I admit that I had my doubts about this October 20, 2013 story, "Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race" — until I visited my neurologist on December 9. Before that date, I last saw my neurologist on June 17, 2013.
As usual, the girl behind the front desk handed me a sheet with insurance information to verify. I did so by comparing all the numbers on the sheet with the health insurance card that I carry in my wallet, then handed the sheet back to her. She said: "You haven't completed the form. See the top right."
There were two more lines to fill in. One said "ethnicity," the other "race."
Never before has any insurance form in any doctor's office I have visited required such designations!
Having to provide that kind of information on any insurance form makes me uneasy. What's the point?
I noticed two other changes while visiting my neurologist on December 9:
(1) Sheet after sheet to fill out so as to provide a detailed medical history of my immediate and my extended family.
(2) Having to be weighed in during my visit. Never before have I been required to step on the scale at the neurologist's office. Not that I worry about my weigh-in; I'm well under even the remote possibility of obesity.
All in all, this December 9 visit to my neurologist took up 1.5 hours of my time; of that time, I spent about one hour face-to-face with my neurologist — although I must say that at least 30 minutes of that face-to-face time was consumed by the neurologist having to sit in front of his computer in my presence so as to complete the electronic medical records. Previous visits to my neurologist have consumed barely twenty minutes of my time.
Maybe the October 20 story in the Daily Caller has validity after all.
Have you had any unusual medical-care experiences recently since more of the ObamaCare provisions went into force during 2013?
from the Jowett summary of Plato's "The Law's"
ReplyDelete... there are three kinds of funerals; one of them is excessive, another mean, a third moderate, and you say that the last is right. Now if I had a rich wife, and she told me to bury her, and I were to sing of her burial, I should praise the extravagant kind; a poor man would commend a funeral of the meaner sort, and a man of moderate means would prefer a moderate funeral. But you, as legislator, would have to say exactly what you meant by 'moderate.' 'Very true.' And is our lawgiver to have no preamble or interpretation of his laws, never offering a word of advice to his subjects, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors are there not two kinds? The one gentle and the other rough, doctors who are freemen and learn themselves and teach their pupils scientifically, and doctor's assistants who get their knowledge empirically by attending on their masters? 'Of course there are.' And did you ever observe that the gentlemen doctors practise upon freemen, and that slave doctors confine themselves to slaves? The latter go about the country or wait for the slaves at the dispensaries. They hold no parley with their patients about their diseases or the remedies of them; they practise by the rule of thumb, and give their decrees in the most arbitrary manner. When they have doctored one patient they run off to another, whom they treat with equal assurance, their duty being to relieve the master of the care of his sick slaves. But the other doctor, who practises on freemen, proceeds in quite a different way. He takes counsel with his patient and learns from him, and never does anything until he has persuaded him of what he is doing. He trusts to influence rather than force. Now is not the use of both methods far better than the use of either alone? And both together may be advantageously employed by us in legislation.
ReplyDelete"Have you had any unusual medical-care experiences recently since more of the ObamaCare provisions went into force during 2013?"
Yes, but it started at least two years ago at the opthalmic surgeon's office. I suppose this particular office –– the best run, most empathetic and attentive medical establishment I have ever encountered since the demise of our old family doctor, who made house calls at 2:30 AM when occasion demanded –– because this surgeon and his staff anticipating The Inevitable decided to bite the bullet and stay ahead of the curve before they were forced to comply with the new regulations.
At any rate, in these past two years or so, I have noticed a tremendous change in this office with which I've had an 11-year relationship. It has been almost exactly as you describe, AOW. A cumbersome, burdensome, limiting, oppressive computerized system of keeping records replaced what-was-once a brisk, cheerfully efficient, more-than-adequate method.
The staff, bless them, are still as kind and compassionate as always, but I see obvious signs of strain in their faces and posture as they struggle to give patients the attention they need while coping with the demands of CENTRALIZED DATA BANKS on every morbid detail of our medical condition, and the EFFICIENCY which once characterized the place has been seriously impaired since they adopted the new government-mandated standards of record keeping.
As you said, the staff now must spend a large share of their time poring with apparent anxiety over the big black computers that replaced the lean, clean, relatively simple and much more efficient system that had been in place.
I can only imagine with increasing dread what lays in store for us as time wears on.
Dealing with the pharmacy has also become a tedious, often-irritating chore, instead of the friendly, neighborhood pleaantry it used to be. It took me about a half hour, instead of the five minutes it ought to have taken to pick up a prescription of longstanding the other day. They wanted me to sign the POISON REGISTER before they would hand over a measure of pills I've been taking for many years.
I refused to comply, and told them I'd rather die than put up with CRAP like this. The oldest member of the team behind the counter, said, "Oh go ahead and let him have it, we KNOW him, It will be all right." The tense, sullen, tight-lipped, apparently anxious, hostile-apprearing clerk who'd been waiting on me reluctantly complied with her superior.
A very nice elderly gentleman who'd been waiting behind me -- an Englishman as it turned out -- said quietly in his beautiful, well bred voice, "If you think this is bad, you should try to make a similar transaction in Britain."
We then exchanged a few remarks in which he told me he'd emigrated here late in life primarily to escape the National Health Service there.
I shudder to think what things will be like once this damnable Obamacare THING really gets rolling.
I can only imagine with increasing dread what lays in store for us as time wears on.
DeleteI feel the same dread. Fascism has come to America, and our lives will be ever more buried under increasingly oppressive and cumbersome bureaucracy.
I'm sure it's all about equality. They have to make sure that racial minority folks get their proportional number of heart transplants as white folks.
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ReplyDeleteThere has been a lot of discussion about "Political Correctness" I personally feel that that Political Correctness had done more harm than just bigotry. We are becoming a society of wimps and pussies thanks to PC bullshit...
ReplyDeleteChristian Americans, as well as Jewish Americans are going to have to stand up against Facism, Communism, and leftism. Wére way late to the party already. Wéve been brow-beaten and harrangued and PCed into shutting up and taking every vile accusation thrown at us, and it́s not just the "gay" issue that the Left has thrown at us. War on women. Muslims areńt terrorists and we should love them. The list of issues wéve kow-towed on is endless, and wéve got no back-up from the Elected "R"s.
I dońt see enough conservative think tanks standing up to these tactics.
They kow-tow and roll over for the Communist Left, and have basically told the people who elect them to sit down and shut up. Dońt make ourselves look bad. Dońt make ourselves look intolerant.
Look at what Phil Robinson (Duck Dynasty) said, when he quoted a fact of what the Bible said. Where is the First Amendment? Why do we accept them calling him a “NUT” when he exercised his First Amendment right to say what he wanted to.
Rather than turning the other cheek, what I think we should be doing when confronted by the fascist PC crowd , is stand up for what we believe in. America needs to know the truth about fascist leftist organizations like GLAAD etc.
This is much bigger than a reality show. That is how progressives work. Progressive thinking has become a cult. It deliberately panders to special interest groups that have been marginalized. Then becomes an abusive act if anyone DARES to object, or have a different opinion.
Personally, I think homosexuality is abnormal, but it’s none of my business, I think it is no one's business except the person who is the homosexual - IF HE DOESN'T MAKE IT AN IN-YOUR-FACE PUBLIC AFFAIR, which too many homosexuals of today make it. Their dancing down the streets in costume and pushing the envelope doesn't help their cause, and I think that isn't their goal. I think their goal is to rub people's noses in it our of hatred of themselves. Then it becomes my business.
Please learn to put space between your paragraphs. If you're going to write so much, you need to do that, unless you don't care whether people read what you've written or not. It's very simple, just use the space bar.
Delete--------------------------> Katharine Heartburn
Dear Ms. HeartBurn
DeleteI am answering your post only because I’m in a very good mood today and i even went as far as to feed the dirty little vermin AKA as Pigeons today. Just to let you know that answering you is on par with that event.
So, to ger bact to the subject on hand. For your information and for YOUR satisfaction, When you post a comment on a blog, there is a limit to the amount of letters, numbers known as “characters” . And “SPACES” are counted as “SPACES” therefore when send a long comment, it is advisable NOT ti us “spaces” But thank you so very much for your advice on Blog comment etiquette. If I ever need further advice, I will surely turn to you.
I can tell how well-versed you are on that subject.
I certainly appreciated the detailed feedback. I totally agree with all of those points you mentioned!
Good points. It seems that the Robertson affair may have caused a paradigm shift in public thinking. Whereas most people grudgingly put up with PC and the subtle tyranny it imposes, now they have had enough. Not only is it okay to defy the oppressors, it is both honorable and necessary.
DeleteThere's a way to fight back. Write down the wrong race and ethnicity.
ReplyDeleteIf a man can call himself a woman now, and a woman call herself a man, the rest of us should enjoy the same freedoms.
My Medicare doctor jumped on the computer thingy several years ago. Thing is - now he needs a whole different program, but the government gives them money for this.
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo, now when you go to the doctor it's, as you have experienced, most of the time he's pecking away at his computer. My line has always been, "If I was dying of late stage liver disease he wouldn't know because he never looked up in order to see my yellow eyes.
Getting back to the subject of islam. The God of the Bible is not the god of Islam. Through the passing of time it has become it has become widely accepted that the word Allah is just the Arabic word for God. This started when truth compromising Bible “translators” substituted the word Allah where the word God should have been used in the Arabic translation of the Bible. Furthermore, in the glossary in the Book ASSASSINS! By Dr. Haha Lung defines Allah as the “Pre-Islamic Lunar god : the god of Islam.” Likewise, the book INSIDE ISLAM by Reza F. Safa on pages 22,23. Reads “In pre-Islamic times both Allah-worship and Baal-worship involved the worship of the sun, the moon and the stars which defines them as astral religions [Which are condemned in the Bible Second Kings 21:3,,5. 23:5. Second Chronicles 33:5.] The crescent moon, which was the symbol of moon worship is also the symbol of Islam. In short, The god of Islam is not the God of the Bible.
ReplyDeleteThe words in brackets are my own. Moreover, this above truth is further exposed in the books WHO IS THIS ALLAH ? by G.J.O. Moshay. THE ISLAMIC INVASION by Robert Morey. UNVEILING ISLAM by Ergun Mehmet Caner and Ermir Fethi Caner. PHILISTINE by Ramon Bennett .
" 30 minutes of that face-to-face time was consumed by the neurologist having to sit in front of his computer in my presence so as to complete the electronic medical records. "
ReplyDeleteMy doctor, at the risk of being fined, refuses to do this.
Sargento,
I love your comment!
Bah Humbug.
ReplyDeleteLast time around with my primary Doc, Do you own a gun? I could only muster a blank stare.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteBunkerville..........
"Do you own a gun"
it's all part of the "Frog Boiling" your rights away plan from the Left. I hate Socialists more and more with each passing day! Socialists: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Enver Hoxa, Mao Zedong, the little $#!T that runs N.K, et al...................and many right here who support our own version of such ilk.
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ReplyDeleteAs I recall the 2000 census had similar questions. My answers were: Race: Human Ethnicity: American.
ReplyDeleteI had a doctor client for whom I designed an efficient and time-saving client database. He loved it and used it for over 10 years. It simplified record-keeping and saved time, while still spitting out forms required by the medical records police in the huge university medical system where he works.
ReplyDeleteWe closed it down this summer as his establishment transferred everything to the new government-mandated monstrosity. The learning curve and time commitment to use this system is crazy, and to say he's nostalgic for his former system would be an understatement.