How many times have we been told by liberals that the
news section of a paper is for facts, and opinions are reserved for the editorial
page? We all know this is hogwash and
the Charlotte Observer wallows in it every chance they get. Last Sunday’s edition was no exception.
What is really despicable is the way these people
propagandize health care. Progressives
would have us believe health insurance is the same as care and in doing so they
have driven the cost of premiums and deductibles through the roof. The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. They have managed to turn North Carolina’s middle-class
– those who make $30,600 to $96,812 a year – into beggars by forcing them to
accept federal government subsidies, or onto the Medicaid rolls.
Medicaid was designed to help the poor and
disabled. Now this overburdened program is becoming a vehicle for a single-payer system.
The Charlotte Observer would have us believe Medicaid is the cure for
all our healthcare needs and our failure to expand this program is directly
responsible for numerous deaths in North Carolina:
Saxe
often saw children on Medicaid who were brought in by mothers who worked and
were not eligible for Medicaid themselves. “They were my patients too, but they
would say, ‘Oh, I can’t see you. I don’t have the money.’ ”
As a result, “you
have a population of women of child-bearing age, some of whom didn’t come in
and get contraception, and that puts them at risk for having another baby at a
short interval.”
Saxe recalled one
patient in her 40s who had been discharged from the hospital after having
several strokes but had failed to keep follow up appointments because she
didn’t have insurance or the cash to pay. “She could have died waiting to see
me,” Saxe said.
Indeed, an
estimated 455 to 1,145 unnecessary deaths a year can be attributed to North
Carolina’s failure to expand Medicaid, according to a 2014 study published in
the journalHealth Affairs. The study also estimated that 14,776 North
Carolina residents would face catastrophic medical bills because of the state’s
decision.
First of all, women can get contraceptives
at a number of free clinics at no cost. Second, why is a poor mother unable to qualify
for Medicaid and her children can? Could
it possibly be that she’s an illegal alien? Hmmm? Third, non-profit hospitals provide indigent
care. Besides, you can still have
insurance and not afford a doctor because of a $9000 deductible thanks to
Obamacare.
I find it laughable the study in Health
Affairs used the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment which was highly critical
of Medicaid. OHIE concluded the
following:
“This randomized, controlled
study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in
measured health outcomes in the first two years, but it did increase use of
health services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates
of depression, and reduce financial strain.”
We
shouldn’t be surprised progressives, who were critical of this study, are now
spinning it to their advantage. These people
will bastardize anything. Here is what Avik Roy wrote in his broadside, How
Medicaid Fails the Poor:
Immediately, progressive bloggers went
into overdrive to explain these results away.
“The sample size was too small,” they said, even though new medicines
for diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure routinely show
significantly improved health outcomes in much smaller trials. “Two years isn’t long enough to show a
significant benefit,” they insisted, even though new drugs that failed to show
any benefit in two years would be summarily rejected by the FDA and abandoned
by sponsors.
The Medicaid cohort reported that they
felt better about their health and their financial security as a result of
enrolling in the program and were less depressed. We can presume that the 40 percent of
Medicaid “winners” who didn’t bother to fill out the application felt
differently; they, however, were not surveyed.
The Charlotte Observer didn’t mention
the caveats Health Affairs enumerated at the bottom of their hypothesis. One being an article published by the New
England Journal of Medicine entitled, Mortality and Access to Care among Adults
after State Medicaid Expansions. Here is
the takeaway:
METHODS
Study Design
We used a differences-in-differences quasi-experimental design
that incorporated data before and after Medicaid expansions in both the
expansion states and the control states.
Quasi-experimental design? What in the hell is that? Is that an oxymoron like the Affordable Care
Act? Maybe we should ask Dr. Benjamin D.
Sommers about his association with The Commonwealth Fund. That suspect organization had a hand in this
whole Obamacare fiasco. Here is an excerpt from
Michelle Malkin’s article:
The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its
resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the
groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in
March 2010.
Perhaps one of the journalists
participating in these indoctrination sessions can enlighten the public on the
people, funding, and ideology driving the Commonwealth Fund’s media “education”
campaign
I wonder if this so-called journalist at
the Charlotte Observer attended one of these sessions. Her use of suspect studies and reports is indicative
of indoctrination.
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