Posted on 01/22/2009 2:43:37 AM PST by fabrizio
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The new administration of president Barack Obama is still putting up nameplates on walls and staff members are learning how to use their computers. But some watchdogs are concerned that the administration is already full steam ahead with a plan that could lead to assisted suicide, euthanasia and health care rationing.
Americans are familiar with the problems that accompany the British-style system of health care -- where costs outweigh the benefit of patients.
Patients see waiting lists and face pressured to go to Europe for an assisted suicide rather than receiving appropriate medical care. Medical providers use cost-analysis to determine if patients get the latest drugs or treatment.
Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has penned a new Wall Street Journal column saying the Obama administration plans to pursue the same thing here.
"In Britain, a government agency evaluates new medical products for their "cost effectiveness" before citizens can get access to them," he explains. "The agency has concluded that $45,000 is the most worth paying for products that extend a person's life by one 'quality-adjusted' year. By their calculus, a year combating cancer is worth less than a year in perfect health."
"Here in the U.S., President-elect Barack Obama and House Democrats embrace the creation of a similar 'comparative effectiveness' entity that will do research on drugs and medical devices. They claim that they don't want this to morph into a British-style agency that restricts access to medical products based on narrow cost criteria, but provisions tucked into the fiscal stimulus bill betray their real intentions," Gottlieb continues.
The plan calls for spending $1.1 billion of the $825 billion stimulus package to compare different drugs and devices to "save money and lives."
Report language accompanying the House stimulus bill says that "more expensive" medical products "will no longer be prescribed." The House bill also suggests that the new research should be used to create "guidelines" to direct doctors' treatment of difficult, high-cost medical problems.
Gottlieb complains, "The bill gives incoming Health Secretary Tom Daschle wide discretion to set priorities, and he's long advocated a U.S. approach modeled on the British [system]."
"Such calculations can't account for all the variation in disease and patient preference that drive medical decisions. So it's no surprise that in Britain there's vocal dissent against NICE constraints, especially among cancer patients who are denied many effective new drugs that, for now, are widely prescribed in the U.S," he says.
Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith says this kind of system invites the futile care theory where patients whose lives are declared too far gone no longer receive lifesaving medical treatment.
"When I was in the UK in the wake of Terri Schiavo, advocating for Leslie Burke's right to have a feeding tube when the time came that he could no longer swallow--Burke has a degenerative neurological disease akin to a slow motion Lou Gehrig's and he sued to make sure he wouldn't be dehydrated," Smith tells of one case.
Smith says British medical officials filed legal briefs against Burke.
"It wanted total control by the doctors over whether he lived or died when he became totally disabled based on quality of life/resource standards. Horrible, just horrible," he says.
"I don't think the American people will yet accept such a program here -- if they know about it," he says.
Change to kill you.
Definite money quote from this story.
Democrat Health Care: Die here. Die now. Pay less.
Rabid Savages....digusting
I so not share this confidence. I think we will gladly give up our most precious freedom, the right to life, for a little bit of illusory savings, that wind up being no savings at all.
""But it is also a shocking indictment of the UK Government's complete inability to properly tackle the problem of winter deaths amongst older people. In the last decade we have lost 260,000 pensioners during the winter months and the response from Whitehall has been a deafening silence"
The sooner the old folk die, the more savings for queer theory studies, Federal courthouses, rare New Mexico Tree Rat studies, bridges to no where, and on and on.
Any government that has no trouble funding, advocating and supporting abortions, won't have any problem snuffing out old people. The state now decides who gets born and who dies. Long live the all powerful state! /sarc
Will? How about already well have? We hand over half, or more, of our yearly work. From morning to sleep we jump over mountains of Nanny government rules, regulations, edicts, orders, commands, laws like we are clowns in a circus show.
When was the last time we were truly free in this country?
Culture of Death. It’s the foundation of everything the Left believes.
Obama’s new book “How Many Ways Are There To Kill You”. Not selling well at all amongst the people; however selling like hotcakes amongst the elite.
The Baby Boom Generation will be decimated by this as we get older.Just to set foot in a hospital will be a death sentence, much less elder communities which will be marshaling yards for the disposable.
The problem is they won’t know about it because the majority of folks who voted this fool and his cronies in are more concerned about American Idol than actually informing themselves about what this usurper has planned for them. More than ever we need to get our act together for 2010 and 2012 and drive these idiots out.
There’s a lot that the government does but the people are powerless to do anything about it because the special interests (unions, corporate lobbyists, “non-profit” groups, etc.) have too much power. Or to put it another way, the government has too much power, since any power the government has will wind up being controlled or influenced by special interests.
Who’s surprised?
This is the first President that is cavalier towards abortion and PBA.
We have a lot more power than we think, all it takes is organization and commitment. There are organizations ramping up right now to stop this and our part will be to fund them and be willing to take to the streets.
A Constitutional confrontation is coming, I can feel it. These guys (the libs) really believe the government is all powerful, powerful it is to be sure, but not all powerful. Always remember 58 MILLION voted against The One. A large percentage of them are not gonna just lay down for all this crap.
I have a disabled son who needs surgery often to prevent very very painful fractures. If they think I'm going to plead with some hack in HHS for permission to have my son treated as it is in the UK, when they're going to have a war on their hands.
The uselessness and meaninglessness of everything the Queen does is demonstrated by the fact that all this mass murder (abortion, “National Health,” euthanasia, etc.), has gone on right under her nose. Her subjects are being murdered, and she has never uttered a peep about it.
LLS
I remember a poster from Hitler about how much the handicapped drained society.
“Murder of the unfit”
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities_02/
“COMPULSORY STERILIZATION,EUTHANASIA, AND PROPAGANDA; THE NAZI EXPERIENCE”
http://www.uffl.org/vol%207/jlamonica7.pdf
Slippery Slope people!
Dash all Hope, because this is the Change.
If it costs more than $45K to heal you then it’s cheaper to snuff you.
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