Last night was the 2019 CCHF Fundraising Celebration Dinner! Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) is a nonprofit that not only defends against a government-run, single-payer system that socializes health care but attempts to build free-market alternatives that secure patient privacy.
Twila Brase, president, and co-founder of CCHF informed the attendees on the many victories of the legislative year, both in our state and at the federal level.
She is skeptical of the State intervening in health care due to what she described as “the inability to quantify quality care.” Despite having a portion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) dedicated to “defining quality care,” there is no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes quality care, said Brase.
Twila introduced the keynote speaker, Richard K. Baker, who helps Canadians escape single-payer rationing. Baker aids patients on long waiting lists receive timely surgery in the United States. Thousands of Canadians have received urgently-needed surgery and many lives have been saved.
Canada has its own limiting definition of what constitutes situations that require surgery: imminent death or loss of limb only. All other afflictions must wait an average of 2 years for surgery. Richard K. Baker laid out some of the more pernicious cases of how the single-payer health care system creates massive cracks that allow many people to fall through.
One such example was of an 8-year-old girl who was suffering from an ear infection, rendering her deaf and unable to learn properly in school. The State-sponsored health care system canceled the primary clinic visit – a visit dedicated solely to diagnosing the disease and setting up a time to drain the ears – not once, or even twice, but four times over the course of a year. The girl’s father contacted Baker, whose company Timely Medical Alternatives connects sick Canadians to American hospitals expediently. Baker linked the family to a clinic across the border, and the young girl was seen immediately the next day. Upon review by a specialized ENT, the doctor noted that he “isn’t tasked with simply draining her ears but saving her life.” Over the course of the continually-deferred period by the single-payer system, the 8-year-old’s infection had spread from her ears into her brain, a terminally damaging diagnosis. After the procedure, the harm was irreversible: permanent deafness in one ear and only partial hearing in the other.
This sad story was one of many that falls through the cracks of a single-payer system. Twila Brase, Richard K. Baker, and others like CCHF are committed to freedom, quality patient care, and defending against the intruding, bumbling system that monopolizes and degrades health care.
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