Posted on 10/21/2010 4:13:51 PM PDT by La Lydia
Selective rationing is already here! The other day, an elderly man came to see me for the first time. He was in his 80s, lived with his wife, and was relatively healthy. He still mowed his lawn and he and his wife were dependent on no one. The first thing he said to me was, “Dr. English, thank you very much for still taking care of elderly patients.” He, like so many others on Medicare, could not find a primary care physician. Have we come to that already? We can’t take care of the very people who need our help the most? Those who came before us, those to whom we owe everything are discarded?
This is not an isolated incident. About once a month, I need to refer a patient for urgent or emergent surgery. I am finding it harder as surgeons are also dropping out of Medicare. I had a patient recently who needed a shunt placed to drain excessive fluid from his brain. He was getting progressively more demented and was having more trouble controlling his walking and urination (a condition known as Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus). I had to make 5 phone calls over 2 days to get this handled as most of my usual referral sources stopped taking Medicare. I recently had to call a patient’s primary care physician (PCP) in person to get him to see his own patient. I saw the patient 4-5 times over 4 weeks, acting like a PCP, because his actual PCP’s office said he couldn’t be seen for 3 months. A gastroenterologist told me a similar story recently. She takes care of simple intestinal issues usually handled by a PCP because Medicare patients have no access to primary care physicians.
The Government will tell you that they will solve this problem under Obamacare. However, the fact is that the Government created the problem to begin with. The true costs of health care have been hidden since the Stabilization Act of 1943 when employers were given the right to offer health insurance with tax breaks, a break not offered to patients buying insurance independently. Since that law, people no longer cared what things cost. This allowed the “non-transparency” that exists and allowed simple economics of supply and demand to be removed from health care. People perceived that “someone else” was paying for their health care. People always use their money more wisely than they do the money of others (be they Democrat or Republican). The situation worsened when the Federal Government got further involved in health care. They became an insurance provider, judge, and jury with the advent of Medicare. From that day forward, those with great lobbies were able to buy off politicians to promote laws for their benefit. More power was removed from the people....
Obamacare increases government control. Government control has lead to a bankrupt Medicare system that will have to ration care away from the elderly. This is a certainty to which no one denies. Why don’t we give the private system a chance to respond to the needs of the elderly. What if Medicare patients were allowed access to private insurance that could be bought across state lines? That would mean that all elderly Americans over age 65 would became one single consumer group. Don’t you think someone could come up with a solution that would provide care at reasonable costs? Since the alternative is Obamacare, a bankrupt system, and rationing of care, the bar for success would be quite low, no? I for one am willing to give it a try and I am willing to bet 40 million Americans over the age of 65 (a number increasing daily) would agree....
Makes perfect sense.
Combine the financial disincentives of tax increases on the “rich”, Baraqqi cost controls on medical payments, and a wave of retiring baby boomer docs and you have (unexpectedly!!) a shortage of medical care providers.
Queue up the crackpot Grayson from Florida to run a PSA to all old people...”here’s 0bama-care’s health care plan for you - DIE FAST!!”.
Obama screwed up our healthcare now he wants to screw up the military.
But the left has assured us that price controls will not cause shortages. Every socialized medicine system imposes price controls to meet health care budgets. We have already begun on price controls well before most benefits (increased demand) are in place. Perhaps we will be able to find health care on Indian reservations. I see a Indian reservations providing health care tourism.
We need to stop Obamacare before 2014. Once it is fully enacted, we will never be able to repeal it, no matter the consequences. We will never be able to must the votes.
It is also happening with vets. i have military service related injury related to the bombing in lebanon in 1983. after having had 50 surgeries i am not in the best of health. I am 1 of 80 service members whom survived the bombing with severe injuries. Lets see i have had surgeries on the face , hands, knees, back, neck, stomach and so forth. I have medications for asthma and COPD because of the dust inhaled in the bombing and susequent days of being entombed in a collapsed building. On October 23, 2010 it will be 27 years.
Now the VA tells me to consider end of life counseling. I told them to go to hell/ i graduated from high school in 1982, joined the Marine Corps and was stationed in Camp Lejune, NC went to Lebanon and had a building blown up. so you figure if I graduated from high school in 1982, I was 20 years old. i am now 47, snd i have lived with a trach for many years, when I underwent reconstructive surgery of upper and lower jaw, doors for opportunities opened up.
Now i am told I have to accept that the cost to keep me alive is no longer justified.
I told the VA to go to hell, because the cost to keep a muslim alive who murdered 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood has far exceeded the value of the 50 surgeries to keep me alive. The VA and Obummer can go straight to hell. There are many buddies who never had the opportunity to live because a muslim extremist took their lives when the Marines went there to help out in a Civil War. where their lives worth the loss for freedom for the likes of the crazed muslim loving psychiatrist. the bastard should be shot on the day of he executed 13 American soldiers, Novemebr 5, 2009
Good grief. The VA told you to your face that the cost to keep you alive is no longer justified? What state do you live in?
Your injuries were on my behalf. You did not chose to live the life you have lived these past 27 years. I'll be damned if the VA or any other entity will ask you to consider end of life counseling on my behalf.
These are the times I am ashamed of what our government has become.
God bless you. As long as I have breath in my body, your sacrifice and the sacrifice of so many others will never be in vain.
Better yet, the government pays more to doctors for Medicaid patients than Medicare. It pays to dump Granny and treat deadbeats.
Granny could croak tomorrow while the deadbeats could be voting for decades.
“Granny could croak tomorrow while the deadbeats could be voting for decades.”
BINGO!!!!
I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan VA is in Iron Mountain, MI. It requires a service related vet to utilize VA in Milwaukee, WI, outpatient clinic in Appleton, Wi and also VA in Madison, WI. Madison WI is the better one to deal with. There is a new clinic to open soon in Manitisique (sp), MI.
But the VA idiot from the Milwaukee (Clement Zablocki Center) has repeatedly told me that I am required to attend an end of Life Counseling Session in how to consider ending your life. he informed me I had a miserable existence. I left office and went to his superior and informed the VA that the person is an idiot and a moron. He needs to be terminated, he is a transplant from DC and he is charge of working with extremely injured service related combat veterans to consider alternatives for our miserable existence. This asshole is from DC and he has orders from the Pentagon and the White House. I have written letters to the Pentagon and the White House with no feedback as of yet. I have simply told the Pentagon and the White House to go through end of life counseling themselves.
I like you. Keep on telling them the truth.
Upon being mustered out, would you prefer to deal with VA facilities for healthcare? Or would you prefer a paid-up health policy that allowed you access to any healthcare facility?
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