April 21, 2016
By Anna Morris, Co-Editor, Freedom Fighters of America
GOP presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich says he will repeal Obama Care because it is not working, and perhaps because that is expected of a Republican candidate. At the same time he is openly working for Oregon-style Obama Care expansion in Ohio, thus curing Obama Care with more Obama Care. [JohnKasich.com/HealthCare]
Oregon style Obama Care as I see it is the dangerous and degrading system of public health for all. As of yesterday, redstate.com reports there has been waste in this scam, in excess of $10 million. As in more than 10 million dollars that supported bureaucracy and never healed anyone, poor or otherwise. [1]
That is chicken scratch compared to the more than $300 million blown when now disgraced Governor Kitzhaber parcelled out to political cronies, to set up a computer sign up for Oregon Obama Care, that failed. [1] None of those hundreds of millions healed anyone either.
Both the Oregon "fundamental transformation" and what Governor Kasich proposes for Ohio, using similar terminology, are based on people staying well so the system is not used so much. Obama Care calls for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to coordinate care, and attempt to enforce wellness for patients. [cms.gov/Medicare] Oregon thought it would improve on that idea by creating Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs), a different name for the same thing. CCOs are responsible for how the latest $10 million, plus, got blown on bureaucracy.
As I understand it from the ACA itself, a federal health care goal will be to have every single patient in the U.S. under an ACO. The redstate.com article quotes from the "Portland Tribune", "While the federal reforms tacked Medicaid as well as private insurance, Oregon's reforms looked only at Medicaid."
This is perhaps correct on paper though in reality Oregon's doctors, beginning in the early '90s, hounded and terrorized admitted tobacco users, even those who were self paying and beholden to no one. One doctor, willing to admit something like this was going on, mumbled something about smokers "using too many scarce resources." On that occasion I had accompanied a friend to her doctor so she could get some simple antibiotics. I wondered for a long time why common antibiotics, the same type that are fed routinely to livestock, were in such short supply. What I missed was the social engineering aspect in Oregon medicine and which would soon be in federalized medicine under Obama Care.
About ten years later, after Obama Care was in effect, Oregon developed an elaborate CCO network to handle the social engineering and anything else they could think of for those "scarce health care dollars." Governor and Doctor, now disgraced and removed from office, John Kitzhaber made up a tale to illustrate his concept of CCOs. He said, for instance, if an elderly lady with heart failure lived in a stuffy apartment without air conditioning, and during the heat of the summer she repeatedly went to the ER for aggravated heart failure, a way to save on ER visits would be to buy her an air conditioner!
A conservative approach might have been to enlist churches or service groups to help in such cases, but Kitzhaber, a liberal Democrat, envisioned a bureaucracy that could furnish air conditioners and anything else that could be written off to "health care." CCOs were born.
CCO functions have to do with that ever elusive attempt to keep people so well they will never need sick care. (Beyond that CCOs mesh with other layers of "health care" bureaucracy to keep whole communities and districts so well they never need sick care.) CCO workers are kind of like social workers for each patient, making sure patients eat right, have rides to the doctor, even babysitters so they can get out to exercise. What could possibly go wrong?
I previously wrote an article for FFOA about one Oregon CCO that paid pregnant women to stop smoking. (Smoking is ever on the minds of these liberal medocrats, perhaps because wiping out smoking worldwide is a UN/WHO goal for "global health", speaking of the New World Order.)
The pregnant women were "paid" with gift certificates from local stores and similar things. That sounds pretty harmless and the program was voluntary. Digging deeper it appeared this CCO backed the effort with about $600,000 worth of bureaucracy. There were coordinators, trainers and others who made the program function. What's money to liberals?
"As a result of the rules created by Kitzhaber and his political cronies," reports redstate.com, "the CCOs were not required to limit their administrative costs to 15 percent as were the private insurance companies providing health care coverage in Oregon."
You guessed it! A recent federal audit found, "11 of the 16 CCOs in Oregon exceeded the 15% limit on administration costs," according to the redstate.com article. The result was overspending by about $10 million.[1] So much for "scarce resources" and "scarce health care dollars" which necessitate eliminating patients deemed to commit lifestyle crimes.
We started out with presidential candidate John Kasich's proposed expansion of Obama Care in Ohio, which is based on the Oregon model according to one of the many links at JohnKasich.com/HealthCare . On his main page he wallows through the idea of keeping people well so they won't ever get sick and need to use the system. That was the dream of the other John...Kitzhaber. If elected, Kasich may or may not technically "repeal" Obama Care, but beyond that he appears to be in love with a scheme that breeds costly bureaucracy.
Providing a social worker nanny for each patient costs less than treating sick people? Exactly how much sick care can be covered by the $10 million bureaucratic loss uncovered by federal audit in Oregon? When those "scarce health care dollars" are spent on anything other than actual care, everyone should be disgusted!
We could write it off as yet another example of bureaucratic pigs swilling at the public trough except that Oregon also pioneered lifestyle rationing from the very beginning of their experiment. Friends in Oregon tell me it is still the same, though now the pressure is to accept "smoking cessation" classes, which are another bureaucratic money drain. If the Oregon system is saving any money perhaps it is because some Oregonians have found it too uncomfortable to go to doctors for social engineering. I know several personally who avoid doctors like the plague.
The media wants to run the present and upcoming elections. Personalities and conflict, as with any "reality" show, generate ratings. Somewhere along the line people forgot to focus on Obama Care. Yeah, all the GOP candidates say repeal...and replace. Replace with what? It looks like Kasich will replace with more of the same. This is not a "reality" show, it is life and death for all of us who will likely need a doctor's care at some time in our lives. Margaret Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism, is pretty soon it runs out of other peoples' money. Obama Care is not socialized medicine but it is heavily funded with taxes, fines and mandated insurance which SCOTUS called a tax.
Oregon started out telling patients who committed health crimes, including having more than two alcoholic drinks per day, that they could not continue to use what was scarce and needed by others. Ah yes, about $10 million of scarce resources was needed for a bloated bureaucracy. Remember that when you vote!
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[1] redstate.com/diary/qstarweb/2016/04/19/millions-mis-spending-found-federal-audit-oregon-health-care
"Millions of Mis-Spending Found by Federal Audit of Oregon Health Care, Dean Chambers (diary), April 19, 2016
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