Posted on 02/24/2014 3:00:51 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Buried beneath the avalanche of recent news reports about the latest Obamacare-mandated funding cuts to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program is a related but far more disturbing story — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken a major step toward rationing medications to the elderly. Since passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug program have been guaranteed access to “all or substantially all” of the drugs in several classes of pharmaceuticals. President Obama’s health care bureaucrats, however, have proposed removing three of these classes from the “protected” list......
[SNIP]
.........Even some left-leaning media outlets are uncomfortable with the Obama administration’s rationing policy. In the Huffington Post, Professor Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, recently pointed out that the CMS rule “will not only fail to rein in Medicare’s long-term spending growth, but will inflict severe and unnecessary harm on our nation's poor and elderly who are suffering from serious physical and behavioral illnesses.” Thorpe makes much the same point as does Feyman: “Restricting access to the medicines patients need to manage depression, avoid organ transplant rejection, and treat psychosis will drive healthcare utilization in far more costly ways.”
It’s a little disorienting to find such an objective view in a publication that normally repeats Obama administration talking points verbatim, but there it is. Presumably, this departure from partisanship is an indication of just how far CMS has over-reached this time. Most Americans regard health care rationing as repugnant and unnecessary, and we look on it with even less favor when it is imposed on the elderly. As Professor Thorpe writes, “That's a betrayal of Medicare’s promise of access to care for our most vulnerable, older Americans.” Well said.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
This is why everyone should ditch the prescriptions and start investing in essential oils and other natural remedies. If you scoff at the notion of this, let me tell you my story - I had about 10 days ago, an infection get totally out of hand, due to me messing with it. It would not break open to drain & was swollen, hard, hot (I had a fever) & red streaked. I knew I couldn’t afford a trip to the ER (with a $5k deductible, no way)...so I applied essential oils & took some internally. 1st day - no more fever & it broke & has been getting better ever since. No trip to Dr and its healing nicely. If I had started the oils on day 1, it probably would not have gotten bad - but anyway - my point is that we can avoid meds - doctors prescribe them like they are candy - and they can kill us.
130,000 elderly patients killed every year by ‘death pathway’, claims leading UK doctor
by Thaddeus Baklinski Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:02 EST Tags: euthanasia, patrick pullicino, uk
LONDON, June 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An eminent British doctor told a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London that every year 130,000 elderly patients that die while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) have been effectively euthanized by being put on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), n a protocol for care of the terminally ill that he described as a “death pathway.”
Scaled up for relative population size...that gives about 750,000 euthanizing events a year in the USA.
The biggest part of the problem with declining funds in Social Security & Medicare is because there are millions of people in the USA who are already sucking from these funds, and they have hardly paid in a dollar themselves.
Most people of my generation worked until they could retire, and they paid into the system all of their working lives. For many of us, that was from age 15 until age 65-—50 years.
Now- people at age 25 & younger are drawing “Social Security Disability’ and haven’t paid into the system. They have all kinds of excuses-—My back bothers me-—I cannot work because I use drugs & no one will hire me.
I know of a woman in my area who has 3 kids. He mother engineered it so that the 3 kids are in the mother’s care-—which is also another drain on resources, various welfare programs paid Grandma to take care of the kids-—but they all live together. The woman “cannot hold a job because she is a chronic alcoholic & drug user”. She had absolutely no reason to kick the drugs, since she has multiple safety nets all around her. She used to live about a mile from me & I saw some of her behavior Where did all this knowledge of how to manipulate the system come from? The “mother” of the woman worked for Social Security for years & learned every trick.
Many long-term unemployed have been pushed onto Soc Sec Disability instead of dropping them altogether. Another dirty little secret of the Obama administration.
Obama administration wants everyone on the dole in some fashion or other, and then wants the few remaining working & the ‘fat cats’ to pay the bill. This is a disastrous pattern.
What is going to happen when the ‘fat cats’ leave the country or just sit down & quit feeding the pigs at the trough???
Atlas Shrugged is happening all around us. The major dropouts just haven’t been seen yet. I know a few that already have quit filling the trough.
Seems some in the media are straying off the liberal plantation. Odd.
They’re hoping the depressed elderly will commit suicide and they’ll herd the psychotic ones to the showers.
BTTT!
Drug rationing is only the beginning of the cuts in the Medicare program. I expect that procedures such as hip and knee replacements, pace makers and even cancer treatments will be severely rationed. Many seniors who are living independently and suffer a health challenge that could be fixed and allow them to continue their independence will be left untreated and sent to nursing homes. I expect this rationing will fill long term care facilities with seniors who could still be living independently with appropriate treatment.
Who needs a death panel when they have Obama administration’s rationing policy?.
How many “seniors” are being “herded into Medicaid”?
Ones not covered my Medicare?
How many “seniors” are being “herded into Medicaid”?
____________
Many, many. Because they are often asset rich and Medicaid does up to a 7 year lookback and will remove assets.
Nothing like a fascist totalitarian dictatorship aligned with a healthcare industrial complex to squeeze monies.
Why should a person get govt benefits funded by my taxes and fake money when he/she has substantial assets?
Why should a person get govt benefits funded by my taxes and fake money when he/she has substantial assets?
___________-
Why shouldn’t people have access to low cost health insurance in a competitive market that allows people to protect their assets?
Health care for old people is expensive because they use it in massive quantities.
So there’s NO WAY it can be LOW COST unless someone else pays for it.
Health care for old people is expensive because they use it in massive quantities.
So there’s NO WAY it can be LOW COST unless someone else pays for it.
___________
Actually they don’t use it in massive quanities. They use more, but they also just plain die. When people realize that less than 3% of our elderly are institutionalized in nursing homes, and that all the elderly need is good care and not extras like the government paid for eye lifts my great uncle received all will be better.
Also need to realize that there is a good portion of people on Medicare/Medicaid who are in some way disabled, from the non-functional paranoid schizophrenic who is no longer warehoused, but instead constantly hospitalized, to the drug using pusher bad back crowd. All on your dime and as expensive as the elderly.
“Drug Rationing for Seniors Begins”
Shouldn’t it be FREE/Subsidized drug rationing begins for seniors?
Seniors have been conditioned to expect much more than what government programs can deliver now and into the future.
If they are willing to spend their own money, they are likely to be able to get whatever they want.
Had the goobermint invested my money over the last 45 years, instead of pissing it away on SSI for elderly indigent mestizos, "crazy checks" and other worthy causes, there'd be plenty of money for those of us who actually paid into it.
I'm conditioned to getting back what I was promised and am therefore owed.
“I’m conditioned to getting back what I was promised and am therefore owed.”
Unless you are already retired, you’re not getting your money back. It’s that simple.
Wait until Dialysis Rationing hits.
I believe that a 65+ senior has to be enrolled in Medicare before they could become eligible for Medicaid due to poverty. But I’m still coming up to speed on the senior stuff.
On the rationing issue, I’m still evaluating the article. What I don’t understand on first reading is why exclude Prozac (a Walmart $4 drug) when Cymbalta, even after going generic, is still almost $300/month? And are other antidepressants say like Zoloft or Effexor excluded or not?
Good for you, glad you're over it, but can't say I'm convinced. That's what studies and control groups are for. Lots of people have died after following someone's anecdotal advice. Topical silver, though, has been demonstrated as useful toward external infections. Some oils such as Oregano have as well but you didn't mention what you were using.
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