How is this for a mandate - one judge admitting well after the fact he ruled in a manner on a case reflecting his own viewpoint and in so doing striking down the laws of 50 sovereign states by creating a right to privacy found no where in the language of the document he swore to protect and defend. How about that?

I have an idea, how about get the government out of healthcare almost completely. Give payments to the poor for healthcare. And provide guarentee issue for medicare until a better health status insurance can be created. But in all cases use current insurers and providers - no government ones.

As the opponents of Medicare at the time noted - it will destroy our health care system. Seems it is trying to do just that. How about eliminating federal health care law? That would improve things considerably.

Let me see, trash talk or substance? What will it be . . . .

;)

The SD mandate's unconstitutional; the Obamacare individual mandate is not. How's that for not deflecting?

DR? Theodore it is very tiring when you compare our infant mortality rate with other countries. Here we count every live birth, regardless of how long they breathe. In other countries, they do not.

Our life expectancy numbers are lower than most countries because A. we are much MUCH bigger than other socialized medicine countries and B. accidental deaths reduce our life expectancy totals.

I guess if our vacination rates are among the lowest then we have a tremendous amount of children not attending school. Did you ever try to enroll a child in kindergarten or grammar school without up to date records? It can't be done.

You need to get out and see more Medicaid patients. Around here we have many young but too lazy to hold a job, people on Medicaid. And their numerous children are also on Medicaid.

The statistics you stated are from the World Health Organization and have been proven false many times. You need to quit seeing so many patients and get more current information.

MikeB I enjoyed your link - particularly this part

"Peggy Gibson, a Democratic state representative who voted against the measure, said the law amounted to “government intrusion into people’s medical decisions.”

Isn't that the problem with Obamacare and all of it's non-medical Czars?

Dr Theodore, your comment may surprise those who do not realize how leftist medical students are becoming. The allure of single payer has led many, who have no concept of actually opening an office and starting a practice, like a small business, to thinking they would not have to deal with the complications of insurance. Medical students today plan to work for some sort of group or clinic and are chiefly interested in their benefits package. I know because I teach them physical diagnosis and history taking. They have no idea of what this would mean to patients.

Dr. Theodore throws around comments as hyperbole to defend a disasterous health care bill. Glaring failures, ineffecient, ineffective.

Here is the reality....

Our system is "expensive" because the end user, the patient, does not pay the bill. Thus, this person is incentivized to use as much health care as possible because it is "free" to him. Obamacare does not address this. So to actually think Obamacare is the solution is silly because it does not address this problem.

My example, Lasix eye surgery. Most medical plans do not cover it. Thus, due to the marketplace, the cost of this form of eye surgery actually has gone down because the end user actually pays the bill for it. This has occurred while the cost of health care has gone up.

Our infant mortality is the worse because we calculated it far differently than other nations. In the US, if you take a breath when you are born, you are a live birth. No matter what shape you are in. In other countries, it is not calculated that way. So our infant mortality is higher. So Dr. Theodore, you morality issues about infant mortality are hogwash.

In addition, our life expectancy is lower not only because we calculate infant mortality differently but because the citizens of the United States shoot each other if far greater numbers and kill themselves in car accidents in far greater numbers. This hardly has anything to do with health care. Thus using overall mortality as a marker for quality of health care is erroneous.

Lastly life expectancy with people being treated for cancer is FAR superior in this nation. It is because doctors are not disincentivized to treat. Patients get the latest drugs and treatments. Thus they live longer because care is not rationed. Obamacare will ration care. That is how the "savings" in socialized medicine are generated. It is great if you are paying for it, it stinks if you actually need care.

So what happens? People that have the financial means flock to the United States for treatment of their cancer. This would include various political leaders of Canada. This is a fact that the proponents of Obamacare do not like to bring up.

Re William Theodore MD:

"According to OECD data, we pay 16% of GDP for health care, while the next highest, Germany, pays 11.2%."

This is the sort of simplistic, black-and-white, out-of-context thinking for which the left is famous. Citing such abstract statistics completely ignores a number of complicated realities. What if medical care is more broadly defined in the U.S. compared to other countries? How much is spent on black market medical care in countries like Canada, where private medicine is illegal? To what extent are other countries subsidized by the new medical technologies and new drugs that come out of the U.S. system?

Most important is the first consideration. What the OECD percentages obscure is that what counts as "health care" varies from country to country. In the U.S., dental care, cosmetic dental care, plastic surgery, psychological care, psychological counseling, analytic therapy, couples counseling, fertility treatment, addiction treatment, and various forms of physical therapy and sports medicine are all considered "health care" and are routinely paid for by private and government insurance programs. In Britain and Canada most of these services are NOT provided by the socialist medical systems, or barely provided. (Although it has changed in recent years, dental care used to be virtually non-existent in Britian - and it showed.) Psychological care is also barely existent outside the U.S. - the idea of weekly therapy sessions for individuals feeling down or couples counseling or putting your 8-year-old on Ritalin or having 10 percent of the population on anti-depressants or cosmetic dentistry (such as braces) is an alien concept outside of the United States. In short, it takes an incredible ignorance of American health care and the health care systems of other industrialized nations to cite those OECD statistics as you did.

Still deflecting aren't we.

The individual mandate has been declared unconstitutional in what - 27 states? We obviously will see where it where it ends up based upon Justice Kennedy's feelings - hopefully he bases it on the 10th amendment, but for my preferences if decides to pull a Roe based decision (because I feel like it) and declare it unconstitutional I'll take it. SDs mandate's constitutionality is currently unknown, although I will admit I may have missed a recent court decision. You still haven't responded to the post as written however. Interesting. Nothing to say on it?

Doc T, I won't pile on, your stats have been thoroughly debunked many times. No one engrossed in the policy discussions give it any validity unless just trying to score points. But there is a very important point that is valid in your post - the expense. We do spend a lot of money on health care. Nothing wrong with that really, as a country gets wealthier they will want to, and with our health status issues surrounding chronic diseases we are going to be expensive. But the question is who is actually paying for that expense. The taxpayer does to a large extent for Medicare and Medicaid and SCHIP and potentially Obamacare. But every employee of every company sacrifices wages because the company has to pay for claims or insurance premiums which have moved much higher over time. And this has happened, I believe, because we don't pay for our care, some third party payer pays for almost all of it absent some minor co-pays and deductibles. HDHP's have shown some promise to try and get the consumer back into the value decision making, but we stilll expect insurance to pay too much of the little stuff. That is why costs keep escalating. There are some other very interesting cost drivers coming from providers.

But make no excuses, the system is expensive and on its current path I would argue is probably unsustainable. That Obamacare doubled down on all the stuff that is driving costs up and forsake anything that might help control them is just one more reason it needs to be scrapped.

This "law," that will in a few years be reviewed by the Supreme Court, is the worst abomination ever foisted upon the American people. Everybody, who did not have much of a chance to vote on it, should refuse to abide by it.