WHITE HOUSE TURNS HEALTH CARE INTO ECONOMIC ISSUE

Here it comes, the urgency of health care reform. Americans still don't get the fact that socialized or universal health care is no good. Again, sounds great on paper, I mean who wouldn't want want a child or the WORKING poor to be insured. We have programs that do this already. LEAVE IT TO THE STATES. Obama is doing it again Alinsky's Rules apply. Create urgency and identify with the sympathies of your audience.

DO NOT BE FOOLED. If you thought HillaryCare was horrid, wait until you see ObamaCare. If you think it hard to get approved for testing or an MRI NOW, wait until the government has to approve the test and then sends you to a sub-par facility with poor radiologists doing the reads.

Let's look at a couple of things, historically, here, the Obama way.

Most don't know that HAWAII HAS SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE. I don't know why Obama keeps saying that his mother had to worry about paying bills--THEY WERE COVERED BY THE STATE. That is why he NEVER HAD TO HELP HER. That answers that.

From the Heritage Foundation back in 1994, when HillaryCare was on the table.

"Despite these advantages present in Hawaii, health insurance premium rates are escalating at a very high rate. This increase is occurring in spite of the rationing of health care by SHPDA, the State Health Planning and Development Agency, through its certificate of need process. For ex- ample, in 1991, the number of MRIs in the state of Hawaii was 1 to 1.1 million population compared to the national average of 1 to 100,000.

Without any political pressure, the Ha-waii Department of Health seemed to be happy with this arrangement even though many physicians were sending their patients to the mainland for MRIs because the total cost, in- cluding hotel and air fare for the patient and companion, was cheaper than getting an MRI in Hawaii. To the Hawaii Federation of Physicians and Dentists, it appeared to be more than mere coincidence that five new MRls were quickly approved by SHPDA through its CON process just when the Hawaii Plan began to be touted as a model for the rest of the nation.

Even with the additional MMs, the ratio is still only 1 to 400,000 population. In addition, the CON process, as well as the cost of land and development, has pre- cluded the construction of hospital beds in our state. For example, the national average for acute-care hospital beds per 1,000 population is 4.2 to 4.7, as compared to 2.1 in Hawaii. This has also resulted in a deficiency in the number of long-term beds available.

There are many occasions when all the hospital beds in the state are full and a 48-hour waiting list for admission to a major hospital is not unusual. Additionally, the shortage of long- term nursing beds often requires patients to remain in acute-care beds for several months awaiting placement. And despite this, published SHPDA plans reveal that their goals are to decrease the number of hospital beds per 1,000 even further.

Reports from the islands of Maui and the big island of Hawaii report a greater than 10 percent occupancy rate in their hospitals for three months out of last year, and there have been reports of physicians having to treat patients with critical illnesses at home because no hospital beds could be found. And despite this rationing of health care, the neighbor is- land and rural hospitals under state control run huge deficits because the state's Medicaid program is the most generous in the country.

In the nation as a whole, the number of nursing beds per 1,000 population for people over the age of 65 is 56, while in Hawaii it is only 18. Last year the Medical Tribune reported that Hawaii had the highest rate of PHYSICIAN EXODUS and EARLY RETIREMENT IN THE NATION.

Another indication that Hawaii's Prepaid Health Care Act has failed to contain costs is the newly instituted Health Quest Program, which was introduced after Hawaii received a waiver from the federal government, in which first the indigent population of Hawaii, and later in Phases 11 and M most of the rest of the population, will be assigned to a primary care provider and will not be allowed to see any other physician unless that primary care provider agrees.

It also states that advanced nurse practitioners have to be included as primary care providers, so we may have a situation in which a patient will be assigned to a Health Maintenance Organization and be UNABLE to see ANY physician, let alone a specialist, unless that nurse refers the patient.

The Clinton health care proposals contain similar provisions which would expand the role of nurse practitioners in the delivery of health care, so people all over this nation may be confronted with this same situation whereby they can get to see a physician only if the nurse recognizes that they are sick enough to warrant it.

In conclusion, Hawaii has had most of the components of the Clinton health care proposals in effect since the enactment of its Prepaid Health Care Act in 1974. It has failed in its two major goals of 1) decreasing the number of Hawaii's population that were uninsured and 2) curtailing the ever-rising costs of health care delivery. In order to control spiraling health care costs, it has just instituted its Health Quest Program, which will severely ration care and deprive most of the citizens of our state of their right to be treated by the physician of their choice.

In light of this information, the American people and members of Congress should think long and hard before enacting a health care proposal which shares so many features of Hawaii's Prepaid Health Care Act. This is especially important when you consider that most of the statistics about Hawaii's health care delivery system come from three sources: HMSA (Hawaii's Blue Cross/Blue Shield), Kaiser Permanente, and the Hawaii Depart- ment of Health. These three would seem to have a vested interest in making the system look good. We should not base a national health system on data provided from a state which have not been independently verified.

ALL OF THIS MEANS UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS ANOTHER WAY TO BANKRUPT THE USA AND DELIVER POOR HEALTH CARE TO AMERICANS. GOVERNMENT CAN NOT RUN ANYTHING GOOD, SO WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU HAND THEM YOUR HEALTH CARE?

GO BACK UP AND REREAD THE HIGHLIGHTED SECTION, SLOWLY. READ IT, UNDERSTAND IT, OWN IT.