February 9th 2009
Mr. Transparent Steaths Massive Health Reform
Barack Obama promised to open federal government to the Citizens, using the Internet and other tools to give us greater understanding and a greater voice. That promise has been broken less than two weeks into his run with the stealth introduction of universal health care, hidden in the Porkasaurus stimulus bill.
Fortunately, the very internet that Obama promised to use for good is catching him in his promise-breaking, as a Bloomberg expose by Betsy McCaughey makes its Internet and talk radio rounds.
Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan
Commentary by Betsy McCaughey
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.
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.
McCaughey goes on, citing page numbers from the pdf of Porkasaurus. What she found on those pages is nothing short than the establishment of the workings of a national healthcare system under the guise of Obama’s much-ballyhooed electronic medical record-keeping system.
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.”
Within this new bureaucracy, McCaughey found the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (pgs. 190-192), a Star Chamber for health care that would weigh the efficacy of procedures on various demographic segments and provide or deny coverage.
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.
Now there’s an America I don’t recognize. An America that just sits down and dies when bad news comes; an America that puts innovation and compassion on the shelf as too expensive. What’s proposed here is nothing short of the selling out of every senior … and every one of us who intends to become a senior.
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.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, you’re right. None of this has anything whatsoever with stimulating an ailing economy … other than increasing the chance that the economy will get an “oops, you died” diagnosis.
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February 10th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
February 15th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
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