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ObamaCare Is All About Rationing
The Wall Street Journal ^ | August 18, 2009 | Martin Feldstein

Posted on 08/18/2009 5:07:40 PM PDT by myknowledge

Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama's health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration's goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating "high cost, low-value treatments," by "implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt," and by "directly targeting individual providers . . . (and other) high-end outliers."

The president has emphasized the importance of limiting services to "health care that works." To identify such care, he provided more than $1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea. That could morph over time into a cost-control mechanism of the sort proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's original choice for White House health czar. Comparative effectiveness could become the vehicle for deciding whether each method of treatment provides enough of an improvement in health care to justify its cost.

In the British national health service, a government agency approves only those expensive treatments that add at least one Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) per £30,000 (about $49,685) of additional health-care spending. If a treatment costs more per QALY, the health service will not pay for it. The existence of such a program in the United States would not only deny lifesaving care but would also cast a pall over medical researchers who would fear that government experts might reject their discoveries as "too expensive."

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 111th; agenda; bhohealthcare; democats; healthcare; obama; obamacare; rationing; socializedmedicine
Really, rationing healthcare is Obamacare's goal. Depopulation is part of the agenda. Emasculating the private health care industry is another. Killing useless eaters is the desired outcome.


1 posted on 08/18/2009 5:07:41 PM PDT by myknowledge
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To: myknowledge
Imagine what the Obamistas think of retired federal employees, They have an earned benefit consisting of health care they take into retirement PLUS they draw a federal retirement pay that expires upon death.

If the Obamistas can cut off their medical treatment fast enough they get a double savings when the retirement pay ends sooner than otherwise expected.

2 posted on 08/18/2009 5:17:08 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: myknowledge

If DeathCare passes, won’t we get more of the populations that Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg said we wanted less of?


3 posted on 08/18/2009 5:23:46 PM PDT by Joe Bfstplk
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To: myknowledge
(and other) high-end outliers."

that would be people.

4 posted on 08/18/2009 5:27:19 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (this slope is getting slippereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...)
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To: myknowledge

And “rationing” is all about “death panels”. “Death panels” may be a provocative way of saying it, but there is no way around the fact that bureaucrats will decide who gets a chance to live, and who doesn’t, when health care is rationed.


5 posted on 08/18/2009 6:13:04 PM PDT by 3niner (When Obama succeeds, America fails.)
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To: myknowledge
ObamaCare Is All About Rationing

Obamacare is ALL about power and control. Rationing is merely a result and a tactic.

6 posted on 08/18/2009 6:32:03 PM PDT by arthurus ("If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, don't shoot an abortionist." -Ann C.)
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To: myknowledge; socialismisinsidious; neverdem

“The rising cost of medical treatments would not be such a large burden on future budgets if the government reduced its share in the financing of health services. “

of course the leftists have adopted the opposite approach.


7 posted on 08/18/2009 8:06:12 PM PDT by dervish (I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself)
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To: long hard slogger; FormerACLUmember; Harrius Magnus; hocndoc; parousia; Hydroshock; skippermd; ...


Socialized Medicine aka Universal Health Care PING LIST

FReepmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this ping list.

**This is a high volume ping list! (sign of the times)**


8 posted on 08/18/2009 8:12:14 PM PDT by socialismisinsidious ( The socialist income tax system turns US citizens into beggars or quitters!)
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To: arthurus
Your post is almost perfect, except for the fact they (the Left) are going to increase the total spending via taxing the 18 to 30 YOA crowd so there's money for all the new citizens coming via Bush's Amnesty :^(
9 posted on 08/18/2009 10:41:26 PM PDT by investigateworld (Abortion stops a beating heart)
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To: investigateworld
Opps

Meant Zero's Amnesty

10 posted on 08/18/2009 10:54:20 PM PDT by investigateworld (Abortion stops a beating heart)
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To: myknowledge
obamacare,healthcare,politics,satire

11 posted on 08/18/2009 10:56:59 PM PDT by Salvation (With God all things are possible.)
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To: Joe Bfstplk

CHOICE FOR HEALTH CARE ! HANDS OFF MY BODY! Im just as good as any woman who wants me to keep my hands off her womb and to give her all the abortions she wants. CHOICE FOR HEALTH CARE ,IF ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE POLITICIANS ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME . How come the Politicians health care is not Broken beyond repair ? What do they know that we dont ,they have a Choice of 17 different plans,nobody wants to talk about that ?


12 posted on 08/19/2009 3:36:40 AM PDT by ballplayer
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To: myknowledge
Of course it is.

The boomer bulge will totally destroy the solvency of current Medicare and Social Security programs, which are already in bad shape. So each of the baby boomers will have his/her treatment and life expectancy (SS payments) reduced.

The irony is that the baby boomers were the ones who moved this nation left and also trashed their elders, saying "Don't trust anyone over 30."

13 posted on 08/19/2009 7:11:15 AM PDT by expatpat
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