Posted on 07/25/2009 11:22:08 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Do folks here remember the ‘taxing of 401Ks’ idea along with eliminating mortgage/charitable deductions? What do you all want to think about betting that the EFT provision of this bill will be used to grab funds of those who die upon certification of their death and that the classification of ‘elderly’ will be revised down to under 50?
Which means a desk clerk is going to be able to make the call on the quality and time of care you get when you are sick. A government desk clerk.
I also think the safe at home is going to get a lot more use in the future if this passes, since the government will have access to our bank accounts.
Heck, a whole new industry based on what used to be cruse ships that are turned into Level 1 Trauma centers and and Surgical/cancer treatment centers. You name it.
I really did have a close relative who stuffed the mattress with money after the Depression, and a very close one whose shoes fell apart with cardboard soles on the first day walking home.
Maybe we’ll get coupons for health care. What a black market that would be.
So we must start thinking of alternatives. Like sending our doctors outside of the country so we can get our treatments there. Unfortunately I foresee that that is what is going to happen for the people that can afford it.
AARP is supporting this crap, because it will be one of the insuring agencies, thus making money off it..
Fleckman’s website “Common Sense from Common Man” has read Healthcare bill and posted quick analysis by page and line...great read.
Pro-Life PING
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
1. Who then is approved for that "course of treatment"?
2. Who decides that?
3. On what basis?
4. Lastly, how is that not a form of eugenics?
We have a racist criminal in the White House.
Anybody on any form of social security would be counseled every five years as to the availability of doctor-assisted suicide. Forms for requesting said assistance would be “available” during the counseling session.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t such a tragedy. They will be told how much their kids must pay in taxes to support the programs that assist them, how medical resources are limited and better spent on the young with more productive years ahead of them, how they have little to look forward to except pain and loneliness, their friends are dying, etc., etc..
......and then granny pulls out her .45 and blows the asshole bureaucrat away.........
The AARP is licking their chops over the malpractice lawsuits that will result in the hundreds of thousands of cases. This is an annuity for lawyers. The bones and crumbs the AARP toss the elderly are just little side businesses. The AARP is a wholly owned subsidiary of the rat party and ATLA (trial lawyers).
I’ve heard about something of a yearly death planning appointment for people 65 and over will have to make with their doctors.”
Every 5 years.
Cost is a diversion. The topic is Socialized Medicine.”
The topic is SOCIALIZED EVERYTHING....Health is the first step.
What car you can drive.
What you can eat.
What kind of housing you can have.
What kind of pen and paper you can have.
What you can read.
What you can do on the internet.
WHAT YOU CAN SAY.
The Constirution means nothing to the occupant of the Oval Office and his bed partner.
This is beyond racial revenge. He is killing off those of his own color, also. This is supreme control.
When NObama campaigned on “leveling the playing field” /that jackass meant every aspect of your life and mine.
All of ozero’s attitudes toward the Constitution were on full display DURING the campiagn. The press refused to pay attention, there fore didn’t get it out to the masses. This is no surprise. One of mugabe’s quotes said he doesn’t like the Constitution because it limits what government can DO TO THE PEOPLE. The truth has been out there for over a year. Thanks dimrat party and the media you rode in with.
Incoming AARP CEO A. Barry Rand contributed $8,900 to President Obama's campaign committees, federal records show.
Rand, a retired senior executive at Xerox Corp., Avis Group and Equitant Inc. and the current chairman of Howard University's board of trustees, gave the maximum $4,600 to Obama's election campaign and an additional $4,300 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising entity of Obama and the Democratic National Committee.
Altogether, Rand has given $15,900 to Democratic campaign committees since 1995, according to searches of Federal Election Commission databases dating back to 1990 that are maintained by CQ Money Line and the Center for Responsive Politics.
As an organization, the AARP strenuously insists on its nonpartisan identity, and its senior leadership ranks include executives with both Democratic and Republican backgrounds. The AARP also is atypical among Washington's heavy hitters because it does not have a political action committee (PAC), make political contributions or endorse candidates.
The AARP announced Thursday that Rand would replace Bill Novelli, its CEO since 2001, as of April 6.
Because of the AARP's fierce defenses of entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, many Republicans consider the group to have Democratic leanings. The AARP, however, has a strong independent streak. During the George W. Bush administration, the group angered Democrats by putting its full weight behind Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit bill in 2003, then turned around in 2005 to play a major part in killing Bush's attempt to add private investment accounts to Social Security.
Nearly all of Rand's campaign contributions came during the 2007-2008 election cycle. In addition to the $8,900 he gave to Obama, Rand contributed $4,500 to a leadership PAC maintained by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), the National Leadership PAC, between 2004 and 2008. Rand also gave $500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in 2007, $1,000 to the unsuccessful Senate campaign of then-Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) in 2006 and $1,000 to President Clinton's reelection campaign in 1995.
Except for the donations to Clinton and the DSCC, Rand's other contributions went to fundraising committees supporting black candidates. Rand became the first-ever black CEO of a Fortune 500 company when he took the helm at Avis, where he also was chairman of the board, in 1999. He was chairman and CEO of Equitant from 2001 until 2005, when he retired. Rand will be the AARP's first black chief executive...snip.
sw
Oregon Plan Shows Dangers of Political Priorities
Publication date: 06/01/2009
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
In becoming the first government health care program in the world to draw up a formal procedure for rationing care to consumers (see article on page 1), the Oregon Health Plan has significantly shifted priorities away from lifesaving measures, instead favoring politically popular ones.
After comment from interested parties, the state health program for low-income people ranked treatments for various diseases and conditions in order of priority. The health care dollars available determine which priorities are met, and as program costs have grown, the list of covered procedures has become shorter.
In 2009 the state will pay for only the first 503 procedures. It won’t pay to remove ear wax, treat vocal cord paralysis, or repair deformities of one’s upper body and limbs. It will fund therapy for conduct disorder (age 18 and under), selective mutism in childhood (a prolonged refusal to talk in social situations where talking is normal), pathological gambling, and mild depression and other mood disorders.
Reordering Priorities
Between 2002 and 2009 there was a fairly radical reordering of priorities. A great many lifesaving procedures that ranked high in 2002 have been relegated to much lower positions in 2009, while procedures only tangentially related to life and death have climbed to the top.
In 2002 there was far more emphasis on actual medical care and measurable interventions that save lives and improve individual functioning. Various interest groups have spent the past seven years reordering the political priorities embodied in the list.
For example, medical treatment for Type I diabetes, which ranked second in 2002, was demoted to 10th place in 2009, even though not providing treatment for it is a death sentence. And this is not an isolated case.
Routine, Preventive Care First
Now the rapid and complete treatment of medically correctable problems and diseases has taken a back seat to routine and preventive care. For instance, bariatric surgery for people with Type II diabetes and a 35 or greater Body Mass Index number is ranked 33rd, with the rationing board judging it more important than surgery to repair injured internal organs (88), closed hip fractures (89), and hernias indicating obstruction or strangulation (176).
Similarly, abortions now rank 41st, showing the state considers using public money for abortions more important than treating an ectopic pregnancy (43), gonococcal infections and other sexually transmitted diseases (56), and infections or hemorrhages resulting from miscarriage (68).
U.K. Lesson
The Oregon Health Services Commission’s Web site explains the 2009 list emphasizes preventive care and chronic disease management because these services are less expensive and often more effective than treatment later in the course of a disease. However, there is no evidence preventive care will reduce expenditures. Good evidence for the cost-effectiveness of disease management programs beyond those currently offered by physicians, individuals, insurers, and patient groups also remains elusive.
So what is driving the move away from procedures to save lives in immediate danger? Oregon’s list increases expenditures for politically popular care, meaning preventive care for the healthy and treatment of diseases with active political constituencies. This drift in rationing appears to be unavoidable when political processes are given control over medical decision making.
Britain’s National Health Service uses utilitarian analyses of cost effectiveness that often conflict with the “rule of rescue,” the presumption that saving a life in imminent danger is more important than improving the quality of life of someone who is not in immediate danger, or of saving hypothetical future lives through prevention efforts. In 2008 the rule of rescue was officially removed from any status in decisions about health care rationing.
The decisions in Oregon and Britain show the results of ceding health care rationing to political bodies.
Linda Gorman is a senior fellow with the Independence Institute. An earlier version of this article was published by the National Center for Policy Analysis. Reprinted with permission.
More:
Posted by Jeff Emanuel (Profile)
Friday, July 24th at 4:35PM EDT
13 Comments
If you haven’t, read Erick’s post about an Oregon public health plan (“public option”) administrator responding to a cancer patient’s request for subsidized chemotherapy with a denial of treatment but an offer to fund a physician-assisted suicide.
Now, know this: over the course of this decade, the state of Oregon has put in place a formal procedure for rationing care to patients whose health coverage is subsidized by government (i.e., who are enrolled in some form of the state’s “public option”). To date, they are the only government in the world to have formally done this, though many — from Britain to Canada to states here in the U.S. — work “cost-effectiveness” into their official denials of medical treatment.
After beginning the process of determining the cost-effectiveness (to the state) of hundreds of medical treatments and procedures in 2002, the Oregon Health Services Commission narrowed down the number they were willing to entertain offering coverage for to 680, ranked in order of state priority. This year — 2009 — the state will only reimburse physicians for performing procedures and offering treatments ranked in the top 503, in ascending order of priority.
Recipe for Denial of Care
WHAT THIS MEANS, of course, is that a patient enrolled in the “public option” who was in need of a treatment or procedure the commission decided to rank 503rd or below in priority would be ineligible for that procedure — period. Further, state bureaucrats balancing Oregon’s figurative checkbook could decide that the Beaver State only had enough health care dollars to fund some of the procedures on the list. This is where the prioritization comes in: under the state’s rationing procedure, a person in need of an emergency appendectomy (prioritized 84th by the the state of Oregon) would be denied that treatment before an individual in need of treatment for “tobacco dependence” (ranked 6th).
Does that sound a bit perverse to you? How about this: the state rationing board ranked abortion 41st overall in state-funding priority, meaning the bureaucrats who designed the priority structure in this “public option” program determined that the use of taxpayer funds for abortion is more important (and more medically necessary) than covering injuries to major blood vessels (ranked 86th), surgery to repair injured internal organs (88th), a “deep wound to the neck” or open fracture of the larynx or trachea (91st), or a ruptured aortic aneurysm (306th).
Also of note is the fact that treatment for esophogal, liver, and pancreatic cancers take up priority slots 337 through 339, with treatment for stroke at 340 — all over 300 places behind Obesity (8!), Depression (9), and Asthma (11).
That Pesky “Prolonging of Life Issue”
In the “Intent” section of the state’s rationing guidelines, the bureaucrats responsible for the prioritization and denial of care make clear their view on end-of-life treatment and treatment for the chronically ill. It is, in a nutshell, “make them comfortable, but do not extend lives” — because these bureaucrats have determined, apparently, that the state’s “public option” health care dollars need to be saved for use on the healthy (or the tobacco-addicted), rather than on those who desperately need them.
From the report:
It is the intent of the Commission that comfort/palliative care treatments for patients with an illness with <5% expected 5 year survival be a covered service. Comfort/palliative care includes the provision of services or items that give comfort to and/or relieve symptoms for such patients. There is no intent to limit comfort/palliative care services according to the expected length of life (e.g., six months) for such patients, except as specified by Oregon Administrative Rules.
That all sounds fine and dandy — until you get to the fine print (page 97 of the 143-page rationing guide), where what is and isn’t covered is listed. What is covered includes:
1) Medication for symptom control and/or pain relief;
2) In-home, day care services, and hospice services as defined by DMAP;
3) Medical equipment (such as wheelchairs or walkers) determined to be medically appropriate for completion of basic activities of daily living;
4) Medical supplies (such as bandages and catheters) determined to be medically appropriate for management of symptomatic complications or as required for symptom control; and
5) Services under ORS 127.800-127.897 (Oregon Death with Dignity Act), to include but not be limited to the attending physician visits, consulting physician confirmation, mental health evaluation and counseling, and prescription medications.
And, more importantly, what is not covered:
1) Chemotherapy or surgical interventions with the primary intent to prolong life or alter disease progression; and
2) Medical equipment or supplies which will not benefit the patient for a reasonable length of time.
“Reasonable length of time” is, of course, an arbitrary measure left entirely up to the bureaucrats counting the change in that year’s budget. In other words, if everybody in the state with all 503 conditions has been treated (in order of priority, of course) and there is money left over in the “public option” cookie jar, then a “reasonable length of time” that drugs or treatments would benefit a patient may be defined as a bit longer than it would be if there weren’t enough funds to go around for those whose illnesses and conditions qualify them for preferential treatment under the state’s official rationing policy.
Either way, folks’ health care — and, ultimately, length of life — is being left up to state bureaucrats.
Politics and Medicine Make Poor Bedfellows
State administrators say they chose to focus on “less costly” preventive care (whose money-saving bona fides are dubious at best) when devising the state’s rationing program, rather than on medical conditions and emergencies in hopes of saving more money in the long run. However, much like the often-ridiculous mandated coverages on state health insurance policies that serve to drive up health insurance costs across the country, the determination of what will be covered and where it falls in the priority list was heavily influenced by special interest groups that have the ear of state government officials and cost-effectiveness-regulating bureaucrats.
In other words, this politician-run medicine has fallen victim to…politics. As the Pacific Research Institute’s indispensable John Graham posted yesterday on Twitter, “the best way to keep politics out of medical decisions is to keep politicians out of medical decisions.”
Oregon residents like Randy Stroup are finding that out the hardest way possible. Despite the President’s persistent push to remake America’s health care system in Oregon’s image, we as a nation can’t afford to learn the same lesson as Oregon the hard way.
So under this scenario, writ nationwide, I’d not be given chemotherapy because multiple myeloma is deadly within five years.
I hate these people.
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