Why We Must Ration Health Care

[red states rule]

The NY Times is telling us in advance how Obamacare will operate


Why We Must Ration Health Care


You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1

[red states rule]

Here is a look at how well Obamacare has worked at the state level


Massachusetts Takes a Step Back From Health Care for All


BOSTON — The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.

The affected immigrants, permanent residents who have had green cards for less than five years, are now covered under Commonwealth Care, a subsidized insurance program for low-income residents that is central to the groundbreaking health care law enacted here in 2006.

Critics of the cut, which would save an estimated $130 million, say it unfairly targets taxpaying residents and threatens the state’s health care experiment at a critical time.

“It either sends the message that health care reform cannot be done, period,” said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, “or it opens the door to doing it halfway and excluding immigrants from the process.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/us/15insure.html

[Monkeybone]

“
It either sends the message that health care reform cannot be done, period,” hmmm..probably. Or that the money strain is just too much. same category..just more defined.
“or it opens the door to doing it halfway and excluding immigrants from the process.” *gasp*!!! You mean people that don't exactly pay into it shouldn't get the benefits from it?!?!?! Say it isn't so!

[red states rule]

“ hmmm..probably. Or that the money strain is just too much. same category..just more defined. *gasp*!!! You mean people that don't exactly pay into it shouldn't get the benefits from it?!?!?! Say it isn't so!

The foundation of Obamacare will be "Embrace death - the government can't afford your treatments"

[chesswarsnow]

Sorry bout that,



The NY Times is telling us in advance how Obamacare will operate


"but at a cost of $54,000."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1



1. Too expensive, why in the hell would it cost so much?
2. This is whats wrong with the health care industry, all arms of it sucking everybody dead.
3. And sending everyone not able to afford it away empty, and those who can, to the poor house, for an extra 6 months of life, sad that.

Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

[red states rule]

Sorry bout that,






1. Too expensive, why in the hell would it cost so much?
2. This is whats wrong with the health care industry, all arms of it sucking everybody dead.
3. And sending everyone not able to afford it away empty, and those who can, to the poor house, for an extra 6 months of life, sad that.

Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

and Obama tells the old geezers to die and save the government money

Obama discusses deathbed measures
At a healthcare town hall, he says stopping futile procedures for the terminally ill can lower costs.
By Peter Nicholas
June 25, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

Obama said he has personal familiarity with such a dilemma. His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health25-2009jun25,0,1978875.story

[chesswarsnow]

Sorry bout that,

1. But at some point every old person reaches a stopping point.
2. Happens everyday in America, and all over the planet.
3. Doctors have to slow down all of what can be done at some point in a old persons life.
4. If you think its 'balls to the wall', order one hundred tests on an old person, your living in a fictional reality.


Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

[red states rule]

Sorry bout that,

1. But at some point every old person reaches a stopping point.
2. Happens everyday in America, and all over the planet.
3. Doctors have to slow down all of what can be done at some point in a old persons life.
4. If you think its 'balls to the wall', order one hundred tests on an old person, your living in a fictional reality.


Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

OK James, so I will recommend Obama appoint you his Health Czar and you can decide who lgets treatment and lives - and who is denied treatment and dies

Germany did the same thing in the early 30's and got rid of those who were a drain on the governments resources - and at the same time purged society of those who did live up to the standards they set

Now the government will set a price on human life - it is amazing how this nation is sinking to new depths

[chesswarsnow]

Sorry bout that,

1. Its already happening.


Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

[red states rule]

Sorry bout that,

1. Its already happening.


Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

You are correct. It is happening where they currently have government run healthcare


Of NICE and Men

Speaking to the American Medical Association last month, President Obama waxed enthusiastic about countries that "spend less" than the U.S. on health care. He's right that many countries do, but what he doesn't want to explain is how they ration care to do it.

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: "Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere."

What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs -- including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 -- that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year's ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE's clinical and public health director, noted that "there is a limited pot of money," that the drugs were of "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost," and the money might be better spent elsewhere.

In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: "When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692973435303415.html

[chesswarsnow]

Sorry bout that,

1. Its also happening here, right now, all across the fruited plains of America.


Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

[9/12er]

The NY Times is telling us in advance how Obamacare will operate


Why We Must Ration Health Care


You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=1

I'm wondering how long it will take the government to stop treating my terminally ill mother once this sets in... she has TWO very rare diseases and the treatment for each complicates the other. They're just managing her pain right now.

I'm also worried that I won't be able to receive the life-saving treatments of clotting factor I need in order to get anything that may involve bleeding done. (Even something as simple as a root canal or tattoo.) What happens if I get into a car accident, they can't stop the bleeding, and the government says that my DDAVP (clotting factor) is too expensive and not worth it to give it to me???????

[Gaffer]

I'm wondering how long it will take the government to stop treating my terminally ill mother once this sets in... she has TWO very rare diseases and the treatment for each complicates the other. They're just managing her pain right now.

I'm also worried that I won't be able to receive the life-saving treatments of clotting factor I need in order to get anything that may involve bleeding done. (Even something as simple as a root canal or tattoo.) What happens if I get into a car accident, they can't stop the bleeding, and the government says that my DDAVP (clotting factor) is too expensive and not worth it to give it to me???????

Those not members of the "party" will be deemed expendable.

[red states rule]

Those not members of the "party" will be deemed expendable.

This is a socialist foot in the door. Most of this done on the premise of a charismatic President. There should be a book called "The Conning of America". I think Dick Morris has this, not sure. I saw this coming early in the pre-election of Obama's candidacy.