Thread by markomalley.
OTTAWA - Opponents of assisted-suicide and euthanasia bill C-384 express confidence the bill will be defeated if it comes to a vote this fall.
That is if an election does not kill Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde's private member's bill first. Elections in 2006 and 2008 killed Lalonde's two previous attempts to legalize assisted suicide.
"In the sense that it might happen, I'm quite confident that the vote's actually going to go the right way," said Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, who chairs the parliamentary pro-life caucus. "On this one, there's clear lack of support in our party."
Bruinooge predicted many Liberals would also vote against the bill, as well as some in the New Democratic Party. Most of the support for Lalonde's bill will come from within her own caucus, he said. . .
Thread by me.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Baucus health care "reform" bill that is quickly becoming the potential alternative to the Kennedy bill and HR 3200 includes abortion subsidies and mandates. Additional analysis also shows the legislation includes health care rationing that would cause problems for senior citizens.
Burke J. Balch, an attorney and the director of the medical ethics center at the National Right to Life Committee, has examined the entire bill.
He points to language on pages 80-81 regarding Medicare physician payments as a concern.
"Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization," the Baucus bill says. "After five years, the Secretary would have the authority to convert the 90th percentile threshold for payment reductions to a standard measure of utilization, such as deviations from the national mean."
Balch says the language clearly makes it so doctors are pushed financially into provided less care for seniors by being urged to purchase cheaper medical tests and phase out costly treatments.
"The provision penalizing doctors establishes that for at least five years, Medicare physicians who authorize treatments for their patients that wind up in the top 10% of per capita cost for a year will lose 5% of their total Medicare reimbursements for that year," he explains to CBN News' David Brody.
"This means that all doctors treating older people will constantly be driven to try to order the least expensive tests and treatments for fear that they will be caught in that top 10%," Balch adds.
"Note that this feature operates independently of any considerations of quality, efficiency, or waste if you authorize enough treatment for your patients, however necessary and appropriate it may be, you are in danger of being one of the 1 in 10 doctors who will be penalized each year," Balch adds. "Moreover, it creates a moving target by definition, there will ALWAYS be a top 10%, no matter how far down the total amount of money spent on Medicare is driven." . . .