{"id":5295,"date":"2009-08-23T10:05:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T15:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5295"},"modified":"2009-08-23T12:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T17:05:00","slug":"steve-jobs-would-not-have-survived-under-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5295","title":{"rendered":"Steve Jobs Would Not Have Survived Under Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and a flaming liberal (one can assume evidenced by his fawning over Obama via his web site after the election) elected to have his liver transplant performed by a super-specialist surgeon in Tennessee. Job lives near Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley California.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not gaming the system,\u201d [Jobs’ surgeon, Dr. James Eason] said in the Aug. 18 interview in Memphis.<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s people choosing where they want their health care. Some people would leave Tennessee to go to California or somewhere else to seek treatment. Now we have people coming from California to Tennessee.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am not asserting that Obamacare would force someone like Jobs to seek care within the confines of California, or given his resources, even within the US. The fact that average<\/em> Americans don’t know<\/em> what choices they would have or would lose is probably what has derailed Obama’s momentum.<\/p>\n

President Obama took his health care message to talk radio Thursday<\/a>, telling listeners of Philadelphia-based host Michael Smerconish that he wants to overhaul the nation’s ailing health care system out of necessity rather than politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s a hard argument to make, at least to an informed audience, when Obamacare lacks tort reform. Malpractice litigation represents a large portion of the system’s cost structure and weighs heavily on health care provider decision-making when potentially being sued has to be constantly considered.<\/p>\n

…but America isn’t buying it from a President and a Congress that will never be subject to the product of this “necessary” reform. They and their families will retain their private-jet health care.<\/p>\n

America has witnessed a government that can’t administer an ill-advised yet simple rebate system for a narrow field of automotive sales transactions and yet aspires to manage the vast and varied intricacies of America’s health care complex.<\/p>\n

The public trust of the Obama administration is fast eroding in the wake of White House confirmination<\/a> that taxpayer dollars were spent on a spam campaign to promote reform most Americans are now resisting.<\/p>\n

Liberal elites like Steve Jobs might also consider the fact that Jobs’ liver transplant, an\u00a0unorthodox treatment of\u00a0a rare cancer, while leaving 70% of patients healthy after one year, would most surely not be covered by Obamacare.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt would not be considered the standard of care,\u201d he said July 2 in a telephone interview. \u201cIt\u2019s not something that would routinely be done nor is it proven to be a beneficial treatment, but it has nevertheless been tried and I\u2019m sure in some cases been successful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, experimental treatments, even if initially funded by the desperate-but-wealthy, tend to trickle down to the little people eventually once they are found to be beneficial – then widespread adoption drives down costs.<\/p>\n

Moreover, at least in the case of Dr. Eason,\u00a0government hasn’t forced him to care for those that can’t pay or represent a minority. He’s already doing it by his own volition.<\/p>\n

While patients of Jobs\u2019s stature are welcome, they aren\u2019t regarded differently than anyone else, Eason said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMemphis is a very impoverished city in and of itself, with a large minority population,\u201d he said. \u201cI can tell you our floors aren\u2019t full of billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eason said he\u2019s aiming for better access to transplantation for the region\u2019s poor, black and Hispanic populations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One has to wonder if Jobs own personal experience might also give him cause for pause for Obama and his policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and a flaming liberal (one can assume evidenced by his fawning over Obama via his web site after the election) elected to have his liver transplant performed by a super-specialist surgeon in Tennessee. Job lives near Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley California. \u201cIt\u2019s not gaming the system,\u201d [Jobs’ surgeon, Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}