Right in the thick of the debate about establishing a federally controlled health care system in this country, my daughter, studying in Rome, ran smack into European health care.  It started out not to be an emergency, but after a couple of days and several contacts with the system, it became one.

One cannot assess an entire system based upon one experience with it.  But a common criticism of Italian universal health care is that there's a bias against proactive prevention... in favor of waiting until there's an emergency to take a problem seriously.  Proponents of national health care here in America claim we'll realize huge savings from practicing more preventative medicine.  Perhaps Italy, whose universal system has been in place since 1978, has learned it doesn't work that way.

 Health care socializers here in America complain doctors order too many tests, one of the reasons our system is so expensive. But there's something reassuring about a doctor thinking through the possibilities that could be causing your acute symptoms rather than sending you home with a prescription he hopes will work.

It took several days and finally a trip to the emergency room to figure out my daughter had a bee sting which was, by that time, badly infected. That Saturday night I prayed for her pain ...and that the 2000-page Pelosi bill would go down to defeat. It passed narrowly...curiously...due to a pro-life amendment.

The World Heath Organization ranks the Italian system number two....just after France's. They rank the U.S. number 37.      But a common criticism in the French and Italian plans is that...they're underfunded. Soaring costs are pushing both systems into crisis.  As Congress fights over whether America's system should be more like France, the French government is trying free market solutions... that would make its plan more like what exists here..

The only way to make a national universal health care system work is to focus mostly on costs. Better to encourage the free market which is normally great at finding efficiencies. Rather than squelch the entrepreneurial spirit in medicine, we should foster it. Profits encourage creativity and innovation allowing the system to get better at helping patients. 

The health care system needs reform. But what's being debated right now is not about making health care more available and affordable for people. It's about putting federal bureaucracies in control of a large portion of the economy and involving government in the most personal of individual concerns. The push is, according to the Wall Street Journal "...intended to make the middle class more dependent on government through the ‘umbilical cord' of universal health care."

Minnesota Congressman Paul Ryan, who has his own conservative plan to reform health care agrees .  He told reporters the House bill replaces the American idea with a European-style social-welfare state. We won't like such a system.  Let's not get stuck with it.

That's my view...and I'm Penna Dexter...for Moody Radio

MOODY COMMENTARY #102          HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL VS. SENIORS

One of the realities permeating the health care debate is that the bulk of medical spending occurs in the last few years...sometimes the last few months....of people's lives.  That's why the idea of government-run health care raises not-unreasonable fears... of rationing, the dreaded death panels.      We are on the threshold of a tidal wave of baby boomers entering their peak healthcare-consuming years. Medicare is already facing its own financial crisis.  Proposed healthcare legislation funds itself, in part, by cutting Medicare further just as the boomers turn 65 and increase enrollment in the program by thirty percent.

Betsy Mc Caughey,    chairman of a group called the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths,   has been a voice opposing a nationalized healthcare system.  In a recent Wall Street Journal op ed she argues that the current plans amount to an "...Assault on Seniors." Ms. Mc Caughey, says this assault began in February with the stimulus package, which contained over a billion dollars for comparative effectiveness research, code, writes Mc Caughey, for "limiting care based on the patient's age." 

Rationing care is central to the proposed overhaul. One of President Obama's key advisors on cost-efficient health care is Ezekiel Emmanuel (brother of Rahm Emmanuel, White House Chief of Staff.) Dr. Emmanuel's 2009 Lancet article on the allocation of medical resources advocates a concept called "the complete lives system."  If you've reached a certain age...say around sixty-five...you have lived a "complete" life.  Scarce medical interventions should be directed to the 25 year-old.  

Once the system is government controlled....the current plans give us a few years to get there...inevitably, medical bureaucrats will ration lifesaving care for the elderly. In Betsy Mc Caughey's words, they'll "doom baby boomers to painful later years." In another column she quotes top oncologist, Dr. Seymour Cohen, who says, "When we went to medical school people used to die at 66, 67, and 68.....we're the bad guys.  We're responsible for keeping people alive to 85.  So we're now going to try to change health care because people are living too long." 

Dr. Cohen laments the bias against specialists in this plan.      In creating a cheaper system, the heath care bills punish fields like cardiology and oncology.    Proposed regulations change how doctors are paid to benefit general practitioners, internists, and family physicians, considered in short supply.  Okay fine. 

But ObamaCare cuts funding for cardiology , specifically stress tests (by 42 percent) and heart catheterizations (by 22 percent) This will mean practices close their doors. Seniors wait longer.  The rap on cancer doctors is they order too many MRI's and CT scans.  Those are set for big cuts... as are funds for anti-tumor radiation therapies. 

The plans on the table will, in the course of a few years, squeeze market forces out of health care.  When that happens, you get scarcity, shortages. This takes us in precisely the wrong direction.

That's my view...and I'm Penna Dexter...for Moody Radio

MOODY COMMENTARY #95          REVISING SOCIAL STUDIES

By Penna Dexter
The state of Texas is in the midst of a mandatory, every-ten-year review of its social studies curriculum for public schools.  This is important to the whole country because textbook publishers develop material based on their largest market, Texas.

The biggest news from this process is that the sixth grade curriculum-writing team removed Christmas from a list of religious holidays.  The standards currently require sixth grade students to be taught the significance of Christianity’s Christmas and Easter, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.  The committee proposed removing Christmas and Rosh Hashanah and adding Dwali, a Hindu festival.

This is not just the war on Christmas. In a note, explaining the change, team members wrote that the examples include the key holiday from each of the major religions.  They’re deleting Christianity and Judaism from the list of America’s predominant faiths.

I doubt this recommendation will stand because Texas parents are getting wind of it. Their complaints are flooding into Austin where the State Board of Education is meeting this week to consider the proposals. But it’s one of many heartbreaking changes being recommended to the Texas social studies standards.

This is happening because      the sixteen curriculum writing teams are overloaded with representatives of the educational establishment and underloaded with the type of citizens the legislature specifies: parents, industry representatives, and employers.

One of the few volunteers from the “average citizen” group is Bill Aames, a well-read grandfather from the Dallas suburb of Richardson.  Bill says      there are two agendas at work:  One is to paint the United States in as negative a light as possible.  The second....and this explains the demotion of Christmas...is to add as much multicultural content as possible, with little regard for the significance or proportionality of contributions.

Hence, this attempt to erase Christianity’s role in the establishment and strength of the United States of America.      Aames reports that in the 8th grade History of the Revolution section, the proposed curriculum removes the instruction to “describe how religion contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies.” In the High School requirements for teaching History Since Reconstruction the new curriculum adds political groups that have been influential, like NAACP, LULAC, NOW.  But it makes no mention of the Christian and conservative groups like Christian Coalition, Family Research Council or the Heritage Foundation.

A modern Texas historian wrote “The ultimate goal of teaching history is to make students feel they are part of the story.”  No it isn’t.  If that were the real goal, these educational change-agents would be failing at their task.  Christian kids compose by far the largest contingent of public school students.  But Christianity’s contribution to America’s founding and success is being systematically stripped from the curriculum.

Concerned Texas parents will get Christmas back into the lesson plan.  But that will only be the beginning of the battle.

That’s my view....and I’m Penna Dexter...for Moody Radio

***************************************************************