Free Republic

It is perfectly clear that Palin is talking about rationing in general. She specifically made an argument about the government's refusing to pay the cost of health care will lead to rationing care, and she also wrote that her "baby with Down Syndrome" could be affected by such rationing. How would "end-of-life counseling" for the elderly cause the death of a disabled baby? As Ben Smith notes, Palin's spokesperson did cite the end-of-life counseling provision as a specific example of rationing in the bill. But that was just one example, which, Palin argued could put pressure on the elderly. Obama...

<p>Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions.Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions.</p> <p>Democrats are touting the American Medical Association's endorsement of President Obama's health plan. But there's an important reason why the American College of Surgeons and 18 other specialty groups are opposed.</p>

Politics: Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state's future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay. Nelson, the 60th vote in the middle-of-the-night Senate party line vote on health care reform, will go down in American political history as the inventor of the permanent earmark. His seemingly principled stand against including federal funding for abortion evaporated like the morning dew as he decided to take what was behind door No. 1. The deal for Nelson includes special Medicaid funding for Nebraska, along...

Dear Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Recently you were asked by a CNS reporter, “What part of the Constitution do you think gives Congress the authority to mandate that individuals have to purchase health insurance?” And you answered, “Well, I just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” As CNS rightly reports: The words “health” and “well-being” do not appear anywhere in the Constitution. Senator Lincoln, words mean something. Dear President Obama, You have repeatedly told the American people your health care bill will not ration care. According to an editorial written by Senator...

Barack and the Democrats will throw grandma from her scooter and give it to Jose.

That's ok. If you've used up your "reasonable" annual benefits for cancer treatments, you could just wait until the following year to continue treating your cancer.

The provision would allow insurance companies to put annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not "unreasonable." The bill does not define what would be allowed. That task would go to government officials.

What kind of "health-care reform" is this that could make me replace my regular checklist of preventive-care tests for a "don't-check list" of exams I won't be able to order? Much of last week's Senate debate on health reform turned on a single screening exam, mammograms for women in their 40s. A government panel last month said the exams weren't cost effective, and critics quickly pointed to the recommendation as an example of the kind of rationing that would have teeth under ObamaCare.

The eligibility age for state-subsidized breast cancer screening has been raised from 40 to 50 by the California Health and Human Services Agency, which will also temporarily stop enrollment in the breast cancer screening program. Advocates for low-income women, whose health care the department helps pay for, say the cuts put a two-tier system in place that is based on money rather than medical standards. The cuts will greatly harm the clinic's mammogram program, said Natasha Riley, manager of Vista Community Clinic's Breast Health Outreach and Education Program. The clinic and others like it in San Diego County provide reduced-cost...

EDMONTON — Even though Albertans shouldn't expect to see a balanced budget by the new health authority until 2011-12, pinching pennies won't come on the backs of patients, says a top health executive with Alberta's health superboard. "When they need the health system, our responsibility is to make sure the system is there to meet their needs," said Mike Conroy, executive vice-president of corporate services for Alberta Health Services. He spoke one day after The Journal detailed a presentation he made in B.C. that suggested Alberta could face a projected health deficit between $500 million and $1 billion in 2010-11,...

Perhaps the most publicized, least understood aspect of the over 2,000 page, $850 billion health care reform bill being debated now in the U.S. Senate is the "public option." Former Governor Howard Dean asserted last week at Yale University that without the public option, "this bill is worthless and should be defeated." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing for a Senate vote by Christmas. In arguing the merits and failings of a nationalized, government-sponsored health coverage program, there is an example of such a system Americans may wish to examine.

Until recently, this political epitaph might have been written for Dick Morris: An amoral, but brilliant consultant, strategist, and analyst -- the man who kept Bill Clinton in, and Hillary Clinton out, of the White House. By selling the strategy of triangulation to Bill Clinton, Morris successfully neutered the Gingrich revolution of 1994. But he also neutered the worst political impulses of Bill Clinton (Morris couldn't do anything about the sexual ones) and forced Clinton to work with the Republican congress to balance budgets and reform welfare. But Dick Morris is doing his best work now in his crusade against...

The Environment Agency will argue today that carbon rationing is the fairest and most effective way for the UK to meet its legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Agency’s chairman, Lord Smith, will propose at the organisation's annual conference in London that every citizen be provided with a "carbon account" and unique number that they submit when buying carbon-intensive items such as petrol, electricity or airline tickets. Individuals would then periodically receive statements that show the carbon impact of each purchase and how much of their annual ration has been used up. If they exceeded this ration,...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be awarded unprecedented new powers under the proposal, including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it. The HHS secretary would also have the power to decide where abortion is allowed under a government-run plan, which has drawn opposition from Republicans and some moderate Democrats. And the bill even empowers the department to establish a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that would have the authority to make cost-saving cuts without having to get...

November 27, 2009Sticks and stones and broken bones under Obamacare Dave LowreyAdieu, yearly mammogram; arrivederci, annual pap smear. Old news already. And hot on the happy heels of last week’s startling revelations and 180 degree rotation of medical testing recommendations, comes still another breakthrough way to shave medical care costs. And we mean “breakthrough” in the literal sense. Turns out Big Spender hospitals have been wasting scads of money, not to mention plaster of Paris and x-ray film, on broken bones that will, researchers now reveal, heal themselves! “Broken bones can mend on their own,” says Dr. Riley Pumpernickel, head...

Last week, on the eve of the Senate health care bill vote, the United States Preventative Services Task Force (I will publish the task force member names separately) released new guidelines for mammograms. The recommendations of this task force, (which I am told and the list seems to verify, includes no practicing oncologists or OB-GYN's, rather it is comprised of professors and heads of university departments, you know INTELLECTUALS, the kind that propose theoretical policy they are never stuck implementing themselves) offer new guidelines that propose women in their 40's no longer receive routine mammogram screening, rather the tests should...

The uproar over the on-again, off-again guidelines on when women should have mammograms is proof of the blindingly obvious: Health care reform that actually controls costs -- rather than just pretending to do so -- would be virtually impossible to achieve. I say "would be" because none of the voluminous reform bills being shuttled around the Capitol on hand trucks even tries to address a central factor that sends costs spiraling out of control, which is that each of us wants the best shot at a long, healthy life that medical science can offer. Just as all politics is local,...

Reality Check: The "Rationing" Smear... Again?Posted by Dan Pfeiffer November 20, 2009 at 03:03 PM EST When people use arguments they know are bogus, it's probably because they know they don't have any valid arguments at their disposal. So it would seem with opponents of reform in the Senate spending today obsessed with arguments about "rationing" that were debunked months ago. Their attacks are focused on the fact that the legislation supports research into what treatments work best for patients. Before we go any further, let's just say this as plainly as possible: Under health insurance reform, this research cannot...

WASHINGTON – Most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually, say new guidelines that conclude that's enough to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.

A top federal health official said Wednesday that the controversial new guidelines for breast cancer screening do not represent government policy, as the Obama administration sought to keep the debate over mammograms from undermining the prospects for health-care reform. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in a written statement, said the new guidelines had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women and their families across this country," and she stressed that they were issued by "an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who . . . do not set federal policy and . . ....

If we are to escape from dilemmas such as Nice's fateful decision on Nexavar, it can only be by permitting additional revenue streams into the NHS, argues Janet Daley. Nice has made another of its fateful (or "fatal") decisions: the drug, Nexavor, which significantly prolongs the life of liver cancer patients, and is widely available in other countries, is not be used by the NHS because it is too expensive. So all those who might have benefited from it have effectively been told that, on accounting principles, they are not worth keeping alive. Nice is functioning as what the US...

This week's decision by a government panel to discourage most women in their 40s from having routine mammograms isn't just bad medicine, but also a small taste of what ObamaCare will mean. Yes, House and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday insisted that the new guidelines won't change what services the government will pay for. But that doesn't eliminate the impact of the finding at all -- and it does nothing about any future guidelines, based on the same approach, for less high-profile areas of medicine. Decades of medical research have proven the value of breast-cancer screening. I order mammograms...

Cancer hotlines and doctors offices have been flooded with calls following the release of new government guidelines on mammograms that contradict previous medical advice. The recommendation surprised many this week, stating women should start getting mammograms in their 50s, rather than in their 40s as the American Cancer Society has advised for years. Nicole Kurokawa, with the Independent Women’s Forum in Washington, joined CBN News with a reaction to the new government guidelines. Is this the beginning of rationed health care? Click play for Kurokawa’s answer. Now, patients are confused and many doctors are questioning the new policy. “Whoever is...

Health Care: A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life. Shouldn't that be between patient and physician? We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work. We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing. New recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding breast cancer and the necessity for early and frequent mammograms do not convince us otherwise. Just six months ago, the panel, which works under the...

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) yesterday announced its recommendation that women between the age of 40 and 50 years old, whose only risk factor is age, skip that yearly mammogram.  While at first glance this may simply seem like a bad idea coming out of a flawed study, a closer look reveals a more ominous rationale behind the decision: cost savings. This may be the first big hint of what nationalized health care will do: sacrifice care standards -- and lives -- to save money.    The USPSTF is a government controlled comparative-effectiveness research task force.  They changed...

As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine. Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls...

The Worst Bill Ever." That is the title the always calm and rational Wall Street Journal put on its editorial on November 1 about the government health care takeover bill that passed the House last week on virtually a party line vote, 220-215. But even this label doesn't fully communicate the outright assault on the American people involved in this legislation. The bill is a serious threat not only to your freedom and prosperity, but to your very life as well. That is because at the heart of this bill is a cruel perversion. The bill labors mightily (though it...

"The doctor overseeing my health care advised me to get an H1N1 flu shot. I've been under a six-year treatment program for a chronic infection, plus I have heart and lung problems. Therefore, I am considered a high risk. Fortunately, my doctor had three shots available, but I would have to get approval from my county health department. Much to my surprise, the woman at the health department apologized and told me that even though I was a senior citizen at high risk, the health department had been instructed to approve shots only for children and pregnant mothers. I asked...

While normal everyday oblivious Americans were preparing their beds to sleep Saturday night their elected officials quietly passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Indeed, the passage of this act deals one of the final death blows to the Constitution and with it our liberties. As I ponder upon this momentously horrid occurrence it is as if I have just woken up from a nightmare and been thrown directly into the plot of George Orwell’s 1984, with no hope of escape. As this thought grabs hold I am lead to ponder more and more about America and...

Dallas County's first mass distribution of the swine flu vaccine Wednesday tested the patience of thousands of adults and children, who stood outdoors for hours to snag a scarce shot. SONYA N. HEBERT/DMN Rony Velazquez, 4, waited while his mother, Blanca Medrano (left), and his sister Diana Velazquez were screened before getting their H1N1 shots at the Dallas County Health and Human Services building on Wednesday.But in the end, there was a lot of praise for how well the county dispensed the vaccine. Despite chilly weather before dawn and intense sun by late morning, almost no one in the line...

As explained by Dr. David H. Janda (author of "The Awakening of a Surgeon"), the healthcare rationing board has already been slipped into the "recovery act" bill. Take a look who is buried down the list on the board ... Rahm's brother, that champion-of-eugenics ... "Dr. Death Panel" Ezekiel Emmanuel. http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/os/cerbios.html

Residents of the Venezuelan capital face cuts in water service for as much as 48 hours per week, after the government imposed rationing to stem a 25 percent shortfall in the city's supply, officials said Monday.

 Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. David Janda has a blistering commentary on the newest House version of Obamacare that succinctly and powerfully illuminates the danger to all of us–well, not the elite who never are bound by the same rules–if this monstrosity passes. From his column “Obamacare versus the Hippocratic Oath (all emphasis within the text): The sad fact is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration’s 1990 page health care reform bill (HR3962) and supplement(HR3961) violate The Oath by stripping  freedom from every person, family and business in Our country . This 19 ½ pound pair of documents, entitled ”Affordable Health Care For Americans...

Everyone knows that if you don't pay to maintain and repair your car, you limit its life. The same is true as human beings age. We need medical care to avoid becoming clunkers -- disabled, worn out, parked in wheelchairs or nursing homes. For nearly a half century, Medicare has enabled seniors to get that care. But ObamaCare is about to change that, by limiting what doctors can provide their aging patients. The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section...

By drastically increasing demand while doing little to increase primary care physician supply, ObamaCare will turn health care into a consumer nightmare: longer wait times, shorter visits, higher prices, and decreased customer satisfaction. The U.S. will have to rely increasingly on nurse practitioners and physician assistants to meet patient demand. According to the WHO, the nurse-to-physician ratio in Canada and the U.K. are 5.3 and 5.6, respectively, compared to 3.6 in the U.S. And as fewer bright young people pursue medicine due to the profession's general malaise and oppressive bureaucratic regulations, we're likely to see an even greater physician shortage---not...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants these groups to have top priority, as they are at highest risk of spreading or catching the flu: Health care workers; healthy children and young adults age 2 to 24; and healthy adults up to age 49 who are caring for children younger than 6 months.

Chris Dodd is one lucky old fart. The guy survives lots of heavy, HEAVY drinking throughout his life, the kind where you can't remember the crap you've done the night before and don't know how you got home, became the co-creator of the waitress sandwich with Dead Kennedy, and lots of sex with a number of different women without picking up herpes or AIDS, and the ol' boy comes down with prostate cancer this July. He's not lucky because he has prostate cancer. He's lucky because he's got an awesome private Senate healthcare plan, and a clinic to go to...

Is this the type of healthcare system that President Obama wants for the rest of the country? Update: Make sure you check the update below. Rationing! The Baucus plan and the Waxman Murphy plan both will tax you if don’t have health insurance. But as we pointed out right here it’s so much more than that. You will be taxed even if you have coverage, IF, it’s not up to government standards. Remember, you read it here first?

Kidney patient must make three trips a week to Saint John for dialysis, while a unit sits idle 10 minutes from her home A1 By Jim Dumville Helping her mother travel more than 1,200 kilometres each week to secure life-saving medical procedure, while the necessary medical equipment sits only a few kilometres away, has become a major source of disbelief and frustration for a Woodstock businesswoman. In a detailed letter addressed to political and health-care officials and members of the media, Woodstock's Kelly Atherton outlined the lengths she and her family must go to ensure her mother receives dialysis treatment....

Why does “pro-choice” refer only to abortion, but not to health care, or schools, or gun ownership, or what car (if any) you can drive, or even what light bulbs and toilets you can use? Choice? What choice? Whether to live in pain or kill yourself? Are we independent citizens who care for ourselves and our loved ones, but who sometimes need the government’s help? Or are we infantilized subjects, totally dependent on a parentified government to care for us, usurp the responsibility for our families, and make important decisions for us? This, rather than what health-care system we choose,...

In President Obama’s Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money. Even so, the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing.

Politics: The administration stages a photo-op with handpicked doctors who support its health care reform. Fortunately, most doctors still believe that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. It would seem some doctors still make house calls. Some 150 of them made one at the White House Monday in an attempt to give a booster shot to the administration's chaotic and stalled health care reform drive. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, this was a classic case of AstroTurfing. Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 were said to be members of Doctors...

The Wall Street Journal today highlights a provision in the Baucus bill which is actually frightening and could not make more clear that Obamacare will lead to rationing despite what he says: "Take a provision in the Baucus bill that would punish any physician whose 'resource use' is considered too high. Beginning in 2015, Medicare would rank doctors against their peers based on how much they cost the program—and then automatically cut all payments by 5% to anyone who falls into the 90th percentile or above. In practice, this rule will only apply to specialists." ...As it stands now, the...

No it isn't death panels, but it might as well be, two moves coming from our Democratic-party-controlled government ration needed health care treatment one in the Baucus version of the Obamacare bill, the other an executive order by the POTUS. The Baucus bill has a provision which penalizes the doctors who prescribe the most tests/procedures. Those in the top 10% of prescribing doctors will get fined five percent of the money they get back from the government. The purpose of this procedure is to provide incentive to the doctors to stop giving life-saving procedures. Not wanting to wait for the...

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

A new report finds that medical innovation boosts life expectancy, but doesn't cost more "About half of all growth in health care spending in the past several decades was associated with changes in medical care made possible by advances in technology," declared(pdf) a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report last year. "Health care economists attribute about 50 percent of the annual increase of health costs to new technologies or to the intensified use of old ones," writes bioethicist Daniel Callahan in his new book, Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs Are Destroying Our Health Care System. Conventional wisdom holds...

Free Speech: The Senate votes against transparency as the administration silences a private insurer for exposing the president's health care proposal. Meanwhile, AARP is allowed to tout reform as it awaits payday. We weren't surprised when the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 12 to 11 against allowing two weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to complete its cost analysis of the health care bill pushed by Montana Democrat Max Baucus and to put the bill online in its original wording. Instead, the Senate panel passed another amendment to require the committee to post the full bill online in "conceptual"...

Obama did, and again he lied to the public. there are "Death Panels as we speak deciding which "populations" deserve treatment and limited health resources and who does not. The decisions are being made quietly and without public input; but they are being made and through regulation given the force of law. Sheri Fink, writing for propublica, has discovered that State and Federal officials are planning guidelines for removing life support from patients regardless of the patient's permission or desire in a pandemic situation. The justification for ignoring SOME patient wishes and medical needs is based on limited resources. http://www.propublica.org/article/flu-nightmare-officials-ponder-disconnecting-ventilators-from-some-pat-923....

Freepers needed to participate in healthcare poll http://www.healthcarevote.com/

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Baucus health care "reform" bill that is quickly becoming the potential alternative to the Kennedy bill and HR 3200 includes abortion subsidies and mandates. Additional analysis also shows the legislation includes health care rationing that would cause problems for senior citizens.Burke J. Balch, an attorney and the director of the medical ethics center at the National Right to Life Committee, has examined the entire bill.He points to language on pages 80-81 regarding Medicare physician payments as a concern."Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource...