California is known for incredible jumps in innovation and new technology. Every big city in California is known for some major innovation, association or business. Los Angeles: Hollwood. San Diego: technology and armed forces. San Francisco: finance and technology. The list goes on, of course.
Despite the increasing problems associated with a bloated budget and the potential for budget cuts every which way, life is still excellent in the Golden State. People come from other states, neighboring countries and other continents to enjoy the top-notch healthcare offered by California physicians. However, with the suggestion of Obamacare, some of these top flight healthcare options may no longer be available.
Say, for example, you are over 65 and have chronic knee pain or arthritis in the shoulder. Now, you can go to a doctor, and they can offer a number of treatments, including cortisone injections, physical therapy, medication or even surgery. If doctors are ordered to ration, they will no longer be able to easily give care to what is seen as "unnecessary" issues.
The Democrats pushing for the government-run healthcare say that the cost of healthcare won't change (false) and that treatment itself will stay the same, despite adding on tens of millions of new users into an already-packed system. This assertion in itself should make all rational people scratch their head.
What happens when you have a sandwich, and only one person is eating it? They get to eat that entire sandwich themselves. What happens when another person comes in and wants some? That whole serving becomes halved. And when six new people come in? The original resource (delicious sandwich) really isn't that fulfilling when its sliced so thin.
There is only so much money that the government can pump into healthcare, and only so many resources. If premiums allegedly won't go up, but millions of new consumers will come in, healthcare will be rationed. And with rationing, comes an implicit belief that some groups "deserve" better care than others. This in itself runs contrary to the oath that doctors take to treat all patients equally. If a 30-year-old man and a 75-year-old man come in with the same complaint, odds are under a rationed system, that the 30-year-old will be given preference for care, while the 75-year-old is instructed to wait and see, or receive nothing at all.
There is something very troubling about pushing for a system which would inherently pose harm to millions of Americans who have already acted responsibly and enrolled in healthcare programs for years, while giving preference to the age. Any person who believes that a doctor should have finally say in what their patients receive, and not a career bureaucrat who never had to spend more than a decade of their life in medical school and hospitals, should take a critical look at this half-baked new scheme.
Beyond this, does the thought that all medical records will be made available to a medically-ignorant bureaucrat make anyone confused? There are privacy laws to protect from exactly that: unlawful viewing of private medical records by anyone but your physician, so why is a system being pushed whereby medical records could be viewed by non-medical staff? That is troubling, and troubling more that so many prominent politicans don't seem to care. The physician takes the Hippocratic oath. The anonymous bureaucrat does not. Who do you think honestly cares more about your health and well-being?
