Canadians with chronic conditions are frequent users of the health-care system, but a new report shows many experience considerable difficulty getting the medical treatment they need.

Read more: ‘Sicker’ Canadians struggle to obtain treatment: report.

Via John Goodman’s blog & Medibid.

Elderly patients are being condemned to an early death by hospitals making secret use of “do not resuscitate” orders, an investigation has found. …

Action on Elder Abuse, an independent charity, carried out its own analysis of the official watchdog’s inspection reports. The charity’s findings, published today, uncover widespread evidence that patients are being left to die, without families knowing that such decisions have been taken.

Read more: Elderly patients condemned to early death by secret use of do not resuscitate orders.

(Via FIRM, Health Care BS)

A senior doctors’ leader has warned that the NHS is “creaking at the seams” as official figures showed almost a third more patients are waiting too long to be treated in hospital.

Read the whole article: NHS ‘creaking at the seams’ as waiting lists rise – Telegraph.
(via FIRM)

“The Great Society,” as Ronald Reagan once said, “is great only in power, in size and in cost.”

[A] study conducted by Joanna Bisgaier and Karin V. Rhodes published in the New England Journal of Medicine, [shows] something that is already known by most in the field – and denied only by those ignorant of the truth or with a political motive to deny it: the level of access granted by Medicaid and CHIP is completely insufficient to meet the demands of the population it purports to serve.

As Kathryn Nix writes at The Foundry, drilling down to the essence of the study: “While specialists turned away 11 percent of privately insured children, 66 percent of children with Medicaid were unable to get an appointment. For those who did, the waiting time was 22 days longer than for other patients.”

Read more: The Great Society’s Lie.

See also Domenech’s “More Medicaid Delusion,” where the following graph came from:

Lastly, see: Expanding the Medicaid Ghetto for how “reform” puts more people on Medicaid.

1. The “new Maine law allows insurers to charge older customers up to five times more than younger ones. But beginning in 2014, the federal healthcare law will cap that ratio at three to one,” reports The Hill. For why allowing insurers to more accurately price their premiums according to risk, see my Pajamas Media article “How to Insure Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions.”This law is in response to a 1993 law establishing community rating in Maine, which restricted how much insurers could vary rates.  For a summary of its damaging results, see “Maine Shows Path to Reform,” by Joseph Allumbaugh of the Heartland Institute.
2. In the same article, The Hill reports: “The Maine law … lets out-of-state insurers sell policies in Maine without getting a license there. But beginning in 2014, the federal law will require insurers to be licensed in every state where they want to sell coverage through a newly created insurance exchange.”  This allows for more competition and gives customers more freedom to by a plan not bloated with mandated benefits they do not need.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s legislature and governor have signed a bill intended to create a government-run monopoly health plan in the state, a.k.a., “single payer.” The Denver Post’s headline reveals its own, and the AP’s bias by referring to Maine’s plan as “universal health care.”  But remember having a government-run health plan does not guarantee that you get the medical care you need. The care is by far universal.  Health coverage is not health care.

For a critique of Vermont’s plan, see Vermont Takes the Single-Payer Plunge by Pete Suderman at Reason.

The National Health Service is today condemned over its inhumane treatment of elderly patients in an official report that finds hospitals are failing to meet “even the most basic standards of care” for the over-65s. …

In several cases considered by the Health Service Ombudsman, patients died without loved ones by their sides because of the “casual indifference” of staff and their “bewildering disregard” for people’s needs. …

The “harrowing” cases in the report disclose:

• An 82 year-old died alone because staff did not realise her husband had been waiting to see her for three hours
• A woman was not washed during 13 weeks in hospital, did not have her wound dressings changed and was denied food and drink
• A woman was discharged from hospital covered in bruises, soaked in urine and wearing someone else’s clothes
• The life-support system of a heart attack victim was switched off despite his wife asking to leave it on while she contacted the rest of the family

via Elder Abuse – Daily Brickbats : Reason Magazine.

My father-in-law needs cervical decompression surgery. He’s been told it will be 12 to 18 months and that the only way he will get the operation sooner is if he degrades further, potentially to the point of paralysis. Cancer patients, he’s been told, have priority. What options do patients have or are they at the mercy of the system?

via 18-month wait for spinal surgery – are you kidding me? – The Globe and Mail.

As Paul Hsieh, MD notes: “Fortunately, the US is not yet in such dire straits. Yet.”

Five years ago, Massachusetts adopted its “universal health care” plan, which served as the template for President Obama’s subsequent national health care legislation. However, Massachusetts’ problems of rising health costs and worsening access foreshadow similar problems for the rest of America — as well as how to avoid them.

Read more: Pajamas Media » Massachusetts: The Canary in the Coal Mine for ObamaCare.

“Having a Medicaid card in no way assures access to care,” said Dr. James B. Aiken, an emergency physician in New Orleans. …

“My Medicaid card is useless for me right now,” Ms. Dardeau said over lunch. “It’s a useless piece of plastic. I can’t find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.” …

With the expansion of Medicaid to cover nearly all people under 65 with incomes up to 133 percent of the official poverty level (up to $29,330 a year for a family of four), Medicaid will soon be the nation’s largest insurer. It accounts for almost half of the increase in coverage expected under Mr. Obama’s health law, but has received less attention than other parts of the law regulating private insurance. …

To hold down costs [spending], it has cut Medicaid payments to doctors, dentists, hospitals and other health care providers several times in the last two years. …

Dr. Kim A. Hardey, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Lafayette, said he received about $1,000 from the Louisiana Medicaid program for providing prenatal care and delivery for a full-term pregnancy, compared with $2,400 from private insurance.

With the expansion of Medicaid eligibility, he said, more of his patients will be on Medicaid, and fewer will have private insurance, which helps offset the financial losses doctors sustain on their Medicaid business.

Already, Dr. Hardey said, many of his patients have jobs with private insurance but switch to Medicaid when they become pregnant, avoiding premiums, deductibles and co-payments.

More: Cuts Leave Patients With Medicaid Cards, but No Specialist to See – NYTimes.com.

If government continues to immorally force taxpayers to fund Medicaid at least its co-payments, premiums, and deductibles should be higher.

(Via FIRM)

The issue isn’t unique to University Hospital. Many physicians across Colorado and the country have stopped taking Medicaid and Medicare patients in recent years because they say they are not reimbursed enough by those government plans. Doctors’ offices typically can break even on Medicare patients and are reimbursed about 70 cents on the dollar for the costs of caring for Medicaid patients.

…

Health care experts say the problem is likely to get worse as millions of uninsured Americans are added to the Medicaid program. Just because those people have insurance, some argue, it doesn’t mean they will find doctors to treat them.