ObamaCare

My Facebook friend Mike posted a link to a Snopes article titled: Senior Death Warrants that responds to a viral email message that uses actress Natasha Richardson's death to proclaim that she would still be alive if her accident happened in the United States instead of Canada. Snopes speaks to the inaccuracy of that email message concluding that it contained inaccuracies and speculation. That viral email goes on to denounce President Obama's healthcare proposals saying that senior citizens would suffer under it. Here are a few of the Snopes responses to the email:

• Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada's and England's.
  
  Although the health care initiative proposed by President Obama (commonly dubbed "ObamaCare") is often characterized as the adoption of a medical system identical to that used in Canada and/or the UK, that characterization is not accurate. The President's plan calls for providing Americans with the option of government health insurance (which will compete with private insurance plans), not for replacing the entire U.S. medical system with a single-payer, government-funded system. (Critics maintain, though, that a public insurance plan would inevitably drive private insurers out of business, thereby setting the U.S. on the road to government-run health care.)
• In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed.
We could find no documentation supporting the claim that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) absolutely denies all coverage of "heart repairs or stents or bypass" to patients over the age of 59. The NHS did not point us to any such policy in response to our inquiry, and many readers from the UK have told us that they (or someone they personally knew) have had such procedures performed on them despite their being older than 59.
• If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay
As federal employees, members of Congress are eligible for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which is not a single health care plan but rather a collection of many different private health insurance plans from which enrollees can choose. In general, the FEHBP offerings are similar to Medicare (with prescription drug coverage), although even supporters of a national health program have criticized the FEHBP for having the "same problems of private plans generally: administrative waste, restrictions on health care providers, inequities, and inadequate cost control."

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I am pretty concerned about the federal government expanding it's control in this area. What the government does is usually bureaucratic and pretty wasteful. That said I do think that reform in healthcare is needed. Many people who really need healthcare either cannot afford it or are denied coverage because of preexisting conditions.. and, as I posted about earlier this year, many people are forced to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills.

I think that the issue needs to be addressed. I wish that the AMA or some other private group would take it on but I don't think that they will. I think that we will be left with whatever congress gives us. Of course.. in ten years most of America will be on Medicare as us baby boomers sail into our senior years :)