Posted on 08/09/2013 11:33:53 AM PDT by Morgana
Oregon rations healthcare to Medicaid recipients. Terminal cancer patients are denied chemotherapy to extend life–and now the Oregon rationing board wants to go deeper into the weeds.
From Hope Landsem’s Wall Street Journal blog:
Liberal states often preview health-care central planning before the same regulations go national, which ought to make an Oregon cost-control commission especially scary. On Thursday a state board could change Oregon’s Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most.
Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims to be merely concerned with what supposedly works and what doesn’t. Their real targets are usually advanced, costly treatments. That’s why HERC, for example, proposed in May that Medicaid should not cover “treatment with intent to prolong survival” for cancer patients who likely have fewer than two years left to live. HERC presents an example to show their reasoning for such a decision: “In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual’s expected survival by three months when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians are without any form of health insurance.”
Let us not forget that Oregon Medicaid happily pays for assisted suicide–and indeed, has offered terminal cancer patients that option while denying life-extending treatment.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
Also, Vermont–which legalized assisted suicide recently–as a single payer plan the state can’t pay for. And guess what: Using assisted suicide and rationing are both on the table as means of paying for the program. No question: Centralized control, mixed with culture of death values make for a toxic brew.
As for the eventual push to turn Obamacare into single payer: As I wrote at length, health care rationing is central to the operation of single payer systems. Obamacarians want more!
Certainly irrefutable logic is there, however consider this:
With a regime willing to use whatever government agencies, such as DHS, IRS, FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. to silence it's critics, it is a just a short jump to denying medical care to manipulate, coerce, or kill their political enemies;
Prior to 0bamacare, citizens and their doctors decided on their course of treatment, not a bureaucrat. And remeber, it was only a couple of months ago that Sebelius, the devil's (0bama) handmaiden, was more than happy to stand before a national audience and deny a little girl a chance at a lif saving transplant, while uttering the callous words "some live and some die". Do you think she, or any other member of the regime, give a rat's ass about you or your family?
Until it’s your grandmother and all she wants to do is live long enough to see her grandchild get married, or get to hold her newborn great grandchild one time.
The problem here is that there’s been a commitment made, one that a lot of people have helped finance over the years and have an expectation that the commitment will be kept.
The original commitment may have been dumb, unworkable, unsustainable etc. But how do we get out of it given the fact that just about everyone niow benefitting from it contributed to it as the govt ordered them to?
“In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual’s expected survival by three months”
Sorry, if I am being forced to pay for “insurance” you better prolong my life.
Then again, you should have a choice. The government program which kills you when you are no longer viable or the private program.
On another note, I’d expect that once Obamacare’s rationing and deathpanels go into place we’ll see a corresponding drop in life expectency. Oh wait, they’ll just do with that what they did with the U3 unemployment numbers, or by excluding food and energy costs from inflation figures in order to maintain that all important upward slope ...
“if I am being forced to pay for “insurance” you better prolong my life”
It’s not insurance, it’s a tax. IMO, an unconstitutional tax, Justice Roberts’ opinion nonwithstanding.
It is Marxism-—the State being god and determining Life and Death of an individual. They have no “Right” to practice medicine. NONE in the USA.
It is intrinsically evil-—and to allow government to “kill” innocent people because of a “few” people’s warped ideas of “reality” (no one knows how “long” a person has to “live”)——doctors have been wrong millions of times and to pretend to be god——is unconstitutional.
Yes, socialized medicine is always evil (and unconstitutional). We are becoming a Marxist State and it won’t be long before people who “think” wrong are on the “to die” list.
It is why all socialism rots the soul-—and is unconstitutional. Government should NOT be in the medical field-—government (in the USA) is ONLY for protecting Individual Rights and the most important is “Life”.
But we have been post-Constitutinal for decades-—we need to take back our Constitution from the Stalinists.
That drop in life expectancy is the real key to fixing the SocSec and Medicare funding “problem”. Nobody will admit to it, but that’s the truth.
Each year cut off le is a HUGE improvement.
When the millenials b!tch about granny getting offed, the fedgov will toss out some student loan relief coupons.
You can NEVER give the State power of Life and Death over an individual. It is why it is unconstitutional for the State to practice “medicine”.
All Socialism rots the soul-—and destroys freedom. They need to be out of insurance/medicine/free markets, etc.
This is the Slippery Slope of controlling Life-—and our government is ONLY for the protection of Individual Rights from God-—and the first is Life. This ability to “kill” people is unconstitutional and Marxism.
“expected survival by three months”
“Expected” by who, based on what???
Doctors have a high rate of failure at predicting life expectency, and bean counters are notoriously motived by worst case estimates.
They can be used to care for crippled 60 year olds who could have been treated with a knee or hip replacement but will be restricted to wheelchairs and walkers under Obamacare.
I disagree with spending any public resources on it at all.
““Expected” by who, based on what???”
Typically, that would be either the average life extension observed during the stage 3 trials of the drug or procedure, or that observed during post-trial use. It is just the average - some will live longer, some not as long.
Here we go! Long term cancer patients- old OR young? -being denied care? Next will be critical burn patients,the critically injured, anyone requiring long term care or maintenance to live, all of the elderly( after all they are all terminal) until only the healthy(valuable) are worth medical care.
Congress and Senate and all old government types exempt, of course.
May I remind you that people for whom everything is being done STILL die every day. How presumptuous of us to assume that medicine can-or does-defy the will of God. If that were true people like Christopher Reeve-for whom money was no object re. healthcare- would never die.
Once we allow government to decide WHO should live another month or year or two, they will decide who should live at all, based on our value to the government.
Since I’m 7 years passed chemo, I’d say the 3 month average is BS.
My point is that these expectancy estimates are the Doc’s best guess, based upon your specific circumstances.
Your guess about stage 3 trials or post trial use, suggesting 3 more months of life, is pure nonsense.
Really? My family is composed of traditional Catholics, very pro-life, but we don't want any heroic life-extending measures for a terminal illness. God gives us a certain limited time on earth. I have a feeling the ones who want the equivalent of an executive's salary every few months in health care are afraid of dying and what comes after or believe there is no after.
“Your guess about stage 3 trials or post trial use”
It wasn’t a guess, it was an answer.
I’m glad to hear you have done well after chemo. Surely you understand that the 3 month hypothetical this guy was talking about was just that - an example of someone whose life would have been expected to be extended by 3 months after getting the appropriate chemo for that type of cancer. I’m guessing that this hypothetical cancer is not the type you had.
When my father had his first fight with cancer, his life expectancy was normal, after chemo cleared it up. When he had his second fight with cancer 12 years later, the expectancy was that his life would be extended by 2 years after he completed the chemo regimin. He lasted one.
“My family is composed of traditional Catholics, very pro-life, but we don’t want any heroic life-extending measures for a terminal illness.”
Granted, but at least thats you or your family making that decision for yourselves. Not the government.
I agree; different issue.
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