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February 10, 2009
Socialized Medicine Burried in Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan
Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion.
These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).
The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.
New Penalties
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
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.”
More Scrutiny Needed
On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.
The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.
Also here.................
There’s Socialized Medicine Burried in Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan
Dr. Steven West, president of the Florida Medical Association, notes that the economic stimulus bill contains a down payment on President Barack Obama’s plans for socialized medicine:
As Congress rushes its economic stimulus plan to the desk of President Obama, its grand vision of health reform has been secretly buried inside: rationing patient care and dispensing cookbook medicine.
That vision involves using large government bureaucracy and computer technology to tell patients what kind of care they can receive from their doctors. The congressional rationing plan will make doctors supplicants to big government and big insurance, rather than independent advocates for their patients. In the system that Congress envisions, the doctor serves the payer and not the patient.
Congress seeks $20 billion of spending on Health Information Technology (HIT) and more than $1.1 billion for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER).
Scientific studies have shown that strict adherence to these best practices does not prolong patients’ lives or cure their illnesses. Worse, this committee medicine has had harmful side effects for patients. In this system, the report-card score is the most important, while patient outcomes, patient satisfaction with care and the value of medical care take a back seat.
Wild Thing's comment........
Obama is killing on both ends of the scale. First it was unlimited abortion, even killing the few babies that survive a botched abortion and now he is going after the elderly. Nazi Germany here we come.
As Mark said yesterday in one of the posts....."those of us over 60 are going to get the royal shaft. If for example you come down with some disease, the health bureaucrat will review your case and if the expected amount to fix your problem is too large or exceed the number of years you are expected to live. Then you don't get any care. As Mark Steyn says, 'then they ship you off to some place to expire.' Damn great system these communist have."
Remember the 1973 movie, “Soylent Green”? They had special places where elderly people were taken to commit suicide. I’m surprised the bill doesn’t have funds for that too.
Posted by Wild Thing at February 10, 2009 04:50 AM
Comments
It looks like this introduction to Socialistic Medicine is going to pass. Can it be far behind the Science of Eugenics. After all these people believe in Darwinism. Eugenics is where the government decides who is fit to live and who is ready to die. They also decide the most efficeint way to kill: Babies who have been born with congenital birth defects, Parents of these children who carry the 'gene' can be forcibly stearlized, so they can not procreate any more anomalies. Then there is the older generation whose life is spent and they are living in a retirement home and taking too much from the government. At this point, a bureaucrat will decide how much longer the government should have to care for this 'burden' on society. A panel of three will decide, whether to juice this old fart or let him survive for another day. Of course, it will depend on his political status, if he is a democrat probably get an extra two weeks and maybe not.
This is what you get when you get socialized medicine. Where Doctors are ministers of the state and have no free will to proscribe treatment as they see fit rather as the State sees fit.
Posted by: Mark at February 10, 2009 08:57 AM
It's like a car accident -- the insurance company stamps the car as totalled and that's it -- off to the scrap yard. Looks like the same will be done to people -- too costly to fix you, you're not worth that much money -- sorry...you have to die. Off to the euthanasia center. Why can't people see Obama taking over everything a bite at a time -- the banks have been bought, medicine will be in the hands of the government, children will be raised the way the state wants them raised, our enemies are welcomed into our nation, on and on...it was never intended that the Federal Gov had this much power over us.
Posted by: PeteSuj at February 10, 2009 10:09 AM
Tom "Center for American Progress" Daschle was born in December 1947 so he is 61. I hope Daschle's physician is in strict compliance with "best pactices" if ol' Tommy ever gets sick....I'm 58 so I have 2 years to live (if I ever become ill ). The hip young morons who swept B. Hussein "X" into office can explain this to their parents and grandparents.
Posted by: willy at February 10, 2009 10:27 AM
I wonder if once installed if the Canadian and other foreign doctors will go home once the money incentive is gone and we'll be left with this. Meet your new doctor, Jim Jones, he has a degree in theology and is here to ease your pain.
Posted by: Jack at February 10, 2009 11:00 AM
Ah yes, wonderful socialized medicine. To get doctors we will have to import ones with degrees from the Medical School of Haiti and Pakistan U. You will have to make appointments now for diseases you may get later because it will take 2 or 3 years to be seen by a doctor.
Of course, our esteemed leaders will have their own medical program which will not be of the socialized variety.
Posted by: TomR at February 10, 2009 11:29 AM
And wasn't Kavorkian sentenced for assisted suicides??? Sounds like this Bill takes it a step further!!!! Does that mean we can send "O", Pelosi, Reid, and every other idiot that voted for this Bill to jail???
You can bet this won't apply to any political jerk......just us common people!!!
Yes Chrissie.....it is Soylent Green for sure!!! There was also a movie in the late 60's that was about young people trying to take over the government....they felt that anyone over 30 was old and no longer useful.
I still haven't figured out why, when you look around and see that every other attempt at socialized medicine has failed, you would think it will work for us. Except to ensure that you Socialize America!!!!
Posted by: John at February 10, 2009 02:08 PM
Now I know how Red Coat Lord Corwallis felt after the loss at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. The Brits surrendered their weapons and played "The world turned upside down!"
Posted by: darthcrUSAderworldtour07 at February 10, 2009 05:02 PM
I don't think I ever wanted kids now I'm sure I don't, I wonder what will happen if I say get one of my legs blown off by an IED in Iraq. If that happens the Medic had BETTER put a bullet in my head (and enough to make sure) because we all know how kindly the VA and other people in our society treat wounded Veterans especially Ones of an unpopular war.
You KNOW this issue in medicine will come up If this bill goes through (I still Pray GOD this "stimulus" Doesn't go through).
Posted by: JohnE PFC U.S. Army at February 10, 2009 06:11 PM
The issue of national health care was bought up during the campaign and now Obama and the Dems are going to make it happen even when it costs people their lives. There are more socialist pieces to this stimulus bill then there is stimulus.
Posted by: Les at February 10, 2009 07:35 PM
Mark, your right, Eugenics has not been mentioned yet but I bet it will be.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:13 AM
Pete it sure feels like that I agree. A horrible horrendous car accident.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:15 AM
Willy, can you just see it now. The idiots that voted for Obama telling their grandparents and parents, well here is the thing, don't get sick or you might as well just keel over and kiss this world goodbye.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:17 AM
Jack, shudder! I bet you are right. Why would they stay here when they can go back to Canada and make the same low pay they will make here.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:20 AM
Tom, exaxctly, I am in total shock right now how easy it was for the left do get this socialized stuff put through.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:22 AM
John, that is what I just don't understand at all.
These people have got to know that socialism and socialized medicine has never worked. This all goes way beyond their hate for Bush and the Rep. This is wanting total power and control and knowing right now is their chance to do and do it as fast as they can and as sneaky as they can.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:26 AM
Darth, good comparison.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:28 AM
JohnE PFC U.S. Army, Foamy is cute and he gets his point across.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:33 AM
Les, you are so right.
". There are more socialist pieces to this stimulus bill then there is stimulus."
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2009 01:35 AM
