Posted on 09/01/2009 9:58:35 AM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
Want an example of why government healthcare in the U.S. is a dangerous proposition? USA Today has a lengthy story on kidney dialysis and how new research is showing that having dialysis treatments more often seems to be keeping patients alive and healthy longer than the traditional thrice weekly treatments. The piece also sadly shows that the U.S. has higher rates of early death of dialysis patients than other western nations.
Why is that, you might wonder? It’s because Medicare won’t pay for more than three treatments a week so the national standard has become thrice weekly because that is what government will pay for. Not only that but government won’t pay for medical services ancillary to dialysis causing patients to succumb to other problems that often accompany or presage kidney failure.
Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...
Kevin, you need to know about this if you dont already.
FS
Be careful what you wish for, Jerome!
He is counting on these deaths with his healthcare bill. The same will happen for people who need chemo, insulin, etc. ANYTHING that can sustain life will not be given.
Bring out the tumbrels citizens, looks like we need to do this French style...
There is hope for a wearable version:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/08/20/hello.wearable.kidney.goodbye.dialysis.machine
A sure sign that it is coming close will be an increase in the leftist suppression of conservatives; increased insults, physical attacks, voting fraud. We will know when it is time. We always have, and there is not a damned thing that the left can do to stop it.
In Canada if your 60 or over, you just get sent home to die. No dialysis for the elderly.
In the UK, if you are over 58, and new dialysis patient, you pay for it at private centers. Used to be about 50 grand a year. If you are on dialysis at 57, you are clear. My bro in law is a nephrologist and told me this. He hasn’t been in practice in 10 years so it could change.
THere is home dialysis which he did and said they had to ration it until medicare started to pay for it.
Yeah why not work on CHEAPER methods of dialyzing rather than killing the patient? Same with imaging - instead of denying the potentially life-saving MRI, why not work to make all imaging cheaper?
You know if the US goes to this approach, medical innovation is just going to STOP at 2009 levels. If we don’t treat the elderly, there isn’t going to be enough market to make innovation worthwhile just for younger people.
AMEN!
It won't just be the elderly, either. On the other end of the scale, we have the extremely innovative but cost-intensive field of neonatology. Notice that Ezekiel Emmanuel's life "curve" of age groups who should be treated with preference doesn't begin to rise sharply until late childhood.
Preemies, and at-risk newborns will be next. They just don't talk much about killing the very young and imperfect -- it would make them seem heartless. So, like the Euros, those "changes" in policy will happen gradually, over time, once everyone is dependent on government health care.
It’s just so typical of these stupid commies, they don’t seem to realize that cutting off the financial benefit for innovation will impact the nomenklatura as well.
My master’s thesis explored how changes in government reimbursement policies in the 1970s actually raised the cost of hemodialysis. By the 1980s however reductions in reimbursement was forcing some dialysis centers to re-use their artificial kidney filters contrary to the manufactures and FDA recommendations. In 1974 when Medicare was extended to all patients in end stage kidney failure regardless of age, the estimated cost of the program was $4 million. Today dialysis and kidney transplants are close to 20% of all Medicare expenditures. The Medicare renal disease program is a textbook example of why we should never allow the government to run health care.
F/S
Thanks for the information and I missed the article in print as well. Trying to get my Doctor to put me on the Home Dialysis ASAP too.
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