My Personal Stake In Defeating Obamacare

Hey, 'member this?



But don't worry, old, disabled or infirm citizen. If there is any doubt as to the value the President places on your life, rest assured. The President is as concerned about your well being as that of his own grandmother.

Actually, it appears that the more that Grandpa and Grandma learn about Obama's health care bill, the more pressure they're placing on the AARP to retract their support for the bill.

Maybe Nana and Bopa read this round up, prepared by Michelle Malkin, of the real-life consequences of socialized medicine in Great Britain.

I normally don't divulge many personal details on this blog. But as I reflect on how the President's proposed health care plan would absolutely devastate American medicine, thereby bringing significant harm to my family, I feel compelled to share a few tidbits about the medical saga my wife and I have lived with regard to one of our children. So, loyal readers (both of you), finish your juice and cookies and join me on the storytime mat, so that I may present to you a few snippets of Geoffy's World.

My oldest child was diagnosed with Pervasive Development Dysfunction when he was four years old. (PDD is another term for "high-functioning autism.") Prior to his diagnosis, there weren't any profound red flags that suggested a serious medical condition to my wife or me. Looking back, of course, there were perhaps things that might have tipped us off, had we known what to look for: My son had been colicky baby and screamed blue murder for the first six months; he was a toe walker, and had been prescribed both orthotic foot braces and, at one point, had his feet cast; he was hyper and seemed a bit strong willed. But he was emotionally engaged, responsive (enough), seemed to play more or less normal (maybe kept to himself a bit more than the average kid), etc. His first pediatrician didn't really express any concerns--he did order an ultrasound of my son's rather large six-month-old head, but the results yielded no evidence for alarm. My son's first three birthdays came and went, and so far as my wife and I knew, we had a healthy, "normal" kid.

When my son was three, we moved a sufficient enough distance to necessitate finding a new pediatrician. Though he didn't push too hard at first, the new doctor did voice some concerns about my son's social skills. Sometime around my son's fourth birthday, a well meaning friend (for whom I thank God) had the courage to recommend a book to my wife about something called "Sensory Integration Disorder." Portions of the book came painfully close to describing some of my son's attributes. At that point we took our son to a neurologist, who formally diagnosed our son as PDD. After consultation with our son's pediatrician, we arranged to get our son private occupational, speech and physical therapy. When he was enrolled in pre-school, he was placed in a class for special needs kids upon recommendation of his IEP (Individualized Education Program) committee.

If there is any one thing about autism that is most maddening, it is the lack of knowledge as to its cause and even greater lack of knowledge about how to effectively treat it. Parents of autistic kids, abhorring this vacuum of information, are especially prone to pouncing on any hint of a successful treatment, be it in the form of an internet testimonial, a second hand miracle story overheard at the play group, or some "alternative therapy" flyer posted on the corkboard at the local hippie free love vitamin-and-organic-wiccan-energy-drink store. We tried our son on the gluten-free diet, the casein-free diet, we gave our kids soy and rice milk, removed corn from the diet, etc. We refused to give our kids vaccinations with mercury, despite the pediatrician's gentle protestations that the amount of the stuff involved was less than the mercury content of your average can of tuna. You name it, we tried it. To no avail.

At some point along the way, some friends with an autistic child told us about a nearby clinic that specialized in treating autistic kids. This place was literally one of a kind, and, counting ourselves lucky to live within driving distance, we got our kid an appointment as quickly as possible. After our first meeting with one of the clinic's physicians, I drove home with something like a sense of hope (a novel sensation indeed to that point). Here finally was a specialized clinic with a wide enough patient population, extending back a sufficient period of time, to allow them to conduct meaningful outcomes research which might provide some clues as to the causes and possible treatments of autism. Some of their patients had shown significant improvement. The doctor was very careful to remain sober about my son's condition and to avoid building up expectations or giving false hope. Nevertheless, I remained optimistic. Their treatment plan basically involved running a barrage of tests on my son (blood, hair, urine, feces) to pinpoint chemical imbalances and excessive toxins and metals in his system, and then prescribing a series of vitamins, nutrients, amino acids, etc, that would hopefully restore some of his neurological and physiological imbalances over time. Our son's pediatrician was cold on the idea to say the least. Long story short, two years of very expensive treatment that was only partially covered by my insurance yielded exactly nothing.

My son was about seven years old at this point. He had been receiving OT and Speech therapy on and off throughout this entire period, both privately and through the public school system. In regard to the latter venue: when my son was six, we pulled him out of public school, having decided that all of our kids would be home schooled by my wife. Our son did for a time continue to receive treatment through the public school, which is a service they are required by law to offer even to private or home educated kids. Though at one point some young and naive administratress did attempt to tell my wife that the district was not legally obligated to provide services due to "separation of church and state." I didn't realize that home schooling was an organized religion. Live and learn. Eventually we came to realize that trying to coordinate with the district proved more trouble than it was worth and contented ourselves with the private therapy he was receiving.

Around the time my son turned seven, our son's pediatrician recommended taking him to be evaluated by a team of experts at the Children's Hospital in Milwaukee. They ran him through a number of different tests and assessments, and again, to make a long story slightly less long, their team of specialists (ranging from pediatric psychologists and neurologists to auditory specialists) offered a most unexpected diagnosis.

Your son is not autistic, they said, but has a language learning disability and RAGING ADHD. Again, the clouds parted as I turned in this revelation over in my mind. ADHD: That's treatable. Learning disability: Also treatable. Autism: Marginally treatable to untreatable. It's hard to put into words the (perhaps undue) relief I felt in that moment, as one arbitrary label was ripped from my son and another slapped on, as if with velcro. So after trying the myriad failed or inconclusive treatment strategies on which we had spent the last few years, not to mention considerable dollars, it was time to move on to that tried-and-true mainstay of the medical profession: drugs! Sh'haaaaah, bro! druuuuuugs.

Over the course of our grand little odyssey into controlled substances, the pediatrician prescribed three different ADHD meds for our son. Two were stimulant based, one non. Apart from one pill that had our son up all night blabbing like a speed freak at a Beat revival, there was little discernable change and certainly no benefit derived from any of the meds. So, one more miracle cure relegated to the dustbin of history.

Which pretty much catches us up to the present, and brings me to my wife's sciatica.

My wife, a petite little thing all of 5' 1", has not only delivered three kids but has had each of them in turn affixed to her hip for the last nine years. Lugging kids around for that long wreaks hell on your back and by the time the youngest grew to unluggable size, my wife was having severe back and leg pain. After other treatments failed to alleviate her pain, I suggested that she see a chiropractor (I had a very positive outcome through chiropractic treatment as a teenager). Before long, the DC treating her cajoled me into having myself and the kids x-rayed as well.

When I saw the x-ray results of my oldest, I nearly fell over. His spine, which was shot from the front, looked as if it was a side profile. His spine is so crooked it looks like a backwards "s." I couldn't believe it. How did this go unnoticed for possibly all of my son's nine years of life? My son basically has scoliosis and none of the manifold physicians or therapists who have poked, prodded or examined him six ways from a flipping months of sundays over the course of his life managed to catch it. Could at least some of his neurological dysfunction be attributed a compromised central nervous system with multiple nerve impingements as a result of his mangled spine? Who knows. But at the very least, a condition that absolutely can't go untreated, and that I possibly would not have known about for years, was uncovered. I told the DC to get my son on the table for and adjustment immediately. Time will tell if this treatment resolves the situation without my son requiring surgery. It also remains to be seen if a corrected spine will lead to any additional neurological regulation. After everything we've tried for my son, I've learned not to get my hopes up too much. However, short of seeing a witch doctor, if there is anything out there that holds even the slightest chance of bringing my son even a nanoparticle of additional functionality, you had better believe that I will try it.

Now, at last, to the point (yes, there really is one): My son has received a vast array of medical treatment over the course of his life. Some of this treatment has been conventional, some not. Some of it has been beneficial, some not. It has been a long, expensive process of trial and error (some of it necessary, some not) that simply would not have been possible in a socialist health care system. I praise and thank God for the private, employer-provided insurance that has funded the majority of the medical and therapeutic care my son has received. I also praise and thank God for certain members of our extended family who have generously helped us financially so that my son could get some treatment options that my insurance would not cover. It has been a tremendous blessing to see my son receive perhaps better and more diverse treatment than the majority of the populace.

And as my son, my other kids and my wife and I continue to age, I want the quality and availability of care we have thus far experienced to continue. I do not want a single payer government option. I do not want rationed care. I do not want the dumbing down of the medical profession as talented and bright young men and women chose more lucrative careers over a medical degree. I do not want some zit-popping, gum snapping, braindead government employee, who only got their job because their uncle gave money to some democrat's political campaign, deciding whether or not to authorize my son's treatment. I do not want to have to sell my house to raise the cash I will need in order to circumvent single payer and get a loved one the care they need (but I will, if that's what it comes down to).

A well-meaning liberal friend once asked me "Geoff, your son has all these special needs, so don't you think it's only fair that the people who have means contribute a little more in taxes so that people like your son can get the care they need?"

Leaving aside the fact that, no, I don't think the government ought to be seizing the wealth of my neighbors to take care of my kids (yes, family helped us, and yes, it enabled us to try some "alternative" therapies; But had we not these resources at our disposal, we would have made do with the treatment options that were insurance-covered, or scraped together the cash some other way), my liberal friend's question misses the point: My son would have WORSE care under Obama's plan than what he's had to date. The so-called "47 million uninsured" will have WORSE care under Obama's plan than the free care available to them now. EVERYBODY will have WORSE care than what they are getting now. Health care will be rationed. Private insurance, both unable to compete with government reimbursement rates--but nonetheless expected to subsidize the loss to medical groups that will result from those rates--will go out of business. Businesses, reeling from the "surcharge" tax that will hit almost of them, will dump their employees into Obamacare en masse. And Obamacare, dependent upon ever-dwindling tax revenues that will stem from ever-increasing tax rates levied against an ever-shrinking private sector, will invariably institute ever-increased rationing of care and cutting of services.

And once this abomination called "government option" health care is enacted into law and rapidly disintegrates into a cash-starved beast, what services do you suppose will be the first for the chopping block?

Well, if President Obama has to question whether his own grandmother's hip replacement is indicative of a "sustainable model" for health care, what the hell chance does your grandmother have for a hip replacement? Or, as implied in the video above, a pacemaker?

And since President Obama is an enthusiastic supporter of abortions of all varieties whose own website states that he wants prenatal screening for "all pregnant women"--presumably so that babies with detectable diseases or disorders such as Down's Syndrome can be diagnosed and "taken care of"--how enthusiastic is the President's administration (or whatever bureaucracy it spawns) going to be about caring for your special needs child, whom you obviously should have just aborted when you had the chance?

For Barack's sake, people--you can't provide compassionate care for everyone without denying a few people coverage! Now if everyone who is mentally retarded, deformed, autistic, paraplegic, or over the age of 55 will do their patriotic duty and swallow their government-issued cyanide capsule, we can get on with the business of making life better for all Americans. And yes, we do have "end-of-life consultants" standing by ready to help anyone that can't open the packet or swallow on their own.