Posted on 02/13/2015 10:44:40 AM PST by wagglebee
“Obamacare’s shoddy implementation doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its great evil,” reported Breitbart late last year, referring to the healthcare rationing that is insidiously hidden within the pages of the evasive law. Perhaps the most alarming criterion of healthcare rationing found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the plan’s death panel language.
Democrats vehemently denied that death panels would play a role in the ACA, but the law itself states that doctors will be paid to have discussions with patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life options.
Killing patients whose perceived utility is declining is not exclusively an American phenomenon. The idea has shaped the healthcare system in the UK for decades, where the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) has been a fixture of end-of-life care.
Unfortunately, however, the LCP has morphed into a utilitarian means of freeing hospital beds and lowering healthcare costs – the unavoidable slippery slope that is presented any time the value of human beings is measured in monetary terms (as socialized healthcare plans do). The LCP has been engulfed in controversy in recent years and has signaled a possible end to the program. After repeated cases of shocking abuse, LCP will be phased out through the elimination of pallative care options for patients in the final days or hours of life.
Similarly, Australia has just released a 29-point checklist to be used by physicians to determine whether an elderly person is likely to die within 30 days. The checklist includes criteria such as low blood pressure, high- or low pulse, hypoglycemia, and low urinary output. But critics of the checklist posit the fact that human beings routinely defy mathematical odds and believe that aligning the probabilities of life or death with a checklist is demeaning.
With the ACA, America descends down the same dangerous paths. In addition to the ACA’s death panel language, there are shocking discrepancies between mainstream medical recommendations for preventive and diagnostic care, and provisions for such care as recommended by the federal government.
The US Preventive Services Task Force (PSTF) is the Congress-appointed body whose job is to recommend guidelines for preventive services, screenings, and medications. In conjunction with Obamacare, the Task Force recommendations have become conspicuously stingier.
For example, the Task Force only recommends routine mammograms for women ages 50-74, while the Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society both recommend annual mammograms for women over age 40 (without the cap at age 74). In fact, findings from a large study indicate that breast cancer deaths decreased by nearly 30% in women who obtained annual screenings starting at age 40. Similar discrepancies exist between Task Force recommendations for colonoscopies and prostate cancer screenings, and those of widely-respected medical associations.
According to the Annals of Family Medicine, Breitbart continues, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (currently Sylvia Burwell; formerly disgraced Kathleen Sebelius) possesses the power to add and remove preventive services based on their rating by the Preventive Services Task Force. Checks and balances? We think not.
LifeNews Note: Reprinted with permission from Texas Right to Life.
The only logical conclusion is that they're not well-meaning, it is just about money and power.
1. Are you a REpublican, conservative, constitutionalist, or Tea Party member?
2-29. See #1.
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Just what we need.
And what’s to stop someone with an agenda from falsifying, IOW lying on the form as they evaluate the patient?
Absolutely NOTHING.........
The Death Panels are essentially a way to “fix” the SocSec and Medicare financials.
Each year sliced off the life expectancy is a huge plus.
When the millennials get uneasy over grandma’s premature demise, the govt will send out Groupons for student loan relief.
One of the many reasons Congress exempted themselves.
Elderly Person = 99% of Congress
Bttt
“One of the many reasons Congress exempted themselves.”
Our Congress gets most of the blame for this horror story, and Roberts (SCOTUS) gets the rest. Obama is a text book Marxist just trying to maximize government control of everything...and that is what Obamacare is all about.
The Congressional EXEMPT are bought and paid for. They should have read the bill, and so should have the medical industry. Just a total disaster for the American public.
I’m just old and stupid, but what?
You are not alone... I have no idea what point TBP is trying to make either. TBP could you clarify please.
The 29 standards for how the death panels will decide you need to die.
I clicked the link but it only went to # 8 or so and then tried to load a bunch of crap...........
Seriously ill old people have a "duty to die and get out of the way." Democrat Richard D. Lamm former governor of Colorado
Palliative End of Life Optimum Serenity Initiative. PELOSI
People know that if they have to go to the hospital and are ill, they make sure they have someone who will make noise for them so they are not shuttled to a back room in order to die alone.
People have told me I am wrong about this, but believe me I am not wrong. This list just shows how they have planned to deem an old person unfit for care, but their treatment of all truly sick people, especially the ones who have no one to speak up for them, is equally appalling.
He is getting up there. I wonder if he is going to do his “duty” sometime in the near future?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lamm
Also, to make room for Americans’ replacements—the third worlders. They will need health care in order to soar America into heights never before dreamed of; they were never able to do that in their home countries.
Gotta get rid of those old Whiteys so the new occupants of this country can come and take their place.
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