WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Urged on by President Barack Obama, Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives hustled on Thursday to round up support for a sweeping healthcare overhaul headed to a close floor vote on Saturday.

Obama IN HIS OWN WORDS saying His Health Care Plan will ELIMINATE private insurance

What would be the impact for you?

* Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show that the U.K.’s 2005 heart-attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America’s. This may correspond to angioplasties, which were only 21.3 percent as common there as here.

* The U.K.’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) just announced plans to cut its 60,000 annual steroid injections for severe back-pain sufferers to just 3,000. This should save the government 33 million pounds (about $55 million). “The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients,” Dr. Jonathan Richardson of Bradford Hospitals Trust told London’s Daily Telegraph. “It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate.”

* “Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets,” Daniel Martin wrote last year in London’s Daily Mail. “Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour [party] pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 911 calls. Doctors warned last night that the practice of ‘patient-stacking’ was putting patients’ health at risk.”

Things don’t look much better up north, under Canadian socialized medicine.

* Canada has one-third fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average. “The doctor shortage is a direct result of government rationing, since provinces intervened to restrict class sizes in major Canadian medical schools in the 1990s,” Dr. David Gratzer, a Canadian physician and Manhattan Institute scholar, told the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee on June 24. Some towns address the doctor dearth with lotteries in which citizens compete for rare medical appointments.

* “In 2008, the average Canadian waited 17.3 weeks from the time his general practitioner referred him to a specialist until he actually received treatment,” Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes, a Canadian native, wrote in the July 2 Investor’s Business Daily. “That’s 86 percent longer than the wait in 1993, when the [Fraser] Institute first started quantifying the problem.”

* Such sloth includes a median 9.7-week wait for an MRI exam, 31.7 weeks to see a neurosurgeon, and 36.7 weeks - nearly nine months - to visit an orthopedic surgeon.

* Thus, Canadian supreme court justice Marie Deschamps wrote in her 2005 majority opinion in Chaoulli v. Quebec, “This case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”

Obamacare proponents might argue that their health reforms are neither British nor Canadian, but just modest adjustments to America’s system. This is false. The public option - for which Democrats lust - would fuel an elephantine $1.5 trillion overhaul of this life-and-death industry. Having Uncle Sam in the room while negotiating drug prices and hospital reimbursement rates will be like sitting beside Warren Buffett at an art auction. Guess who goes home with the goodies?

Let your Representative know you want to keep your choices in Health Care! Send a message to the liberals. Vote for this now and be voted out in a year!

U.S. House of Representatives

Maryland
Rep. Frank Kratovil, Jr. (D-1st)
314 Cannon House Office Building
(202) 225-5311; 225-0254
Centreville: (443) 262-9136

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-2nd)
1630 Longworth House Office Building
(202) 225-3061; 225-3094
Timonium: (410) 628-2701

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-3rd)
426 Cannon House Office Building
(202) 225-4016; 225-9219
Towson: (410) 832-8890

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-4th)
318 Cannon House Office Building
(202) 225-8699; 225-8714
Silver Spring: (301) 562-7960

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th)
1705 Longworth House Office Building
(202) 225-4131; 225-4300
Greenbelt: (301) 474-0119

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-6th)
2412 Rayburn House Office Building
(202) 225-2721; 225-2193
Frederick: (301) 694-3030

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-7th)
1632 Longworth House Office Building
(202) 225-4741; 225-3178
Baltimore: (410) 367-1900

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Jr. (D-8th)
1419 Longworth House Office Building
(202) 225-5341; 225-0375
Rockville: (301) 424-3501

Senators

Cardin, Benjamin L. - (D - MD) Class I
509 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4524
Web Form: cardin.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

Mikulski, Barbara A. - (D - MD) Class III
503 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4654
Web Form: mikulski.senate.gov/Contact/contact.cfm