A System So Good We Want To Opt-Out

From The New York Post.

We all know that Sen. Ron Wyden is attempting to get a waiver from the onerous Obamacare that he helped promote, but here is a complete List as of now of those that have been granted.

The United Federation of Teachers -- one of President Obama's key political backers -- is the biggest beneficiary of a White House sweetheart deal that will exempt certain outfits from complying with new health-care rules, officials revealed yesterday.

The one-year waiver, approved last month by the Department of Health and Human Services, covers all 351,000 members of the UFT's welfare fund, which provides health care and other benefits.

"Big labor spent millions of dollars pushing ObamaCare, which they made sure was stuffed full of union giveaways," said Patrick Semmens, spokesman for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which represents businesses.

"So the fact that the largest waiver now belongs to New York teachers union bosses might be funny if the rest of America wasn't stuck complying with the bill's onerous mandates."

Obama Care Blow Back-part 2

According to the Wall St. Journal, McDonald,s is set to eliminate healthcare coverage for up to 30,000 employees. Stating that they are in need of an exemption from the new Obamacare guidelines or they will have to discontinue the decade or longer program.

According to McDonalds, the reports that they will discontinue coverage "completely false".
"We're not going to walk away from health-care insurance completely, but we're going to have to look for alternatives if we can't get the resolution we're seeking from Health and Human Services," McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud told Bloomberg.

I guess time will tell.

Obama Care Blow Back.

From the L.A. Times.
By Duke Helfand

"Major health insurance companies in California and other states have decided to stop selling policies for children rather than comply with a new federal healthcare law that bars them from rejecting youngsters with preexisting medical conditions.

Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others will halt new child-only policies in California, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere as early as Thursday when provisions of the nation's new healthcare law take effect, including a requirement that insurers cover children under age 19 regardless of their health histories."

WHO DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING?

Let The Rationing Begin

EUGENE, Ore - Dr. Daniel Bustos is an Ophthalmologist at Eugene's PeaceHealth Medical Center. He helps his patients with their vision. A recent change in a Medicare is something he hopes they all see clearly.

Medicare recently cut how much they pay him by 21 percent. "It's a very large chunk," he said.

Dr. Bustos says this will affect doctors like him who work with elderly people. About half his patients are on Medicare.

"When these reimbursements for these physicians for these patients that they're seeing drop down by 21 percent, they're going to have to adjust costs somewhere else," he said.

He suggests some doctors might adjust these costs by hiring less staff to run the clinics, charging other patients more, or taking fewer Medicare patients. Some doctors might end up taking no Medicare patients at all.

"Their doctors are going to have less money effectively to treat them," explained Dr. Bustos. "And I think it's important as patients to understand what the effects are going to be based on the decisions our lawmakers have made."

CNN- Health care reform speech.

In the President's health care reform speech on Wednesday night he attempted to dispel the many "rumors" that are challenging his quick and easy "reform" of our health care. You can watch the CNN synopsis of the speech but one thing comes to my mind as I glanced at their headline: "CNN Poll: Double-digit post-speech jump for Obama plan". They claim that 2 out of 3 Americans who watched the speech favor his health care plans-a 14 point gain among speech-watchers. That's great however in the last paragraph of the article they state: "The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican. Our best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is about 8-10 points more Democratic than the population as a whole." They also state that there is a survey sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points which means that combined with the 8-10 demographic skew perhaps no one changed their mind.
Chalk up another one for the Cable Nutjob Network.

Nation Health Care?

The following was pinched from ZZMike @ MaxRedline Blog.

Do you really want the government managing your healthcare?
Many people extol the virtues of health care in Socialist countries like England and Canada but there are many examples of how this system can be found to be less than ideal.
One example from England is the following:
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.

Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.

Dr Jonathan Richardson, a consultant pain specialist from Bradford Hospitals Trust, is among more than 50 medics who have written to NICE urging the body to reconsider its decision, which was taken in May.

He said: "The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients. It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate."

Iris Watkins, 80 from Appleton, in Cheshire said her life had been "transformed" by the use of therapeutic injections every two years. The pensioner began to suffer back pain in her 70s. Four years ago, despite physiotherapy treatment and the use of medication, she had reached a stage where she could barely walk.

"It was horrendous, I was spending hours lying on the sofa, or in bed, I couldn't spend a whole evening out. I was referred to a specialist, who decided to give me a set of injections. The difference was tremendous",

Within days, she was able to return to her old life, gardening, caring for her husband Herbert, and enjoying social occasions.

"I just felt fabulous – almost immediately, there was not a twinge. I only had an injection every two years, but it really has transformed my life; if I couldn't have them I would be in despair".