can make profit is inhumane and evil. Legitimizing this behavior by labeling it as good business practice reduces you to the lowest denominator. You obviously have enough wealth to take care of yourself and don't want to concern yourself with others. why don't you just continue to focus on yourself and let those who are concerned about others do their job?-
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Georgia502 months, 2 weeks ago
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Let's say I get a terminal cancer diagnosis tomorrow. I have lots of financial and insurance resources that I can bring to bear on the condition.
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But in the end, the result is the same.
I've already made a PROFIT decision for my family. There's no way in hell I'm going to deplete my wife's retirement for my health. I'll take the bullet, so to speak.
So let's get real. We will all die, period. We may or may not have a say in the circumstances that attend our passing. For many of us, a decision could potentially be made that will delay or accelerate the date of our passing. The LAST entity I want involved in that decision process is government.
Insurance is about pooled resources and allocating those resources for effect. Do insurance companies make decisions that are detrimental to some? Sure. What government health care operation doesn't? What pbcutti needs to do is examine how his sister would have been treated under Eurocare or Canadacare. I'd be willing to bet that in the same circumstances, she would have died or would have been permanently paralyzed under rationed single-payer systems.
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Georgia502 months, 2 weeks ago
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What's truly astonishing about these M.A.H. doctors is that all of them bring absolutely nothing to the discussion outside of Obaminator talking points.
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Abysmally stupid, partisan, and...ah yes...mad as hell. They declare single-payer to be successful wherever it's been tried, yet haven't the time to regurgitate a single statistic to support their lies. "47 millions uninsured blah blah blah"...a long-since discarded lie. "United States citizens" when they know damn well illegals will be covered.
Complaining about a 4-month waiting period, then somehow thinking that adding 47 million patients overnight--while not adding one single additional doctor--is going to magically streamline the wait. Their own premise is absurd on its face...and they don't even see it.
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