Dr. David Scheiner took care of Obama for 22 years. But they don't see eye-to-eye on how to fix the health care system.
Forbes reports:
David Scheiner, an internist based in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, has a diverse practice of lower-income adults from the nearby housing projects mixed with famous patients like U.S. Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the late writer Studs Terkel and, most notably, President Barack Obama.
Scheiner, 71, was Obama's doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate's "excellent health" in a letter last year. He's still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but he worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. "I'm not sure he really understands what we face in primary care," Scheiner says.
Scheiner takes a few other shots too. Looking at Obama's team of health advisors, Scheiner doesn't see anyone who's actually in the trenches. "I have a suspicion they pick people from the top echelon of medicine, people who write about it but haven't been struggling in it," he says.
Scheiner is critical of Obama's pick for Health and Human Services secretary--Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who used to work as the chief lobbyist for her state's trial lawyers association.
"He doesn't see all the pain, it's so tragic out here," he says. "Obama's wonderful, but on this one I'm not sure if he's getting the right input."
What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be "Medicare for all," a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. "A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won't starve," Scheiner says.
Does anyone have a calculator big enough to add up all this ridiculous Liberal spending? Good grief!
The Associated Press reports:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate sources say the latest cost estimates for health care legislation are around $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Two Senate staffers, one Democratic and one Republican, said Congressional Budget Office estimates put the cost of the Finance Committee version of the bill at around $1.6 trillion.
A third staffer, a Finance Committee Democratic aide, indicated committee members are working to lower the cost to less than $1 trillion over 10 years, a level preferred by the Obama administration.
The staffers spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the legislation.
Cost problems have slowed work on the sweeping legislation.
Pushing again to get the U.S. health care system overhauled, President Barack Obama is arguing that Americans must beware of 'fear tactics' that have killed such efforts in the past.
I agree with Sen. Shelby! Say No to Obamacare!
Nancy Pelosi wants an "Obamacare" Bill passed by the end of July.
Why? Because it's a political power grab to create another entitlement that encourages people to rely on government for every facet of their lives, a.k.a. socialism/communism. This is a horrible idea. It has never worked anywhere it has been tried. Just ask the British or the Canadians.
President Obama launched his "bold" nationalized health-care plan.
Just as Rahmbo The Ballerina said never let a good crisis go to waste, Obama has used the economic crisis as the impetus for passing his radical nationalized health-care agenda.
It's our view, that the President is not terribly concerned with actually fixing the economy.
Instead, he will use smoke and mirrors to covertly pass a radical Socialist agenda, establish a vast power grab for voting supremacy, and attempt to implode America from within.
The Obama Budget contains a $634 Billion "down payment" on national health-care that will ultimately top $1 Trillion!
Sneaky Democrats on Capitol Hill quietly sneaked "stealth-care" into the $800 Billion CRAPulus Socialism Bill.And all of this crap to get health care that Europe has proven as a complete and utter failure.
British PM Gordon Brown recently issued an apology for a "Third World Hospital".
Sen. Jim DeMint wrote a great op/ed in the Washington Examiner a few months ago on the dangers of national health care.
In Great Britain last year, a 24-year old woman named Katie Hilliard was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The disease has since spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. In October, she took time off from her course of chemo and radiation therapy to marry her fiancĂ©e because, in her words, “We didn’t know how ill I would get.”
The family of Claire Everett does know. She died in September, of the same disease, with her parents, husband, and two-year old son by her side. She was 23.
Both could have been diagnosed early and possibly saved by a routine screening test. But the British National Health Service does not allow women under the age of 25 to receive that test.
These kinds of stories are commonplace in nations with government-controlled health care, with good reason. As the miracle workers in the global medical research field develop treatments to keep us alive and healthy much longer than ever before, the costs of health care inevitably rise. Government health services looking to cut costs usually choose to ration coverage.
In Great Britain, Canada, Sweden, and elsewhere, government bureaucrats decide which patients may receive which treatments based on how beneficial the treatment will be – beneficial to the government, that is, not the patient.
The process by which government health departments decide who gets what is called “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (CER). And you might be surprised to know there was more than $1 billion allocated for CER in the so-called economic stimulus bill passed last month by Congress.
By comparison, this is how the Obamabots at MS NBC view the health care debate.
"I Don't Care How Much It Costs," adding "I think conservatives are selfish when it comes to health care."
Really?
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