The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ah, So: Normalize Relations With Cuba, Import A Few Legions Of Doctors

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Over at Hot Air, Morrissey points out what a despicable [redacted] liar Harry Reid is/was during ObamaCare’s quest for stillbirth:

The “doc fix” dodge had been going on for some time, but Reid took it to a new level in order to fool the CBO into scoring ObamaCare as deficit-neutral. He submitted the Senate-written bill with the cuts to the CBO while winning AMA endorsement with a separate and temporary suspension of those cuts that the CBO didn’t get to see. That and the “temporary” Medicaid reimbursement rates have kept up the pretense of deficit neutrality ever since while pushing off the day of reckoning … until now.

Would that his embalming fluid were mislaid, so that Harry Reid could dry up and blow away. Do read the whole article as this week will see some major cuts to entitlement funding kick in. The groin.
While reading the Hot Air post aloud to Mrs. Other Smitty, she pointed out the related problem that a lot of these high-speed health plans require a specimen of the increasingly rare Primary Care Physician species:

A survey this year by The Physicians Foundation found that 81 percent of doctors describe themselves as either over-extended or at full capacity, and 44 percent said they planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients.

At the same time, insurance companies have routinely limited the number of doctors and providers on their plans as a way to cut costs. The result has further restricted some patients’ ability to get appointments quickly.

One purpose of the new health law was connecting patients, many of whom never had insurance before, with primary care doctors to prevent them from landing in the emergency room when they are sicker and their care is more expensive. Yet nearly 1 in 5 Americans lives in a region designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians, and the number of doctors entering the field isn’t expected to keep pace with demand.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the shortage will grow to about 66,000 in little more than a decade as fewer residency slots are available and as more medical students choose higher-paying specialty areas.

If only. . .there were some. . .handy location which happened to be chock-a-block with docs that would jump, say, a 90 mile stretch of water just to see some patients. Such a place would have to be crankin’ out the Marcus Welbys to compensate for the U.S. physician shortfall, though: you’d need at least as many as can be found in Cuba.

Certainly, swiping Cuba’s doctors could trigger a crisis for the Castro regime. However, we’re talking about Barack here. Standard operating procedure: someone else’s problem (SOP/SEP). Too, having a bunch of Spanish-speaking doctors, raised in an authoritarian system, treat the rest of your new Executive Amnesty citizens is sure going to help the Libertarian vote, isn’t it?

Anyway, you read it here first: normalizing Cuba relations is just the latest defibrillation effort for BHO’s dying signature legislative abortion.

Category: Barack Obama, Cuba, Health Care, Hot Air

Comments

24 Responses to “Ah, So: Normalize Relations With Cuba, Import A Few Legions Of Doctors”

  1. Joan Of Argghh!
    December 29th, 2014 @ 5:33 pm

    Some day I’ll be able to tell all I know about Cuba, but I will tell you this loud enough for Michael Moore to hear it: what he saw was a Potemkin hospital, a front for the foreign press, tourists and those with the money to pay for care. The rest of Cuba is as buggered as Haiti.

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 29th, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

    https://twitter.com/MsEBL/status/549673357260505088

  3. RS
    December 29th, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

    ObamaCare is like an ill constructed dam. From the day of its commission, there have been cracks and unseen, unknown leaks and flaws dissolving it. The Pelosi “know what’s in it when we pass it” pronouncement will be evident when the whole thing collapses and Americans really discover that their healthcare delivery system has been destroyed beyond any hope of reconstruction.

  4. RichFader
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:03 pm

    Cuban doctors meet American medical-malpractice jurisprudence. Hilarity ensues.

  5. smitty
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:07 pm

    That’s the legal employment piece.

  6. smitty
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:20 pm

    Initially, I had some exit question about Michael Moore getting liposuction, but dropped it from the post for the “you read it here” closer.

  7. Adobe_Walls
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:39 pm

    I’ve always considered ObamaCare to be one of those ”da Vinci war machines wherein the gears all work against each other.

  8. Greg Hlatky
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:43 pm

    I for one am all for trading Cuba’s doctors for US progressives.

  9. Adobe_Walls
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:49 pm

    The ”automatic mandatory” cuts to Medicaid and Medicare have been postponed every time the previous postponement comes due to expire, since first passed in the 90s. Republicans and Democrats have voted for the delay, declaring it the last ”doc fix” every time. That’s why the Democrats didn’t have to include it in the ACA which would have put it well above the one trillion dollar limit.

  10. smitty
    December 29th, 2014 @ 6:53 pm

    So, a river of lies, then?

  11. Mm
    December 29th, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

    THIS. When you grow up with family friends who were tortured in Cuba, you have no sympathy for the regime and its enablers.

  12. smitty
    December 29th, 2014 @ 7:37 pm

    The Progressive understanding seems to be that torture is bad, but only when we do it is torture “bad” bad.

  13. Adobe_Walls
    December 29th, 2014 @ 7:47 pm

    River systems.
    Morrissey seems to think the administration is fighting the providers who are suing to stop the cuts in order to keep ObamaCare costs from blowing up the program, nonsense. He simply doesn’t want anyone to have standing to stop the government from doing as it see’s fit. It’s the threat to his power he’s fighting, Obama doesn’t give a rat’s ass about costs.
    If the administration wins the lawsuit then Republicans will have to pass yet another doc fix or be blamed for allowing Medicaid and Medicare patients to die in the streets. Either way is OK by Obama’s political calculations.

  14. Robert What?
    December 29th, 2014 @ 8:12 pm

    And even better: the Cuban doctors are used to working for a pittance.

  15. JeffWeimer
    December 29th, 2014 @ 8:16 pm

    No more than $30 per month.

  16. Joan Of Argghh!
    December 29th, 2014 @ 8:44 pm

    No, that’s the “shovel ready” employment piece…

  17. Kory Oransky
    December 29th, 2014 @ 9:53 pm

    Oh dear Lord, no. A thousand times no.

    I’m in Florida. I had a Cuban-trained doctor once. He proudly displayed his diploma from the Universidad de Havana.

    Worst doctor I ever had in my life, bar none. He couldn’t read a EKG properly and told me that I had a “silent heart attack” (not likely for a woman in her 30’s), and told me to keep using an asthma medication when a pharmacist was certain I was exhibiting signs that it didn’t agree with me. He then said I needed prozac because I believed the pharmacist.

    Never forget…..when Hugo Chavez got cancer, he went to Havana for treatment. Didn’t work out that well for him, did it?

  18. Joan Of Argghh!
    December 30th, 2014 @ 8:30 am

    The epistemic closure of the Left shines through in everything they attempt. Cuban or Swede, Chicago or Kiev: they are told they are the best without ever having to prove it. They obtain jobs with others who have always been told they are the best, so they all believe each other and assume that folks not within their self-imposed enclosure are idiots.

    There is no Cuban miracle of health care. At all. Everyone whines about the, “ugly American” who boasts in the real achievements of our meritocracy, but the phony, unearned accolades that the Left hands out indiscriminately are the ruin of modern life.

  19. Quartermaster
    December 30th, 2014 @ 9:57 am

    An entire drainage basin bigger than the Amazon’s.

  20. Quartermaster
    December 30th, 2014 @ 9:58 am

    Yeah. We’ll need to import Cuban grave diggers.

  21. Quartermaster
    December 30th, 2014 @ 9:59 am

    If Moore had liposuction they’d get his brain as well.

  22. Joan Of Argghh!
    December 30th, 2014 @ 11:55 am

    This deserves a bump.

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