Free Republic

Children with "hereditary defects" such as Down syndrome were among the first victims of the Nazi euthanasia program, which killed those deemed "unworthy of life." From Healthcare to Holocaust The New American 24 November 2012 It all started modestly enough. Hoping to stem the rising tide of socialism in the late 19th century, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck decided to institute a welfare state, the theory being that finding a middle ground between laissez-faire capitalism and full-blown socialism would blunt the popularity of the latter without unduly interfering with the former. Bismarck convinced the Reichstag to create four programs:...

Borrowing an idea left over from the Carter Administration, New York City announced an odd/even gasoline rationing scheme. It was hoped that the scheme would cut four-hour wait times at gasoline pumps in half. However, a substantial portion of drivers are unable to determine whether the numbers on their license plates are odd or even. “My plate has four numbers on it,” one driver observed. “Which one should I use?” Another driver pointed out that “I have a vanity plate. All of the writing on my plate is letters. Do I go on an ‘odd’ day because it is odd...

From the mayor who made owning an 18oz+ container of coke a summary offense, comes this: Effective 6 am 11/9: drivers in NYC whose license plates end in an even number or zero will be able to buy gas only on even-numbered days— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) November 8, 2012 Drivers in NYC whose license plates end with a letter will be classified as “odd” and may only buy gas on odd-numbered days— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) November 8, 2012  In case anyone gets any ideas, the NYPD will be there to enforce counting skills: NYPD officers will be deployed at...

Saturday at noon there will be gas rationing for passenger vehicles in 12 counties. Gov. Chris Christie signed an executive order today instituting gas rationing for the purchase of fuel by motorists in 12 counties. Calling the fuel supply a "shortage" that could endanger public health, safety and welfare, the rationing will take place in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Morris, Monmouth, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren counties. The order restricts the sale of fuel for use in passenger cars depending upon whether their license ends in an even or odd number, the order said.

As he begins his commentary in the New York Times, a former Obama administration official offers a breathtaking suggestion for American health care. “We need death panels.” Having arrested his readers’ attention, Steven Rattner explains. “Well, not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.” Rattner, a former Treasury Department counselor who helped design the $82 billion bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, has extensive experience on Wall Street and in journalism — but none in medical practice...

Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid. The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient...

Patients should expect increasing difficulty accessing medical care, according to a survey of 13,575 physicians. The survey commissioned by The Physicians Foundation estimates that "44,250...physicians will be lost from the workforce in the next four years. The survey also found that over the next one to three years, more than 50 percent of physicians will cut back on patients seen, work part-time, switch to concierge medicine, retire, or take other steps likely to reduce patient access. In addition, should 100,000 physicians transition from practice-owner to employed status over the next four years (such as working in a hospital setting), the...

The readmission penalty, authorized by the 2010 health-care law, is one of the first examples of the incentives Medicare, the single largest payer of hospital services, is using to try to lower costs and improve care. Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said. “Not only do we have the very sick patients, they also have very significant social needs,” said Kamaljit Sethi, who heads quality...

WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget. But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical procedure or pharmaceutical. Most notably, President Obama’s estimable Affordable Care Act regrettably includes severe restrictions on any reduction in Medicare services or increase in fees to beneficiaries. In 2009, Sarah Palin’s...

"The new system would take 20 percent of the 'best' kidneys or kidneys that have the potential to last the longest, and give them to the 20 percent of patients that could last the longest," Cutler explained. "So, a simple example would be a young donor going into a young patient." And the reverse would be true, too. "Older kidneys would go to older patients," he said. He said the current system of matching donors and recipients is based on how long someone has been waiting, how close the match is, and how likely it is another match could be...

Some of President Barack Obama's former advisers are proposing major changes aimed at controlling health care costs as political uncertainty hovers over his health law. Call it Health Care Overhaul, Version 2.0. Their biggest idea is a first-ever budget for the nation's $2.8-trillion health care system, through negotiated limits on public and private spending in each state. It could become the Democratic counterpoint to private market strategies favored by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan. Under the proposal, the major public and private players in each state would negotiate payment rates with service providers such as...

There are two types of societies, production societies and rationing societies. The production society is concerned with taking more territory, exploiting that territory to the best of its ability and then discovering new techniques for producing even more. The rationing society is concerned with consolidating control over all existing resources and rationing them out to the people. The production society values innovation because it is the only means of sustaining its forward momentum. If the production society ceases to be innovative, it will collapse and default to a rationing society. The rationing society however is threatened by innovation because innovation...

A doctor at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas denied a 12-year-old gun-shot victim food and water and slipped a "do not resuscitate" order in the patient's chart, without the parents' knowledge. In Texas, the doctors' actions are protected by law. Now the patient is facing a so-called death panel where the doctor and hospital will give the patient and patient's family ten days to find another healthcare facility or they will stop treating the patient. Read more at Spero News...

Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board is authoritarian. It does not “advise,” it imposes on cost cutting for Medicare–even over a presidential veto.  Moreover, it’s imposed “advice” is also immune from judicial review.  Frankly, I think it is blatantly unconstitutional because it tells Congress what to do instead of the other way around. But with the courts we have these days, nothing is certain. As currently existing, the IPAB cannot ration care. But that is precisely the destination toward which the monster is lurching. It isn’t even up and running yet, and already President Obama and the New England Journal of Medicine have called for expanding its...

FOR decades, scientific research has shown that annual physical exams - and many of the screening tests that routinely accompany them - are in many ways pointless or (worse) dangerous, because they can lead to unneeded procedures... So why do Americans, nearly alone on the planet, remain so devoted to the ritual physical exam and to all of these tests, and why do so many doctors continue to provide them?Indeed, the last decade has seen a boom in what hospitals and health care companies call "executive physicals" - batteries of screening exams for apparently healthy people, purporting to ferret out...

If you never watch another 6 MINUTE VIDEO - WATCH THIS ONE! DR. DAVID JANDA from Ann Arbor , a nationally known health care expert spoke on on behalf of candidate Rob Steele on Sunday Oct 10 2011 in Saline, WI. His comments here are repeats of his testimony before congress - the one you never heard about in Obama's media. THIS WILL SEND CHILLS DOWN YOUR SPINE - GUARANTEED.

The Medical Intelligentsia is bound and determined to devolve medicine into a technocracy. A professional practices medicine, providing optimal care to each patient as individuals. A technocrat is a service provider who provides consumers with medical care according to check lists and rules created by bureaucrats and “experts”–and does so in the context of perceived or imposed duties to general society. The New England Journal of Medicine leads the technocratic pack. To illustrate from where the publication is coming, it has supported rationing, helped push the assisted suicide movement, respectfully published the Dutch infanticide checklist known as the Groningen Protocol, and pushed hard against medical...

For weeks now, the nation has been riveted by arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over one provision of the Affordable Care Act. Does the law's requirement that every adult buy health insurance violate the U.S. Constitution? We think it does not. Yet even if the court ultimately shares that view, the federal health care reform law will face monumental hurdles to be successfully implemented. The biggest of these is its cost. Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don't get a handle on rising health care costs the answer to that more important question is...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a move that threatens to further inflame concerns about the rationing of medical care, the nation's leading association of cancer physicians issued a list on Wednesday of five common tests and treatments that doctors should stop offering to cancer patients. The list emerged from a two-year effort, similar to a project other medical specialties are undertaking, to identify procedures that do not help patients live longer or better or that may even be harmful, yet are routinely prescribed

Even the most sentimental champions of the NHS recognise its dark side. Given that its Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson has demanded a £20 billion efficiency saving if the NHS is to survive, and that demographic changes mean millions more elderly people will rely on its services (and space), the NHS can only do one thing: ration. As the Telegraph reports today, elderly patients are being denied the best cancer care. The figures are alarming: lack of treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year among the over-75s. Men and women are dying prematurely each year because their diseases are...