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Death Panels are HERE
The Grouch at Right Truths ^ | October 18, 2012 | Dr. Grouch

Posted on 10/20/2012 8:51:52 PM PDT by LucyT

Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have "expanded" the rule to include re-admissions for any reason.

So if you're in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg.......too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg.

...........................................

(Excerpt) Read more at grouchatrighttruth.blogspot.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: deathpanels; rationing; sarahwasright; socialism
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To: steve86

This lady “E” is as pro-life as you can get. No, she doesn’t post on pro-life message boards or stand outside Planned Parenthood with a sign. But no baby of hers will ever be disposed of at the pre-birth stage!


21 posted on 10/20/2012 10:25:43 PM PDT by steve86 (Acerbic by nature not nurture TM)
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To: LucyT

I’d heard that if you’re re-admitted with the same symptoms as your original illness, the hospital is fined. How can the hospital be fined if it’s a different diagnosis? Yeah, I know the gubmint can do anything they want. I emailed the link to our DIL who’s an ER nurse for her opinion.


22 posted on 10/20/2012 10:52:57 PM PDT by azishot (When your life is on the line, lead is worth more than gold.)
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To: steve86

She has our prayers. May God bless her and her family.


23 posted on 10/20/2012 10:57:19 PM PDT by azishot (When your life is on the line, lead is worth more than gold.)
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To: LucyT

Don’t worry the AARP will stop it.... oh wait... they endorsed it


24 posted on 10/20/2012 11:08:23 PM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: One Name

#7- but the taxpayers will pay for their “sex change” operations.


25 posted on 10/20/2012 11:10:26 PM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: azishot

This happened to our family member. The doctor was angry she was readmitted, due to the fine. Then they refused to give her the oxygen she needed (at home) unless she was put in hospice to die. The family went through hell because she couldn’t go back to the hospital and desperately needed oxygen. So she was put in hospice and died within the week.

This is happening, it is meant to kill you to save money. This is how Obama’s gang gets their “free” healthcare.

You get tongue depressor check up care when you are young and healthy, then you are abandoned when old and frail.

Liberals.


26 posted on 10/20/2012 11:44:15 PM PDT by Andrei Bulba (No Obama, no way!)
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To: LucyT; socialismisinsidious; GailA; ExTexasRedhead; sheik yerbouty; cajungirl; Ravi; nikos1121; ...
Death Panels Are HERE.

This statement isn't quite accurate, because the issue at hand seems to be unrelated of Obamacare and its notorious death panels. In other words, the problem here will not be cured by repealing Obamacare, it so it appears.

Medicare has been chiseling in their payments to patients ("beneficiaries") and physicians, hospitals and other parties rendering services ("providers") for decades, by means of ever-increasing regulations promulgated by the Medicare bureaucracy. Their objective seemingly is cost control. This new no-readmit rule seems to be one of those. Of course, the regulations need not make practical sense, because this is, after all, the federal government who promulgates them and its conractors who dutifully carry them out like good foot soldiers.

I'm wondering if patients and their loved ones will be complaining loudly about this latest such arbitrary dictate, and if so, whether it will be reversed in a new Romney administration. Don't expect AARP to come to the rescue.

27 posted on 10/21/2012 12:26:27 AM PDT by justiceseeker93
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To: LucyT; All

the trend continues; it will get more blatant

13 years ago, my mother beat extremely aggressive leukemia in a texas research hospital experimental program. medicare specified a follow-up chemotherapy treatment several weeks later...and sent her home about 6-8 hours after wiping out her immune system.

she had a high fever about 6 hours later, and an ambulance ride back to the hospital - where a staph infection caused organ failure, coma, and eventual death.

because these were ‘medicare says...’ rules that doctors seem to follow no matter what, no one asked us or informed us. i’m no doctor, but sending someone home with no immune system seems foolhardy. clear i’m not qualified to work on a death panel.


28 posted on 10/21/2012 12:28:39 AM PDT by CzarChasm (My opinion. No charge.)
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To: knak

Effective Oct. 1,2012 the rule on re-admissions within 30 days is that the hospital will be fined.

Medicare already had rules about how long the patient should stay in the hospital. For example my mom was down to the last 2 days and the hospital was going to discharge her even though she was in a Coma if she didn’t hurry up and die. And the time period for re-admission used to be 3 days.

I encountered these readmit situations in 2006 when my Dad was in the hospital, discharged, and had to be readmitted the next day more than once.


29 posted on 10/21/2012 12:55:49 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Let Freedom Ring.)
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To: CzarChasm

The worst place for a person whose immune system has been compromised is often a hospital. Lots of nasty bugs around.

My mom beat blood poisoning only to contract vancomyacin resistant infection. There was no antibiotic that would be effective. VRE is highly contagious, so they put her in isolation.

All they could do was try to make her comfortable, and the case manager was counting the number of days she had left before she had to be discharged.


30 posted on 10/21/2012 1:11:37 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Let Freedom Ring.)
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To: Brad's Gramma

BTTT


31 posted on 10/21/2012 1:19:12 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: LucyT

But an illegal alien can get free treatment both times, and that old lady with pneumonia Nd broken leg has to pay for that illegal.


32 posted on 10/21/2012 3:58:59 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: LucyT

Bump!


33 posted on 10/21/2012 4:24:20 AM PDT by Absolutely Nobama (The Doomsday Clock is at 11:59:00......tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.....)
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To: greeneyes

“..vancomyacin resistant infection.”

‘Vanco’ saved my wife’s life 19 years ago. Nothing else could halt the MRSA infection she contracted during surgery to reconstruct a shattered eye orbit. The Dr. told me in confidence that if it didn’t work that there would be nothing they could do and that the infection would eat her brain away in a matter of hours.

The hospital sent her “home” after I received the training on how to infuse vanco via a Hickman cathader that led directly into her heart. We had just purchased an old (1813) house that we were trying to make livable and were living in one room. The rest of the house was totally gutted and under construction. No running water, no toilet except a porta-potty, plus over 60 miles from the hospital! This was in the dead of a bad winter in upstate NY in 1993, temps were -15. The hospital & insurance company (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) did not care about our situation and ordered her out. They had literally sent her ‘home’ to die.

Knowing that our home environment would not be beneficial to her recovery we opted to stay in a motel near the hospital in Albany. Five weeks of 24/7 infusions of ‘vanco’ and a cocktail of other antibiotics saved her life. The antibiotics alone were nearly $10,000 a week, not to mention the cost of a month in the hospital and 11 facial reconstruction surgeries!

It’s really scary to hear that staph has mutated to become resistant to Vancomyacin. It was the last “silver bullet” in the war on MRSA. Glad to hear your mom beat it.

Many will die under 0bamacare.


34 posted on 10/21/2012 4:29:15 AM PDT by panaxanax
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To: LucyT

So, what if you give all of your “stuff” away to your kids and then go on Medicaid? I bet medicaid pays for it. My wife worked as a cytotech for many years and most insurance plans only allowed 1 pap test a year but if you were on medicaid you could get one every week if you wanted. There are numerous examples of this I’m sure.


35 posted on 10/21/2012 4:46:49 AM PDT by mc5cents
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To: knak

The re-admission part is true.

Near me, a major hospital has built an annex to house a rehab unit. Now, instead of discharging Medicare patients to the care of their personal physicians, those with lingering health issues are put into the care of the hospital system.

I don’t know the specifics, only that the hospital has found a loophole which keeps the patients from facing the scenario described in this thread.

Local docs are incensed, because they are losing business, yet they understand why the hospital is doing this. My source is a doc who is on the hospital’s board.


36 posted on 10/21/2012 6:04:18 AM PDT by Jedidah
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To: justiceseeker93
Don't expect AARP to come to the rescue.

AARP, that passive and often active enabler of every foul process and rule a liberal democrat can inflict on the elderly and dying, will abruptly rise from the dead on January 20th to oppose anything Romney tries to do to actually fix the problem.

Expect the homeless and the unemployed to make a magical reappearance on every MSM outlet about the same time.

37 posted on 10/21/2012 7:32:05 AM PDT by null and void (Day 1370 of our ObamaVacation from reality - Obama, a queer and present danger)
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To: steve86

Prayers for the “E”asing of “E”s, pain, the successful completion of the pregnanc”E”, a health”E” and happ”E” bab”E”, who grows up to be Big Government’s Worst Nightmare!


38 posted on 10/21/2012 7:38:26 AM PDT by null and void (Day 1370 of our ObamaVacation from reality - Obama, a queer and present danger)
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To: mc5cents

There is a little rule about the asset shift. You have to wait a certain period of time to go on Medicaid if you, for instance, sign over your house to your children. If the rules aren’t followed, Medicaid will pursue those assets. One of the reasons that Medicaid is so increasingly expensive is that otherwise well off married couples are allowed to divide their assets, wait the time period, and then the one who needs to be in a nursing home goes on Medicaid. That is why taxpayers are being charged through the nose for expensive nursing home care for the well off. People are allowed to conserve their personal assets instead of spending them down, and the taxpayer pays. Watch outside a nursing home for a couple of hours and you will see a visiting spouse drive up in their new luxury car to visit the spouse on Medicaid.


39 posted on 10/21/2012 8:11:26 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: Graewoulf

Obama said that they should probably just take the pain pill rather than getting the surgery.

A cost-efficient OD of morphine is hardly being “my brother’s keeper” as Obama likes to boast.


40 posted on 10/21/2012 8:28:02 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Obama likes to claim credit for getting Osama. Why hasn't he tried Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yet?)
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