red states rule
06-19-2009, 05:59 AM
The details of Obamacare is starting to leak out. Seniors will be the ones to pay the price of government run healthcare
Obama's Senior Moment
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 6.18.09 @ 6:08AM
snip
At the heart of President Obama's plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs. That might sound good to you, but it means cutting services, nurses, technicians, medical tests, and most prominently the use of expensive technology. The President's top medical advisers are quite frank about this. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and a health policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, has chided Americans for the expense of their "being enamored with technology." Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, charges medical innovations as being responsible for fully two-thirds of the annual increase in healthcare spending. Their solution is to limit expensive innovations. A 2008 Congressional Budget Office report agrees with their cost analysis but concludes happily that such innovations "permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions." As I shall show, there are more humane ways to cut healthcare costs.
Also at the heart of President Obama's plan is the restriction of services for older people, people 65 and older who by virtue of modern medicine may actually be ten and fifteen years younger in terms of good health than they would have been a generation ago. Alas, they still have higher health risks and costs than younger people. Thus they are going to bear the brunt of the Obama Administration's cost cuts, for 27-30% of Medicaid spending is spent for caring for people at the end of their lives. With the government taking over more of the nation's healthcare costs under the Obama regime, it has already been decided that government monies are more economically spent on younger people than on older people. If a 65-year-old needs a hip replacement, the government will better spend that money on a younger person whose hip will last longer. Or perhaps the government will decide the money is better spent on preventive medicine for younger people.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/06/18/obamas-senior-moment
Obama's Senior Moment
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 6.18.09 @ 6:08AM
snip
At the heart of President Obama's plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs. That might sound good to you, but it means cutting services, nurses, technicians, medical tests, and most prominently the use of expensive technology. The President's top medical advisers are quite frank about this. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and a health policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, has chided Americans for the expense of their "being enamored with technology." Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, charges medical innovations as being responsible for fully two-thirds of the annual increase in healthcare spending. Their solution is to limit expensive innovations. A 2008 Congressional Budget Office report agrees with their cost analysis but concludes happily that such innovations "permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions." As I shall show, there are more humane ways to cut healthcare costs.
Also at the heart of President Obama's plan is the restriction of services for older people, people 65 and older who by virtue of modern medicine may actually be ten and fifteen years younger in terms of good health than they would have been a generation ago. Alas, they still have higher health risks and costs than younger people. Thus they are going to bear the brunt of the Obama Administration's cost cuts, for 27-30% of Medicaid spending is spent for caring for people at the end of their lives. With the government taking over more of the nation's healthcare costs under the Obama regime, it has already been decided that government monies are more economically spent on younger people than on older people. If a 65-year-old needs a hip replacement, the government will better spend that money on a younger person whose hip will last longer. Or perhaps the government will decide the money is better spent on preventive medicine for younger people.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/06/18/obamas-senior-moment