dims and RINOs need to go, and obamacare needs to be repealed, or unfunded.
I guess I’m a little confused: we ask all of our clients who come to us for estate planning if they want a directive to physicians (living will), because it puts them in charge of the decision whether to use “heroic measures” to keep them alive it they’re in an irreversible or terminal condition, rather than leaving the decision to family members who may disagree on whether Mom ought to be left on life support when there’s truly no hope. I don’t have a big problem with that. It does NOT, as many think, mean that if I get in a car wreck and am at the ER, the doc can look at my file and say, “no soup for you”.
Colonel, USAFR
Most physicians speak with their patients about these things voluntarily, when appropriate. Making a decision whether or not to accept chemotherapy, or be listed for a heart transplant, or to refuse resuscitation is a very personal one. The government should keep its nose out of it.
Along these lines, the general success rate for drug rehab programs ranges from 2-20% (though some claim to be much higher). Those percentages are similar to the treatment successes for some of the ‘end of life’ treatments the democrats would like to restrict. Would they support ending funding for drug rehab programs because they are ‘not cost effective’?
Joe Wilson was right on a multitude of levels........=.=
Heard last night on the news that this started under Bush. Where is that coming from?
The situation for many years (and I have no problem with this) is that a cancer patient (for example) follows a "protocol" -- you take a certain medicine, at certain dose, for a certain amount of time. You don't deviate. You don't "add" additional medicine "to see if it will help". The protocol is pretty rigid, so that doctors can understand what is happening with you and can apply this to a broad range of other patients.
Sure, people can grouse about it, but it's done for pretty solid medical reasons.
But with increased government involvement, and tighter financial controls, the options for patients will be reduced. Based on your age, your weight, your blood pressure, the protocol is to give you pain medication. What? Dialysis? No, I'm afraid that's not indicated in your situation. The protocol indicates that it would be inadvisable. Sorry.
What they just told you is that dialysis is expensive, and you're not worth it.
Democrat President Obama: At that age just a pill might be better than expensive cures.
Former Senate Majority Leader Democrat Tom Daschle has praised Europeans for being more willing to accept "hopeless diagnoses" and "forgo experimental treatments," and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Former Governor of Colorado Democrat Richard Lamm: Seriously ill old people have a duty to die and get out of the way.
Democrat Pelsoi is back with the Medicare funding fix. Democrats lead the way! Eliminates the burden on Social Security too!
PELOSI (Palliative End of Life Optimum Serenity Initiative)
Secretary Sebelius impresses me as someone who has the sentiments of a dictator.
Journalist NEIL MCLAUGHLIN in Modern Healthcare "When Congress passed healthcare reform, we joked that the package amounted to a Full Employment Act for health journalists. There were so many provisions and questions about implementing it that it would require weeks and months to sort through it all."
OUTSTANDING article/post/thread. Thanks to EVERY poster.
Abortion of the elderly, the undesireables, the useless eaters...especially after they’ve drained your finances.
Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
Donald Mengele Berwick
fyi
This bill would pay your own doctor to discuss your options if you want to.
The only thing that changes is the your doctor no longer expected to provide this service at his or her own cost - the whole point of the bill is to made it easier for patients to take control of their own medical decisions.
Worried about death panels?
Discuss you options with your own physician, and then draw up a medical directive that reflects your concerns and desires - one effect of this bill will be that a lot of people, having given it more though that they would have otherwise, will end up with stronger protections than before.
Don't want to end up like Terri Schiavo? Then make sure that you have a appropriate advance medical directive and that power of attorney for health care is vested in someone you trust and who understands your wishes.
Getting people to think about such issues is what this bill is about, and you get to do it in the privacy of your physician's office.
No one knows what was said, or what advice was given - you have exactly the same rights and options as before, the only difference that if you are covered by certain kinds of insurance your physician (the one you selected) can bill the government for providing the advice.
They are spinning and blaming this on Bush. Can’t wait to hear what Sarah has to say about this new regulation and their spin.
Theiving, murdering scumbag dhims.
O-demort’s Death Eaters?
The U.K. Telegraph and others awarded Sarah Palin a prize for telling the greatest political lie of 2009. In fact her following statement discloses one of many deceits within health care legislation. Next follows an explanation of how this outcome will be realized.
“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
Of course no one will go to the 14th floor of the federal building in Boston and look for room 1486 labeled DEATH PANEL. Instead her anxiety arises from seeing hordes of new bureaucracies provide the framework for boundless regulatory masterpieces eroding human freedoms. The stimulus bill created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Health Information Technology Research Centers. These bureaucracies duplicated private sector information bases, utilizing computer technology for coordination and flow of recommendations and policies for medical knowledge.
Now passage of HR 3962 and Senate legislation adds over 100 new boards, commissions and programs. For example a new Medicare Commission, exempt from judicial review, will unilaterally write rules about utilization and pricing of medical devices and drugs often needed by surgeons. Many regulatory bodies will be overarching in their abilities to select and direct medical subjects concerning Tri-Care, employer group policies, Veteran’s Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
The HHS Secretary will use these bureaucracies to reflect Congressional intent; not the will of the people. The regulations will utilize disquieting legislative provisions, selected legislator speeches, and selected expert testimony. Regulations will incorporate ideas politicians consider too sensitive for public debate. Medical professionals will join other private sector professionals such as education financial aid directors and CPA’s I know, who often serve as federal agents instead of client advocates.
Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer recently presented in the New York Times Congressional intent without equivocation. “Rationing health care means getting value for the billions spent by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse….There’s no doubt that it’s tough – politically, emotionally, and ethically - to make a decision that means that someone will die sooner than they would have if the decision had gone the other way….The task of health care bureaucrats is then to get the best value for resources they have been allocated….If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving that life gains 70 years, whereas a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds”.
Peter Singer’s scientific approach reminds me of the Geneva Conventions, which attempt rational, moral threads to grasp during wars’ barbarity. For my Navy experience pulverizing a major enemy base in Vietnam, I especially liked the clear and obvious reading of Articles 28 and 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The VC were responsible for any civilian deaths. Those civilians qualified as Protected Persons within the enemy’s physical control, and could not be used to render certain points and areas immune from military operations.
The passages furnished the basis for rules of engagement we followed when attacking a legitimate military target. Distance provided me the blessing of avoiding clean up after-wards for the mess I helped create. However, I am certain our task force was an effective “death panel”. We permanently shattered that VC main force unit, forcing it to surrender the region to South Vietnamese control.
Government bureaucrats will apply similar detached patterns of analysis to those which enabled our ship to apply over 400 rounds of naval artillery to a VC base camp. Politicians will use the implementation process to disconnect totally from consequences of their actions. The resulting health care regulations will place everyone on pathways to federally defined, cost effective, approved treatments. Seniors and the disabled will hold second class citizenship, because popular philosophies, as discussed above, find these people deficient in societal contributions compared to active workers and youth.
When Sarah Palin speaks of an “America I know and love” she understands that federal administrative laws and regulations are the soft underbelly of our Constitution. Under English common law, which serves as the basis for our Constitution, a person is innocent and not subject to the penalties of the law until proved guilty. Under administrative law like Roman civil law a person is subject to its penalties and restrictions until they discover a way to legally extricate themselves.
Pursuit of happiness means spiritual prosperity within the hazards and uncertainties of personal freedoms. Once again politicians offered enchanting material security, while obscuring subservience to rules vastly increasing their power. This legislation attacks our Bill of Rights by confiscating speech and religious freedoms, personal life without access to courts and trial, and Ninth Amendment personal freedoms guaranteed, but not enumerated by our Constitution.