“The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said routine mammograms aren't necessary for women of average cancer risk in their 40s, and that women between 50- and 74-years-old don't need to undergo mammograms more often than every other year. The guidelines, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also recommend that physicians abstain from teaching women how to examine their breasts for signs of cancer because of a lack of evidence that it is of any benefit.”

-         Wall Street Journal, Nov. 16, 2009

As many of you know, I would be dead now had I followed this new advice from a government task force. So you can guess that I’m outraged by this finding.

Fortunately, the likelihood that insurance companies will use this finding as an excuse to deny coverage for mammograms to women under 50 is slim. Why? Because the states still control the mandates given to insurance companies, and there is enough competition among insurance companies in many states.

But if the healthcare bills currently winding their way through Congress are signed into law, it’s another story. The federal government will take over all control of mandates and what can and cannot be paid for, whether via a single payer or a co-op system. If a federal task force (made up of unelected officials) makes a determination that women don’t need mammograms until age 50, it’s likely the federal government will mandate the denial of coverage of all mammograms for women under 50. The effect: more 40-49 year old women will die of cancer.

(Question: does the benefit of saving money on these routine screenings and the treatment of these women outweigh the cost of these unnecessary deaths? Fight against these healthcare bills, or you won’t have much say in the answer to this question – it will definitely be above your pay grade.)

This leads to the question of why this task force finding came out now, in the middle of the healthcare debate? Any politician, even un-seasoned, can see that this finding will cause an outcry, so why allow its release?  Yes – I have a guess as to why: it’s a sop to the insurance companies to get them back on-board in support of the healthcare bills being considered. It is a clear demonstration to them that federal government control will lead to lower costs – at least for the big insurance companies who are allowed to survive (for awhile, at least). 

So the healthcare debate has gone from lowering costs through more preventative care, to the denial of one of the most effective preventative care procedures to help the insurance companies so they will support, or at least not fight, ObamaCare. We will be forced to purchase federal-government-mandated policies (one-size-fits-all) that will be much more expensive, yet cover less than what we get today, while paying higher taxes for this “benefit.” Sounds like a great deal to me. Then again, maybe I’m not even supposed to express an opinion, given that this government panel doesn’t believe my life is important enough to be concerned about.

Take those evil banks that wouldn’t lend to minorities, closing them out of the housing market. Everyone deserves a good home, so government had to step in with new laws and create the taxpayer-backed Freddie and Fannie, in order to force those greedy bankers to loan money to minorities so they could buy houses. The next thing we knew, those evil speculators tricked a bunch of poor people into purchasing houses they couldn’t afford; and other evil speculators bundled the loans; and the evil Wall Street executives bet American’s retirement money on the bundles, until it all came crashing down on itself. Then the government had to bail out those “too big to fail” on Wall Street and the banks. Now the greedy Wall Street and bank executives are getting paid too much, so the government has to restrict their pay and realign it to lower the risks they take.

Another example is our current healthcare market. We’ve been told the evil insurance companies don’t care about patients and do everything they can to restrict necessary procedures. (Don’t ask me why the healthcare plans include forcing every American – strike that and change it to every resident in America – to purchase health insurance.) Additionally, doctors are cutting off diabetics’ feet and removing children’s tonsils to make a profit. (Maybe we should keep diabetics and children away from these greedy doctors.) The healthcare market is so bad that the government believes it will be able to squeeze out the waste in order to cover more people at a lower cost per person. And we can’t even consider ideas like selling insurance across state lines or allowing individuals the same tax breaks that employers receive for purchasing health insurance. We all know that allowing more market freedom would just cause more greed and evil-doing, which would then require additional government involvement in order to save us all.

Geez - with all of this evidence of market evil, the last thing we need is to create a new market. J

Most have already heard about Van Jones, who resigned from his post of Environmental Czar due to his links to communism and the 9/11 conspiracy nuts. And some have heard about Cass Sunstein, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who believes animals should have the same rights as people. But there are so many more Obama advisers with out-of-the-mainstream beliefs that it is becoming extremely difficult to keep up with the revelations.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will share some thoughts on what these people can tell us about the President’s potential policies. Some of my thoughts may seem whacky, but as we rang in 2009, who would have thought that the government would take over the banks and two automobile companies within a few short months?

1. Lisa P. Jackson and the EPA

On April 17, 2009, the EPA found that six man-made “greenhouse gases are contributing to air pollution that may endanger public health and welfare.”[1] One of the main culprits is carbon dioxide – the very carbon dioxide that each of us exhales with every breath we take throughout our lives.

If our breaths are killing our planet, isn’t it the EPA’s responsibility, as the governmental agency responsible for protecting our environment, to try to decrease the number of breaths exhaled by Americans over our lifetimes? Could this be the logic behind ObamaCare, under which rationing of healthcare by government bureaucrats will be the only way to keep costs from exploding? Perhaps this is also the reason that President Obama has been such a firm abortion-advocate during his entire political career.

In an August 28, 2009 article on the Huffington Post[2], the Obama-appointed EPA Administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said that poor Americans are significantly more affected by this man-caused air pollution, which she implies is primarily caused by richer Americans. 

If richer Americans are causing most of the greenhouse gases, couldn’t we eliminate greenhouse gases by lowering economic prosperity so there are fewer richer Americans? Could this be the logic behind allowing the economic recession to continue to worsen? Additionally, this completely explains why then-Candidate Obama expressed his desire to “spread the wealth around.”

Check back regularly for more...

1. Too many government mandates on what insurance must cover cause insurance rates to increase and no ability to shop across state lines reduces competition.  This reduces the number of people who can afford insurance for catastrophic occurences.
2. No portability causes people to be uninsured between jobs.
3. Patients who are insured often don't know anything about the costs since they receive their insurance through their employers.  This often causes patients to use the healthcare system when they wouldn't had they needed to pay out-of-pocket.  Additionally, uninsured patients often misuse hospital emergency rooms, where they receive free care no matter how minor their illness.
4. A lack of personal responsibility causes many Americans to believe that someone else will take care of them if they make bad decisions.
5. Malpractice insurance costs have gone through the roof over the last couple of decades.

1. Reduce state mandates and allow people to shop for insurance across state lines.  We should be able to purchase insurance for catastrophic care only if we want (which would be much less expensive than current health insurance, which covers everything from accupuncture to alcohol rehab - kind of like expecting good rates on auto insurance that covers gasoline and oil changes).  We should also be able to save tax-free money in a health savings account to use for general care.  These HSA accounts should be able to accumulate over time, and should be able to be inherited upon death just like any other asset.  Also, if each person had to spend their own money on their general care, doctors would be forced to offer competitive rates, just as lasik eye surgeons and plastic surgeons (not to mention veterinarians) do now.  Bottom line - we want more choices!
2. Insurance should be owned by the individual/family, and not by the employer.  We don't receive auto or home insurance from our employers, and you may notice that auto insurance costs keep going down.  Also, health insurance companies should be able to provide discounts based on factors such as weight, smoking, and alcohol consumption, just as auto insurance companies provide discounts for students with high GPAs and on cars that have alarms.
3. Tort reform to place caps on what attorneys can receive for lawsuits against doctors in order to reduce the malpractice insurance that excellent doctors have to pay - and pass on to us via higher fees.
4. Allow people to suffer the consequences of their decisions - and not be saved by the taxpayers.  We, as good Americans, should give to charities to help these people.  But it is not the government's responsibility to save everyone from their bad decisions all the time.

If you have read all the way to here, thank you very much for your attention and consideration.  I hope that you will speak out with me against government-run healthcare in America.  I hope I don't have a reoccurence of cancer, but if I ever do, I pray that I can receive the same quality care that saved my life 1 1/2 years ago.  God bless us all.