The question is not whether helmets are efficacious. The question is whether we have the right to indulge in risky behavior, or whether the state has the right to restrict us in order to preserve our lives.

Helmets and seatbelts today – a requirement to lose weight and exercise later? Questions that seemed ridiculous before Obamacare and a legal decision that a lack of activity – the refusal to buy health insurance – constitutes activity are now on the table.  Questions about whether there are any actual barriers to what Congress can require of us are currently being debated.  Helmets are the least of our worries.  Our very independence is at stake.

Of course, given that doctors actually lose money on those patients, refusing to take them is a rational response to the market the government has engineered. But now, if the government can define the problem as “doctors refusing service” rather than “government insurance plans underpaying doctors” Obama can implement a solution in line with the rest of his extra-legal regulatory adventurism.  Will it be that hospitals who don’t treat a certain percentage of Medicare/Medicaid lose all access to government funding? Will it be that “private” doctors have more difficulty with licensing and inspections?  Will it be some kind of surtax on private medical practices which don’t treat a certain percentage of Medicare/Medicaid patients? Or will it be addressed as a civil rights issue – the “right” to medical care?

h/t Instapundit

Here in New Orleans, a clinic was shut down yesterday for

operating without a registered nurse on staff, without a controlled dangerous substance license and without registering with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The clinic was actually shut down in January for those things, but it was permitted to reopen while they contested the issue in state court. Which, I guess, was better than actually making the effort to meet the medical standards.  But hey, it’s the GOP and pro-lifers who hate women and want to reduce their access to safe medical care, right?

That’s a full semester of grammar or high school.

Nearly half of a full-term pregnancy.

A week longer than football season.

And it’s how long you’ll be waiting to get your “free” doctor’s visit in Britain.  Is the “free” really worth the wait?

An epic cage match, with a very decided victor.

Take cancer as one example. Compared to the U.S., breast cancer mortality is 9% higher in Canada (according to the government statistics of each country), 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom (according to studies published in Lancet Oncology). Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in Britain.

Those in need of timely care from specialists are better off in the U.S. Drawing on several peer-reviewed studies, Dr. Scott Atlas of the Stanford University Medical Center notes that patients who need knee and hip replacement, cataract surgery, and radiation treatment wait months longer in the United Kingdom and Canada than in the United States.

But conservatives are the “poor, uneducated and easy to command” people who “cling to their guns and religion,”and are intellectually stunted because of their limbic brains.

Market forces apply to us – when’s the last time you got a raise? How many people do you know who have lost their jobs? But they don’t apply to unions. Just try firing a union member.

They hire non-union picketers to protest hiring of non-union workers.

Secret ballots? Not so much.  How would you like to wake up one day and learn that your home is now a union shop?

The unions got what they wanted – Obamacare was rammed through. And now they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it applies to us, and not to them.

Oh, it’s not the hypocrisy, though they certainly have that in abundance. It’s the naked, shameless authoritarianism. It’s abundantly clear they expect to live by different standards than the ones they want to enforce on the rest of us.

But not 32% less, along with less pleasant working conditions in which my husband is expected to perform the exact same job.

On the other hand… hey, doctors are rich, so let’s stick it to them! From Heritage:

She’s not alone. A group known as Docs4PatientCare, led by Dr. Hal Scherz, has brought together doctors across America to make the case for repealing Obamacare.

I realize that to some people, especially government employees math is hard. But healthcare is not now and has never been, anywhere in the world, FREE. It’s just a question of deciding who bears the cost for it. Some people are demanding that doctors do so.  It’s only fair, they reason, that people so privileged as doctors be required to give back, besides, it’s immoral to make a profit off sick people.

They never seem to wonder exactly with what these doctors are privileged.  Crushing education debt?  Long hours?  Incredibly high malpractice premiums?  The right to have your name ruined by some yahoo looking for a quick buck when he sues you?  The right to have a jury easily swayed by a convincing attorney award him the value of years worth of your labor?

Give back? That’s based on the theory they took something away from people in the first place.  What did they take? No one seems to know.

But ask yourself – would you work hard and bear heavy responsibility without being well-compensated for it?  At some point, wouldn’t you decide that if you’re going to be paid less anyway, you’d rather take an easier job? I would.

Doctors are already voting with their feet in Massachusetts, which has suffered under an Obamacare-type plan for several years.  Sure, everyone is covered by insurance.  But good luck finding a doctor.

Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.

And that’s not just in Massachusetts.

The House of Representatives will soon vote on repealing Obamacare, but the vote is largely symbolic because there’s little chance Harry Reid will permit it come to a vote in the Senate. Even if it did pass a Senate vote, President Obama would surely veto it. Obama promised that if we like our plan, if we like our doctor, we can keep them.  I do like my doctor and I want to keep her.  That’s why I’m doing my part to keep the heat on Congress to repeal Obamacare, and failing that, chip away at it and refuse to fund it.  In other words, to stop giving her reasons to quit.

Crossposted.

The best part about this is this tool still thinks her “free” healthcare is wonderful.

“Living in Canada, we have universal health care, which is wonderful, but I have been on a waiting list [garbled] seven years… I’ve been waiting seven years just to meet the surgeon. …To see any kind of specialist is at least a few months, you’re not going to get into see somebody next week. … But I think actually what I did was maybe piss somebody off. …They’re telling me it’s going to be another two or three years.”

I really enjoy how blithely accepting she is of the concept that health care in her country may be distributed according to how well the patient sucks up to bureaucrats.  If you “piss somebody off” you should be prepared to wait longer to see a doctor.  How again is Canada’s health care “universal” when it can be delayed or denied at the whim of some civil servant?

Brian Maloney wonders,

Just as a conservative is often said to be a liberal who is mugged, has one of our favorite “progressives” just had a similar epiphany?

Rosie has never let facts stand in the way of her opinion before, and it seems unlikely she’ll permit them to now.

Patient dissatisfaction with long waits is not lost on physicians, and new practice models are popping up around the country partly in response.

On its Web site, One Medical Group, a practice with five offices in San Francisco and a newly opened one in New York City, promises “same-day appointments and longer, more personalized visits that start on time.”

How does the medical group guarantee on-time appointments? The practice, which charges patients a $199 annual membership fee to join and uses information technology to help manage costs, doesn’t require that patients come in for routine ailments like urinary tract infections. Instead, the medical professionals treat them by e-mail or phone, similar to a new service in Minnesota we wrote about earlier this year. Refills are also done online. Such policies help limit the number of patients coming into the office.

In addition, the practice has adopted certain time management policies that make starting and ending appointments on time easier, said Tom Lee, medical director of One Medical Group. Because appointment times with doctors are 20 to 30 minutes for each appointment,  longer than elsewhere, they don’t tend to run over as often. This also builds in extra buffer time between One Medical appointments for physicians to deal with tasks like looking over test results or filling out forms.

Email or phone treatment of common-sense ailments alone makes membership well worth the price.  This is a great example of how the market can work in medical treatment – without government intervention.