No health care for seniors.

EXCERPT:
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.
______

COMMENT: They factor in the senior's expected life span. If the
mandated cost is exceeded, no treatment for mama. Shucks, we might as
well put mom and pop out on an ice raft when they hit a certain age.

Another example of big govt. controlling your life.
__________

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

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.

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.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an
adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed
are her own.)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...aL zfDxfbwhzs









On 10 Feb 2009 22:38:46 GMT, Robb wrote:

Kali wrote:

NASA is porky pie, you know. It just got cut out of the bill, along with
a heap of infrastructure spending. Roads, schools and colleges,
hospitals, police, fire, EMS, broadband, chopped right out. I wonder if
that levee in the Big Easy is in there. From what I've seen, that is one
of those necessities that is porky.

This isn't quite up to PETA's level of stim, but 'maybe'.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issu...animation.html

Bloomberg - Economists who support legislation to stimulate growth say the
version passed in the House of Representatives would create at least half a
million more jobs than the bill the Senate votes on today. The key
difference: The Senate version provides less money than the House measure for
public works and aid to state and local governments. While the two measures
have similar price tags, the Senate’s includes bigger tax cuts and adds tax
breaks for auto and home buyers, part of a compromise to win some Republican
votes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...OG8&refer=home

Includes a $70BN AMT tax cut - one that guys like "Joe the everything" never
had to worry about.


Schools:
$16 billion in investments in school infrastructure that is in the House
legislation. Yet the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that
spending $127 billion to $268 billion is needed to bring school facilities
to a good condition. The projects these funds would pay for are among the
infrastructure investments that can be brought up to speed very quickly.
The construction sector, which would benefit most from this funding, has
enormous idle capacity and more idle workers than any other industry, having
shed 10 percent of its jobs over the past year, compared to 3.2 percent for
the private sector overall.

Weatherization:
On average, weatherization reduces heating bills by 32% and overall energy
bills by $358 per year at current prices. This in turn, spurs low-income
communities toward job growth and economic development. Average value of
weatherization services provided is $2,500, the value of the weatherization
is 2.2 times greater than the cost of the improvement:
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/weather.../improving.cfm

LIHEAP Funding (Low income heating supplement) - The Bush Years:
01 $1,372,500,000 + $455,650,000 sup + $27,500,000 lev/REACH $1,855,650,000 + f
02 $1,672,500,000 + $100,000,000 sup + $27,500,000 lev/REACH $1,800,000,000 + f
03 $1,760,978,750 + $200,000,000 sup + $27,321,250 lev/REACH $1,988,300,000 + f
04 $1,762,042,250 + $99,410,000 sup + $27,337,750 lev/REACH $1,888,790,000 + f
05 $1,857,519,008 + $297,600,000 sup + $27,280,000 lev/REACH $2,182,399,008 + f
06 $2,452,775,000 + $600,000,000 sup + $27,247,000 lev/REACH $3,080,022,000 + f
07 $1,980,000,000 + $181,170,000 sup + $27,225,000 lev/REACH $2,188,395,000 + f
08 $1,980,000,351 + $610,677,759 sup + $0 lev/REACH $2,590,678,110 + f


--
Robb | Shared Secrets Usenet