cancer

This week the Congressional Budget Office projected enormous cost increases under the current congressional plan for national health care. It was promoted as saving taxpayers money, but the CBO estimates a cost over $1 trillion and it is likely to raise the tax burden for many Americans to close to 60% of their already dwindling incomes, as government bureaucrats balloon the cost of what is already the most expensive health care system in the world. The devastating financial impact of ObamaCare for the nation and every citizen is now overwhelmingly clear. But just in case you still harbor any illusions about how disastrous current proposals for national health care would be, I thought it was time to revisit the other cost — the cost in human suffering and loss of life under socialized medicine.

A key element of the cynically misnamed Affordable Health Choices Act, which is the plan currently being rushed through congress to meet deadlines and criteria set by President Obama, is rationing health care using Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) methodology where government bureaucrats would set up schedules by which treatment would be allocated based on statistics and cost to benefit ratios rather than the interests and needs of the specific patient. Decisions on care would be matters of policy based on group effectiveness rather than on a case by case basis and doctors would have to abide by these decisions without regard to the welfare of the patient.

The impact of rationing in other nations where it has been introduced as part of the national health care system has been horrendous. It attempts to reduce the financial cost of the system by a trade-off which increases the cost in lives lost and individual suffering. Two nations with many similarities to the United States which have resorted to rationing health care are Great Britain and Canada. In both nations the human cost has been high and the results are easily quantified.The failure of rationing comes down to two basic problems — denial of treatment and very long wait times. Both of these can result in suffering and death for patients, especially those with critical and chronic conditions which are treated easily and routinely in the United States today, but which often result in death in Great Britain and Canada.One telling scenario of denial of care comes with cardiac patients. In the United States if you come into a hospital with an arterial blockage you are usually scheduled for an angioplasty or a bypass in a matter of days, because that is the best way to achieve a long-term solution to the problem. In Canada and Britain the common response is dictated by a shortage of surgeons and facilities, so you are given beta blockers to try to keep your heart functioning and sent away. If you're lucky you'll survive the months that it takes to get you scheduled for surgery or maybe come into the hospital in the middle of an actual heart attack when your chances of surviving the surgery are lower but they may actually operate. Or even better, if you live in Canada they may slap on a heart monitor and have an ambulance drive you to the US for treatment as they do with hundreds of cardiac patients every year. The sad reality is that many who are denied immediate surgical treatment for heart problems just die.In the US a coronary patient is four times as likely to receive surgical treatment as in Britain. In the US only 5% of Americans are made to wait more than four months for surgery. In Canada 27% wait four months or more and in Britain 36% wait four months or more. While the base rate of coronary disease in the US is higher than in other countries because of diet and lifestyle, the rate of survival for those diagnosed with coronary problems is much higher than in other countries because patients get the best and most appropriate treatment more quickly.

The same pattern holds true with cancer. Overall Britons and Europeans in general die at a higher rate from all forms of cancer than US citizens and the difference is dramatic in cases where early detection and treatment are important. For example, women with breast cancer in Britain have a 46% death rate as opposed to 25% in the US. Men with prostate cancer in Britain have a 57% mortality rate while in the US only 19% die and the death rate is declining rapidly because of early detection. It's the same with colon cancer. In Europe as a whole there is only a 8% survival rate, in Britain there's a 40% survival rate and in the US there's a 60% survival rate. With cancer of the esophagus only 7% survive while in the US 12% survive, although it's still one of the most deadly forms of cancer. Both long- and short-term recovery and survival rates for all forms of cancer are also significantly higher for US patients. Rationed care has limited diagnostic facilities like MRI machines and has created long wait times for specialist doctors. In fact, 40% of cancer patients in Britain never get to see a cancer specialist at all, and the National Health bureaucrats have denied basic tests like pap smears and ruled out powerful chemotherapy medicines as too expensive, all of which has cost lives. With diseases like cancer where early detection and treatment are vital,  resource rationing means a lot more dead patients.

The human cost of delay of care caused by rationing is particularly significant. One key element of this is the wait time to see a specialist who can provide the best treatment for specific ailments. In the US 74% of patients get to see a specialist within four weeks. In Canada only 40% get seen that quickly and in Britain only 42%. In many cases these delays can cost lives, but the cost of suffering has to be considered as well. In both Canada and Britain the wait times are even longer for conditions which are not life threatening, but can be very painful and seriously reduce quality of life. In Britain a hip or knee replacement can take more than five months and in Canada it can take as long as eight months. That's a very long time when pain is literally crippling.

An unsurprising irony is that as our congress looks at health care reform, activists in Canada, Britain, and a number of other countries are also looking at health care reform. The difference is that they are trying to figure out ways to introduce more choice and more market elements and reduce rationing at the same time we are plunging headlong into the same mistakes which they made a generation ago and which they now realize have left them with unacceptable failures in their systems with thousands of preventable deaths every year and millions stuck on waiting lists for essential treatment.

This is how bad it can get with government-run, single-payer systems, which may have a cost in lives and suffering, but do at least bring down the cost of health care. Imagine how much worse it could be with a combination of government bureaucracy and rationing and the high prices of private insurance and you have some idea of what ObamaCare will be like. It is likely to have all the flaws of socialized medicine while preserving most of the shortcomings of our current private insurance system, because the thousand-page bill which congress was considering is largely authored by lobbyists for the health care, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It's like yet another bailout for these industries at a high cost in life, suffering and taxation to the American people.

Even the far left agrees that the health care plan currently being rammed through congress serves the interests of big insurance, medical and pharmaceutical companies while doing more harm than good to the average citizen. It rations and reduces the quality of medical care. It massively increases costs and forces small businesses and individuals to purchase insurance plans at inflated prices which they cannot afford or pay substantial penalties which they also can't afford. It passes many of these costs on to the public in huge tax increases. It doesn't solve the key problem of inflated insurance and health care costs and is projected to still leave 20 million people uninsured.

This may be the most monumental legislative disaster ever given serious consideration in the notoriously profligate halls of congress. This plan is not what the American people have in mind when they think of health care reform. It ignores their needs and sets their interests aside to pander to statist radicals and big business. The American people deserve better.

It has been reported that Jack Kemp has cancer.

His office released the following statement:

"Mr. Kemp has been undergoing tests to determine the origin of the disease and the options for continued treatment. He will continue to serve as Chairman of Kemp Partners and plans to remain involved in his business, charitable and politically related activities. Mr. Kemp and his family are grateful for the thoughts and prayers of friends and appreciate respect for their privacy at this time".

The disturbing news hits POLITICS 24/7 hard. For me Jack Kemp, has been a shining example of the type of leadership we expect, want and need in government and the news causes reason for me to pause.

As a young man Jack F. Kemp spent 13 years in professional football, playing quarterback for the San Diego Chargers and Buffalo Bills. He led the Buffalo Bills to the American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965 when he was named the league's most valuable player. He also co-founded the AFL Players Association and was elected it's president for 5 consecutive terms.

After a period working for the Reagan gubernatorial campaign in California during 1966 and as special assistant to Reagan when he was Governor, Kemp in 1969 worked for the chairman of the National Republican Committee. In 1970 Kemp was elected to Congress where he represented the people of Buffalo, New York in the state's 38^th district and served their until 1989.

Barely in my teens, my political interests were inspired by Ronald Reagan. They grew each day for the eight years that he was President but during the mid 80's I also came to appreciate the Congressman from my home state of New York. Although Jack Kemp was from Buffalo and I was from Brooklyn, the distance did not takeaway any sense of the Congressman's i.mpact on me.

Many casual voters outside of Buffalo may not have heard of him at the time but those involved in the issues shaping America sure did. Especially those who considered themselves "movement conservatives". They considered Jack Kemp a leading figure.

A movement conservative is one who supports all or nearly all conservative principles with a coherent philosophy, and who advances broad conservative goals both individually and through teamwork. At the time, I did not know it, but I was one and Jack Kemp was one of the movements leaders.

Kemp's credentials increased in In Congress where he became increasingly interested in economic ideas and was a keen supporter of supply-side economics and especially of large cuts in direct taxes, which he argued, would pay for themselves. Kemp was also a strong and vocal advocate of deregulation and enterprise zones. In 1978, together with senator Roth of Delaware, Kemp sponsored a 30 percent across the board tax cut which was in large part enacted in the 1981 Reagan budget. It is said that he sold Reaganomics to Reagan. Kemp's vigorous promotion of supply-side economics made him a well known, if not controversial, politician and earned him a popular following among the Republican rank and file.

In addition to being a fiscal conservative Kemp has also been conservative on cultural and foreign affair issues. In one debate with Mario Cuomo, Kemp said of himself, "I am not a hawk but actually a heavily armed dove".

Over time, I came to appreciate Jack Kemp more and more. I followed his voting record and read the speeches he offered on the floor of the house in the congressional record. His words were always inspiring to me. Although those speeches were often intermingled with words that I needed to lookup in the dictionary, once I did, they made sense and they were supported by all that freedom in a free nation meant.

On top of that, his voting record always matched his rhetoric. Jack Kemp meant what he said and said what he meant.

Later, while working on Kemp's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, I learned that I was not alone in sometimes having to look up the meaning of something Kemp said. While gathering the mornings news clippings for the campaign's press secretary, I stumbled upon an a piece from a local paper that wrote "although very passionate about economic policy, Congressman Kemp often finds himself speaking to an audience of reporters and voters alike, who have a glazed look in their eyes that is brought about by his discussion of intricate policies and use of technical terms that Kemp uses with the familiarity that we have with the alphabet".

After reading that I was actually relieved to know that I wasn't quite as ignorant as most. I was just as ignorant as everyone else.As the Reagan years were winding down I geared up to take the Reagan revolution to the next level and I prepared to make sure that Jack Kemp became our next President. The man to carry the torch into the future. I even developed a report which proved that Jack kemp would be the Republican presidential nominee and that Jean Kirkpatrick would be tapped as his running mate.

I was also a fan of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and the relatively close ties that she and Kemp had at the time, seemed to me, to make them a perfect and likely ticket.

As the 1988 campaign began, I found myself traveling to campaign for Jack Kemp in New Hampshire and eventually became a low level field director. I will never forget sitting on campaign busses traveling from every Notch from Dixville to Zealand in the North White Mountains and Great North Woods to Portsmouth and Seabrook in the Seacoast region and Nashua, Concord and Manchester in between. I was often honored beyond belief to sit next Jack Kemp on the campaign bus and have the opportunity to brief the would be President on events at our next stops and update him on how the door-to-door events at previous stops went.

Although Kemp did win in Dixville Notch, when all of New Hampshire's votes were counted, Kemp came in third behind then Vice President George H.W. Bush and Kansas Senator Bob Dole, but ahead of Delaware's former Congressman and Governor Pete DuPont, evangelist Pat Robertson and Reagan's former chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, respectively. Suffice it to say, I was devastated.

In 1989 President George H. W. Bush appointed Kemp to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development when he formed his administration. In this role Kemp was perceived by many as a maverick rather than a collegial member of the administration. Yet he successfully implemented many policies and programs which won over friends and foes alike. One of Kemp's most effective creations was the introduction of urban enterprise zones.

With his maverick image in place, in 1996 the Republican nominee for President, Bob Dole picked Kemp to be his Vice Presidential running mate. The selection was something of a surprise, not least because Kemp and Dole had policy disagreements in the past and had been rivals in 1988. Dole had generally been skeptical of massive tax cuts preferring to emphasize deficit reduction but the electoral dynamics of 1996 converted Dole to the merits of tax cuts. In this context Kemp was an ideal vice presidential choice. He symbolized vigorous tax cuts and was able to generate enthusiasm among Republican activists. Kemp was well known nationally because of his football career and visionary economic and defense policies; and it was hoped that Kemp's energetic style and manner would balance Dole's age.

Maybe it did or maybe didn't but either way Americans wanted a second term of Clinton and Gore and they got it.

Just as was the case in the 1988 primaries, I was disappointed but just like before I remained a fan of Jack Kemp.

I feel that there are few people who have actually been involved in politics on par with Kemp. Sincere, principled, hard working, innovative, persistent and consistent, Kemp and his leadership has influenced our nation much more than your average politician and he helped take what was once a fringe wing of American political thinking and turned it into mainstream policy.

All of his leadership and accomplishments led me to pick up the moniker 'Kempite". On the internet, one must often come up with a user I.D. and since all of my online activity involves politics, I felt there was no name better to choose from other than Kemp's.

So today, from the bottom of my heart, I offer my wishes for a speedy recovery for Secretary Kemp and it is the greatest hope of all of us that he defeats this bout with cancer with the same level of energy and success that earned him his victories and honors in the N.F.L. and that moved America over to his way of thinking in politics.

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REPEAL THE CONGRESSIONAL PAY HIKE

Sign the Online Petition - To Repeal The Automatic Pay Raise That Congress Is Receiving Congress

Pass The Link On To Family, Friends and Co-workers

http://www.gopetition.com/online/24301.html