More Senate healthcare horrors: Starving seniors, Alzheimer's cuts

St. Petersburg Times (The Buzz) ^ | March 12, 2010 | Marc Caputo

[Brandonmark]

The Senate's healthcare proposal is barely a day old, and the senior community is sounding the alarm. Aside from the big multi-million hits to hospitals, are seemingly little cuts that have potentially big consequences: a $5 million elimination for Alzheimer's programs, and a $4 million cut to home care for the elderly.

Then there's a $7 million cut to food-for-seniors in the line item "Local Service Programs." It looks like a total elimination. Expect the senior centers in Hialeah and Little Havana to inflame Miami radio and spur the Dade delegation to do something. Also, this budget is like the past decade or so of parade-of-horribles health budgets that gin up the provider community and put pressure on lawmakers to shake more lose from the money tree. Problem is, the tree is almost bare.

[ExTexasRedhead]

Behold the Auschwitz and Dachau of our time.

[Frantzie]

A lot of fools voted for this.

[ExTexasRedhead]

The RAT “final solution.”

[sam_paine]

pressure on lawmakers to shake more lose from the money tree. Problem is, the tree is almost bare.

Problem is....author doesn't know hte difference between lose and loose.

What? No literate editors remain?

[pburgh01]

Maybe this is Rush’s , “Obama loses it moment” off the prompter. I could see the Messaish losing it and saying...”Hey the elderly have zapped all the money out of our once robust system, transplants to 87 year olds, come on we can’t continue to do that. The world belongs to the young, I don’t want my Shanique and Malique to suffer becauce some old Jew spent their healthcare dollar”

[b4its2late]

I guess this is what happens when they vote on a bill they don’t read. Or they could give a rats rear end which is probably more like it.

[b4its2late]

Problem is....author doesn't know hte difference between lose and loose. What? No literate editors remain?

Eye souport publik edekashun two.

[Marty62]

Starve the Seniors and wharehouse the Alsheimer people.

Reminds me of the Nazi hospital for the “life unworthy of life program.

The hospital was where the unworthy were sent, in busses with blacked out windows.

The infirm, children, and other undesirables. The hospital was ran by Dr Brandt, Hitlers Reich Doctor. It was a testing place for the plan to eliminate the JEWS. He ordered the patients to not be fed. Unfortunately for him, some of the nurses slipped food to the patients. After a month, the death rate was not as hoped by Brandt. The SS came in and went from bed to bed, giving shots that killed the patients.
This practice created another problem. To many bodies.
Brandt decided that the hospital furnace would be used to burn the bodies. (the town complain of the odor) This practice was the prototype for the ovens used at auschwitz etc.

The Future?

[joesbucks]

I thought we were for curbing and eliminating entitlements.

[dalebert]

healthcare people are telling me its going to get alot worse and there is no provisions for elderly. why not cut the waste and fraud first....there is plenty of it...especially in the equipment rental. I just made them take back a bunch of stuff my mother has never used

[3catsanadog]

Great. Cut home care for elderly and force them into $6000.00 a month nursing homes.

[Marty62]

Belongs to the young. Yes our children are becoming our enemies. Just like before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSoLN77fBn8&feature=related

[CholeraJoe]

Soup's on, Granny!

[JoanneSD]

I think a close look should be at the care Harry Reids wife is getting, under obama care they would consider her age, and quality of life etc. and give her pain pills... any one notice she was driving an SUV, she would of been in a Smart car coffin, had she been driving one of those..

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think it's defensible to be an anti-entitlements conservative and still to oppose SOME cuts, these particular cuts, in Medicare --- though I know it sounds like a contradiction. But here's why:

(These arguments may not be perfect, but I'm still working on them!)

• To some extent, granted, Medicare is just a welfare/redistributionist scheme, which is odious. However, because the recipients are retirees, these are mostly people have been working and paying taxes all their lives. Thus in some ways it resembles a prepaid services plan. A kind of fiduciary trust. The presently-elderly generation have been paying into it all their lives: they are not entirely without legitimacy if they feel "This is ours, we own it."

• Therefore cutting reimbursements and benefits from Medicare is often taking from people who have made a lifetime contribution.

• As retirees, they have little opportunity NOW to switch to pay-as-you-go. What are we of the Geezer Generation going to do, get sales jobs at Abercrombie & Fitch?

• This is particularly unjust when it involves cuts to programs that benefit Alzheimers patients and others who are similarly mentally debilitated. They cannot organize themselves or defend themselves.

• Cutting from these helpeless people reflects an Obamunist value judgment that "we will plunder those who are of no political use to us (Alzhemers patients are not a voting constituency!) and give to those who will swell the Democratic Party voting blocs."

I think it is plausible to oppose the emplacement and growth of new welfare entitlements, and yet say the Obamunist screw-the-old-and-feeble plan is truly wicked.

Your thoughts?

[Marty62]

When Americans decide it is perfectly fine to starve the infirm and elderly...we truely have lost our souls.

[joesbucks]

I like what you are writing, but then again, I am somewhat more moderate than most on this forum. Also prior to the Big O taking office and the dems taking the legislature, Republicans had discussed cutbacks and means testing. And there has been some discussion on trying to starve such entitlements out of existence.

I know that now with the shoe on the other foot politically, it makes great hay as the sun is shining. But I believe it is somewhat not totally honest to stand back aghast at the suggestion of cutbacks and/or means testing when it's been some of the stuff we've tried ourselves to advance.

[Bitsy]

When Americans decide it is perfectly fine to starve the infirm and elderly...we truely have lost our souls.

God sees all. These murderous thugs who are in office and vote for such things will be held accountable. The subject of Gods wrath in the final judgment, will be dealth with. They can believe it or not but it will happen and the eternal suffering, intense.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think means testing might be a fair way to curb unnecessary public disbursements in a fiscally tight world where choices must be made.

No need to pay big benefits for an elderly person with plenty of income and property; no need to take benefits away from a person in physical and mental decline who has no other, adequate way to pay for care.