Posted on 01/22/2009 2:43:37 AM PST by fabrizio
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The new administration of president Barack Obama is still putting up nameplates on walls and staff members are learning how to use their computers. But some watchdogs are concerned that the administration is already full steam ahead with a plan that could lead to assisted suicide, euthanasia and health care rationing.
Americans are familiar with the problems that accompany the British-style system of health care -- where costs outweigh the benefit of patients.
Patients see waiting lists and face pressured to go to Europe for an assisted suicide rather than receiving appropriate medical care. Medical providers use cost-analysis to determine if patients get the latest drugs or treatment.
Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has penned a new Wall Street Journal column saying the Obama administration plans to pursue the same thing here.
"In Britain, a government agency evaluates new medical products for their "cost effectiveness" before citizens can get access to them," he explains. "The agency has concluded that $45,000 is the most worth paying for products that extend a person's life by one 'quality-adjusted' year. By their calculus, a year combating cancer is worth less than a year in perfect health."
"Here in the U.S., President-elect Barack Obama and House Democrats embrace the creation of a similar 'comparative effectiveness' entity that will do research on drugs and medical devices. They claim that they don't want this to morph into a British-style agency that restricts access to medical products based on narrow cost criteria, but provisions tucked into the fiscal stimulus bill betray their real intentions," Gottlieb continues.
The plan calls for spending $1.1 billion of the $825 billion stimulus package to compare different drugs and devices to "save money and lives."
Report language accompanying the House stimulus bill says that "more expensive" medical products "will no longer be prescribed." The House bill also suggests that the new research should be used to create "guidelines" to direct doctors' treatment of difficult, high-cost medical problems.
Gottlieb complains, "The bill gives incoming Health Secretary Tom Daschle wide discretion to set priorities, and he's long advocated a U.S. approach modeled on the British [system]."
"Such calculations can't account for all the variation in disease and patient preference that drive medical decisions. So it's no surprise that in Britain there's vocal dissent against NICE constraints, especially among cancer patients who are denied many effective new drugs that, for now, are widely prescribed in the U.S," he says.
Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith says this kind of system invites the futile care theory where patients whose lives are declared too far gone no longer receive lifesaving medical treatment.
"When I was in the UK in the wake of Terri Schiavo, advocating for Leslie Burke's right to have a feeding tube when the time came that he could no longer swallow--Burke has a degenerative neurological disease akin to a slow motion Lou Gehrig's and he sued to make sure he wouldn't be dehydrated," Smith tells of one case.
Smith says British medical officials filed legal briefs against Burke.
"It wanted total control by the doctors over whether he lived or died when he became totally disabled based on quality of life/resource standards. Horrible, just horrible," he says.
"I don't think the American people will yet accept such a program here -- if they know about it," he says.
The British people chose to back Blair, and (amongst other things) usher in the current, particularly malevolent instantiation of the NHS.
I’m not sure why you think the Queen should have power against the wishes of the British people. She’s there to legitimate Parliament: she may not direct it. Her primary function is to separate the Head of State from the Head of Government. That’s what she does. It’s illogical to moan that she doesn’t run the country, when that’s not her job.
Its like complaining that “Bush didn’t save all those people in Louisiana”, when in fact it was Blanco and Nagin who were asleep at the switch.
Would that apply to Sens. Kennedy and Dodd, I wonder?
This pro-death fascist administration will die if it advocates witholding medicine or setting up suicide clinics.
If these yuppie fascists think that the ego-centric baby boomers will quietly go off into the night to die, they are stupid.
The Rostenkowski incident will be mild compared to what nobama will face with ME-ME-ME baby boomers. The entrire US Army won’t be able to protect nobama from enraged boomer grannies. nobama will need to flee to North Korea for safety.
She’s also Head of the Church. And she gives speeches. I am faulting her because she never raised her voice against the killing. I would expect any housewife to do so; why not the Queen.
The problem is that good paying jobs with benefits have been lost...so many people without insurance or those who fear losing insurance will support this because you die without insurance also.
An ADDITIONAL 90 million didn't vote FOR him, either. Those eligible voters 'sat it out'...
She is just a person, isolated by great wealth in an institution that made political sense 500 years ago.
There is no upside for her to rock the boat, and every downside. She’s not risking the crown and all that wealth on some slattern’s spawn or drooling pensioner. She’s going to go along to get along.
Is she the head of the Church of England in any of her duties?
A billion and a half dollars will buy all the boot licking, coatholding number crunchers you want any any 'outcome' you want.
Dollars to illegal donuts, the reports come back favorable. Provided more reports are paid for, mind you.
Academics, the coatholders for big government.
You are absolutely CORRECT!!!!!!!!!!
If you haven’t taken your own health seriously, now is the time to do so. That of your family as well.
If the recession deepens, or there is a depression, employers will drop or cut health care drastically to cut costs. Folks are finding that buying their own health insurance with unemployment benefits is not feasible. If your employer drops of cuts your health insurance, you are going to be shocked when you go out shopping for coverage.
Hey, at least no one will have to pay for it,
and no one will be denied care based on ability to pay!
Yay! We’re all equal now!
The ironic thing is that the old folks who voted for these bastards did so on the promise of free care.
And they will be the ones denied or offed in order to reduce costs.
There’s no reason to “snuff” old people. Just make them wait 3-4 months for something they need this week.
3 & 4 might be mixed up.
They’ll off the whites before they go after the conservative minorities. They’ll probably move them to #2.
Maybe if you have one of these on your forehead or right hand you can move to the front of the healthcare line at the hospital.
Well, there is no free care. What they meant was that it would be free to them, and paid for at the point of a sheriff’s gun by others.
Proponemts of abortion on demand call it “Reproductive Rights” on the front end.
I wonder what cutsey label it will be given on the back end.
“Rights of Passage”
“Last Rights?”
Have you ever tried to get a lib to admit that this is the method by which their precious social programs get paid for?
If you try, go into it with a sense of ridicule and humor, because they will DANCE... it's hillarious if you don't let yourself get worked up about it.
He will be pushing for this for us and ours--but will live by different rules for him and his.
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