While Democrats are over there champing at the bit to make their radical Medicare for All dream a reality:
107 House Dems have introduced a single-payer healthcare bill that is even more "ambitious" than Bernie's. It would:
– Outlaw ~all private health insurance
– Eliminate 1-2 million jobs
– Cover abortionThe proposal includes no price tag & no pay-fors.https://t.co/6EqZdPJjmb
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 28, 2019
People over here who understand what that would actually mean for Americans are terrified. Yesterday, pediatrician Joe Silverman, whose 12-year-old son is struggling with a life-threatening medical condition, laid the future those Democrats want bare in chilling detail:
I promised you all a thread on the state of modern American healthcare from the unique perspective of both a pediatrician and a father of a gravely ill child undergoing surgery. This won’t be my typical tweetstorm for a few reasons. (Cont)
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
In specific, these tweets won’t be coming that fast today and I don’t plan to number them. Normally I get angry about something and slam out a series of tweets. Today, I’m not angry. Mostly I’m simultaneously scared and hopeful.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Our 12 year old son just went into the operating room at Mayo Clinic and he will be there for much of the day. My wife and I are here in the waiting room and this thread will be slower and maybe somewhat intermittent as a result.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Let me give you a bit of background. My son is my 4th child. When he was an infant, one of my partners noticed during a routine well visit that he had a heart murmur. We got an echocardiogram – which is an ultrasound of the heart – and found out that he had thickened heart walls.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
After some further evaluation, he was diagnosed with a disease called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). HCM is a genetic condition that is actually rather common. Maybe as many as 1/350 people have it. However, it is extremely variable in severity and when it shows up in life.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Most people who have it live normal lives and many only find out they have it when they’re adults or even elderly and are having their hearts evaluated for other reasons. I have a friend whose dad was a CEO and it was found at 60 on an executive physical.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
My son is the other extreme. In fact, he is one of the youngest and most severe cases ever encountered. When I was a medical student, a patient like my son would have died at a young age. The two ways patients died was from heart failure or from a sudden death rhythm event.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
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However, during the last two decades a small number of dedicated doctors and researchers have advanced the medical care of HCM to the point where patients like my son can live essentially normal lives that are compatible with normal life expectancies.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
But here’s where the meat of my rant begins: the medical procedures and devices required to achieve this outcome are very expensive and specialized. In a Medicare for all system as promoted by @AOC, @BernieSanders, @CoryBooker and all the rest of @TheDemocrats, my son would die.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Moreover, they *want* him to die.
You think maybe I’m being extreme? Hyperbolic? Ok, let me prove my point.
Let’s start with a man who’s simultaneously the creepiest and most honest of @TheDemocrats, Ezekiel Emanuel, MD.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Who is Dr. Emanuel? He’s none other than the brains behind ObamaCare. During the Obama presidency, his title was (get this) Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Wanna hide someone in plain sight? Give him that kind of title.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
From that obscure office, he served as the chief architect of our current mess of a medical system. Interestingly, he’s also Raul Emanuel’s brother and I personally think the parallels between the ruin of healthcare and the ruin of the City of Chicago are striking.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
How did “Zeke” (as he’s known to his pals) get this kind of power? Well, he’s been a far left health care policy guru for most of his career. As such, he’s left a meaningful trail of writings that we can reference to understand the doctrine of leftist healthcare in America.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
The article Zeke is best known for is entitled “Principals for the allocation of scarce medical interventions.” It was published 2009 during the lead up to ObamaCare in the Lancet (which is oddly a British journal). Here’s a link to the article https://t.co/JFDVfi7LJd
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
I’m going to take a break here. Take a look at that article and think about what it means and what you think about it. I’ll give you my thoughts in a little while.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Ok, I’m back. Many of you picked up on the creepy nature of what Zeke is suggesting. If you don’t have social worth, you’re screwed. If your medical care is very expensive, you’re screwed, if you’re young or elderly, you’re screwed.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
This graph from the article is particularly interesting to me. I’m 52 ? pic.twitter.com/O0QSasujBH
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Sooo, who gets to decide on all the fine print of this fancy “allocation” algorithm? Why, you’re friendly neighborhood bureaucratic committee of course! (But you’re a crazy wingnut if you call it a Death Panel, amirite?).
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
(I also wonder if being a member of @TheDemocrats party will get you extra healthcare social worth points but that’s a bit off topic)
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Let’s bring this down to my son. One of the expensive interventions specifically targeted by the American left and its doctrinal architects are implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. These are the pacemaker like devices that shock hearts back into rhythm from the inside.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
HCM is most famously one of the handful of diseases that cause people to die suddenly. If you hear of an athlete sliding to a stop on the basketball court and dying it often turns out he has undiagnosed HCM. Unfortunately, portable automatic defibrillators don’t work on HCM.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
In other cases of fatal rhythm problems, if you get an automatic defibrillator on the person’a chest within a few minutes, the chance of survival is about 50%. In the case of HCM it’s about 10%. In my son’s case, he is at high risk for one of these fatal rhythm problems.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
As a result, one of the things he’s getting today is his own implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). The device will monitor him constantly and give his heart a shock if he needs one. They are extremely good at preventing sudden death in HCM.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
For a bunch of reasons we don’t need to explore, he’s having a special kind of ICD implanted behind his abdominal muscles just under his rib cage by his liver. Due to the extremely early onset of his HCM, my son’s ICD installation is going to be done in an “unapproved” fashion.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
We actually do all sorts of things in an unapproved manner in pediatrics. Even in the rest of medicine, doctors prescribe medications and recommend “off label” treatments regularly. Modern American medicine is a moving target. We’re always trying to optimize what we do.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
In my son’s case, the ICD and the defibrillator pads around his heart are not approved for this purpose. That’s because there aren’t enough patients like my son to do the kind of huge study that the FDA require for government “approval.” However, we know they work great.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
In addition to not being approved by the FDA, the use of ICDs in children like my son is not specifically described in the official cardiology guidelines. If every uncommon but well proven therapy was added to medical guidelines they’d end up being 1000 pages long.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Roll the clock back to the Obama years. Like I said, for some reason leftist “thinkers” got it in their head that ICDs were being implanted in far too many patients too great a cost. As a result, they decided to aggressively go after hospitals and MDs who used them off label.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
To do this, for the very first time in history, the Obama Justice Department decided literally prosecute anyone not following the guidelines for ICDs. Remember, guidelines are just that – guidelines. They’re never intended to be rigid and doctors deviate from them regularly.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
This prosecution went on for years and eventually wrapped up 100s of hospitals and 1000s of cardiologists. This is important: the basis of the prosecution was that all these institutions and doctors were installing off label ICDs in Medicare patients to commit actual fraud.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
The situation got so bad that in 2013 the cardiology societies updated the ICD guidelines to say that off label use should be allowed based purely upon physician judgement if the patient is unusual because the life saving potential of the devices is so great.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Despite that, the Obama Justice Dept pushed forward and finally in 2015 settled the case for a fine of $250 million dollars again at 457 (!!) hospitals. Here’s the Heart Rhythm Society’s statement on this travesty: https://t.co/bpWmEBENmB
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Now, please note this was purely for Medicare patients. Private insurance companies continued to willingly pay for off label, off guideline ICD placements as long as there was appropriate medical justification. But the key point is @TheDemocrats decided to prosecute for fraud!
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
(As a side note, we just got notified that my son’s surgery is going extremely well and he might be out much sooner than we thought. If that’s the case, this thread will come to screeching halt).
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
A brief glimmer of hope amidst the horror.
Silverman continued:
Fast forward to 2021. @BernieSanders is President, @AOC is speaker of the house and @chuckschumer is majority leader. They cram Medicare for All (MFA) down our throats. One month later, a boy just like my son is diagnosed with HCM. Guess what, he will be flat out denied an ICD.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
It will be outside the guidelines and unapproved by the FDA. There will be no insurance company there to pay for it and no one will take cash. That kid – my son’s doppelgänger – will likely die a sudden death as a youth. Screw @TheDemocrats and their sick communist dreams.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
One more thought. Our son’s cardiologist is the world expert in HCM. When we saw him last week, he told us we needed this done now. He also told us Mayo Clinic was the only place that could do this right for him. In fact, Mayo Clinic is that way for many problems.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
One more thought. Our son’s cardiologist is the world expert in HCM. When we saw him last week, he told us we needed this done now. He also told us Mayo Clinic was the only place that could do this right for him. In fact, Mayo Clinic is that way for many problems.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
In fact, this private medical system out in fly over country is the best hospital and physician group practice on the planet. Do any of you remember my thread on what happens to medical practices with MFA? https://t.co/GS7ICiqik7
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
FYI, that thread applies to Mayo Clinic as well. In fact, they recently had to make the unprecedented decision to prioritize private insurance over Medicare because they can’t survive on the much lower reimbursement from public insurance. https://t.co/chN4JIcgYT
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
Mayo Clinic is not just the best medical system in the world, it’s also the birthplace of modern medicine. It’s fitting that @KamalaHarris, @BernieSanders and @AOC want to drive them out of business.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
When that happens, my son’s heart team will disband. Some will retire, others will scatter. The next kid like my son won’t be able to go to that one place in the world where he can be helped. It simply won’t exist.
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
This is what they want for us all. They will get it if we let them. This is a literal fight for the lives of our children and loved ones. Modern American free market medicine where people like my son can live and thrive vs their communist fever dream of death.
-The End
— Pouncing Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) February 28, 2019
There are no words.
A remarkable and frightening thread.@MrsCasey6 @patrickmadrid
— Bill Moody (@WRogersM) February 28, 2019
Holy hell. Thread.
This made my blood run cold. https://t.co/110i0lklYG
— Courtney (@AlaskanCourtney) February 28, 2019
As it should. Because it’s absolutely terrifying.
In the meantime:
Praying for you all today, Joe.
— Prof B (@BProfB) February 28, 2019
Prayers for your family.
— Lori Taylor (@kjaristi) February 28, 2019
Prayers for your son, his medical team and your family.
— Pixie ?? SS ☕️? (@pixiejss) February 28, 2019
May your whole family he held in peace and strength today.
— (M)amy(ie) Barrett, SCOTUS (@hellomamiekitty) February 28, 2019
Praying for successful surgery and as painless a recovery as can be had. ❤️
— IronJawedAngel (@AngelJawed) February 28, 2019
First and foremost, I am praying for your son and your family. ?
— Bill Moody (@WRogersM) February 28, 2019
Praying for a successful surgery and complete healing for your son.
— George Wept (@GeorgeWept) February 28, 2019
Amen.
***
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