Restricting Access To Care
Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE
As a retired Clinical Endocrinologist I don’t have a vested interest in generating income for myself from the healthcare system.
What I am trying to do is help consumers and healthcare policy makers understand the present healthcare system. I fear they have no interest in understanding what would work to repair the healthcare system.
I am also trying to explain to consumers that few politicians are interested in helping them. Politicians are interested in power. They are interested in making the people dependent on them.
Politicians and the central government are interested in controlling the healthcare system, the financial system, the Internet and the environment. Once politicians control these systems the people have lost their independence and freedom. Politicians will have the power they seek.
Many of our constitutional freedoms have been disappearing. American have been on the Road To Serfdom for many years.
President Obama has hastened the journey on the road to serfdom with his blatant disregard for the constitution and the bill of rights. To my chagrin he is succeeding.
President Obama is pretending to want to provide universal care. His goal is to destroy the healthcare system so that the people will beg for the central government to control the healthcare system. There are more uninsured people now than when he became President.
Paul Krugman is one of President Obama’s henchmen. He stated in a recent article that Obamacare is costing the government less money than the administration thought it would. He therefore calls Obamacare a success.
This administration and its henchmen in the traditional media flood us with half-truths.
Obamacare might be costing the government less than they expected. The Obama administration never told Americans what they expected to spend.
The Obama administration is the most non-transparent administration in my lifetime. Meanwhile, the Obama administration tells Americans it is the most transparent administration in history.
CGI is a Canadian company with offices in the U.S. It had the contract to develop the Obamacare website healthcare.gov. The website was a disaster. The development cost overruns were unbelievable.
CGI received the contract through an Obama crony capital award and a non-competitive bid.
CGI receive another contract to complete the backend of healthcare.gov.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is supposed to be affordable for consumers. Consumers are experiencing higher premiums and out of pocket expenses for medical services.
1. Obamacare has been under subscribed. Only 10 million people are verified premium paying subscribers. The Obama administration projected 30 million subscribers by 2015 when Obamacare was passed in 2010.
2. The deductibles are unaffordable. Obamacare is even unaffordable to those people who receive subsidies.
The subsidized people have avoided seeing physicians in a timely manner. The result is government costs are less in the short run but will be more in the long run as people get very ill.
3. The Obama administration is keeping the expenses for infrastructure and bureaucratic structure non transparent.
4. Obamacare’s rules and regulations are resulting in restricting access to care.
There has been an explosive increase in premiums and higher deductibles though the health insurance exchanges as well as private insurance.
The Obama administration has been silent about this reality.
The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. It has not increased the “quality of care.”
Paul Krugman does not publish the real truth in his New York Times articles. Those who still read the New York Times take his words literally. They are deceiving themselves.
One of the ways the Obama administration is restricting access to care to lower its costs is through the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s (USPSTF) recommendations.
The task force is composed of a group of physicians that do not have clinical expertise in the medical or surgical topic they are evaluating.
The group simply reads the medical papers assigned to them to evaluate. The committee decides the efficacy of treatment on the quality of the literature they are given to evaluate. Clinical judgment is not included in their evaluation.
A positive decision is made if the literature contains a double blind controlled study yielding positive results.
Last month the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued its final recommendation statement on Screening for Thyroid Dysfunction. The USPSTF studied this topic in 2004 with the same final opinion.
This time Obamacare will probably take action and restrict the evaluation on the basis of this recommendation
“ In its statement, the task force said that without more data from randomized clinical trials it could not assess the balance of benefits and harms from pre-clinical thyroid disease treatment and, thus, could not recommend that asymptomatic, non-pregnant adults be screened for thyroid dysfunction.”
The Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM), a journal of the American Medical Association published the USPSTF recommendation without expert clinical endocrinology comment or critique.
R. Mack Harrell, MD, FACP, FACE, ECNU current President of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) is having the AACE Thyroid Scientific Committee submit a note to the Annals of Internal Medical addressing AACE’s concerns with the USPSTF’s paper.
AACE has studied and written many guidelines on the evaluation and treatment of thyroid disease. Its members have vast experience as practicing clinicians in the treatment of thyroid disease. Its input should be sought by the Obama administration not ignored in favor of a default decision that saves Obamacare money and puts the financial burden of care on consumers.
The following is Dr. Mack Harrell’s comment to AACE’s membership.
In my opinion Dr. Harrell’s’ comments are totally correct and should be heeded by the Obama administration.
“While agreeing with the USPSTF’s call for new, controlled thyroid screening studies, AACE issued a press release outlining its position on aggressive case finding suggesting: that this approach is an appropriate alternative to screening in patient groups where thyroid risk factors are present.
More specifically, AACE stressed that testing and treatment are indicated in those patients who are at highest risk for developing life-altering, overt thyroid disease, including:
Patients over 60, in whom symptoms of hypothyroidism are often minimal, absent or atypical
- Newborns (continued mandatory screening for congenital hypothyroidism recommended)
- Those with autoimmune diseases often associated with thyroid disease, such as type 1 diabetes and pernicious anemia
- Patients with a prior history of thyroid disease or thyroid surgery, an abnormal thyroid exam, or taking drugs known to affect the thyroid
- Patients with a family history of thyroid illness
AACE further emphasized that careful consideration should be given to thyroid testing in women who are planning pregnancy or are already pregnant given the clear-cut detrimental effects of thyroid hormone lack on fetal development in the early phases of pregnancy.
We also intend to submit to AIM a formal statement from the AACE Thyroid Scientific Committee to address concerns that the task force’s “lack of data” argument could be incorrectly interpreted as a “lack of clinical need” to find and treat thyroid disease.
For years, members of AACE and the American College of Endocrinology have worked diligently to provide up-to-date, useful clinical guidelines and recommendations regarding decision-making about thyroid function testing for physicians. We will continue to keep our members and the medical community apprised as we communicate our position regarding thyroid disease testing.
Best regards,
R. Mack Harrell, MD, FACP, FACE, ECNU
The Obama administration has made many mistakes in writing Obamacare. Most of them have not been in favor of the consumers it professed to help.
About 50% of women over the age of 60% might have subclinical hypothyroidism. Overt clinical hypothyroidism can take several years to declare itself. During the time of subclinical hypothyroidism evolves to overt hypothyroidism patients can suffer mild to moderate symptoms that would decrease their quality of life on many levels.
I believe President Obama should show compassion and responsibility toward the millions of who people would suffer from subclinical hypothyroidism. President Obama is setting up the healthcare system to restrict access to care for these people.
I do not think he should rely on a committee that does not have the expertise in the field of clinical thyroidology.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone
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