"Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey"
Callous, unfair, and unquestionably evil:
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.What does that mean? Let's say you're 70 years old and although you can get around on your own two feet you have to have supplemental oxygen. Let's say you fall and break your hip. Daschle's idea of humane care is refusing to replace your hip. It'll mean you spend the rest of your life--however long or short that may be--in a wheelchair.
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.
Under the present system, of course, you can get your hip replaced and be walking around towing your oxygen cylinder. The decision is up to you and your doctor. Under Daschle's system, some faceless bureaucrat has the final veto over whether or not you get that new hip...and the bureaucrat won't give a rat's ass what you want.
In essence the government is saying, "Hey, thanks for paying taxes all your life. Now that you're a burden on the system, piss off and go die, already."
It makes me want to tear my hair out. We're always told that health care is a right by the same people who are planning this kind of horror. I guess health care is only a "right" if you're a prominent Democrat or under the age of 65!
Anyone who thinks that politicians--regardless of age!--won't get preferential treatment under this system is smoking the whackity crackity. So if you're 70 years old and on oxygen but you're also a Democrat congresscritter, you'll get the red carpet treatment on your way to the osteo OR--bypassing the hoi polloi who have to wait three to six months for their new hips. (Assuming they ever get them.)
I can confidently predict that because it has been the same every time socialized medicine has been tried. Every time.