Posted 3 months, 23 days ago in 
Loading ...
This health care bill is an astonishing piece of work. Dr. Betsy McCaughey currently heads up the Committee to Reduce Infectious Diseases. She has actually read the health care bill that Obama is trying to recklessly rush through Congress.
Defendyourhealthcare.us is a Web site with an amazing expose’ of what is really in this bill and the folks behind it. Pages 16 & 17 will assure you that you cannot keep your health care insurance, no matter how much you love it. It will also tell you that you will pay more for only selective services. Even if you could afford to pay out of pocket for better care, it will not be allowed as it would be unequal treatment. Another transparent lie.
We should be getting used to it by now. Scare tactics, inflammatory rhetoric, the blame game-all should be hugely transparent by now. Page 425 of this bill makes it mandatory for seniors to receive counseling every 5 years, so they will know how to decline nutrition, hydration and hospice care. Duty to die legislation.
Any time a senior gets a grim diagnosis, there is a requirement to receive counseling again. So if a senior is diagnosed with cancer, treatment is not immediate nor guaranteed. Counseling to die Is. One of Obama’s chief health advisors is Dr. Ezekial Emanuel-brother of White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. That means he has the means to implement his ideas. He has writings stating emphatically that it is only logical to deny basic health care to anyone with dementia, i.e. Alzheimers or cerebral palsy, folks.
Payment for this bill? Half will be a 500 billion dollar cut in health care benefits for seniors. Only the irresponsible would vote to pass this without reading it completely, all 1,000 pages. Run Logan Run.
JUANITA R. WILLIAMS
Parachute
13 Responses to “Truth about Obama’s health care bill”
Posted July 30th, 2009 at 4:56 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Pure balderdash. The advanced care planning consultation section in the bill is a wonderful addition to what medicare will pay for. If you have ever had to struggle with end of life issues you would understand the purpose of this section. It is voluntary and only allows a consultation once every 5 years unless the individual’s medical condition changes radically.
Posted July 30th, 2009 at 5:15 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
OK, this letter is just wrong. Seniors and everyone else get counseling about end-of-life issues now. At least they do if they have responsible physicians. The only difference is that doctors will be paid for their services under this program. Imagine that.
It’s important that all people make their wishes known to their loved ones. That way their wishes will be respected. You see, that provision is there to make sure it is the individual, not the government, that makes the choice.
Posted July 30th, 2009 at 5:20 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
The current house bill isn’t going anywhere. That is now clear. Let’s wait and see what comes out once the public gets to tell their representatives what they think of a government takeover of health care.
Posted July 31st, 2009 at 8:15 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Re: dgadbc: “only difference is that doctors will be paid for their services” - doctors are already paid for their services. “provision…makes sure it is the individual, not the government, that makes the choice” - individuals now have that freedom; they won’t once the government takes over.
Question: If Dr. Betsy McCaughey can take the time to read the bill, why can’t the legislators? After all, we pay them very well to do just that. Also, keep in mind, if this bill passes it will not affect any of the people voting, including the President, as far as their own health care is concerned. They are immune to their boondoggles while we pay the price.
Posted July 31st, 2009 at 8:22 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
By MYRNA ULFIK
I have been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer, for the past nine years. Last year, I was also diagnosed with uterine cancer.
I didn’t run to Canada for treatment. Medicare took care of my needs right here in New York City. To endure, I just need the freedom to choose my insurance, my doctors, and get the diagnostic scans and care I need. And one more thing: I need hope that a treatment will be developed that can control my diseases the way insulin controls diabetes.
Every cancer patient needs these things, especially hope. But the government’s plan to reform the health-care system in this country threatens all of this—particularly the development of new treatments.
When I was first diagnosed in 2000 I had chemotherapy. It put me in remission, but nearly killed me.
Three years later the lymphoma was back and I faced more chemo. This is so often the pattern of cancer: recurring disease and repeated chemo. In the end patients often die not from the disease, but from the treatments.
I took a different path, seeking a cancer vaccine. One had been developed at Stanford University 12 years earlier that had given 90% of patients very long remissions and cured some entirely. Unlike chemotherapy, there were no severe side effects.
But I couldn’t get the vaccine because the Food and Drug Administration required another trial that would take nine more years. Over-regulation has kept this treatment from patients for 21 years, as some 24,000 lymphoma patients died each year.
My husband and I searched the Internet and found another vaccine being tested at Freiburg University in Germany. That vaccine has helped me avoid chemotherapy for years. My oncologist says he’s never seen another patient do so well with the type of lymphoma I have.
I am still here because my care was managed by doctors—not a government agency. My doctors do what the bureaucracy can’t: They see me as a human being.
Patient-as-person will be a lost concept under the new health-care plan, where treatments will be based not upon individual patient needs, but upon what’s best for everyone. So cancer drugs for seniors might take second place to jungle gyms and farmers’ markets—so-called preventive care—which are covered under both the House and Senate versions of the health bill.
The stimulus package passed earlier this year allocated $1.1 billion for hundreds of “Comparative Effectiveness Research” studies. This project will compare all treatment options for a host of diseases in order to develop a database to guide doctors’ decisions. Research of this sort typically takes years. But the data will likely be hastily drawn conclusions that reflect the view of the government agencies that fund the studies: Cheap therapies are just as good as expensive ones.
In order to finance health-care reform, Democrats in Congress have proposed cutting $500 billion from Medicare over the next 10 years. Yet in his press conference last Wednesday, President Barack Obama denied that Medicare benefits would be cut. He has surrounded himself with advisers who believe otherwise.
Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama’s original pick to head Health and Human Services, argues in his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis,” that we should accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments.” Mr. Daschle blames the “use and overuse of new technologies and treatments” for runaway health-care costs. He suggests a Federal Health Board modeled after the British “NICE” board to make decisions on health-care rationing.
But the British system is infamous for denying state-of-the-art drugs to cancer patients. Thus cancer-survival rates in Britain are far below those in America, just as they are in Canada.
Canadian cancer patients told to wait months for treatment and diagnostic scans frequently go south and pay out-of-pocket for care in the United States. A number of Quebeckers even sued their government for violating their “right to life and security” under the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada’s Supreme Court has acknowledged the pervasive rationing that occurs. In the 2005 case Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) , the majority opinion stated: “The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”
Despite such evidence, the Obama plan is likely to target various treatments—including radiology scans—in order to cut costs. I survived this long because my radiologist examines each of my scans with me in detail.
One of those scans also saved my life by picking up unsuspected uterine cancer. The congressional majority seems blissfully unaware that all cancer patients need those scans to monitor their diseases.
Also uneasy with the cost of medical progress is Dr. David Blumenthal, Mr. Obama’s new head of Health Information Technology. It is not reassuring that he stresses that two-thirds of the annual increases in health spending result from medical innovation, as he has written in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Cancer patients need nothing more than such innovation. Yes, developing more effective, less toxic treatments is expensive. The prices of new cancer therapies reflect the billion-dollar cost of developing each new drug. But such treatments can be life-saving, as they have been for me.
Despite its warts, our system works. Carelessly tinkering with it will have a world-wide penalty—the stifling of new drug development. What company would spend a billion dollars to develop a drug that will not be reimbursed by the new health plan? This would be a direct, devastating blow to the most vulnerable Americans.
In spite of the president’s assurances, there is every sign that this plan will be financed by deep cuts to Medicare, which, like the public option, will limit payments for specialists, radiology scans, and cutting-edge cancer drugs. These are prime targets because they are more expensive than other services. But are we really expected to forgo new medical technology and return to the cancer care of the 1970s?
When members of Congress are asked if they will opt for the public plan, they say no. That’s for the rest of us.
The number of Americans who have cancer exceeds 10 million. It’s time for cancer patients and their families to remind those on Capitol Hill that health-care reform is a matter of life and death for us.
Ms. Ulfik is a writer in New York.
Posted July 31st, 2009 at 10:54 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Everytime I hear the foolish comment that calls this bill a “government take over of health care” I know they are talking through their hats. They don’t have a clue of what government take over and what socialism really is if they equate the efforts in the bill to that.
Here is the real question we should all be asking our representatives as posed by a young woman:
Dear Editor, how can a democratic society shun universal health care? Why isn’t the US the world’s forerunner of excellent health care for all citizens? It’s a money thing…some say. From where will the money come? From where did the money for a preemptive, unjustified war come? If we can support sustained killing and unjustified war for six years, isn’t it reasonable to think that perhaps we can cost-cut and creatively figure out a way to provide universal health care. Of course, this will not necessarily appeal to insurance companies, drug companies, or any entity making mega bucks from sickness.
Posted July 31st, 2009 at 12:22 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
i want to see a sign up sheet in congress, foregoing all current health plans and signing on to the current proposals. lets see how good health plans suddenly become.
Posted July 31st, 2009 at 12:29 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
You mean, giving up their care at Bethesda? Not bloody likely.
Posted August 2nd, 2009 at 6:45 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
The correct name of the group mentioned by the letter writer is “The Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths”. It is indeed run by Betsy McCaughey, who was Lt. Governor of New York during the GEORGE PATAKI administration. Imagine that! Pataki’s former Lt. toeing the health care industry line! On the main page of her website ( http://www.hospitalinfection.org ) in the upper right hand corner, there is a video link titled “See RID chairman Betsy McCaughey on Fox News”. It is a typical Fox shock story about bacteria from hospitals.
OMG, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Posted August 2nd, 2009 at 6:56 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
If you want some more right wing fear mongering go to http://www.defendyorhealthcare.us .
NOWHERE in this bill it there so-called “duty to die” legislation. If you can’t understand it, Juanita, have someone read it to you!
Now stop trying to scare our seniors nto thinking your way, fear-mongerer!
Posted August 2nd, 2009 at 7:00 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Oh, I forgot:
Betsy McCaughey writes for the New York Post! Now there’s a fine Rupert Murdoch/Newscorp/FoxNews owned publication!
Posted August 2nd, 2009 at 9:08 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
seabee says, “Everytime I hear the foolish comment that calls this bill a “government take over of health care” I know they are talking through their hats. They don’t have a clue of what government take over and what socialism really is if they equate the efforts in the bill to that.”
Whenever I hear the arrogant assumption that OTHER people “don’t have a clue of what government take over and what socialism really is” I know the person making that assumption doesn’t have a clue about what leads up to a government take over and that it doesn’t happen overnight, nor what the ideology of socialism looks like in action.
Take off your own hat, put some thought behind what your mouth says, and tell us your definition of what a government takeover is and what socialism really is.
Posted August 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
dgadbc says, “Seniors and everyone else get counseling about end-of-life issues now. At least they do if they have responsible physicians.”
I’m all for “end of life counseling” to make sure that people are aware of the legal mechanisms that can affect their personal wishes. Beyond that, it is absolutely a question of personal and religious beliefs. The health care bill puts end of life counseling in the hands of people outside that sphere - namely the government, or attorneys, or physicians.
The real question is not whether each of us should make end of life decisions ahead of time, but whether the government should be involved. To be somewhat simplistic, it’s obviously a conflict of interest and breaches the separation of church and state for those who believe those decisions should be between the individual and their God.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.