Posted on 08/07/2009 6:15:33 AM PDT by Federalist Patriot
Here is video from Fox & Friends this morning where Dr. Marc Siegel talked about medical treatments that would be in danger of disappearing or being drastically curtailed in America if President Obama's Government Health Care Plan is enacted. They are in danger because the treatments are very targeted and quite expensive, which could make it difficult to be approved under a Government-controlled Health Care System. They could particularly disappear for the elderly, who might be deemed unworthy of the expensive treatments because of age and health.
Here are the five he mentioned:
1. Targeted, Effective Cancer Treatments - Latest Chemo therapies
2. Certain Cosmetic or Reconstructive Surgeries - Rhinoplasty - or for Burn victims
3. Transplants - Liver transplants in particular
4. Bariatric Surgery - Gastric Bypass Surgery
5. Dialysis Treatment - particularly for the elderly
(Excerpt) Read more at freedomslighthouse.com ...
MY LETTER TO THE WHITEHOUSE AND OBAMA ABOUT FREE SPEECH
A PETITION ON FACEBOOK FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION
A 4TH OF JULY TEA PARTY SPEECH
...and on the lighter side, take your mind off the Obamanation for a few minutes and enjoy some beautiful Western US scenery slideshows.
The list is really a lot longer than that. I have an 82 year old friend who has lung cancer, has had it for 2 years. The cancer has been kept in tow by chemo. She is doing really well.
She is alert, brilliant, active...drives all over Dallas, lives alone, walks her dog....and so forth.
One of her treatments cost $28,000. Under the government plan she would have been dead already.
Is there a link to find the full list? I would really like to know if my meds are on there. One alone is $2000 a month and my gut tells me I would no longer be worthy if this monstrosity does pass.
Just wait til they start issuing the Obama do it yourself at home Appendectomy kits.
There is the problem. Is she paying the $28,000 for the treatment or is Medicare? That is, are WE paying for her treatment?
The problem facing an aging US population is that the costs greatly exceed our ability to pay for them. And the costs way exceed any insurance premium paid by the elderly over their lives.
I don’t like Obama’s cure, but what is the solution? Unlimited healthcare for the elderly is not going to happen. Eventually, they will have to ration healthcare or deny it for people over, say 75.
The Dems screwed up by giving healthcare to illegal immigrants and all retired union workers. We could have used those funds for more care for the elderly.
Or they have to have a SENSIBLE way to reduce the cost of treatment from $28,000 down to something reasonable.
I have another thing that most likely would be banned from healthcare and that is oxygen for those with COPD. My husband has been on 02 at night for 15 yrs and just put on it 24/7. According to a friend of ours who lives in London, their healthcare system does not allow for oxygen use unless in the hospital. Her 02 sats are down in the low 80’s and while she does her best to get around havig oxygen would certainly make her life better. Here...once your sat’s go to 88% you are entitled to oxygen useage and have it covered either by Medicare or private insurance. I’m positive under Obamacare my husband would not survive very long without his 02....it’s a major part of his “therapy” along with some meds to keep him going...and he is doing pretty good considering...so needless to say we are part of those “senior thugs” out there protesting....oxygen and all!!
Why limit it to people over 75? If you get seriously ill at a young age you will cost a fortune throughout your life. Think of all the money spent on cold remedies. Simply make all medical treatment illegal. That will really save a lot of money. The new motto in America can be - “Get sick and die”.
Survival of the Fittest - now starring your friends and neighbors. I can see it as a new reality show. Or the new school bully won’t beat other kids up, he will sneeze on them instead.
The average cost to the health care system of a full term baby (birth to 12 mos) is about 4,500. The average cost of a low weight/pre-term infant is 50,000.
The “cost”, as you put it, way exceeds the insurance premiums paid by the young parents of pre-term babies.
By your logic, it isn’t just the elderly who should be rationed out of existence.
http://www.marchofdimes.com/aboutus/49267_55250.asp
I don’t know the solution. But I do know the gov’t has plundered the social security funds for other projects. I know there must be fraud in the Medicare $. 15 years ago a couple of folks started a ‘home care’ Medicare funded nursing service.
Today I drive past a Texas ‘estate’, grand, stunning mansion, a herd of registered cattle.....just built in the past year by the owners of that ‘home care’ company.
The community they serve is rural, low population....I can’t believe the profit in this Medicare funded operation.
Maybe it is all legit....as I think there are ‘ways’ to do the paperwork and provide the services. But...that needs to be looked into.
Taking elderly AND infants out of the equation is exactly what Obama is proposing. This from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief health-care policy adviser to President Barack Hussein Obama, and (not coincidentily) the brother of Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel:
"Strict youngest-first allocation directs scarce resources predominantly to infants. This approach seems incorrect. The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects.... Adolescents have received substantial substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments.... It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does."
The Final Solution
In their minds rationing is the sensible way to reduce "costs". The problem is liberal sensibility kills people.
We had a Canadian friend who developed prostate cancer at age 69. The Canadian policy at the time was to not treat it if the patient was 70 or older. His Canuck doctors told him that since he was "close" to the cut-off age they weren't going to treat him anyway. He came to the U.S. and paid for treatment that saved his life (at least until he was 85 when he got colon cancer). BTW, he came back to the U.S. for EOL treatment for that as well because they wouldn't treat him for that either. He passed away 4 months ago at his American sister's home.
If 0bama care passes this is the kind of creeping rationing we will get. With private health care reserved for The One and his slack-jawed drooling sycophants where are the Canadians going to go?
This is utter insanity. "Intuitively worse"??? By this lunatic's own standards & logic, "intuitively" we should be denying health care or education to ANY individual who doesn't justify the "investment of others," regardless of their age. And we should begin calculating the "return of investment" at birth so we don't squander "scarce resources."
History is replete with instances of some human beings regarding others as "investments." It's known as Slavery & it doesn't matter who's practicing it...pathetic pseudo-thinkers such as this or the State.
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