www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Spending Bill Contains Health Care Rationing

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan

Health Care will be rationed, Elderly most affected

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

Link [bloomberg.com]

If this gives them bad press it may be delayed for another day. I won't be surprised if it's pulled by the joint committee.

There are plenty of other intentional back-door measures which could escape public attention until after the effects are lived.

To make you all laugh - the English Committee / Board that decides on the new medicines and are they cost effective is called

are you ready for this ????

NICE

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

Sounds great doesn't it - and here's their explanation

NICE [nice.org.uk]

As long as people want the government to pay for their medical needs the government rightly or wrongly is going to demand a say in how the money is spent. People want the government to pay but then don't want them to have a say.

Father Deacon is correct. That is why I oppose socialized health care. Everywhere it has been tried it leads to rationed health care. Capitalism - even in health care - works. Socialism - anywhere - does not work. If we as a country choose to subsidize health care for those in need it should be through tax credits and grants so that individuals can choose from providers that compete for their business based upon the quality of the service provided and the cost of that service.

I have to echo Father Deacon Lance and John. Right now the problems in health care stem from the fact that insurance companies decide what care is appropriate, how much they will pay, how long you stay in the hospital, when you get cut off. But with our politcal process, we can force them to back down once in awhile.

But give the government the final say and we've entered that Brave New World where decisions like the Terry Schiavo case will be made by faceless bureaucrats with no accountability to the people served and, given the tone of the article, insulated from politcal influence.

What people don't understand about the "utopian" health care systems in Europe is that they are full of rationing. On a tangent, did anyone see the article on the internet today about the 8-year-old child in the UK who died of starvation after she'd been in the hospital to have teeth extracted? Appears the physicians took out more teeth than she should have had extracted, she became extremely upset, refused to eat anything but soft foods, the hospital said she couldn't be readmitted, and she literally starved to death--the psychologist assigned said she'd get over it and would see her later.

Then there's the Dutch solution to overcrowded nursing homes: euthanasia.

BOB

I don't hear that this health care rationing is going to be taken out. I expect to hear a new call to a patriotism where, for the good of our country, we are asked to let our parents die with dignity and to forgo treatments that will only prolong their misery.

If it is for the greater good that the non-productive are eliminated, why bother giving birth to a child that's deaf and dumb, or tests for any kind of chromosomal abnormalities? Why bother giving birth to a child who has club feet, or a child with any type of physical and mental disability? If a person's worth is in his utility, then we could take this very far. Perhaps people not useful to the party need to be looked at too.

Terry