Decisions, Decisions, Oh Dear What Am I to Do?

Posted on 03/12/2009 by Grumpa Joe

     I’m glad the rules of football require time limits on making decisions.  Can you imagine any football game if  it took the coaches hours to make a decision about the next play while the players stood on the sideline freezing their butts off. If the Commander-in-Chief (CIC) continues to run the war as he has, Congress will have to begin passing laws limiting the amount of time the Chief has to make a decision. Of course, with the ass kissing Democratic Congress we have now, it is highly probable that Congress would write the law requiring twelve months to make any decision that was not on the Liberal Left agenda. If POTUS were the coach of an NFL team he’d have more pressure on him then he does as Commander-in-Chief. 

    Being that POTUS is a basketball player, I have to believe he understands the concept of winning. He leaves me wondering if he has the same philosophy when it comes to beating hostile tribes who are hell-bent on destroying the United States. Then again, he is doing a pretty good job of that himself. Could it be that he is one of them?

    POTUS gave an un-inspiring speech at West Point the other night. In it, he openly announced his game plan for the war. I’m sure the Taliban has already begun an exodus from Afghanistan to begin a holiday that will last until September 2011.  After our troops begin to pull out, the Taliban and Al Qaeda will begin their hostility anew.  In the meantime we will have spent another sixty billion dollars plus for nothing.  POTUS confirms Sadam Hussein’s prediction that the US has no stomach for war and that we would leave the mid-east after a very short time.

CIC will attempt to pull Euorpean countries into the fray to assist him in his mission. As usual, they will all have more important things on their plates. POTUS will be forced to take it on all by himself. We all know he won’t do that. He’ll leave and quit even though he has openly declared, in the war against the people of the U.S on Health Care Reform, that he is not a quitter. 

POTUS needs to learn Ronald Reagan’s policy regarding war; “we win they lose.”

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What?

Posted on 25/11/2009 by Grumpa Joe

Both Peggy and I suffer from a malady that causes us to ask “what?” Repeatedly, we request each other to repeat what we said. Neither of us will admit it but we are losing our hearing. It occurs to me that congress must also be suffering from the same malady. What other reason would they have for ignoring  input from their constituents.

I suggest that our congressmen, and senators all use their Cadillac health care plan to have their hearing tested. The results to be posted on Congress.org. With hearing test results posted for our review, we can then decide whether they have a medical excuse for their stupid voting decisions.

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The Arrogance of Congress

Posted on 18/11/2009 by Grumpa Joe

Imagine every page of the House Bill H.R. 3962 loaded with doublespeak, and references to prior bills, and paragraphs. Each branch leading to a new trap for the American consumer. Each one leading toward a take-over of our liberties. How can our Representatives be so delusional as to think that the contents of this bill are good for their constituents. All they know is what their leadership is telling them, VOTE FOR THE BILL.

My guess is that H.R. 3962 is loaded with perks for congressional leaders, and new ways for Congress to become wealthier off the tax payer. Health Care? There may be a hint of that in there too.

Will the bill create jobs? You bet it will, but they won’t be doctors or nurses, they will be highly paid government  clerks who will interpret the law and decide if you get treatment. I’m positive the law will be loaded with ambiguity, thus giving those clerks more control over you and me with their interpretations. In the meantime, salaries for doctors will be frozen. Their ability to make more money by treating more patients will be removed from their control. They will be given a quota of patients to see. Once they have seen them, they will go fishing.  In the European system, the doctors meet their yearly quotas by hustling in the early part of the year, then they go on vacation for the remainder of the year.

The Democrats invented Medicare back in the nineteen sixties. Since then it has become the standard for health care. A crummy one at that. What amazes me, is that Medicare must be something that only the wealthy get. Otherwise why would it be stripped of five hundred billion dollars from its budget to help pay for HR 3962?  This is clearly another example of the redistribution of wealth. The government is going crazy thinking about how  it will pay for the healthcare of all the baby-boomers coming into the system.  Their answer, redistribute the wealth of the senior health care system  to pay for an even larger system, and ration health care for seniors. Who cares  if seniors die early? Liberals encourage seniors to die early, just as they encourage controlling the population by murdering unborn babies. Medicare has put a monkey wrench into that philosophy by extending life. Therefore, kill Medicare to kill seniors. 

If you are wise, you will get sick in the first six months of the year, and die just before you are ready to retire.

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Tea Party Terror

Posted on 02/11/2009 by Grumpa Joe

The Part of YesBack in April, I attended my first Tea Party. It was a rather subdued group of conservatives, liberals, young and old. We all sang, pledged our allegiance to the flag, and listened to some eloquent young people speak about liberty, taxes,  and the government take over of capitalism. There were no arrests, there was no shouting or shoving, just peace loving folks who were all mad as hell about the events taking place to change the fabric of our great country. Nevertheless, we were branded as “Tea-Baggers, Nazi’s, Astro-Turf, mobsters, and much more. The Liberal Left had to destroy the Tea Parties just as they tried to destroy Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and any other threat to their revolutionary takeover sold under the slogan of “Change We Can Believe In.”

When I wrote my post in April, I warned of a looming terror attack on the horizon. The Tea Baggers were coming. They were coming brandished with a weapon of mass destruction; the vote.  The time has arrived. It will be interesting to hear the new adjectives  the liberals will use to negate the effect of the elections on their agenda.

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Why Is Health Care So Expensive?

Posted on 03/10/2009 by Grumpa Joe
High Cost DocumentationDuring the last couple of weeks, I got a first hand reminder of what  it is like in a health care system.  My late Auntie Marie was hospitalized for a few days before she died. Of course, Peggy and I visited often during those days. There was one thing that stuck out as I walked the halls of a well known suburban hospital. No matter which floor we were on,  or which nurse’s station we were near, people were diligently entering data or writing on charts.
I began to wonder what that was all about. Very few of these people were tending to patients, yet all of them were very busy. These people are all very expensive. Health care workers don’t come cheap. What is so important to require so much documentation? I quizzed my daughter, who is a nurse, to explain. We had a very nice father daughter discussion on the matter. She cleared up some of my mis-conceptions.
In summary here is why they document:
1. If it ain’t documented the insurance company, Medicare, etc. doesn’t pay. Of course the hospital is a business, and requires money to run. Patients never like to pay for their own health care,  therefore they pay for insurance to pay the bill for them. The insurance companies are also in business to make a profit. They sell us policies with fine print defining just what they will cover. Medicare does the same thing. Their rules are just as stringent as any insurance company’s. Therefore, hospitals document in order to charge.
Insurance companies take a bad rap when they cite the fine print in a policy, and refuse to pay. We should all be more careful when we buy policies. We tend to go for the lowest cost. Of course we do, why pay more? Except we don’t read the details, or the details don’t matter when we sign the contract. There is a famous insurance company commercial, running now, that touts the ability to tailor make a policy to fit your budget. Guess what? They do it by limiting your benefits. We go for price, they go for the sell, and we are happy until we get into a health crisis and the bill comes to us. 
2. Doctors need information from the nurses in order to make your health care decisions. They work by reading test reports, and the charts documenting vital signs such as temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and  repsonses to medications.  Doctors also write instructions to the nurses for your treatment. Then, as a CYA they document their treatment plan and diagnosis. Again, if it ain’t documented they don’t get paid. A doctor  might spend ten minutes per patient reading a chart, and two minutes talking to him. If you have a serious problem, the doc may take three minutes to explain the prognosis.  Nurses document your vital signs, and dispense drugs. Certified Nursing Assistants do all the other dirty work of keeping patients comfortable. In the good old days, the nurse did it all. My wife Barbara tended to a surgical ward at West Side VA hospital back in 1959. She took care of, and documented up to thirty patients at a time. Life was simpler back then.
3. Hospitals have quality control programs. They are crappy compared to the ones  industry has  put into place to make all the products, and drugs they use, but they have systems.  These systems require documentation. In my business, we said that if we could measure something, we could improve it. Therefore, any quality system requires data documenting metrics that can show management if they are doing well. Most hospitals require you to complete a satisfaction questionnaire when you leave. This is an example of their input.
4. Lastly, health professionals document to CYA (cover your ass). All doctors and hospitals are so afraid a patient will sue them that they over document in order to cover themselves in the event that one of them makes an error. Or, if the patient and his family perceive a screw up.
The bottom line is that I saw dollars with wings and heard a cash register ringing as I walked the corridors of that hospital.
Obama’s solution to this problem is to invent a totally new health care system to compete with the one in place. If the actual health care industry doesn’t know how to fix their problem, what makes us think a group of Congressman and Senators can  invent  a new system to fix it all?
Bend over America, the government wants to give you an enema.
In a future post, I will present a plan for realistic reform. Stay tuned.

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