Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel's emergency room cure for About to Collapse Anyday

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 10/07/2016 - 10:16pm

I'm sure you all know about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of big-hearted Rahm Emanuel. Dr. Zeke is one of the chief architects of About to Collapse Anyday (which is more formally known as the ACA). Dr. Emanuel's proposed fixes (more like band-aids) to the ACA, seem to have as much validity as brother Rahm's police "reform" in Chicago.

First let's listen to Dr. Emanuel's health care prognoses at 3 different time points, the first in 2013 as shown on this Megan Kelly interview of 10/5/2016

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqlHsd7VuBY]

Doctor Emanuel offers three fixes for ACA's current catastrophic death spiral, which like a whirlpool will suck lots of people with it:

The following summary comes from Stuart Varney's Emanuel interval, the next day:

“You want to increase the subsidies that would help, increase the fines for not having insurance, and restore payments to insurance companies from taxpayers. Those were the three fixes you put out last night with Megyn Kelly,” Varney said.

Stuart Varney's interview

Tim Kaine must have taken debate lessons from Dr. Zeke, as noted by the latter's frequent over-talking of the Fox host (some of which WERE appropriate, but most not).

In turn, Dr. Zeke must have taken tap dancing lessons from Her Heinous in the way he skirts the issues or deflects to blame the ~~Russians~~ er...Republicans.

Now, in defense of the Democrats who hatched this ultimately unworkable and now moribund plan, comes this comment from a prominent Democrat who actually agrees with Kelly and Varney:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsCg-0GAbt4]

Now, a physician or psychologist may analyze this bit of cognizant difference as representative of schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. Neither one of these conditions are curable but are remediable (Bernie-Care).

So how about the three talking points Dr. Emanuel raised?

increase the subsidies

What is not clear is the referent--subsidies to the impoverished citizen or to the insurance companies? Yes, the statement is ambiguous but Dr. Z. E. did not elucidate to whom exactly were those subsidies to be directed.

increase the fines for not having insurance

Now that is a truly beneficial treatment, reminiscent of leeches being used to drain the blood of patient's suffering from a variety of maladies, chief of which is lack of financial resources. Yes, this wonderful tax will do just what the Doctor ordered: coerce the uninsured into feeding the Insurance industry under the guise of enticing the Insurers to re-enter a market in which they cannot make billions of dollars per year. Insurance companies will complain but their losses are really from expected profits--not real income.

restore payments to insurance companies from taxpayers

Now isn't this the very thing that people, such as those that called into the Varney program complained about? So one of Dr. Zeke's cures is increase the tax burden on the general populace rather than only on the uninsured. Dr. Zeke, you obey the hypocrite oath, not the Hippocratic Oath. The key tenet of the latter oath is "First Do No Harm."

Obama can never admit he was wrong
Medusa who once derided Bernie as threatening to destroy the ACA--is now an ACA champion of sorts: the Hillary Health Plan

So, add one more Hillbot to the weasel list--which grows every day. The nonsensical cure offered by Dr. Zeke is simply: more taxation and more insurance company subsidies. This is simply giving a cancer growth hormone.

Hat tip to MsGrin.

#BringBernieBack, #JillnotHill.

Tags:

ACA

Ezekiel Emanuel

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Comments

Submitted by MsGrin on Fri, 10/07/2016 - 11:32pm

Wow.

I am without words. All I can think of to say is that I don't want that architect designing and building any structure I set foot in.

I may actually dislike him as much as I do his brother.

It irritates me that Megyn Kelly is improving in my estimation of her by proximity to him.

We really did not get much hope or change it seems.

—

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 10/07/2016 - 11:39pm

The physician as factory worker--another side of the issue

The following is from Sermo, a website reserved for physicians:

The physician as factory worker

Submitted by MsGrin on Fri, 10/07/2016 - 11:50pm

Quite reserved

it wants folks to sign in with an account it recognizes.

—

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Submitted by duckpin on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 6:41am

No link for me but I have read most MD's are now employees

of hospitals or corporations who own practices. The days of an MD opening a practice with a receptionist/ clerk and a nurse are drawing to a close.

The AMA has had enough clout to place restrictions on foreign MD's coming into the USA to practice however. A foreign MD must complete a full internship before getting a license to practice. It seems to many that an MD from Germany(say) or Belgium has about as good a background as an American and this rule mainly serves to protect the high salaries - about 2ce those in Europe according to CEPR - of American doctors. European doctors probably don't need to perform a second internship.

The ACA seems to have been designed to fail after delivering windfall profits to Big Pharm & insurance companies.

—

"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Submitted by karl pearson on Fri, 10/07/2016 - 11:53pm

Approval of the ACA

The approval of the ACA averages around 39% and the disapproval averages around 50%. It's obvious that there are serious problems with this program. Competition has decreased and medical costs have increased. Also, the American people will be more disapproving of the ACA if their taxes increase because the insurance companies want to make more $$.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health...

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 2:01am

For those unable to link to the physician as factory worker

here are a few snippets:

A colleague giggled at my metaphor, “I am a factory worker.” The hospital machine sees numbers not patients. Patients have become black digits on the bottom of a business ledger. Economies have changed and entities once protected for their value to society now loom as imposing business structures: Universities with billions in endowments, and Hospital Systems generating large sums. The physician or hospitalist in this case is reduced to a pair of hands working with extenders to process the waves of patients. That all so necessary clinical encounter and connection to the patient is now reduced to a brief moment in time. This is a situation that generates a struggle to retain quality care and quality outcomes for the patients it serves.

I heard a hospital administrator ( who did not know I was a surgeon) bemoaning the fact that at our Level I center most ORs sat empty part of the night ( usually 2 or 3 were running). He didn't see why the scheduling couldn't force closer to 24/7 usage (patients and book keepers wanted fast turn-around of all Trauma). Yea right. Why should I want to sleep? At this hospital which I have gladly left, patient safety was never a concern (sue the doctors). If you had a patient complain that you were not generous with the opiates a representative contacted you within the hour. Said hospital has a huge methadone- Suboxone practice.

One of my favorites:

My patients see everything as them and I alone. Admin sees us both as widgets.

Medicine has become a machine turning out consumer products like a fast food joint. The quality isn't good, the providers are not happy, but the owners of the chain are making money. We sign our names ending with MD or DO which means other people, who cannot do what we do bill people and make money. The more people we sign our name on, the more drug stores, medical supply stores, practice owners, medical managers, and medical equipment regulators and others make. We have our work recorded and reviewed, not for quality, but for billing. We spend less time with the patient and more with the paper work. Granted, in the olden days some of the charting was bad, but the care was better. Back then we were trusted. Now we are billing units for the medical machine.

Emphases mine.

Submitted by lotlizard on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 3:58am

In the 1980s I suffered a medical emergency in Norway

and when time came to depart after four days in the hospital, members of the staff were saying, “She’s from Germany, so we have to write a bill — has anyone here ever written a bill?”

In the end someone found a form (just a photocopy of a photocopy of a hand-typed sheet), typed a two line invoice for a lump sum, and handed it to me.

That was the extent of the billing overhead. All the effort, all the focus was on care.

Submitted by MsGrin on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 12:38pm

Good medicine is at least as much art as science ime

Billing skills do not contribute to the benefit the patient or the satisfaction of the physician, best I can tell. Certainly not in a world where physician is cog.

—

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Submitted by Centaurea on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 2:04am

Sounds like

Sounds like the old "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" strategy. All I can say is, I wouldn't want the good Dr. Zeke practicing medicine upon my person, not even to affix a bandaid.

—

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 10/08/2016 - 8:50am

I don't know what confusion there could be over what Zeke

said. He's still pushing the scheme as devised by the Obama administration. Guaranteed profits for the insurance companies and Big Pharma while trying to fool the world that they're doing something for the 'little pipples'.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa