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Govt.-Run Health Care Isn't the Answer

Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D., and GOProud's Christopher R. Barron say that the inefficiencies of the Ryan White CARE Act suggest that a government-run program is not the key to quality health care.


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COMMENTARY: Right now, there are hundreds of patients with a fatal disease being denied lifesaving treatment as a result of government health care rationing. This isn’t happening in a third-world country, or Canada, but right here in the United States of America.

Imagine that you have been sick for weeks, maybe even months, and you haven’t gone to the doctor. You are scared -- and worst of all you don’t have insurance. When you finally do go, you get the news you had feared -- you’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. The good news is that the disease can be treated, that the disease can be managed, unfortunately, at a cost of as much as $20,000 a year. You are told that there is a government program that can provide treatment, but there is a waiting list, and it may be months or years before you will finally receive the medication that would keep you alive. Without treatment, you could die.

The disease is HIV/AIDS and the public program is the Ryan White CARE Act.

The federal government will spend $15 billion on AIDS treatment alone this year, yet due to the inefficiencies of the public-run program, thousands will not receive appropriate care. In recent years, two patients in West Virginia and five in Kentucky died while awaiting care on waiting lists for the RWCA AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Today there are 247 Americans on waiting lists for livesaving AIDS drugs in eight states. The number is expected to reach 500 by Christmas. Those on the ADAP waiting lists are disproportionately minorities and residents of rural areas.

Sadly, the waiting lists do not tell the whole story of how care is being rationed under this program. Many other ADAP patients, while receiving care, are being denied the best treatment. Fuzeon, the AIDS drug of last resort that has been successful in treating patients who no longer benefit from other drugs, for example, has been denied to ADAP patients in our nation’s capital.

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Reader Comments
  • Name: Matt Helm
    Date posted: 2/28/2010 5:39:54 AM
    Hometown: Timmins Ontario

    Comment:

    "A third world country or Canada"???? Or Canada?? WTF??? As a Canadian I really believe that many Americans have no idea how beneficial free, universal health care benefits the society at large. Do some things fall between the cracks? Very rarely!!! How did the Americans get so brain washed and get it so wrong as to believe a private company will work in your best interest with regards to health care??? You pay absorborant prices, and get nothing!! It is only logicall that if you all paid into health care it would be cheaper for all!! Why do we have co-ops if not?? Watch Sicko!! As a proud Canadian I even believe that Dental is part of your health care and should also be universally covered, as it is in most advanced European countries!! As Americans you should really be asking yourself, what most Canadians or Europeans think on the matter! Do we really have it so wrong?? Or are the companies campaigning to make you think we have it bad??

  • Name: Tez Anderson
    Date posted: 12/21/2009 12:17:39 PM
    Hometown: San Francisco

    Comment:

    Coburn is lair and a nasty piece of work. He is they one who tired to kill the bill by demanding the entire bill be read on the floor of the Senate. He has attempted to kill the bill through any means he can no matter how deplorable. But it doesn't get much worse than this: The Washington Post reports that Coburn went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer, "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray." He was clearly talking about ailing Sen. Robert Byrd. He wanted Byrd to die. He called on his fictitious god to strike another senator dead. I wish it were it were that easy. I'd be praying for Coburn's demise.

  • Name: Etaoin Shrdlu
    Date posted: 12/3/2009 2:55:17 AM
    Hometown: Farmington, New York

    Comment:

    Never forget, Coburn is the "genius" who denounced NBC on the floor of the House of Representatives for showing "Schindler's List" uncut and without commercial interruptions. "Mr. Morality" objected to all the nudity in the film. I guess he found sadism and genocide a real turn-on!

  • Name: Kira
    Date posted: 10/31/2009 11:25:00 PM
    Hometown: New Jersey

    Comment:

    HIV/AIDS is 100% preventable! 100%! But it means changing behavior, something many find reprehensible. If Nationalized Health Care/Insurance goes into effect promiscuous sexual activity, or sex with more than one partner for life could be considered reckless activity that could lead to the necessity of extra health care treatment and payment or coverage for said treatment. Be careful what you wish for.

  • Name: bobc
    Date posted: 10/31/2009 9:03:03 AM
    Hometown: Ashland

    Comment:

    It is amazing just how many people do not realize how much fraud is in all government run programs! Who do you think messed up Medicare and S.S.? I read once, that any foreigner that steps foot on our soil and has AIDS, gets treated for free, if this is true, then our own citizens with this disease aren't getting the treatment because it went to a non-citizen. First hand, I have seen Community Action and Welfare use fraud, in order to get more money the next year! On Medicare, if one is denied a new treatment, and you find a way to get the money to pay the Dr., Medicare will stop all payments to the Dr. for two years! So he is punished for trying to help his patient! Gov. should first stop fruad, do tort reform, allow tax deductions for people to buy ins., but they won't because they think you are too cheap and too stupid to do it on your own!

  • Name: David Lampo
    Date posted: 10/27/2009 3:38:55 PM
    Hometown: Washington DC

    Comment:

    The ignorance about health reform in this thread is appalling. In every single state where a public option exists, costs have skyrocketed and coverage has been cut back. The cost of regular insurance in those states, from Maine to Massachusetts, has skyrocketed because of mandates like guaranteed issue and forced coverage that millions do not need. And to hold up Medicare and Medicaid as the ideal of what a public option should look like reveals a profound ignorance of these programs. They have unfunded liabilities of TRILLIONS of dollars and are rife with fraud and abuse. Foreign countries spend a less on health care because their governments ration it. The U.S. has far higher cure rates for cancer and better treatment of heart disease, partly because we make much greater use of medical technology like MRIs and Catscans. Once you correct for national differences in race, obesity, fertility rates, and other demographic factors, we have the best health care in the world, bar none.

  • Name: libhomo
    Date posted: 10/25/2009 9:04:00 AM
    Hometown: NYC

    Comment:

    Why is Barron willing to collaborate with a vicious homophobe like Coburn anyway? The influence HMO money can have on some people is frightening.

  • Name: Rob S.
    Date posted: 10/23/2009 12:03:27 AM
    Hometown: Lakeland

    Comment:

    These comments are amusing, yet sad. For example: "The GOP will stop at nothing to protect the insurance lobby," Remind me again who's fighting tooth and nail to get the insurance companies to support ObamaCareless? And let's not forget all the beau coup cash liberal Congress critters take in contributions from the eeeeevil insurance companies like Pelosi. I find it strange that the gays will rail against Coburn as a "bigot", but circle the wagons around those who gave us DADT, DOMA (and refuse to do anything about either), refer to gays as "those people", call a guy "maricón" on Imus' show, refuse to offer amicus in Romver v. Evans, encourage John Kerry to support the FMA, etc. etc. And let's not forget Chairman Obama surrounding himself with many homophobic bigots. The gays didn't think twice about throwing their cash and votes at him. So it seems that the Coburn hysteria is little more than typical liberal feigned indignation.

  • Name: Dustin
    Date posted: 10/22/2009 1:06:04 PM
    Hometown: Yuma, AZ

    Comment:

    Republicans, since getting trounced soundly at polls in 2008, have been very good at telling us what the answer is not. They have been very short is supplying viable alternatives however. If government-run healthcare isn't the answer, then what is, Mr. Coburn? Leaving our healthcare to profit-driven private insurance companies doesn't seem to be working.

  • Name: Russ Klettke
    Date posted: 10/22/2009 9:28:24 AM
    Hometown: Chicago

    Comment:

    Isn't it funny that when a GOP senator wants to talk to gay people, he thinks we all have the AIDS? He apparently missed the e-mail about how members of the LGBT community have jobs, buy homes, have long-term partners, sometimes have children and we get old. Like any straight American, we worry about losing our jobs if we have an accident or get sick; or that our employer will eliminate healthcare benefits; or that because an employer simply doesn't like gay people that we will get fired; or that if we get sick and aren't covered we'd lose our houses to exorbitant medical costs; or that our partners might have healthcare benefits but our family doesn't qualify for those benefits as do straight coworkers; or that maybe we do get partner benefits from one partner's employer, but have to pay income taxes on those benefits (when straight coworkers do not); or that many of us are entrepreneurial and therefore have to purchase health insurance on the open market. AIDS does not define us.

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