Are you over 70? Have parents over 70?
A Personal Note From Brother Ned
July 21, 2009
Senior citizens will be cut out of essential health services if the ObamaCare passes Congress.
Read this report from the New York Post, then I suggest you contact your Congressman/Senators to raise UnHoly …. To let them know they must do all in their power to stop this dive into socialism!! Also see the additional information after the New York Post article.
Brother Ned
This story is by Betsy McCaughey who is an excellent source of information regarding this nightmare health care plan. She has actually read the plan and sights page numbers. She was hugely responsible for getting out the true word on Hillary’s health care plan and getting it defeated. Particularly note what she says about what is going to happen to senior citizens under this plan ~ compelling seniors to submit to “counseling sessions” about alternative end-of-life care?! This is absolutely ghoulish! People! Please call or fax our members of Congress!
O’S BROKEN PROMISES
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
PRESIDENT Obama promises that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our health-care system.
That’s untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests. Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these “qualified plans.” If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year “grace period” to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you’ll have less time. And as soon as anything changes in your contract — such as a change in co-pays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year — you’ll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).
When you file your taxes, if you can’t prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars — as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size — and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).
It’s one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone’s consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.
Nowhere does the legislation say how much health plans will cost, but a family of four is eligible for some government assistance until their household income reaches $88,000 (House bill, p. 137). If you earn more than that, you’ll have to pay the cost no matter how high it goes.
The price tag for this legislation is a whopping $1.04 trillion to $1.6 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimates). Half of the tab comes from tax increases on individuals earning $280,000 or more, and these new taxes will double in 2012 unless savings exceed predicted costs (House bill, p. 199). The rest of the cost is paid for by cutting seniors’ health benefits under Medicare. There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.
One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.” This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?
Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured. The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance. They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.
Congress should pursue less radical ways to cover the uninsured.
We have too much to lose with this legislation.
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York.
betsy@hospitalinfection.org
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AND WHILE YOU’RE DIGESTING THAT BIT OF GOOD NEWS, CONSIDER THIS ABOUT THE UK SOCIALISTIC HEALTH CARE SYSTEM:
Kill the Old People
Obamacare is the answer.
Finally, a practical approach to reducing health costs that will work and is working well in the UK . The biggest drain on the health system is caring for older people so if you eliminate them then the cost to the survivors is much less. (Like a draconian reality show on TV)
1. It will be mandatory that your Dr. encourage living wills to prohibit any life saving efforts, Page 416 of the Obamacare House Bill
2. Ration (prohibit) treatments to those on SS such that they get no organ transplants, no MRI, open heart surgeries, etc., none of procedures that extend life. (Too expensive and the old people will die sooner)
3. Eliminate or make people wait a long, long, long time for basic tests like mammograms and prostate exams and a much longer time for a decision on treatment (It works well in UK with 75% more likely to die from prostate cancer than in the USA .)
4. Broken hips? UK allows 15% to be treated within one year while USA has 90% treated within 6 months. UK has it right because without treatment/replacement, they soon die.
5. Mandatory counseling for people on SS about how to end your life, Page 425 (See highlighted paragraph # 7 above)
6. The most effective drug for breast cancer is not used much in the UK because it is too expensive.
7. All private health insurance is made illegal, Page 16.
8. When you file your income taxes if you do not have Obamacare you will be fined thousands of dollars and AUTOMATICALLY enrolled whether you want to or not. Page 19.
9. I love this one, government bureaucrats will make life and death decisions for us. They will determine who is worthy to receive health care and who should be allowed or even encouraged to die. This will be based upon the availability of funds and their perceived quality of your life just like the UK . Of course, those on SS have no life and are a drain on society so let them die and save the cost of treatment and the future SS costs, two birds with one rejection.
10. Obama does not want old people to suffer too much, he encourages older people to utilize Hospice as a life (death) choice. (Yes folks, he said that)
11. The whole program will be managed by the same folks who have totally mismanaged Medicare with exploding costs at many, many times the initial projections. (But that won’t happen with Obamacare.) Yeah right?
12. For your own peace of mind list off the vast number of programs the government has taken over that have been managed efficiently and have been under budget!!! ……………………………………….. Oh! Wait! There aren’t any.
Obama the TERMINATOR. Like sheep to the slaughter, like the Jews at Auschwitz , we wait our turn in line and walk into the chambers. Just remember, as you watch your loved ones die one by one at the will of a committee of bureaucrats who refuse to allow treatment, we all sat on the sidelines and watched the destruction of our health care system. You remember, the one where we had a choice.
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