Posted below is part of Betsy McCaughey’s opinion commentary on Bloomberg.com. You can read the entire piece here.
The Senate approved the bill today so unless this part is removed in negotiations with the House of Representatives then many elderly Americans might get turned away from treatment for being too old.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit.
Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.
In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.
Hidden Provisions
If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.
The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).
Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”
Anyone want to talk about how compassionate Democrats are now? What about all the stories run by the MSM every four years about Republicans wanting to reduce Medicare benefits.
Obama is running around demanding $1 trillion in a stimulus bill so he can save us from a depression. Well what’s more depressing than your own government tell you that you’re too old for medical treatment?
Other stories on Health Care in the stimulus bill:
This is not what I voted for!! I need help as a senior citizen, not a death sentence.
Posted by: Paul W. Cameron | February 17, 2009 at 09:34 AM
How about the government get out of the healthcare business completely? Don't regulate it, don't subsidize it and don't mandate it. Without the costs of compliance and shady regulatory laws that benefit large corporations by supressing competition and innovation we would probably have a much cheaper, much more dynamic and higher quality system than we have now. Instead, like everything else in this country, it has been turned into a political tool where superficial ideological differences between the 2 parties is supposed to exemplify major differences in benefits. Does anyone else realize that the Republican party and the Democratic party are 2 sides of the same socialist coin? Both parties believe in some form of socialism except the Democratic version is more Communist and the Republican version is more Fascist. Bring back the free market for healthcare, not this heavily regulated state controlled fascist bull crap that passes for capitalism. It seems the Russians did win the cold war after all as Socialism is more than alive and well in this country.
Posted by: LibertyOrDeath | February 15, 2009 at 01:07 PM
This concept further impowers the failed concepts of the Democrates (see http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807 which proves who failed America and who started this mess - I have been following it for years ). Will members of Congress be forced to use the same Health Care rationing system? In the UK if you go out side the system you are committing a crime.
Posted by: George Sanborn | February 11, 2009 at 05:23 PM
I think this is disgusting. I don't know if it will help, but I've written to my representative, my senators, the AMA and the AARP of my dissatisfaction. How many of you want to be treated this way? Fight it. Get the word out to your senators and reps. This is wrong.
Posted by: Vicki | February 10, 2009 at 06:17 PM
Every Republican should be running to every retirement home throughout the country with this in large print. What a gift for shortening the Dems control. What a terrible way to treat your fellow citizens.
Posted by: Bill | February 10, 2009 at 03:21 PM