If you want to take a pulse on the political vibe in this country, one need only look at Wisconsin.  The state has become the barometer for judging not just the public’s appetite for political battle, but the competitive landscape as well.  The spotlight on anything that has six degrees of separation from a Koch brother has been great drama for Wisconsin’s ongoing soap opera, but audiences in the state and nationwide might get a better show by turning their attention leftward.  Few have examined the strange pattern of money and favor trading that’s been pervading Wisconsin’s beloved circle of progressive politics.

The activity in Wisconsin over the last few months becomes crucially pertinent as the state gears up for the 2012 Wisconsin Senate race.  It’s worth looking at the financial innards  of the Supreme Court race and the protests against Governor Scott Walker in order to assess what the fight for the Wisconsin Senate seat, soon to be vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, will look like.  What many don’t realize is that this race could have broader implications – not just in national politics, but in specific policy areas, like health care and your personal medical records, for example.  Lots of money, fueled by liberal business interests and an ever-growing progressive movement in Wisconsin, has already been freely flowing.

But is anyone watching? Who are some of these donors?

Let’s start by looking back at the recent Wisconsin protests and the Supreme Court election, and then dissecting some of the money trail.

The hostility stemmed from the union reform bill signed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on March 11^th as a stand-alone portion of the overall budget repair bill.

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The indispensable Jake Tapper of ABC News took an interview with Vice President Joe “Foot in Mouth” Biden that contains a nugget of information that tends to prove that Barack Obama intends to destroy America’s insurance industry and place it under the full control of the federal government.

Tapper asked VP Biden what he’d been hearing from the members of the Democrat Congress that are vulnerable over this healthcare debate and Biden’s reply let slip the administrations ultimate goal; full government control of the insurance industry. (My bold)

BIDEN: Well, I yes. Some of them I say they say, well, Joe, look, man, I mean, you know, you guys haven’t massaged this very well. And, you know, this thing has gone on so long, I don’t know. And my response is, hey, man, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m telling you, you know, pre-existing, they’re going to be covered. You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Granted Joe Biden is the court jester of the Obama Administration. He is a fool of the highest order. It would be easy to dismisshis words. However, the idea that Obama wants to take full federal control of the insurance industry fits quite nicely with Obama’s claims as a candidate — that he was for a single payer plan all along.

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If the goal of the President’s proposal was to drive doctors into hospital based practices or community health centers, or if it was to break the spirit of providers and bend them to the will of the government that holds the threat of criminal prosecution over their heads if they are found to be Medicare cheats, or if the goal was to dumb down the practice of medicine by ramping up the power of the HHS secretary and the evidence-based medicine posse, then the President’s proposal for health care reform was successful.

However, we as physicians are individuals. There are approximately 890,000 doctors currently practicing in the US. Those of us who want the autonomy to practice medicine the way we were trained, those of us who run a private practice who are entrepreneurs at heart, those who are tired of being pitted against our patients and other physicians (the specialist vs. primary care physician meme), and those who are just sick and tired are NOT going to take this. Those of us who can will retire or leave medicine all together. Those within the system will simply opt out.

The President’s summit on Thursday amounts to nothing more than six hours of theater. Not one physician in Congress has been invited to attend. The physicians for single payer have also not been invited. It is his chance to hear from the people on the front line, and it is obvious this bill is NOT about the health of our people. It is about raising revenue, controlling the medical industrial complex completely. How else can you explain the proposal for the government to a) take over control of the cost of insurance premiums; b) limit provider medical decisions based on cost, and c) control what is medically covered for the patient. Under the proposed health care reformed, the government will control how much an insurance company can charge, decide what is covered medically, and sanction the provider for deviating from the norm.

These are some of the proposal highlights that concerned me the most:

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From Canada’s National Post:

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States.

Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.

“He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done,” said Ms. Dunderdale, who will become acting premier while Mr. Williams is away for three to 12 weeks.

“In consultation with his own doctors, he’s decided to go that route.”

Mr. Williams’ decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada’s health-care system.

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Kaiser Permanente (KP) would appear to be the frontrunner to head up the government-administered Medicare buy-in plan devised by Senate Democrats, especially since the company was ranked as the number one Medicare plan in November. In addition, KP–in compliance with the Obama agenda to have all medical records electronic by 2014–has heavily invested in electronic medical records (EMR) and has even linked two of the largest electronic medical record systems in the country—allowing doctors and nurses at Kaiser and VA hospitals and clinics in San Diego county to access certain information about patients who receive care from both health systems. KP’s merging of the two systems also can be thought of as the flagship model for EMR convergence, leading to an EMR platform under a single-payer, universal health system.

With this type of progress and plan ratings, KP would be a natural fit and even help facilitate the transition to a single-payer system. Even the Democrats in the Senate seem to think that, after demonizing the insurance companies, they could overlook the insurance industry’s greed and other flaws and have them run their new compromise “non-public” option plan.

Furthermore, KP’s chairman and CEO George Halvorson, who took the helm in 2002, has met with Obama and has had several meetings with key figures in the health care debate, including:

March 27–Meeting with Keith Fontenot, who manages the financial resources of government agencies related to health. He oversees funds for Medicare, Medicaid, all U.S. public health agencies, and the entire Health and Human Services Department, from the Food and Drug Administration to the National Institutes of Health.

June 5–Meeting with Peter Orszag, director of the CBO.

July 23–Meeting with Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)

July 24–Meeting with Sarah Fenn, who is a $36,000-a-year White House assistant. Fenn is an attorney and also served as the state legal Voter Protection Director for the Obama campaign in Indiana, Kentucky, and New Hampshire, as well as campaign field staff in Iowa, Idaho, Texas, and Florida.

Halvorson was the only insurance executive to meet with Sebelius.

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First, a brief congratulations to all on having seemingly killed the public option. Without our efforts, it would be en route to becoming law. Now there will not be a government owned, government run and government subsidized insurance company that will put all others out of business.

But the current proposal Reid is loudly trumpeting is horribly flawed as well.

It has all of the old flaws (minus the public option) in that the government, through the Secretary of Health, will decide who gets what treatment at what cost and will force rationing through an artificial scarcity on all people, particularly the elderly. And it still has such high premiums for young uninsured people that it will compete with student loans for the honor of being their number one headache.

But the compromise itself is flawed:

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Many advocates of health-care reform are admirers of Canada’s state-run, no-opt-out, single-payer system. Indeed, in 2003, President Barack Obama voiced enthusiasm for such a health-care program.

Proponents of Canadian-style health care should meet Cheryl Baxter, a Canadian citizen who waited years for hip-replacement surgery, only to be told that her operation would not happen any time soon. Instead of waiting, Baxter did what an increasing number of Canadians are doing: She flew to a clinic in the United States, paid out of pocket, and had a life-altering surgery in a matter of weeks rather than years.

Baxter’s experience doesn’t just throw damning light on Canadian health care. The sort of clinic she went to in Oklahoma suggests a different way of delivering health care in the United States, too: A simple fee-for-service
model in which providers openly advertise their prices, service, and reputation. Rather than a frustrating, complicated mess of intermediaries such as employers and insurance companies, U.S. health-care reformers should think about bringing medicine into line with the same dynamics that help deliver great service at great prices throughout most other parts of the economy.

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To achieve the goal of a universal, single-payer health system, the White House must secure the power it needs by amending the Social Security Act to transfer pivotal controls from Congress to the executive branch.  This transfer of power would ultimately give the President and the majority party, in this case the radical left Obama White House and Pelosi-Reid led progressive Democrats, the authority to frame and manipulate new policy, coverage options, and reimbursements, ultimately reshaping the future US health care system into a something unrecognizable in this country.

The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built into the each of the health care bills and, if they fail, little-known twin bills called “MedPAC Reform of 2009” are waiting in the wings.  The bills, S.B. 1110 and H.R. 2718, craftily amend the Social Security Act and transfer the Medicare guideline and rule setting processes, from the legislative branch to the executive branch.  These bills offer cover to one another in case one doesn’t pass the House or Senate, respectively.  Remember, Democrats need to gain executive branch authority by amending the Social Security Act over Medicare regulations and physician fee schedules to transform the health care system in a single-payer, socialized system.

More importantly, Medicare’s regulations and physician fee schedules are the keystone to developing payer systems and reimbursement models across the entire health care industry.  And where Medicare goes, insurers follow.

To underscore the far-reaching power, a bulk of the states already reference or utilize the Medicare guidelines and fee schedules in determining policy, coverage, and payment, which impacts certain state-specific plans, including, but not limited to, self-funded plans, automobile insurance payers, and state workers’ compensation funds and plans – affecting even Big Labor.   For the executive branch to have such authority over Medicare regulations with little oversight is alarming.  This raises further issues of the powerful impact these federal mandates could potentially have on the states in stripping them of their own management of their respective insurance industries.

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In this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Eline van den Broek of the Netherlands needs only about four minutes to explain why government-run healthcare in Europe is a mistake and why the problems in the U.S. healthcare system are the result of too much government, not too little.