Showing posts with label death panel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death panel. Show all posts

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Death Panel a la Sebelius… “Some people live. Some people die.”

Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, says she doesn’t want to intervene in transplant decisions about a dying Pennsylvania girl when other children are just as sick.

10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan has been hospitalized for three months with end-stage cystic fibrosis.

Sebelius Says She Can’t Intervene on Behalf of Dying Pa. Girl

Sarah Murnaghan (Photo: Change.org)

Doctors say the girl needs an adult lung transplant (because pediatric lungs are so rare). They are confident that she would survive the procedure, but they say she has only three to five weeks to live.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that current federal regulations prohibit doctors from performing the expedited procedure. So Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) on Tuesday went directly to the HHS Secretary herself.

“Please, suspend the rules until we look at this policy,” Rep. Barletta begged Sebelius during a House hearing.

“I would suggest, sir, that, again, this is an incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies,” she replied.

“The medical evidence and the transplant doctors who are making the rule — and have had the rule in place since 2005 making a delineation between pediatric and adult lungs, because lungs are different than other organs — that it’s based on the survivability [chances],” she added.

The Pennsylvania congressman responded by pointing out that the girl only has three to five weeks to live.

Sebelius would only say that there are currently 40 other people in Pennsylvania who are on the “highest acuity list” for lung transplants, adding that medical experts should make those decisions.

But relatives of young Sarah say they want the policy changed for all children awaiting a lung transplant, not just Sarah.

Sarah’s aunt Sharon Ruddock says older children should be eligible for adult lungs because so few pediatric lungs are available.

She says that would add just 20 children to the 1,600 people on the adult waiting list.

Sebelius has called for a review of transplant policies, but the Murnaghans says Sarah doesn’t have time for that.

Update: Court Orders Sebelius to Suspend Death Panel – Place Dying 10 Year-Old Girl on Transplant List

The Politico reported:

A federal judge has ordered Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old in Pennsylvania dying of cystic fibrosis, to be moved to the adult lung transplant list. Normally federal policy prevents children younger than 12 from receiving donated adult lungs, but Sebelius has been under pressure to change the policy.


The parents of the girl asked the judge on Wednesday to order Sebelius to alter organ donation rules so that the dying child has a better chance of receiving new lungs. They say she is running out of time. U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson granted a temporary restraining order to exempt Murnaghan from the current policy, and there will be a hearing on June 14.


Sebelius has come under intense pressure in this case, which is receiving media and online attention. Some medical ethicists, however, say that while the organ allocation policy may well need to be reviewed and changed, they worry about making case-by-case decisions based in part on emotional media attention.

Video: Dr. Manny: Sebelius hiding behind bureaucratic rules

Sunday, October 14, 2012

On the Road to Death Panels

Star Parker: “America's 'soulless materialism,' declining birthrate leading to disaster”

WND: With the first presidential debate and the only vice-presidential debate behind us, it seems pretty clear that so-called “social issues” are not going to get much attention in this year’s presidential politics.

It’s unfortunate, I think. We deceive ourselves to permit the assumption that values and behavior are not the real drivers behind our economic problems.

The fiscal crisis of our entitlement programs is the direct result of these values and behavior.

The fiscal soundness of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is rooted in the assumption that those working can fund the needs of our elderly through payroll taxes. In the case of Social Security, we’re talking about retirement income. In the case of Medicare, we’re talking about health costs of the aged, and, Medicaid, long-term care of low income elderly.

When these programs were founded, the approach of using payroll taxes to fund care for our elderly seemed like a viable idea.

The bottom has fallen out, however, because of changes in our behavior. There are fewer and fewer workers per retiree as result of longer life spans and a shrinking workforce.

In 1950, there were 16 working Americans for every retiree. Today, there are less than three. According to projections, by 2030 there will be less than two.

It doesn’t take a supercomputer to realize that if we don’t reduce the retirement and health care resources available to our elderly, the burden on each working American to provide those resources increases substantially when they must be provided for each retiree by two, rather than 16, workers.

Yet the discussion about this crisis is 100 percent focused on how to cut the spending, and zero attention is spent on restoration of values that could rebuild families, produce more children and stop destroying the unborn.

According to a new report just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall fertility rate of American women – defined by the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 – is the lowest ever recorded since the government started gathering this information.

According to demographers, a fertility rate of 2.1 is necessary to keep a population at a steady state – which means that the overall population remains the same size over time. The 2.1 rate means that each adult woman produces 2.1 children on average over her lifetime.

After years of the U.S. fertility rate hovering slightly above 2.1, it has now dropped below to 1.9. That means the overall U.S. population is shrinking.

We generally look to Europe to see low fertility rates and shrinking populations. However, according to the Economist magazine, the U.S., at 1.9, now has a fertility rate lower than France, whose fertility rate stands at 2.0.

A change in prevailing values could reverse this trend. But the opposite is happening.

According to a new Gallup poll, for the first time most Americans feel that government should not promote any particular set of values.

In 1993, the first year Gallup did this annual survey, 53 percent said government should promote traditional values and 42 percent said that no particular set of values should be promoted. Now, in this latest survey, it is the opposite. Fifty-two percent say no particular set of values should be promoted, and 44 percent say government should promote traditional values.

With no rebirth of traditional values that could lead to more babies, caring for our elderly will become an increasingly onerous burden. Where can this soulless materialism lead?

In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York investment banker and former counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration Steven Rattner provides a shockingly candid answer.

The op-ed begins, “We need death panels.”

Rattner then qualifies this by saying, well, maybe not “exactly.”

But he then concludes with, “We may shrink from … stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable.”

Star Parker is the author of Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It, Revised and Updated Edition, Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: From Welfare Cheat to Conservative Messenger and White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay

Related:

Meet the ObamaCare Mandate Committee

Obamacare rationing panels an ‘immediate danger to seniors’: former AMA president

“Death Panel” Three Years Later

The Bilderberg Group’s Connection To Everything In The World – Updated

People of Faith

Obama Regulation Czar, Cass Sunstein, Advocated Removing People’s Organs Without Explicit Consent

Obama’s "Science Czar" Advocates De-Developing the US to World of Zero Growth

Video: More Scary Stuff From Obama’s Science Czar

Holdren Says Constitution Backs Compulsory Abortion

Holdren: Seize Babies Born to Unwed Women

List of Obama’s Czars Plus Two – Updated: 8.18.09 – Remember when the Czars were the hot topic… but they overwhelmed us and forgot them to do they scary dirty jobs…

Science Czar John P. Holdren – Updated 9.2.09

Meet Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel: Deny Coverage to Elderly an Disabled for the Greater Good – But don’t forget… Sarah Palin was crazy…

Complete Lives System by Ezekial Emanuel

Checkout: ObamaCare Survival Guide

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

“Death Panel” Three Years Later

by Sarah Palin on Monday, June 25, 2012 at 11:11am – on Facebook

Sarah Palin Gallup Photo

As we wait for the impending Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, I reiterate what I wrote in my first post on this topic nearly three years ago. I stand by everything I wrote in that warning to my fellow Americans because what was true then is true now, and it will remain true as we hear what the Supreme Court has to say.

It was a pretty long post, but a lot of people seem to have only read two words of it: “death panel.” Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that Obamacare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life and death decisions about health care funding. It’s called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and its purpose all along has been to “keep costs down” by actually denying care via price controls and typically inefficient bureaucracy. This subjective rationing of care is what I was writing about in that first post:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.

Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.

We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.

If the Supreme Court doesn’t strike down Obamacare entirely, then Congress must act to repeal IPAB and Obamacare before it is indeed “too late.” All of Obamacare must go one way or another.

- Sarah Palin

Related:

Obamacare Has Literally Replaced the Constitution

Obamacare to Herd Disabled Seniors to Bare-Bones Medicaid Plans

Meet the ObamaCare Mandate Committee

Eugenics In Action: 3 Year Old Girl Denied Kidney Transplant …

"People 70 and over will not be treated under Obamacare… and you thought DEATH PANELS were gone"

Dirty Little Secret: Rationing is at Heart of ObamaCare

Obama “Fixed” Medicare…With Rationing

FYI: Every American Concerned With Health Care Needs To Read This Conversation

UPROAR OVER OBAMACARE‘S ’RATIONING PANELS’ INTENSIFIES

Obama Embraces 'Death Panel' Concept in Medicare Rule

ObamaCare and me – Doctor Zane F. Pollard, MD – For Anyone Who Still Doesn’t Believe in Rationing and Death Panels if ObamaCare Passes

Life With Trig: Sarah Palin on Raising a Special-Needs Child

Soylent Green Anyone???

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Eugenics: Effective by Incrementalism

Short excerpt:

In a shocking little booklet (click for PDF) entitled “Ancient Eugenics” written in 1913 by “late scholar” Allen G. Roper, this incrementalism is further elaborated upon. The way to build this future eugenic state, Roper argues, is not by an open decree or oppressive measures. For the trick to work, it must be a thing of the long haul.

http://ia600302.us.archive.org/23/items/ancienteugenicsa00ropeuoft/ancienteugenicsa00ropeuoft.pdf

 

Eugenics: Effective by Incrementalism

Jurriaan Maessen  -  Infowars.com  -  February 21, 2012  -  h/t to AJ

Every time we read about another technocrat (biocrat may be a more accurate description) stating that the planet should be liberated from “excess humans”, some obscure manuscript in a long-forgotten library rattles with glee. For the eugenic idea does not originate with some sadist in a United Nations office building. It is a practice, rather, that has been tried and tested by many civilizations and tribes in earth’s history- and now perfected at the hands of a biocratic elite hellbent on seizing the human body, constricting the human mind, and by doing so, subdue all of mankind.

The biocratic thought is simply this: in order to achieve total control over the body and the mind, both components must be made dependent on a specific cure for a specific ill. A feigned ill is usually preferred, as it can be made to go this or that way just as they see fit. By presenting themselves as well-doers, the biocrats raise the perfect guise behind which they can exercise eugenic power in full impunity. They regard their work as a great work, a sacred exercise. Like the human offerings of old, this too is performed as a sacrifice to be laid at the feet of some dark deity.

True culture-changes, the biocrats know, are not spontaneous- nor are they the children of sudden revolutionary acts. It is by the hand of gradual variations, the tiniest adjustments, that humanity is led towards the biocratic society.

In a shocking little booklet (click for PDF) entitled “Ancient Eugenics” written in 1913 by “late scholar” Allen G. Roper, this incrementalism is further elaborated upon. The way to build this future eugenic state, Roper argues, is not by an open decree or oppressive measures. For the trick to work, it must be a thing of the long haul.

“(…) compulsion”, writes Roper, “or guidance, however veiled, is foredoomed to failure in the case of an institution which can only rest on inclination or an innate sense of duty. Moreover, “custom is lord of all,” and custom can only be modified gradually and in the course of centuries”

“Modern Eugenists”, the author goes on to say, “have recognized that, if there is to be Eugenics by Act of Parliament, the Eugenic ideal must first be absorbed into the conscience of the nation.”

The author, a fierce proponent of eugenics himself, also shows us a glimpse into the mind of the biocratic utopians: those who believe themselves to be equal to God and therefore permit themselves the leisure of deciding who lives and who dies.

The author traces the idea of exterminating the weak in favor of the strong’s survival back to the ancients. Roper does not, as you would expect, limit his search to the ancient Greeks. He descents even further into the past until he reaches the very beginnings of man.

“The preface to a history of Eugenics may be compiled from barbarism, for the first Eugenist was not the Spartan legislator, but the primitive savage who killed his sickly child.”

“While they (the “savages”, as Roper tends to describe early man) lived their short lives, the weakly, the deformed, and the superfluous were a burden to the tribe. Human law, superseding natural law, strove to eliminate them at birth. This was the atavistic basis on which subsequent Eugenics was built.”

Infanticide, therefore, as a means to preserve the tribe. Roper states outright that eugenics flows from the killing of baby’s. Any lapse in this human endeavor will be compensated by nature, Roper says:

“Nature, forging additional weapons, hastens the elimination of the unfit by disease.”

But the author makes clear that:

“Modern Eugenics is based on Evolution not a passive form, but one that concedes some latitude to the guiding action of the human will.”

“While infanticide is everywhere disappearing”, Roper writes, “there remain still the principles simultaneously developed. Three centuries ago Eugenics was the Utopian dream of an imprisoned monk. A century later Steele, more in jest than in earnest, suggested that one might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty. But neither science nor public opinion was ready to respond. It was not till late in the nineteenth century that the crude human breeding of the Spartans, in altered form and in new conditions, became the scientific stirpiculture of Galton.”

There it is. Eugenics existed for countless millenniums. Now, in the last fifty years or so, the mainstream media will make you believe eugenics does not exist. It’s a conspiracy theory, they claim. To understand where the eugenics movement of the early 20st century- and by extension the Rockefeller-funded environmental movement of today, draw their inspiration from, the following quote must be read in its entirety:

“The Ancients attempted to combat the wasteful processes of Nature by eliminating the non-viable at birth; our efforts, on the contrary, have been directed to the prolongation of their lives. Instead of sacrificing the unfit in the interests of the fit, we have employed every resource of modern science “to keep alight the feeble flame of life in the baseborn child of a degenerate parent.”” (…) “There is the female infanticide of China and the Isles of the Southern Pacific, the male infanticide of the Abipones of Paraguay, and the indiscriminate massacre of the Gagas, who, killing every child alike, steal from a neighbouring tribe. There are the Indians who offer up children to Moloch or drown them in the Ganges; the Carthaginians sacrifice them to Kronos, the Mexicans to the rain god. There is the murder of twins and albinos in Arebo, and the cannibalism of the Aborigines. In Mingrelia, ” when they have not the wherewithal to maintain them, they hold it a piece of charity to murder infants new born.” There are the Biluchi, who kill all their natural children, and there is the modern factor of shame. Co-existing with all these various practices there is the definitely Eugenic motive. Among the Aborigines, all deformed children are killed as soon as born. The savages of Guiana kill any child that is “deformed, feeble, or bothersome.” The Fans kill all sickly children. In Central America “it is suspected that infant murder is responsible for the rarity of the deformed.” In Tonquin we hear of a law which forbids the exposing or strangling of children, be they ever so deformed. In Japan, deformed children were killed or reared according to the father’s pleasure. Among the Prussians the aged and infirm, the sick and deformed, were unhesitatingly put to death.”

“Unhesitatingly put to death”, thus ends the quote. The biocrats who pull the strings of the scientific dictatorship are very much aware of the origins of their belief-system, which is firmly rooted in the ancient practice of infanticide. Roper continues to say modern eugenicists have refined the ancient practices of primitive man to the degree that in modern times the state is the deciding factor. Roper:

“Limitation of numbers, though it does not itself constitute “aggeneration” of the race, improves to a considerable degree the individuals of which the race is constituted. When the undesired children are out of the way, more attention can be paid to the desired. The savage bred recklessly, compensating his recklessness by infanticide, but a natural law of civilization has superseded the artificial law of primitive man. Control of reproduction, and resulting from it a falling birth-rate and a diminished death-rate, is a tendency which, first showing itself in Imperial Rome, is conspicuous today in every civilized community.”

Roper also mentions the obsession of the biocrats, including Plato, with numbers:

“Obsessed by the idea of the mean and a mystic doctrine of numbers, he (Plato) would fix the number of the state at an unalterable 8,000. To attain this static equilibrium the guardians are to regulate the number of marriages.”

The idea that numbers have a mystical dimension is prevalent amongst biocrats. The before-mentioned statement is also reminiscent of the Georgia Guidestones, which reads:

“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

“(…) there is”, Roper continues, “the question of the numbers of the population. It is no definitely Eugenic conception that leads to the limitation of 5,040: there is a certain Malthusian element, and something of a prepossession with a mystical doctrine of numbers.”

Although Roper invokes the Platonic way of conducting eugenics- quick and openly- he states that to the modern eugenicist “the chronic pauper is the victim of the germ-plasm- heredity.”

“With increased knowledge to justify restrictions”, Roper explains, “the modern state may be purged of the pauper more slowly, but no less surely, than the Platonic state of the Laws.”

Since 1913 two World Wars have raged over the earth, leaving a pile of dead in their wake. Eugenics became a thing of the state. In Nazi-Germany, eugenics was the norm, in Europe and the United States it became a more or less covert enterprise. Finally, the UN was constructed to make sure that the ancient Eugenic ideal would be preserved and passed on into the 21st century on a global scale.

What is the Real Purpose of Birth Control?  Why is it So Important to Progressives?

Bill Gates Confirms Population Reduction Through Vaccination on CNN

Bill Gates: Register Every Birth by Cellphone To Ensure Vaccination, Control Population Growth

Hillary Clinton: Population Control Will Now Become the Centerpiece of U.S. Foreign Policy

UN Ordered Depopulation of 3 Billion People by Food Malnutrition has Started – PBSpecial Report

Vaccines ARE (In Many Cases) Germ Warfare

Sterilization of Children… - See links at bottom of article as well

Eugenics and Other Evils

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Leaving America behind

James Cameron has announced he is leaving America and moving to New Zealand. His motive? He likes New Zealand.

Someone else is planning to leave America too. His motives are much different.

Who is it?

It is me.

That may come as a huge shock to many people, but I have begun planning an exit strategy from America. I’m not doing it yet.

You might ask yourself why I would do such a thing?

One word. Obamacare.

Anyone who is a baby boomer or older who is not now looking at this option is being foolish. As Obamacare kicks in, care for seniors is going to go. Sarah Palin railed against “death panels” and people laughed. They may want to stop laughing because those death panels are being set up.

As of now, the magic age is 72.

If you are rushed to the hospital with a serious illness, you have a big problem. Let’s say you have a stroke. If you are over 72, the presumption is going to be that the American medical system is now only going to give you comfort care. We will not treat your serious illness only make you comfortable.

Serious medical conditions can be treated if an ethics board meets and decides it is appropriate to treat you. Imagine you are rushed to the hospital and you are over 72 years old. Right now, if they get you to the hospital quickly, there are treatments that can be given that will stop a stroke and even prevent some of the massive damage a stroke can do. But you cannot get that treatment, if you are over 72 unless the medical ethics board meets and agrees that you should.

Think about this for a second. Seconds count in these kinds of emergencies. How the hell are you going to get a board together to vote when you only have minutes to act? How are you going to do it if it is at 3 AM?

Obamacare represents the final step from freedom to tyranny. In a free society, the society does everything it can to protect life. The citizens own the government. In a tyranny, the government owns the citizens and they are treated just like any other commodity. Their value is calculated and if the cost of the treatment, at least according to a bureaucrat, exceeds the value of the person then there is no treatment.

I’m 52 and I am now waiting. I am hoping the Supreme Court totally strikes down Obamacare. If not, Obama will veto any attempt to repeal it. The Republicans have not shown any willingness to even try to repeal it. We can only hope that the next president vetoes it if the GOP candidate is elected.  But I wonder if some of them might just adjust it instead of vetoing it completely, leaving the door open and perhaps the rationing part in tact?

If the Supremes do not save America, I am working on my exit strategy. Fortunately, at least for the moment, I have twenty years to figure it out.

The good news is there are countries that will be willing to accept wealthy American retirees and offer the kind of medical care we have grown accustomed to. Unfortunately, there will be many Americans who will not be able to escape and will be killed by the same government that is now killed the best health care system in the world.

Let’s hope we can all grow our income before we need it.

By Judson Philips – Tea Party Nation

Friday, July 22, 2011

UPROAR OVER OBAMACARE‘S ’RATIONING PANELS’ INTENSIFIES

So long death panels. Hello “rationing” board.

An independent panel authorized by President Barack Obama’s health care law to control excessive Medicare cost increases is drawing heavy fire from Republicans. The Independent Payment Advisory Board may not be appointed for another couple of years, and remains in suspended animation to see if the brouhaha dies down. Nearly every health industry lobbying group is pushing for an Obamacare repeal, as are some consumer advocates. GOP lawmakers call it a rationing panel, and at least one has suggested seniors will die from its decisions.

IPAB has the power to force Medicare cuts if costs go up beyond certain levels and Congress fails to act. Although Medicare’s long-term finances are troubled, it’s unclear if short-run costs will rise enough over the next decade to trigger the board’s intervention. If that happens, the law explicitly forbids IPAB from rationing care, shifting costs to retirees or restricting benefits.

Yet the uproar is getting louder.

“Senior citizens will lose control over what they actually get in Medicare,” GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told conservative bloggers in Minneapolis last month, “because a politically appointed 15-member board that‘s unelected and unresponsive to the will of the people called IPAB will make the decisions about what care we get and what care we don’t.”

After their own plan to essentially privatize Medicare for future retirees ran into trouble, Republicans became more vocal about IPAB. At a press conference of the GOP Doctors Caucus, Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey suggested the board could leave a trail of bodies.

“Under this IPAB … a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether or not you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy,” said Gingrey, an ob-gyn physician. “I’ll guarantee you, when you withdraw that, the patient is going to die.”

But IPAB — an unusual delegation of power by Congress — may exist only on paper for a long while. The administration seems in no rush to set it up.

Just this spring, Obama had proposed beefing up IPAB to squeeze more out of Medicare. But as opposition grew, and prominent House liberals and AARP voiced their own objections, the administration downplayed that idea. In recent testimony before two House committees, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius described IPAB as just a “backstop” and a “failsafe.”

“If Congress is actually paying attention to the bottom line of Medicare, IPAB is irrelevant … and it never triggers in,” she said.

Obama hasn’t made any moves to set up the new agency, said Sebelius, but has only consulted about possible board candidates. Those members would have to be confirmed by the Senate, a fight the administration may be unwilling to pick when it can’t even get Medicare chief Don Berwick approved.

“The more interesting question is whether it will ever get off the runway,” said economist Robert Reischauer, one of the public trustees overseeing Medicare finances. “Can they find 15 people willing to serve under the conditions laid out in the legislation? Will the Senate confirm them?”

It wouldn’t be the first time cries of rationing forced Democrats to pull back. During the congressional health care debate, Sarah Palin denounced a plan to have Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life consultations between patients and their doctors. Although the “death panels” accusation was discredited, the idea got dropped.

Rationing is a criticism Americans respond to, said Reischauer. “They are fearful that health reform might include limitations on their ability to access any care they consider worthwhile.”

HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields said comments such as Gingrey’s amount to “scare tactics” and IPAB is “absolutely prohibited” from rationing. It could recommend savings that don’t involve cuts, she said.

Backers say the board is meant to counterbalance a Congress addicted to spending, unable to turn down lobbyists for hospitals, doctors, drug companies, nursing homes, power wheelchair companies and other businesses that depend on Medicare, and whose executives and employees make political contributions.

“The system now is that people come up here that work the Congress like crazy, lobbyists making millions of dollars,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., one of IPAB’s biggest supporters. “The Congress often doesn’t know how to say no. And the Congress has the practice of never saying no. And costs go up.”

Dispassionate experts can do a better job, Rockefeller contends. Some of his colleagues don’t like IPAB “because they don’t get to … do the big connection with the lobbyist,” he added. Under the law, Congress can override the board’s recommendations with its own savings, as long they add up to the same total.

Critics say their concerns can’t be dismissed as easily as that, because IPAB is an attempt to cap Medicare spending. A stingy approach could stifle promising new medical innovations. And if IPAB leads to steep payment cuts, doctors and other providers will be reluctant to take Medicare patients, limiting access even without explicit rationing.

The early evidence is not particularly alarming.

For example, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service tried last fall to estimate the impact of projected IPAB cuts and came up with about $60 per year, per beneficiary from 2015-2019. Annual Medicare spending during that period was estimated to increase from an average of $13,374 per enrollee in 2015 to $15,749 in 2019.

Updated cost projections from other government offices differ on whether IPAB cuts will be required in the short run. The Congressional Budget Office says no. But Medicare’s Office of the Actuary says yes, in 2018 and 2019. Under the law, it’s the actuary who makes the call.

That’s keeping critics on edge.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Related:

Review:  The New World of ObamaCare

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Obama “Fixed” Medicare…With Rationing

A Shovel Ready Project

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Guest Writer  John Goodman

While charges and counter-charges about Medicare are flying back and forth in Washington, hardly anyone seems to have noticed that Medicare’s financial problems have already been solved. They were solved by the health reform bill enacted last year, what some people call ObamaCare.

So why isn’t this front page news? Why aren’t people dancing in the street? Why isn’t the Obama administration boasting about this accomplishment far and wide? Probably because Medicare’s financial problems are slated to be solved by the unconscionable

rationing of health care for the elderly and the disabled, which will lead to the equivalent of death panels for senior Boomers and some disabled persons! Please stop laughing at Sarah Palin, she’s telling you the truth, and stop listening to the mainstream media and AARP, they aren’t!!

The most recent Medicare Trustees report conveys the same message as the last one: On the day that Barack Obama signed the health reform bill, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion. That sum is about three times the size of the entire U.S. economy. And, it gets better. Once the Baby Boomers work their way through the system, Medicare spending will grow no faster than the payroll taxes, premiums and general revenue transfers that pay for that spending.

So what does this mean for senior citizens who rely on Medicare? No one knows for sure. But it almost certainly means they will get less health care.

Last August, the Office of the Medicare Actuary predicted that within nine years Medicare will be paying doctors less than what Medicaid pays. Think about that. In most places around the country Medicaid patients have extreme difficulty finding doctors who will see them. As a result, they end up seeking care at community health centers and in the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals. In a few more years seniors will be in that same position — with this difference. From a financial point of view, the seniors will be perceived as less desirable customers than welfare mothers. Also, by that point one in seven hospitals will have to leave the Medicare system.

As Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster (page 282) said in the 2010 Medicare Trustees’ report, “Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result.”

But suppose Congress didn’t intervene. Suppose that the law continues on the books exactly as it is written.

Consider people reaching the age of 65 this year. Under ObamaCare, the average amount spent on these enrollees over the remainder of their lives will fall by about $36,000 at today’s prices. That sum of money is equivalent to about three years of benefits. For 55-year-olds, the spending decrease is about $62,000 — or the equivalent of six years of benefits. For 45-year-olds, the loss is more than $105,000, or nine years of benefits.

In terms of the sheer dollars involved, the planned reduction in future Medicare payments is the equivalent of raising the eligibility age for Medicare to age 68 for today’s 65-year-olds, to age 71 for 55-year-olds and to age 74 for 45-year-olds. But rather than keep the system as is and raise the age of eligibility, the reform law instead tries to achieve equivalent savings by paying less to the providers of care.

What does this mean in terms of access to health care? It almost certainly means that seniors will have extreme difficulty finding doctors who will see them and hospitals who will admit them. Once admitted, they will certainly enjoy fewer amenities (no private room, no gourmet meal choices, and no cable TV perhaps) as well as a lower quality of care. We will have a two-tiered health care system, with the elderly getting second class care.

All these problems will be exacerbated by what ObamaCare does in the rest of the health care system. In just two years, 32 million people will become newly insured. If economic studies are correct, they will try to double the amount of health care they have been consuming. In addition, almost everyone else (including most above-average income families) will be forced to obtain more generous insurance than they have today. With more coverage for more services these people will also try to greatly expand their consumption of care. Yet the health reform act did not create one new doctor or nurse or other paramedical personnel to meet this increased demand.

We are about to experience a system wide rationing problem, which will be reflected in longer waits at doctors’ offices, emergency rooms and clinics and delays in getting almost every kind of care.

In such an environment you will be at a real disadvantage if you are in a health plan that pays doctors less than what private plans are paying. The disadvantaged patients will be the elderly and the disabled on Medicare, poor families on Medicaid, and (if Massachusetts is any guide) people who are newly enrolled in government subsidized health plans.

And here is the final tragic irony: The most vulnerable population are the ones whose access to care is likely to decrease the most under a health care act that was widely touted at the time of its passage as a humanitarian measure

John Goodman is President and CEO/Kellye Wright Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

This article originally appeared on Conservative Battleline Online and is reprinted with permission.

h/t to A at  Sovereignty in Colorado

Friday, October 9, 2009

The 'kill granny' bill

The 'kill granny' bill - By BETSY MCCAUGHEY, NY Post, 10/05/09

As the health-reform bills move through Congress, the prognosis for Medicare patients gets worse and worse.

The Senate Finance Committee bill (generally called the Baucus bill, after Chairman Max Baucus) robs the elderly to cover the uninsured -- like snatching purses from little old ladies. The House bills already cut future funding for Medicare by $500 billion over the next decade. The Baucus bill would slash a similar amount, just when 30 percent more people enter the program as baby boomers turn 65.
The Baucus bill also puts new limits on what doctors can do for patients in Medicare:

* A "race to the bottom" provision (p. 102 of the revised chairman's mark) would take effect each year for the next five years. The provision penalizes doctors who end up in the 90th percentile or above on the cost of what they use to treat their patients, compared with national averages. The intent is to force down the cost of care, year by year. Yet this blunt instrument can't determine which care is actually wasteful -- it will punish doctors for treating high cost patients with complex conditions. Inevitably, it will lower the quality of care.

* Even more devastating is the amendment Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) got inserted into the bill (revised chairman's mark, pp. 102-

3). It gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define quality, cost-effective care for each medical condition and penalize doctors who spend more on their patients.
The law establishing Medicare in 1965 barred the federal government from interfering in doctors' treatment decisions. Slowly, Medicare regulations have begun unraveling that protection. Now the Cantwell amendment finishes the job.

This is the most extreme change to Medicare ever. Dr. David McKalip, a Florida neurosurgeon and a board member of the Florida Medical Association, predicts: "The only doctors left in Medicare will be those willing to ration care and practice cookbook medicine."
It's reasonable for Medicare administrators to strive to get value for dollars spent. In recent years, Medicare has taken a slow, tight-fisted (and sometimes arbitrary) approach to paying for new drugs or medical devices. But Cantwell aims directly at doctors' decisions.
That's not surprising. President Obama and his advisers vilify doctors for over-treating patients. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a key Obama health-care adviser, argues that the Hippocratic Oath is largely to blame for the "overuse" of medical care.

In his view, doctors focus too much on the needs of their own patients; they should be taught to ask whether the money they're spending on a patient is worth it. To curb doctors' spending, the stimulus legislation launched a process of sending doctors protocols via computer on what the government deems "appropriate" and "cost-effective" care. Doctors who are not "meaningful users" will be punished financially.

When I warned that this meant the government would be interfering in doctors' treatment decisions, CNN and FactCheck.org said that was untrue. But Dr. David Blumenthal, appointed in March to head the new system of computer-guided medicine, settled that debate. In the New England Journal of Medicine (April 9), he confirmed that "embedded clinical-decision support" (his term for computers telling doctors what to do) would be used to reduce costs, and he predicted that some doctors might rebel against tight controls.
The Baucus bill completes the framework for tying doctors' hands when treating the elderly.

Driving all this is the misconception that doctors spend wastefully on patients who are about to die. Newsweek's recent cover story, "The Case for Killing Granny," argues that "the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate."

Numerous studies prove that is false. In 2006, Emory University researchers examining the records of patients in the year before they died found that doctors spend far less on patients who are expected to die than on patients expected to survive.

The Emory researchers said it's untrue that "lifesaving measures for patients visibly near death account for a disproportionate share of spending." They also found that doctors often can't predict when a patient is in the last year of life.

In any case, the health-reformers' plan to cut spending on patients 65 and older won't simply reduce end-of-life care, it will also eliminate care for patients who are perfectly capable of surviving their illness and going on with life.

The 'kill granny' bill - By BETSY MCCAUGHEY, NY Post, 10/05/09
Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former New York lieutenant-governor.

Posted: True Health is True Wealth

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

CASH FOR CODGERS


Democrats, realizing the success of the President's "Cash For Clunkers" rebate program , at least from their perspective, have revamped a major portion of their National Health Care Plan.

President Obama , Speaker Pelosi , and Senator Reid are expected to make this major announcement at a joint news conference later this week. I have obtained an advanced copy of the proposal which is named.

" CASH FOR CODGERS " and it works like this. Couple

s wishing to access health care funds in order to pay for the delivery of a child will be required to turn in one old person. The amount the government grants them will be fixed according to a sliding scale. Older and more prescription dependent codgers will garner the highest amounts.

Special "Bonuses" will be paid for those submitting codgers in targeted groups, such as smokers, alcohol drinkers, persons 10 pounds over their government prescribed weight, and any member of the Republican Party.

Smaller bonuses will be given for codgers who consume beef, soda, fried foods, potato chips , lattes, whole milk, dairy products, bacon, Brussel sprouts, or Girl Scout Cookies.

All codgers will be rendered totally useless via toxic injection. This will insure that they are not secretly resold or their body parts harvested to keep other codgers in repair.

Remember you heard it here first.

How much is your old family member worth? Turn them in to the nearest Planned Grandparenthood Center and find out! Receive cash prizes and free healthcare entitlements!

As part of a new incentive tied to Obama's upcoming healthcare reform, the network of Planned Grandparenthood Centers are to begin running ads, themed "Double Cash for Your Old Coot." The push offers a cash incentive or zero-percent financing on top of free government plans for all families whose trade-in old-timers qualify for the government's program known as "Cash for Clunkers," up to a maximum of four grandparents over 70 years of age.

Latest opinion polls show that seniors steal billions of dollars out the federal budget each year just by staying alive. This new bold initiative is calculated to save us all money by gently recycling high-maintenance old coots, thus taking them off the list of potential beneficiaries of the impeccable government health coverage.

"Everyone who signs up for our plan will get a cash incentive even if they don't turn in a qualifying old fogey," says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "But families who trade in their useless members will also get a free premium plan and - for a limited time only - a rationing coupon for an extra unaborted baby!"

At the opening of the first Planned Grandparenthood Center in Washington, DC last week, Barack Obama offered a brief, optimistic cheer:

"In the cold-hearted, uncaring capitalist society of the past, where every man was for himself, people often reached advanced age without any government help. It is a shame that in the richest country in the world, old people were abandoned by society and survived on their own, sometimes until they were 117 years old. No one knew or cared about how long they lived because everyone paid their own medical bills. But those dog-eat-dog days are over. In the caring, collectivist America, no one will be allowed to live without government care. And since we are paying for you, we decide how long you can be a drain on the collective wallet.

"From my meetings with community activists and focus groups I have learned one thing: once you're past seventy, you have outlived your usefulness. Progress requires sacrifice. Some don't buy a large flat-screen TV, some don't go on vacation, and some don't go on living. And since humans are nothing more than a random collection of chemical elements that can also be found in a flat-screen TV, human sacrifice is no different than material sacrifice. Do it for the children!"

Special thanks to General Secretary for the idea.

Source: Knowledge Creates Power

Posted: True Health is True Wealth

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Monday, August 17, 2009

ObamaCare: Beware of the Rhetoric

Both syndicated columnist host Mark Steyn and author and former political advisor to Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, said today in separate interviews… “beware of the rhetoric on healthcare”!

“ObamaCare is not about healthcare reform, it is about a power grab and taking 40% of Medicare funds (from the elderly) and redirecting them to illegals. The key to this program is not the public option or end of life counseling, it is taking funding from the elderly, giving it to younger illegals and then rationing care. So the protestors’ victories in the past few days are not what they may seem” …Dick Morris

“Fraiser Care in British Columbia (their socialized medicine) just announced that they would again be cutting healthcare for seniors as well as 15 to 20% of elective surgeries for everyone. Obama and the Dems will do whatever they can to pass an embryonic healthcare program and then burn the bridge behind them, so that there is no going back, because their ultimate goal is to get to a single-payer government-run healthcare program as part of their re-making of America program. Their entire Healthcare Program (Obamacare) is a death system with them in charge. It is the nationalization of your body.” …Mark Steyn

They both say that the co-op plan that the Dems have now started talking about is the same thing as the public option plan… which will ultimately result in a single-payer plan and government running who is covered and who isn’t, price setting, and what procedures and drugs will be given to whom!! They will also cover abortions with government money, have full access to your medical records and your bank account, if this passes.

One third of the uninsured are 18 to 25-year-olds categorized as ‘the invincibles’ who think they are just that and don’t have a lot of money, so choose not to purchase health insurance if not covered by their parents or their employer.

Another quarter of the uninsured are adults between the ages of 50 and 65, the pre-Medicare boomers, who have lost jobs or coverage through their employer and either can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions of themselves or someone in their family, or can’t afford the premiums, so they are waiting and praying they will be fine until Medicare kicks in.

And then there are another 12 to 19 million illegals depending on who is supplying the figures that are not covered but will be under Obamacare. Covering illegal aliens not specifically addressed because if something or someone is not specifically excluded… they are included, which is the goal of the left!

Medicaid (coverage for the poor) is broke, primarily because of fraud and waste caused largely by duplication and could be cleaned up.” …Ceci Connolly, Washington Post

The balance of people not insured is about 5 to 8 million people who could be covered and covered cheaper by:

  • Trashing all 5-bills that are presently being considered in the house and Senate
  • Clean up Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs and Reservation Benefits… by controlling fraud and waste.
  • Invoke serious tort reform… stopping frivolous lawsuits and restricting the awards
  • Do not cover abortions with public funds
  • Do not cover people in the United State illegally
  • Allow individuals and small businesses to for groups and co-ops to get better rates
  • Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines
  • Allow portable coverage (allowing you to take your insurance with you when you leave a job or move)
  • Pay on results not on number of procedures
  • No more exclusions because of pre-existing conditions by insurance companies
  • Crack-down on insurance fraud
  • Allow coverage of natural supplements, natural and holistic procedures like chiropractic care, acupuncture etc by insurance coverage
  • Force Big Pharma to honor price reduction they offered Team Obama
  • Allow generic medications to be covered by insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.
  • Allow sharing of information and encourage the reduction of duplication of records… but not kept and managed by the government or in a central database by a company like GE, who is in bed with Team Obama. In today’s world if large companies and groups like Kaiser, Blue Cross, Medicaid, Cigna etc kept their own central databases, forwarding information electronically or giving a copy to the patient to hand carry to avoid the duplication of procedures or tests is and would be easy. Perhaps some the unspent stimulus money could go toward helping some of these companies updating their record systems, which would also create some permanent and temporary jobs. A central database of everyone’s information is just to tempting for future problems.

If the above measures were enacted, we could pay for the 5 to 8 million who are not insured and not are insurable, lower or at least maintain our costs without changing the quality of our medical care in the United States, keep additional government intrusion out of our lives and prevent rationing.

Add to this the ideas of dozens and dozens of present and ex-Governors, Senators and Congress people plus CEO’s of companies and experts in economics and medical care from the financial end, we could perhaps level the cost increase for a few years and improve our care for everyone.

Everyone agrees that we need some kind of reform. This kind of reform, not the ObamaCare versions (any of them)

HUGE PRO-OBAMA HEALTH CARE AD CAMPAIGN UNDER WAY

As you can see from the link below, the Obama people are launching a huge TV ad blitz to restore momentum behind their health care proposals. Funded by money from drug companies and other vendors who have been bought off to back the plan, it tries to refocus the campaign for his legislation on the supposed benefits of his plan for the average person.

Click here to watch the ad. We need to counter this offensive with all our resources.

The supposed benefits of the Obama package that are enumerated in the ad are all:
1. Easily available by federal or state regulatory legislation and need not be part of an overall change in the health care system; and

2. Have largely already been agreed to by the insurance companies at their White House meetings; and

3. Were, in many cases, solved by the Kennedy Kassenbaum bill, passed in 1996, that prohibited insurers from discriminating against patients whose pre-existing conditions were covered in their old jobs.

Yet, in a bid to drum up support for the bill and its inevitable rationing of care to the elderly, Obama is presenting these measures as integral to his legislation when, in fact, they are quite extraneous to it.

Strategically, he is trying to focus the debate on the needs of the younger population and avoid addressing the catastrophe that his plan would represent for the elderly. None of the people in the ad are old and the issues are those that concern the younger, working population.

The answer is to keep the debate focused on the elderly. If their opposition to these proposals grows and reaches a tipping point (as it is doing as we speak), the Democrats will not dare pass their legislation.

PLEASE... Go here and donate funds so we can run ads attacking Obama's plan and zeroing in on what it means for the elderly. We are now on the air in Montana, North Dakota, Arkansas, and Maine. We are about to go on in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Louisiana.

We need money to advertise in North Carolina, Wyoming, Indiana, and Connecticut.
Please give generously so we can reach these Senators!

Thanks,
Dick Morris

If you have the time and inclination to read the healthcare bill (HR-3200 - full report) yourself it would be great, most of the Congresspeople who are holding town halls have not.

If not, here are some breakdowns:

Breakdown Articles of HR-3200 - full report

And a must read on this subject is Dick Morris’ Catastrophe

Click Here To Find A Town Hall Near You!

Related Resources:

Contact your Senator and Congressperson, any Blue Dogs or moderates in pivotal states and attend a local healthcare Townhall, healthcare Tea Party on 9/12 or the Big One in Washington. Read the Bill or at least some Reviews, Read Catastrophe, educate yourself on this and related issues And then please speak out America!!!

Taxes go up, taxes go down. Laws are made and rescinded. But once a version of Government-Run Healthcare is passed and initiated there is no going back: Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly and No Turning Back From Obamacare

Call the switchboard for Congress in Washington today... your Senator, Congressperson and Nancy Pelosi and tell them “NO” on Government-Run Healthcare Takeover, "NO on Cap and Trade" & NO on the Carbon Tax… and to pay back the unspent stimulus money!!!

1-202-224-3121- Switchboard - House

1-202-225-3121- Switchboard - Senate

(202) 225-0100 - Speaker of the House Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact or http://www.speaker.gov/contact
If the web contact form doesn't work, use this email address:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov

Info on Senators from your State.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” --Ronald Reagan

Join the Tea Party Express

Free Our Health Care Now - Petition

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Monday, August 10, 2009

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer Say Citizens Exercising Their First Amendment Rights Are “Un-American”… The Desperation is Showing!

This morning’s column in USAToday quotes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as saying, “Un-American’ attacks detail health care debate” and go on to say, “Now — with Americans strongly supporting health insurance reform, with Congress reaching consensus on a plan, and with a president who ran and won on this specific promise of change — America is closer than ever to this century-deferred goal.” This comes after Speaker Pelosi’s comments last week, that people are bringing Swastikas and the like to Town Halls, another fabricated Pelosism like saying she was lied to by the CIA under Bush, that she has no proof for. (You can bet if there were Swastikas at meetings, there would be photos!!).

Both these statements just highlight how far out of touch the House leadership is. There are Americans who are rightfully afraid exercising their First Amendment Right that the Speaker and Hoyer are calling “Un-American” for doing so and both the Healthcare Bill itself and President Obama’s along with Nancy Pelosi’s personal and job performance polls on this issue are at an all-time low and still dropping. The drop in the polls and the continues desperate comments by Speaker Pelosi prove that Obamacare is a bust and

Boehner Statement on Speaker Pelosi & Majority Leader Hoyer’s “Un-American” Comments

Washington, Aug 10 - House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement on comments by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in this morning’s USA Today calling Americans who express vocal opposition to the Democrats’ health care plan “un-American”:

“For months, House Democratic leaders have worked to silence any opposing views in this health care debate, both here in Washington and around the country where millions of Americans are struggling in this economy. Every poll taken in the last month shows that a majority of Americans are concerned about, if not outright opposed to, the Democrats’ plan because of the cost and consequences it would mean for their own health care. Each public forum should give every participant the opportunity to express their views, but to label Americans who are expressing vocal opposition to the Democrats’ plan “un-American” is outrageous and reprehensible.

“The American people deserve answers to basic questions about whether the Democrats’ plan will increase health care costs, add to the deficit, increase taxes on middle-class families and small businesses, put government between doctors and patients, force anyone to lose their current health coverage, kill jobs, promote taxpayer-funded abortion, or cut Medicare. The fact is Democrats have not been able to address the very real concerns the American people have.

“It’s time for Democrats to start listening. When we return to Washington in September, Democrats should scrap their costly plan and finally work on bipartisan reforms that give Americans what they are seeking: better access to affordable care.”

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin says President Obama's plan to overhaul healthcare is evil

The former Republican vice presidential candidate posted her thoughts Friday on Facebook.

Palin says in the America she knows, people won't have to "stand in front of Obama's 'death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of healthcare."

She says such a system is "downright evil."

An e-mail sent to Palin's spokeswoman confirming authorship was not immediately returned.

Palin resigned as Alaska governor July 26. She promised to speak out on issues but has largely been silent on both Facebook and Twitter since resigning.

© 2009 Associated Press

There are plenty of Republicans and others who have alternative and better ideas than HR3200 and/or experience in improving healthcare. And almost everyone that falls into that group says… Obamacare and the Dem’s proposals will bankrupt the Country unless taxes go up and rationing for grandma and grandpa (which will eventually be all of us), people with special needs and even babies with problems are enacted. And it is a proven fact that socialized medicine (which this is) takes away choice, creates a shortage of medical personnel, creates waiting to receive care and even a primary care physician, and involves Government in personal decisions. So even if government having real time access to your bank accounts, government paying for abortions, and government breaking the law by forcing ‘legal ‘aliens and people with permanent resident status here in the U.S. into Nationalized Healthcare, while covering all the illegals in this Country doesn’t bother you, maybe thought of a bureaucrat telling you that your 69 year old parent or your handicapped baby can’t have a life and death procedure because they aren’t worth it, will?!?

Please read the bill… or at least some analyzes of it!

There are articles and breakdowns of this bill available (below are a few) to anyone who is looking for the truth and the full bill - HR-3200 - full report I would advise everyone to read it for themselves and unless you are in favor of Big Brother running your life… speak up! And not just once!!

Click Here To Find A Town Hall Near You!

Senators from your State.

Phone Numbers for both houses of Congress & Speaker Pelosi:

1-202-224-3121

1-202-225-3121

(202) 225-0100 - Speaker of the House Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
http://speaker.house.gov/contact orhttp://www.speaker.gov/contact

and visit: www.house.gov/writerep

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Seniors Left Behind?

Ken Connor :: Townhall.com Columnist by Ken Connor

One of the most controversial issues of the current health care reform debate is the concept of health care rationing—allocating medical care according to predetermined criteria that dictate how much and what kind of care a given patient will receive under a government-run system. Setting aside the comparative merits of various reform proposals on the table in Congress, Americans—particularly the elderly—should be wary of any plan that would limit access to health care based on the arbitrary and discriminatory criteria of age.

As many have pointed out in the course of the ongoing national discussion on health care, America's population is aging rapidly, placing a growing strain on entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Health care costs continue to rise, and America's younger population cannot long foot the bill for elderly retirees and their significant health care requirements. This conundrum (caused not by taxpayers but by decades of gross government mismanagement of taxpayer dollars) seems to have bred an underlying antipathy towards seniors, the undisputed "resource hogs" of public health care. This feeling of resentment is exacerbated by an increasingly utilitarian view of human life that sees no value in prolonging one's twilight years, especially on the public dime.

This situation makes proposals for "comparative effectiveness" research seem like a pretty good idea. Who, after all, wants to waste their taxpayer dollars on treatment for old folks who are going to die soon anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to allocate the bulk of our health care resources towards more productive members of society while reducing the spectrum of costly options available to seniors and the terminally ill among us?

But do Americans really want government bureaucrats dictating access to care based on their perception of one’s worth to society? This question goes to the heart of the problem with rationing: a stranger far from the scene decides who gets care and who doesn't. The person making these decisions knows neither the patient nor the healthcare provider, yet he or she is charged with the responsibility of allocating scarce resources among a demanding population rather than providing the best possible care.

Instead of allowing the market to dictate cost and availability, the buck will stop with the government. Instead of allowing doctors to work dynamically with their patients to tailor a health care approach best suited to the individual in question, the government will use its regulatory power to force physicians into applying narrow "quality of life" criteria when evaluating treatment options for society's elderly citizens. This utilitarian approach to life and death is already affecting seniors in North America, in places like Canada (no surprise there),Texas, and Wisconsin.

A health care system that bases its fiscal solvency on rationing undermines the fundamental American values of self-determination and choice. This nation has always been known as a land of opportunity and innovation. For hundreds of years, people have traveled from all over the globe at risk to life and limb just for a chance to build their own dreams here in America. This includes the opportunity to live a full and free life, even into one's golden years of retirement and senior citizenship. But what criteria will America's elderly citizens have to meet in order to retain access to the best health care if our leaders institute a Brave New World of "comparative effectiveness" in health care? Age? Productivity? Societal "usefulness?" Level of sentience?

The elderly often don't score well along these lines, and once American society becomes comfortable with the idea that certain members may be deemed less worthy than others in the eyes of the government, we have rendered the heart and soul of our Constitution meaningless. Once we decide that the elderly are expendable, not worth their share of society's resources and attention, we are setting a dangerous precedent that opens the door for government bureaucrats to assign other vulnerable members of the human community to the same second-class status.

The idea that senior citizens are less deserving of the best medical care our system has to offer smacks of gross ignorance and ingratitude. Among the ranks of America's elderly are countless American heroes—veterans of numerous wars, entrepreneurs, farmers, businessmen, teachers, scientists... men and women who have worked hard and paid taxes their whole lives. Our society wouldn't be what it is today without their contributions, and they deserve just and equitable treatment as they live out their final years.

As the August recess commences and our leaders head home for some straight talk with their constituents at Rotary Clubs, community centers, and town halls, hopefully they will recognize that America's seniors are vital members of our nation's communities and integral to our democratic way of life. If Uncle Sam is determined to assume the mantle of responsibility for health care in America, the elderly should not automatically be relegated to the back of the bus.

Medicare Fraud Arrests… Finally - APHouston TX USA

Federal agents escort suspects out of the FBI offices Wednesday, July 29, 2009 in Houston. Federal authorities arrested more than 30 suspects, including doctors, and were seeking others in a major Medicare fraud bust Wednesday in New York, Louisiana, Boston and Houston. (No doubt ACORN related) (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

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Posted: True Health Is True Wealth