Posted on 02/24/2014 3:00:51 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Buried beneath the avalanche of recent news reports about the latest Obamacare-mandated funding cuts to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program is a related but far more disturbing story — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken a major step toward rationing medications to the elderly. Since passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug program have been guaranteed access to “all or substantially all” of the drugs in several classes of pharmaceuticals. President Obama’s health care bureaucrats, however, have proposed removing three of these classes from the “protected” list......
[SNIP]
.........Even some left-leaning media outlets are uncomfortable with the Obama administration’s rationing policy. In the Huffington Post, Professor Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, recently pointed out that the CMS rule “will not only fail to rein in Medicare’s long-term spending growth, but will inflict severe and unnecessary harm on our nation's poor and elderly who are suffering from serious physical and behavioral illnesses.” Thorpe makes much the same point as does Feyman: “Restricting access to the medicines patients need to manage depression, avoid organ transplant rejection, and treat psychosis will drive healthcare utilization in far more costly ways.”
It’s a little disorienting to find such an objective view in a publication that normally repeats Obama administration talking points verbatim, but there it is. Presumably, this departure from partisanship is an indication of just how far CMS has over-reached this time. Most Americans regard health care rationing as repugnant and unnecessary, and we look on it with even less favor when it is imposed on the elderly. As Professor Thorpe writes, “That's a betrayal of Medicare’s promise of access to care for our most vulnerable, older Americans.” Well said.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
There is no "promise", and the sooner everyone accepts this, the better.
If an elderly person has taken more in Medicare benefits than he has paid in (assuming a reasonable rate of interest on those payments), he is receiving welfare. Pure and simple.
‘If you like your “Medicare meds” you can keep your “Medicare meds”...’ -— Barry Hussein
You can still pay for the drug yourself even if the insurer will not pay. Therefore, you do have a choice.
And you REALLY think your money is going to be there when you turn 75?
Does this mean drugs for everyone else will get cheaper?
As I said about government-run medicine:
…and, in fact, it may be impossible for you to even pay for the med out of your own pocket, particularly if the pharma companies decide that it’s not worthwhile to produce the med or if the pharmacy decides that it’s not worthwhile to purchase a wholesale quantity of that med.
This is nothing but the evil of planned murder.
Based on COLOR and POLITICAL connections.
The transplant drugs are the most worrisome and I think you’ll see a curtailment of just who will receive transplants. I could fore-see transplants being simply outlawed due to the extreme costs for drug maintenance...unless those who are extremely wealthy can afford them.
Stop paying for transplant drugs...say for kidneys and people will go onto permanent dialysis...which may actually be cheaper than the drugs. In general, as I’ve observed in my years as an RN, transplanted kidneys don’t seem to last more than 5-7 years with frequent hospitalizations due to infections especially fungal as the rejection meds really play havoc with immune functioning. Many substance abusers are found in that bunch especially kidney transplantees, who continue to abuse after the fact...then lose their new kidneys(hence going onto dialysis). They continue to have multiple hospitalizations not so much because of dialysis issues but because they continue to substance abuse and not stick to their diets. Their AV grafts get infected, some of them, because they continue to inject drugs into themselves with dirty needles.
There was always going to be a come to “Jesus” rethink anyway as to how to manage the whole transplant and transplant donor mess in this country. I’m just sorry for the responsible patients who also being caught up in the same general Obama-”noncare” net!
Anybody who reaches 65 has paid into it their whole working life. The fact that some pay in yet die before they reach 65 means that there should be a pool of money left to redistribute among those who do reach 65. This means that on average everybody who reaches 65 might get more than they pay in.
Only folks who never worked, or worked very little, are getting a free ride.
You are right about there being no promise. I'm pretty sure that Medicare will be covered by the same Supreme Court ruling that says that the FICA taxes you pay for social security are simply a tax, and not necessarily related to what the government chooses to send to you in Social Security payments when you retire. If it wasn't included in that SC opinion, it will be if push comes to shove.
So, in the sense that Medicare was sold to the electorate, it was insurance.
In the sense of the Supreme Court ruling on Social Security, every payment is welfare.
You won't get an argument from me on that.
Testing too.
But lawsuit abuse has greatly harmed health care too (lots of false positives and patients being run through the gambit of tests so doctors can CYA from legions of personal injury lawyers).
"Follow the money" applies to all who have perpetrated this fraud on patient-consumers.
Who do you trust? Not the government who now is telling us, "Oh! You didn't need all those tests." "Oh! This and that is really BAD for you." Not the drug companies that advertize non-stop.
Our health care system is far beyond that which would exist if the individual or even private health care insurers were footing the bill directly.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is still in force.
I didn't want to split every dollar I made all my life with the Fed for I feared that they would spend it before I could get it back.
Government is not charity, kindness or compassion - it is the Gun, force and coersion.
So socialized medicine isn’t socialized enough? And that’s a bad thing?
It’s islamism.
Germany’s biggest health insurer to cut 3,500 jobs
Mon Feb 24, 2014 8:48am GMT
BERLIN, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Barmer GEK, Germany’s largest statutory health insurance provider, is slashing 3,500 jobs, or 20 percent of total staff, in response to deteriorating market conditions and changes in client behaviour.
Chief Executive Christoph Straub said in a statement on Monday that Barmer planned to cut back on the number of customer-facing offices and build up its phone and online services.
“Apparently, the Obo-dum-dums finally figured out that sap-happy pols blanketed so-called “underserved populations” with so many govt freebies, like free medical care in emergency rooms, that these “underserved” types are thumbing their noses at laying out cash for Obamacare”
What they are NOT is Obo-dum-dums”. They have been working the system and screwing taxpayers (working people) for YEARS. Why not now? Hospitals will still treat them for “free” when they show up.
Predictable.
The left doesn’t care about the elderly, unless they’re members of the ruling elite, having a sex ‘change’ operation, have aids, or are getting an abortion.
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