Posted on 08/14/2009 10:54:01 PM PDT by Steelfish
AUGUST 14, 2009
Obama's Senior Moment
Why the elderly are right to worry when the government rations medical care.
Elderly Americans are turning out in droves to fight ObamaCare, and President Obama is arguing back that they have nothing to worry about.
Allow us to referee.
While claims about euthanasia and "death panels" are over the top, senior fears have exposed a fundamental truth about what Mr. Obama is proposing: Namely, once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, rationing care is inevitable, and those who have lived the longest will find their care the most restricted.
Far from being a scare tactic, this is a logical conclusion based on experience and common-sense. Once health care is a "free good" that government pays for, demand will soar and government costs will soar too.
When the public finally reaches its taxing limit, something will have to give on the care and spending side. In a word, care will be rationed by politics.
Mr. Obama's reply is that private insurance companies already ration, by deciding which treatments are covered and which aren't. However, there's an ocean of difference between coverage decisions made under millions of voluntary private contracts and rationing via government. An Atlantic Ocean, in fact. Virtually every European government with "universal" health care restricts access in one way or another to control costs, and it isn't pretty.
The British system is most restrictive, using a black-box actuarial formula known as "quality-adjusted life years," or QALYs, that determines who can receive what care.
If a treatment isn't deemed to be cost-effective for specific populations, particularly the elderly, the National Health Service simply doesn't pay for it. Even France—which has a mix of public and private medicine—has fixed reimbursement rates since the 1970s and strictly controls the use of specialists and the..
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
AWOL and assuming the fetal position; raising their heads occasionally to zero in their criticisms of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. The American public has grown impatient with the Pubs and have taken matters into their own hands.
Amen to that brother.
It makes no sense that people, just because they've grown old, no longer deserve needed health care. Most of these people spent their whole lives working and contributing to their country, some even fighting for it.
Never a word is mentioned about all the money that would be saved by denying certain treatments to those who choose to live on welfare rather than get a job.
The government, rather than punish everyone who brings children into the world whom they can't even afford to feed, sends them checks and food stamps!
It's even more incredulous that the U.S. government would like to ration health care for citizens while, in the same breath (bill), they plan to cover illegal aliens who have stepped all over our immigration laws.
What would our founding fathers tell us to do?
Ration health care for the elderly so we can give it to illegal aliens. Force health care on those who don’t want to buy it, so we can ration it even further.
Yep..sounds like the plan!
What proof is there for this statement?
For any of this to work they have to ration care. Now, to insure millions of low income people and illegal aliens they will have to cull the existing population!! Bye bye Babybomers!! Wake up idiots!! It’s the stupid coolaid drinking boomers who are at the most risk and they don’t even see it coming. sheeeze!
Anyone who would buy into Obama’s healthcare idea would buy a used concom.
Which is why sizable percentages of British and French citizens also have some form of private health insurance. Now if government health insurance was so superior, there would be no need for private insurance, would there? This gives the lie to the notion that people on gov insurance programs are perfectly satisfied.
Abamanation? Without doubt but what can we expect from the most obombamable creature ever created?
Watch this ▬ Did Jesus give us the name of the antichrist?
“where is today’s GOP?”
IMO the party is laying low and should continue to do so. Otherwise whatever they say will become the focus of the media and the dems and would be used to dems advantage.
As it is, the town halls are true grassroots, and all the dems can do is lambaste them and place labels, which is fueling the fire. But hard as they have tried, they have not succeeded in aligning the movement with the Republican party and that’s a good.
Stay out of the way and let the people do the talking. They’re doing well in spite of the naysayers.
My mom has her own private insurance and is also on Medicaid because Medicaid does not pay for enough should she need it.
She recently went to a Massachusetts emergency room for heart palpitations and they kept her overnight but one of the questions they asked her was “would you want to be recessitated”? Now, isn’t the fact that she had my father drive her to the hospital a dead give away that yes she would want to be recessitated? Welcome to RomneyCare everyone!!!
You raise a great point. If the obese and smokers are going to face criticism and sanctions why not those who indulge in far more physically destructive behavior?
The solution is for government not to be involved.
I had to love the interview with the obese 0bama supporter in front of the NH town hall. She was going on about how everyone should have affordable health care and 0bama was just the best for trying to make that happen. I was laughing thinking that her fat be behind would be the first on the chopping block!
One of my sisters is a nurse at a major hospital in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She says she's been at the bedside when the doctor asked the very old person if they wanted to keep on going or have the plug pulled. The very old person ALWAYS says they want to keep on going.
I noticed the same thing last night with the footage of the bussed-in Obama/ACORN people at that Specter townhall in a small town in PA. Every one of them were carrying around quite a few extra pounds. Here’s my question: will THEY be subjected to rationing? Or will it just be the folks who are comprising the ‘disruptive mobs?
Obamanation!
And are for it!!
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