One of the many myths on the political right is that the Medicare prescription drug plan passed under President Bush was wrong and did not pay for itself. It is one of those stubborn misunderstandings which typically embed themselves into the psyche of a movement. It is a much milder form of the zealotry which backs the myths underpinning Obamacare.
Well those two myths of misunderstanding just collided, with devastating results for seniors and taxpayers.
The Bush Medicare prescription drug plan was enacted to fill a Medicare hole which was bleeding money. Without preventative and corrective drugs provided under Medicare, many people were getting them through the emergency room. The drugs were god-awful expensive via this route, and the emergency room visit costs were astronomical on top of that. This expected behavioral response to a natural need to stay alive was bleeding out Medicare.
The answer was Medicare Part D, and unlike Obamacare this plan relied heavily on the free market to enact and pay for it:
Beneficiaries can obtain the Medicare drug benefit through two types of private plans: beneficiaries can join a Prescription Drug Plan (PDP) for drug coverage only or they can join a Medicare Advantage plan (MA) that covers both medical services and prescription drugs (MA-PD).[2] The latter type of plan is actually part of Medicare Part C and has several other differences relative to original Medicare.
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As of 2008 there were 1,824 stand-alone Part D plans available. The number of available plans varied by region. The lowest was 27 (Alaska) and the highest was 63 (Pennsylvania & West Virginia).[5] This allows participants to choose a plan that best meets their individual needs. Plans can choose to cover different drugs, or classes of drugs, at various co-pays, or choose not to cover some drugs at all.
Medicare Plan D costs money and is imperfect, but it does rely on participants paying for their fair share, and help for  low income participants in paying for the basics. While imperfect, it is better than the expensive emergency room pharmacy plan it replaced, and apparently much less expensive to taxpayers than Obamacare:
There are days when it seems even fate or God is sending a message to the liberals in DC to just give up on their wrongheaded approach of government run and rationed health care. Just as Al Gore’s global warming  conferences seem to be regularly plagued by blizzards, the Obamacare major events always seem to come in tandem with horrible breaking news about England’s or Canada’s disastrous government rationed health care programs:
Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.
Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.
But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.
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Former chief executive Martin Yeates, who has since left with a £1million pension pot, six months’ salary and a reported £400,000 payoff, did not even give evidence to the inquiry which detailed the scale of the scandal yesterday.
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Bosses at the Trust – officially an ‘elite’ NHS institution – were condemned for their fixation with cutting waiting times to hit Labour targets and leaving neglected patients to die.
H/T Drudge. No wonder Canadian leaders come to the US for serious medical attention. Folks, make sure you follow this link and read the whole article. Your life and the lives of your family depend on it.
Reminds me of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financial disasters, where none of the Democrat legislators or Democrat-crony managers who legalized and then ran up the collection of bad loans in the name of liberal social engineering. They too never paid for the financial devastation they caused as they lined their pockets with the money of American home owners. These people were trusted to be responsible and protect the American People’s trust.
This is the robotic greed of the government bureaucracy. In the name of doing good some people just pillage the public piggy bank – completely blind and immune to any carnage they cause. 1200 people died from neglect under horrible conditions – conditions we don’t even allow for our pets, let alone loved ones. This is the context of today’s already failed health care summit, where President Obama and the Democrats will once more shine a light on their incompetence, tone deafness and crazed compulsive behavior.
The universe is sending a message, people need to listen. We don’t want the UK Health Care disaster in place of what we have now. And don’t pretend to pick on marginal details. This crime against humanity was caused by cost cutting. Just another version of controlling insurance premiums.
As people prepare to listen to our young President tonight attempt to salvage his failing health care initiative, please read up on one of the premier government rationed health care programs in the world – the UK’s NHS. Here are some eye opening stories of hell from the land of ‘public’ health care:
Florence Elizabeth Weston
By her son Mike Weston
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From research that I’ve done since these events I understand that if operated on within 48 hours, patients have a much better chance of a full recovery and the opportunity to regain full mobility. However, some 20% of the 70,000 hip fracture victims each year who are over 60, have to wait over two days causing them to be in pain and increasing the likelihood that their future life will be impaired. This lack of prompt action also dramatically increases the patient’s chance of dying.
Despite us being told on a daily basis that she was on the list for surgery for that day, she was constantly removed to make way for other clinical priorities. What these priorities were, that enabled them to take precedence over her, was never explained to our satisfaction. In the end she waited some five days after admittance for her operation.
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She was also told that, because of being unable to use the toilet facilities through being immobile, she should wet the bed. This was highly embarrassing for her. Even worse, on one occasion, a night nurse told her off for doing this severely enough to reduce her to tears and cause her to ask me if she could go home. Once she made me aware of this, I made a complaint to the senior nurse on duty, although the patient notes that we have since obtained, did not reflect this. Eventually she was fitted with a catheter.
Unfortunately, the operation did not work, allowing the ball joint of her leg to become separated from her hip, so yet again she was put on the trauma surgery list and awaited further surgery. All of the family were now becoming increasingly concerned by the apparent lack of speed in dealing with the situation. Despite constant questioning of the ward staff, it took a further three days for corrective action to be taken and the decision to move her to an Orthopaedic Hospital some 20 miles away.
Two days after that, a long operation took place during which a full hip replacement was carried out. Sadly, the following day she died of heart failure.
This dehumanizing treatment is what happens when you are a statistic – and not a paying customer. When an organization must earn its customers, when each person has a critical role in creating an caring, professional environment that will attract people, then you never see this kind of crap. This reads more like a DMV than a hospital, where people are checking off boxes and watching the clock for their next break.
This is government rationed health care in the 21st century. This is what Obamacare will mean to far too many people. We don’t need to trade in our current health care for this criminal malfeasance AND be charged more for the torture! The only crisis is DC has run amok in mindless liberal delusions. Keep your hands of my health care!
Don’t touch a thing. I will pay the higher premiums to cover those who prefer ER health care. It will cost me the same as now.
Only radical liberal schemes could make people feel so threatened they demand protection for what they have now. Only liberals could propose such foolishness that our current system looks grand in comparison.
Political momentum appeared to swing sharply against the public health insurance option prized by liberals Tuesday, on the eve of President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate on Tuesday signaled they are increasingly willing to pass healthcare reform without a public insurance option, even while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) again insisted it must be included in a House healthcare bill.
Public anger may explain why the White House is now insisting that Congress has not exempted itself from the Public Option, most notably in this new “Reality Check” video on the White House web site featuring former ABC reporter Linda Douglas, who now flaks for Obama as communications director for the White House Office of Health Care Reform.
The problem is, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffitt, the White House assertion is “incorrect.”
And in this video Moffit points to an amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-NV, during a House Ways and Means Committee meeting just before the recess began that would have required Members to be covered by the Public Option plan if they approve it for private citizens.
Predictably, however, the Heller amendment was defeated, with all 21 committee Democrats voting against it.
Too dangerous for Congress to use, but not so for the unclean masses.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been held up as the model for the liberal government rationed health care solutions now in front of Congress as Obamacare. I have written extensively on the NHS and its hellish, substandard performance (see here). In government rationed health care systems costs are contained by selecting who is worthy of treatment and who is not. Who will die and who will survive.
In recent years both the Canadian and UK NHS programs have been forced to restrict more and more care. In the UK they have almost given up on curing and gone to simply keeping the healthy healthy. They have also flirted with the idea of including growing to a ripe old age in with other bad life style choices like overeating, heavy drinking and smoking. Like growing old is a choice?
Even Obamacare gets half its funding from cutting Medicare by 10% at a time its roles are growing by 30% and its customers are aging (requiring more investment, not less).
One way to reduce costly end of life care is to accelerate the end of life. In the UK there have been lots of warning bells that patients are being shuttled off their mortal coils prematurely. One such case just hit the Drudge headlines today:
Mrs Munkenbeck, 56, from Bracknell, said her father, who previously said he wanted to live until he was 100, has now said he wants to die after being deprived of fluids for five days.
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Last week The Daily Telegraph reported a warning from experts that some patients with terminal illnesses were being wrongly put on the NHS scheme and allowed to die prematurely if they ticked “the right boxes”.
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Mrs Munkenbeck said that her father was taken off an intravenous drip last week but she argues that he has as much of a right to life as anyone else. Although a spokesman for Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey says Mr Troake is not on the scheme “at the moment”, it is likely he will be offered a plan of care for dying patients.
What a scheme. Deny the man fluids for 5 days until he is begging to die, then put him on the path to meet his maker. The article notes another big problem with this approach and the elderly I have seen numerous times:
Although Mrs Munkenbeck admits her father is “confused”, she argues that is because of the drugs the hospital have given him.
I have seen this in my own mother. She is incredibly susceptible to narcotics, even in mild doses such as in cold medicine. It builds up in her over a very short time. It takes days to get her head clear. This man is being dehydrated (which causes delusions itself) and being drugged. Who wouldn’t be confused?
The daughter has a reasonable answer, but under government rationed health (costs savings you know) she has little control:
“We believe that he has been forced down this route. By withdrawing fluids he is now very weak and there’s no going back from it,” she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
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“Let his body do his own job with a little bit of help. If it’s not possible we don’t necessarily expect him to be put on a ventilator,” she said.
How hard is this? Give the man his fluids and reduce or suspend the medication for a week. They are not asking for him to be artificially kept alive. The fact he can ‘ask’ to die is a clear sign he is not mentally gone.
This is the brave new world of Obamacare if the current plans get passed. A few cheap drugs to mask clarity of the mind and you can make all sorts of claims about viability. Senior citizens, you have been warned. And all of us who hope to be senior citizens in 10-20 years, we have been warned as well.
I need to start this post with a heart felt recognition for doctors and nurses. I once dabbled with the idea of going into medicine, before I admitted to myself that the bottomless well of emotional stamina and caring required for those jobs was just not something I had. Scientifically I probably had the skills, but to face people in need all day every day was not something I could do without turning off all my emotions and treating patients like problems. It was a step I decided I could not take.
I just want to make that clear because this report I have been reading about the UK’s National Health Service problems and its treatment of the elderly is very tough reading. All I can say is the health care I have had to deal with for my elderly parent’s here in the states was nothing like the nightmare I am reading about. To truly appreciate what we have here in America, it is usually necessary to see what the rest of the world deals with. This is a prime ‘teaching’ experience.
To understand what the very naive on the far left want to sell us in terms of Obamacare, one needs to see the result of a ‘public option’ in our sister country, the UK. Here are some excerpts of real life incidents that tell the tale of bureaucrat run health care solutions:
Toilets were not cleaned properly with faeces clearly left from several previous uses. My sister often had to clean them herself before she’d let my father use them. My father’s swallowing wasn’t safe because of his stroke but drinks of orange juice and water were supplied when the counter instruction over the bed was nil by mouth. We saw dirty and blood stained food trays. We saw soiled and dirty linen left on floors and mixed with fresh supplies. Personal items for his own comfort frequently went missing.
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His catheter bag was not changed when it was full, sometimes after nursing staff had seen it needed changing. It wasn’t secured properly, meaning it dragged along the floor at times. He wasn’t shaved or showered regularly. We had to bring in a blanket for him because he was cold in bed. Perhaps most importantly as he had suffered a minor stroke and had difficulty using his left arm, besides a walk to the toilet, he was given no rehabilitation exercises.
We witnessed similar problems for other patients on the ward. Patients didn’t seem to be getting enough assistance with eating and drinking. We saw patients with food and drink, spilt down their chests, struggling to manage on their own.
It is a series of heart wrenching stories that I doubt happen here in the US at the same level it seems they happen in the vaunted UK’s ‘public option’. It should be noted the the NHS in the UK is avoided by most with the means to purchase private health insurance. It is free, universal and it is avoided. Tells you something about government rationed health care, doesn’t it.
I sometimes wonder (as have a couple of our readers) whether this debate on Health Care will change America’s system or the UK’s? I know which one I would change.
Most patients are frail and elderly and not in a fit state for the operation, it said. A major factor affecting survival chances is how quickly the hospital operates on the patient. The Royal College of Physicians recommends operations should be done within 24 hours.
Hospitals with high death rates had 22% of patients, on average,waiting for more than two days, while those with low death rates had only 14% waiting that long.
Apparently in the NHS they have such a backlog of patients in the queue for surgery that it is tough to get Emergency Room (ER) patients (what they call A&E) in the queue. It turns out that the rationing causes long delays in getting the needed surgery, leading to death in many cases. Having taken my own mother through a broken hip on one fall and a broken arm/wrist on a second, I can tell you that immediate care is imperative.
Liberals are so clueless to what they are trying to push on health care they refuse to understand what government rationed (e.g., ‘cost savings’) health care is. They idiotically claim their are no ‘death panels’ or ‘rationing’ in their ‘public option’ – but then again I know of no law that specifies ‘clueless bureaucrat’, ‘mountains of paperwork’, or ‘shyster lawyers’. It seems the poor saps on the far left can’t understand the concept of a descriptive moniker.
But the process of of cutting costs by restricting care for those in need and forcing some panel to chose who will be worthy of treatment does exist. Just look at the current ‘cost savings’ from Team Obama and who it targets:
You didn’t read this in your local paper, but 2010 could be a catastrophic year for elderly heart and cancer patients. Bloomberg News reports that President Obama has proposed cutting$1.4 billion in Medicare payments to heart and cancer specialists.
Does anyone want to  bet there will be more or fewer retiring Baby Boomers on Medicare next year? Do you suppose those aging Boomers will see increasing or decreasing rates of heart issues and cancer? I mean this is pretty simple stuff here, is there a valid reason to be cutting back here? Will reducing the number specialists who deal with the elderly on heart and cancer conditions, while the population of elderly is expanding at historic rates, make it easier or harder for the elderly to be seen and get treatment? Do delays in treatment make conditions better or worse?
Why isn’t anyone asking the basic questions here?
One of the first government rationed health care systems is in the UK – created after World War II. It is so strapped for money with its aging Boomers that it is selecting who is worthy of treatment every day (those mythical death panels), with one proposal lumping the sin of growing old in with those social miscreants who are overweight, smoking and drinking:
Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.
While this is a proposal, overweight people and smokers are being denied care – and dying. Drudge has a banner headline proving again that there are ‘death panels’ in the UK National Health Service:
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
But look at the fiscal side, they are cutting the costs of expensive care.
Beyond the ignorance and denial on the left to the downside of cost cutting through government rationed health care is that I find, when I read the liberals’ posts and comments on this subject, their primary concern is for someone to pay for their health care for them. They are willing to sentence thousands of people to the whims of a faceless bureaucracy focused on cost savings to save THEM some money. Personally I find that offensive.
I am all for reforms that make health care affordable and accessible (especially getting rid of the precondition barriers), but we have been taking care of our health care costs and I think it is a responsibility (not a right) to have health care. It is our responsibility just like putting a roof over our heads, feeding ourselves and clothing ourselves. I would never think I have a right to pick someone else’s pockets (through taxes and government give -aways) to take care of my family.
We may need help once in a while, and I am all for helping those with severe conditions or situations, but that is not what this is about (though people wave that around as if no one can get health treatments at all – which is a lie). The left lost this fight on day one, since government rationed health care has been rejected by this country for decades. It is not wanted here – get a clue.
The liberal resurgence which was so inevitable with the 2008 elections, where the Democrats (and their liberal old dog guard in DC) took the reigns of power in DC. It looked as if America was in for years of leftward tacking.
But leave it to those whacky liberals on the far left and their grade school level grasp of reality. They pushed so hard on so many fronts to demonstrate the fallacy of liberal ideas (thinking all the while they were the superior beings coming to the rescue of humanity) that they sunk their own ship of state!
As a prime example, take the utter corruption of the liberal democrat congressman in charge of tax laws and punishment in this country – an arrogant, corrupt, tax cheat the likes of which who has NEVER before been in a such position of power in this great country:
Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.
The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.
The guy is damn crook, and if he was actually to be treated equally under the laws of this country, as anyone who failed to list MILLIONS of dollars in income, he might well be in jail right now. He would definitely be a convicted felon.
But in the crazy world of liberal zealots he is a ‘leader’. The Dems have the audacity wonder, while Americans struggle through the loss of income and savings on a level not seen for almosts 100 years, why America is turning on these elitists buffoons.
The people are fed up with these dumb PR tricks. This country is ready to storm DC and physically throw the left wing nuts out, they are so fed up. This country has had it with liberal arrogance backed up by Looney Tunes concepts. It is one thing to hold naive views, it is another to try and ram those views down everyone else’s throats through lies and deceits.
Even President Obama’s administration is lying through its teeth about its health care proposals, apparently ignorant of the fact they had made completely opposite claims, on the record, just days and weeks before:
Two weeks ago, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said in a now legendary “viral” email that, “It’s a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits.” This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he’d pay for health-care reform by “eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years” for “what’s called Medicare Advantage.” And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he’d cover “two-thirds” of the “roughly $900 billion” of his plan’s cost by “eliminating waste,” again citing Medicare Advantage.
Who’s right? As a former senior adviser, I can tell you who: the president.
The levels of buffoonery and corruption have hit such incredible levels is it any wonder America is fed up with the liberal imbeciles? It is just too damn obvious to paper over:
President Obama’s health care “plan” is going down like a handful of tacks, and the Democratic Party, experiencing the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown, is poised to commence a civil war over health reform that could virtually tear the party’s leaders to shreds.
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The talking points coming out of the White House these days are harder to follow than a Jessica Simpson autobiography. First, there was the moral imperative that it wanted to move forward with universal health care to cover the 46 million uninsured. This number is misleading. Many of the uninsured are offered insurance and don’t take it, and millions are illegal aliens. More troubling is the fact that the former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that 43% have the means to buy insurance but don’t. CBO projections among the uninsured in 2009: 18% will be eligible for but not enrolled in Medicaid, and 30% will be offered, but will decline, coverage from an employer, leaving the electorate questioning a full overhaul.
When the original argument fell flat, the White House quickly shifted to an economic imperative that its plan would help cut the rising cost of care. Not so, according to the CBO, which found that the Democratic “plan” will raise – not cut – costs. Nothing blows up a sales pitch like getting mugged by reality.
“Mugged by reality” – that about sums up the rolling liberal disaster playing out in DC and across the nation. Their stimulus bill has provided no job stimulus, their energy bill will kill an already critically injured economy, and their health care plans for government ration health care are competing – headline wise – with the collapse of the UK’s government rationed health care system.
In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with ‘neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel’ treatment.
The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.
The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust – where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care – was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.
This horrific health care disaster in the UK is what the liberals in DC all want to have in place here in America as soon as possible. By taking this lunatic stand they have, in effect, picked a fight with the retired WW II generation, the retiring Baby Boom generation, and all their immediate families. It was the dumbest political move ever conceived, and yet the liberals keep attempting to lie and harass their screwed up ideas through.
As if this was not enough, as all these liberal fantasies are ‘mugged by reality’, President Obama and the DC liberal old dog guard has picked a fight with the last group they can afford to do battle with – Â all in the lame hope they can tame the lunatic fringe on the left:
The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that’s riled by his decisions to retain some Bush-era counterterrorism policies. He’s facing Congressional liberals still baying for Bush blood. He’s hired Attorney General Eric Holder, who is giving the term “ideological purity” new meaning. Mr. Obama’s way to appease these bodies? Hang the CIA and Mr. Panetta out to dry.
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Reversing prior promises not to prosecute CIA officials who “acted in good faith,” Mr. Holder appointed a special counsel with the ability to prosecute officials who acted in good faith.
The ‘logic’ here is Americans have sympathy for the mass murderers and wannabe mass murderers of al Qaeda, and will line up to attack those fellow Americans who defended this nation from another 9-11. It is the epitome of hubris run amok. Not only will America rally to their fellow Americans on this, everyone knows this is an attempt to feed the brain dead vultures on the left who have been mugged by reality so many times they have come to hate it with a passion. These nuts are out to destroy America for the sin of reminding them how wrong they have been on so many fronts.
Throwing the CIA to these angry masses will not pan out as the DC liberals think, and they have just added another powerful faction to the ranks of their opposition.
The result of all these crude and crass moves? Crashingpollnumbersmarking the path to a political tsunami in 2012. The path to this political backlash is going to be harsh and ugly, if the crazed left wing nut jobs live up to their usual sewer rat reputations:
Just look at this warped image of a depraved and sick left wing mind. If you oppose President Obama you are clearly just a closet KKK member. Who is wearing the American flag? What is the symbol of America in this grotesque view? And “Teabaggers” are simply people rejecting the massive deficit spending without any positive results – how dare they! The only truth to this pathetic work of ‘art’ is the ‘coming 9/12’ line. Obama will be on his way out of office by this time no doubt.
But it will not be because America is a rabid hole of KKK sympathizers. It will be because liberals truly are that dumb, that crass and that immature that they will have earned the electoral beating they will have wrought. They failed to fix our economy, and instead made it much, much worse by increasing our debt to the point it will take multiple generations to pay it off. They attempted to put in place faceless panels of penny-pinching bureaucrats to determine who was and was not worthy of health care – following the disastrous model of the UK’s NHS. They raised taxes and will have tried to prosecute our protectors as enemies. They have failed.
The crude, crass and immature world view of the liberals is facing a serious (and well deserved) mugging by reality. And it will actually start in this fall’s elections, running through the 2010 mid terms, culminating in the 2012 ‘realignment’.
Liberals hoping for government rationed health care (a.k.a., the ‘public option’) are in dire straights. It’s not due to the right wing message machine. It’s not because Americans too stupid to see the perfection of the made-for-TV fantasy the libs are pushing. It’s not even because Obama can’t help himself and blurt out the truth (Fedex/UPS verses the US Post Office).
It’s simply because government rationed health care is a proven disaster. It’s the message for sure.
That’s why Republicans are calling for a Seniors’ Health Care Bill Of Rights that will:
PROTECT MEDICARE AND NOT CUT IT IN THE NAME OF HEALTH CARE REFORM: President Obama and Congressional Democrats are promoting a government-run health care experiment that will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan. Â Medicare should not be raided to pay for another entitlement.
PROHIBIT GOVERNMENT FROM GETTING BETWEEN SENIORS AND THEIR DOCTORS: The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment will give patients less power to control their own medical decisions, and create government boards that would decide what treatments would or wouldn’t be funded. Republicans believe in patient-centered reforms that put the priorities of seniors before government.
PROHIBIT EFFORTS TO RATION HEALTH CARE BASED ON AGE:The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment would set up a “comparative effectiveness research commission†where health care treatment decisions could be limited based on a patient’s age. Republicans believe that health care decisions are best left up to seniors and their doctors.
PREVENT GOVERNMENT FROM INTERFERING WITH END-OF-LIFE CARE DISCUSSIONS: The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment would have seniors meet with a doctor to discuss end-of-life care that could mean limiting treatment. Republicans believe that government should not interfere with end-of-life care discussions between a patient and a doctor.
ENSURE SENIORS CAN KEEP THEIR CURRENT COVERAGE: As Democrats continue to propose steep cuts to Medicare in order to pay for their government-run health care experiment, these cuts threaten millions of seniors with being forced from their current Medicare Advantage plans. Republicans believe that seniors should not be targeted by a government-run health care bill and forced out of their current Medicare coverage.
PROTECT VETERANS BY PRESERVING TRICARE AND OTHER BENEFIT PROGRAMS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES: Democrats recently proposed raising veterans’ costs for the Tricare For Life program that many veterans rely on for treatment. Republicans oppose increasing the burden on our veterans and believe America should honor our promises to them.
All very powerful promises, and something the liberals CANNOT sign up to. They cannot create a government rationed health care system without some cost cutting (read rationing to the worthy). And over 50% of the cost of a person’s health care occurs in their senior years.
Compare these promises with current proposals in the UK to eek out cost savings by lumping the concept of living to a ripe old age in with those social miscreants who are overweight, smoke and drink:
Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.
Under Obama care you are a drain on society if you live to a ripe old age, under the GOP plan you are protected and ensured equal status to all those youngsters.
The horror stories of government rationed health care are real. Here are another round to enlighten Americans to how good they really have it compared to the rest of the world
The UK government rationed health care system is in such bad shape they are importing doctors on the cheap to cover the doctor shortage (seems the best and brightest don’t want to make a career out of rationing health care to the needy).
The huge extent to which the NHS needs foreign doctors to treat patients out of hours is revealed today.
A third of primary care trusts are flying in GPs from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland because of a shortage of doctors in Britain willing to work in the evenings and at weekends.
The stand-ins earn up to £100 an hour, and one trust paid Polish and German doctors a total of £267,000 in a year, a Daily Mail investigation has found.
But the most shocking thing was not the lying. Nor even the incompetence. It was our total lack of surprise at the turn of events, since after 15 years suffering from the failings of the National Health Service we are prepared for almost any ineptitude.
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I used to share these delusional views, wrapped in a comforting blanket of national pride over Bevan’s legacy. But that was before the birth of our daughter sent us hurtling into the hell of our health service. Since then, hours and days and months and years have been spent battling bureaucracy, fighting lethargy and observing inefficiency while all the time guarding against the latest outbreak of incompetence.
It is a heart wrenching story of reality, not that bogus made-for-TV crap you get from liberals promising the Nirvana of lower cost and expanded care. Anyone promising more for less is a huckster. We don’t need some ShamWow! Health Care.
The government rationed health care plan is DOA – as it should be.
I know some people are mocking the term “death panel” as it applies to government run health care, but sadly the term is a good summation of what happens when faceless bureaucrats dole out treatments based on cost and not need.
What is just ridiculously ironic is how the UK and Canadian models of government run health care are falling apart at the same time as mindless liberals are pushing for that same health care nightmare to come to America.
A study out in January 2008 claimed that the UK’s National Health System allowed 17,000 people to die unnecessarily from poor treatment – making this one of the largest crimes of medical malpractice I think I have ever seen in my life:
More than 17,000 people receiving treatment in the UK have died unnecessarily because of the inadequacies of the NHS, it is claimed today.
The figure, in a paper published by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, is calculated using data given to the World Health Organisation. It compares the number of people who died prematurely, even though their illness was treatable, in five European countries.
The NHS performs worse on this measure of “mortality amenable to healthcare” than Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany. If it had achieved the average of those four, 17,157 fewer deaths would have occurred in 2004, the most recent year for which the data is available, says the alliance.
That is more than five times the death toll from road accidents, says the alliance, which claims that the extra money for the NHS from the Labour government has been wasted.
Emphasis mine. Would America stand for a health care system which causes more deaths than automobile accidents? What kind of crock of a system is this? If you read the whole article the UK doesn’t even deny the claim!
Data collected by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) shows that 1,282 people in England died in what it calls “patient safety incidents in mental health settings” in the period 2007-08.
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Campaigners claimed last night that the high death rates showed that many of the hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people who seek help each year receive a second-class service.
“These figures are shocking. It’s a scandal that four people a day are dying while under the care of the NHS, and nearly three a day are ending up seriously harmed.
And the liberals wonder why the ‘public option’ is DOA.
Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.
Delays in treatment usually result in greater damage to the body, leading to shorter life. That is a scientific and medical fact.
I have been noting the draconian steps the UK is taking and considering to cut costs to its government run health care system. These cost cutting measures include panels who decide what life styles should be barred from treatments, whether the system should be designed to only deal with the sick and not focus on cures, and whether growing old is one of those nasty life style habits (like smoking, drinking and being obese) that makes patients unworthy of treatments. Here are the key points and links to the ongoing debate about the future of the UK NHS:
The UKÂ is already consideringchanging their government run system from curing the ill to only keeping the healthy healthy:
Already around one in ten hospitals refuse to carry out joint replacements for obese patients or orthopaedic surgery on smokers.
The contract, first floated by Tony Blair was proposed by Gordon Brown in a New Year message to Health Service staff today.
The Prime Minister believes a new focus on the prevention of ill health, rather than curing it, is essential for a modern NHS.
The shift in focus has clear results for the UK, as noted here:
Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.
These are from main stream media outlets in the UK and illustrate quite clearly what will happen to America if it follows the foolish proposals of the DC liberals and their fantasy driven base to introduce government run health care. A second example of why we don’t want a government run health care system here is now popping up in Canada (the other example of what liberals want for American health care):
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.
“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.
His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that “a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and “that competition should be welcomed, not feared.”
In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the publicsystem.
Anyone else find it ironic that Canada might be moving to a system more like ours to deal with the challenges of their faltering government run option? What is happening in Canada is disturbingly similar to what is happening in the UK:
The Fraser Health Authority confirmed Thursday it intends to cut surgeries, seniors’ programs and services for the mentally ill to help deal with a budget shortfall of up to $160 million.
It seems that in this part of Canada being senior and mentally ill is worthy of being denied treatments. More cost savings, Canadian style, are coming in other parts of Canada:
This spring, nurses were shocked by a sudden hiring freeze and talk of reducing their numbers. Managers scrambled when 100 positions were cut. The Royal Alexandra Hospital cancelled 15 per cent of elective surgeries to meet a new budget directive, and two Edmonton hospitals cut back on MRIs. Frustrated doctors say the cuts will only lengthen wait times. Like nurses, they don’t like a new code of ethics for health-care workers that looks like a gag order to them.
The Alberta public, taken aback by the out-of-the-blue budget cuts and already wary of health reform, just got more nervous. What, they ask, is happening with their health-care system?
It’s always the elderly (with their massive health care costs) who seem to be the target of government cost savings. So why is America aiming at a system of health care which has been soundly proven in Canada and the UK to have failed financially to the point both countries has started deciding who is worthy of care?
