Obama Says Doctors Perform Unnecessary Surgeries
Obama caused a huge uproar when he gave a press conference saying that he wants government to dictate whether or not a child’s tonsils are allowed to be taken out by a doctor. He claimed that doctors are all evil capitalists who only want to cut things out of little kids because its like mining for gold. Check it out:
Of course Obama is a crackpot and is wrong about healthcare if he thinks the government should step in and make these decisions on how to treat your family members instead of your doctor.
But you want to see an example of a doctor being greedy and performing unnecessary surgery? And seriously, why hasn’t the government stopped surgeries like this?
From CBS13 here:
“Renee” Ramsey is recovering from the surgery that
she’she’s been dreaming of for decades.“Since I was about 13, I always knew something was different,” said “Renee.”
SheHe used to be Richard; a green beret specialist in Vietnam. A tough guy who privately dreamed of wearing dresses.Richard was in the military for over 20 years and married twice. Richard eventually started to dress like a woman, but switched back into the uniform for official duties.
“Renee” is 77, and while genital re-assignment surgery is complicated, age, as long as there are not medical problems, usually isn’t an issue.
Renee says
shehe waited untilherhis wife died to have the surgery, and finally feels normal.The surgery can be expensive, $20,000.
The press and liberal world celebrate this as a good thing– a sexually imprisoned person is finally liberated after 77 years of suffering by having his dick cut off. They don’t see this as an old man likely suffering from grief and despair who wanted to mutilate himself.
Why wouldn’t the doctors talk this old man out of this horrifying surgery? Who is this old codger planning on having sex with? No one? Then what was the point of the surgery? Gender reassignment doctors like those at the Philadelphia center are greedy and should have very tight government regulation.
But in Obama’s world, having your dick and balls cut off is a matter of choice and the patient’s privacy should be respected. But having your kid’s tonsils removed is a dangerous procedure and must be decided, not by your doctor and you, but by a faceless bureaucracy.
From Charles Krauthamer ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302723.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter ):
“When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance before he even turns on the light in his office or hires his first nurse, who do you think pays? Patients, in higher doctor fees to cover the insurance.”…
…”Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.”
I’m amazed… simply amazed… and disgusted!
While I agree that insurance premiums are excessively high and often drive away good doctors from practice areas that are in demand, the problem is deeper than you assert. Specifically, according to the latest study done for Americans for Insurance Reform:
• Medical malpractice premiums, inflation-adjusted, are nearly the lowest they have been in over 30 years.
• Medical malpractice claims, inflation-adjusted, are dropping significantly, down 45 percent since 2000.
• Medical malpractice premiums are less than one-half of one percent of the country’s overall health care costs; medical malpractice claims are a mere one-fifth of one percent of health care costs. In over 30 years, premiums and claims have never been greater than 1% of our nation’s health care costs.
• Medical malpractice insurer profits are higher than the rest of the property casualty industry, which has been remarkably profitable over the last five years.
• The periodic premium spikes that doctors experience, as they did from 2002 until 2005, are not related to claims but to the economic cycle of insurers and to drops in investment income.
• Many states that have resisted enacting severe restrictions on injured patients’ legal rights experienced rate changes (i.e., premium increases or decreases for doctors) similar to those states that enacted severe restrictions on patients’ rights, i.e., there is no correlation between “tort reform” and insurance rates for doctors.
I have not yet analyzed the report, but it is consistent with my experience with the medical malpractice litigation. More notably, one would be naive to assume that Trial attorneys (plaintiff or defendant) are the only ones making substantial political donations. AMA and the Insurance Industry lobbies are very well funded.