To read the Czar’s review of HR 3200, pages 401-500, please click here.

You know, in a weird twist of irony, the Czar had surgery done on his foot quite recently. He hobbled into a small, community clinic, paid $20 as a co-pay, and complained to a wonderful, grandmotherly doctor about the extraordinary pain in his toe. She looked at it, and declared it an ingrown toe-nail. 20 minutes later, the Czar had his foot wrapped in gauze and tape, the offending nail cut away. Cured. But, she added, she wanted to run some blood tests on the Czar because his diastolic blood pressure was holding at 104. Shouldn’t be that high, so she put the Czar on a mild dose of medication to reduce the hypertension and instructed him to notify the Royal Surgeon and investigate whether this is some early form of diabetes, or the onset of heart problems.

Two things about that. The President appears to believe that being treated and released within 20 minutes is not possible under private healthcare programs. And he believes that the battery of tests done serve only to enrich the pockets of greedy doctors. All the Czar knows is that his excruciating pain was cured in 20 minutes, and the same doctor caught what may be a severe health condition right when it was easiest to treat. This horribly broken system worked incredibly well for the Czar.

But on to pages 501-600, which means we are now halfway through the bill!

Almost all of this portion of the bill addresses how skilled nursing facilities, currently overseen by states, will now abide by and report to federal commissions for quality and regulations. This is a bad idea, since it clearly infringes on a state’s ability to control its own interests where skilled nursing facilities are involved. Some state governments might like the idea of letting the feds pay for all this, since management of skilled nursing facilities is extremely difficult in the best of situations, but most will not. As always, exactly how this process will change under public healthcare is omitted; once again, this will be determined by a series of commissions and oversight interests. However, the procedures for ensuring employees and patients receive quality care is spelled out to a nearly trivial level.

This should please the SEIU, because there is a lot about protecting the interests of workers at these facilities from management. Indeed, a massive amount of these pages cover filing grievances, protection against whistleblowers and management retaliation…almost as if the SEIU wrote it from one of their standard skilled nursing home labor contracts. That, my friends, is a hint.

Of course, ironically, if this gets passed, why would a nursing home employee need to join the SEIU, since so much of the benefits are now federalized? In other words, if you land a job at a nursing home, and the US of A is ensuring you get union-style protection and autonomy on the job, why would you pay a dime to the SEIU to get the same thing? Why not save your paychecks and stick with what you get?

Hey, SEIU. Here’s some free advice from the Czar: pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Your input into HR 3200 is driving your support of it. But you fail to realize that you’ve made yourself even less useful if this gets passed. Let your AARP stooges know that as well. Right now, they are busy trying to hush up their irate members, who have begun to phone, write, and email their condemnation of the AARP’s support of healthcare reform, so they might not have time to read this.

But you can read the Czar’s review of pages 601-700 by clicking here!

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.