The End of the World ... And Where was the AARP?

I have been predicting this for a long time, but frankly, I thought that there would be discussion first and outrage. But they swept it in with the "Economic Stimulus" Bill and no one looked any further than the title. We have just killed our medical system off in the United States, and with it our Senior Citizens en mass. Keeping them alive is just too expensive. Why should I care? I won't be one for a few years yet.

Maybe we actually ought to read this evil, evil law. H.R. 1 EH, (pdf version)

But I being lazy and pressed for time (my flight leaves for Atlanta from Denver in a mere Four hours) have to get this out any way I can. So I will excerpt the very best article on this subject by Betsy McCaughey in Bloomberg.

There are three main problems:
1) The national treatment registry, which in addition to keeping records approves treatment.
One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (pgs. 442, 446).
2) Eliminating experimental treatments as uneconomical. (Where do they think new treatments come from? The Government?
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
3) Limiting care for elders as uneconomical.Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

More from Atlanta.

Irony is invisible to the truly ironic

I spoke to two small businessmen in the latter half of this week -- a Pakistani gas station owner, and an Indian small restaurant owner. They are the opposite of the custodians I wrote of yesterday. They came here for the wealth, not the freedom. Each is dead center in the crosshairs of the coming rape of the wealthy, but neither sees it.
The gas station owner said "Oh, no, I am not going to be taxed. I do not make $250,000 a year, but my cousin does. He is rich, let him pay it." I guess he does not know that the Bush tax cuts sunset in 2010.
The small restaurant owner frowned when I asked him how he felt about the election. Obama will raise his taxes. "Good, I thought someone who gets it". Until the subject of medical care came up. I mentioned that I had not thought McCain to be much better on that subject. Ali became quite animated. He needed medical care. It was too expensive. The government must provide it. "How?" I asked. The cost is the wages of the doctors, nurses and companies who work in the health care field. Should they work for free? "But they must" he said, for "we all need medical and I cannot afford it". He has a disconnect between them and himself. We all must eat. Even more universal than the need for medicine. Must he feed me? And not profit from it?
Yeah, that might work. For how long? We could enslave the doctors and nurses to be government employees paid by their own taxes. Drawing the same reward whether they worked hard or goofed off.
But when this generation is gone why would they spend those hard years in college for a fixed reward? And the companies? What medicine has any government ever developed? Not even euthanyl is a government drug, although it would be the type that they would develop. Without profit as a motive, why bother? Develop a better Wii game instead or become the all-American profit machine -- become a lawyer and tort your way to wealth.

If you like the Unemployment Office,

For some reason, the American public is hell bent on leather not to have to write their own checks to pay for their medical care. Do they really think that they don't have to pay for their medical care if it comes from the U. S. Government? Or do they all think that they can get more than they pay for? Apparently, the state of our education system is that, YES, they all think they can get something for nothing.

There are a number of serious problems with the idea of putting the Government in charge of our health care, and none of them seem to matter in our headlong rush to commit medical suicide. It seems inevitable at this point that we will let the Government Bureaucrats have this potentially fatal control of our lives. I am not saying that there are not flaws nor need for improvement in our current system; but handing control of your life to someone further removed from you in never the solution to your problems.

First - think of every contact you have ever had with the Government -- The Post Office, the Driver's License office, jury duty, the military, taxes, the Veteran's Administration, your school board, the Unemployment Office -- Is there any of them where you or your opinion mattered? Was there any of them that ran efficiently? Was there any of them that had the latest equipment? Was there any of them where you were even remotely comfortable during your wait? Were there any of them where you felt the employees cared the least bit about you? WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THIS ONE WILL BE DIFFERENT?

Second - Do you think you will see you Congressmen, Senators, or other big-wigs at the same clinic you will be at? Dream on. their plans are for you, not for themselves.

Who are these people without healthcare? And to what extent are they without healthcare. In the United States anyone who comes to a hospital, private as well as public, will be treated. Ostensibly for "life threatening conditions", but we all have experience with people using the emergency rooms for non-emergency conditions. Why don't they have treatment at a regular doctor's office? Because they don't have insurance. Why don't they have insurance? Because they have chosen to spend their income on lifestyle -- color TVs, spinner wheels, and other "bling". And because they don't have to. The system enables, even prefers, foolish behavior. Also, the poor have Medicaid and the elderly Medicare.
In addition to the non-working poor, they are also young adults who have again consciously gambled and chosen a more advanced lifestyle than they would otherwise have banking on the statistical health of a young person. Why are we expected to insure someone who will not insure himself?

Is it even possible for the Government to allocate resources to the people without favoring one group over another? By this I do not mean just the political favorites groups that the Liberal Democratic proponents of Nation Health Care normally take care of. I mean the rationing of resources that will, of necessity, come with a government budget.
It has been said that the bulk of medical expenses come at the end of your life. This is not a coincidence. It comes because as we get older our bodies fail. But it also comes because as we get sicker our bodies fail. What better place for the Government to begin trimming expenses than to deny "Heroic care" to the old and terminally ill. After all there are irresponsible (friendly) voters to reward.
You think this will never happen? Ask a British senior citizen. Ask a Canadian cancer patient waiting 4 months for a sonogram that my 85-year-old mother got the same evening.

And what of the doctors? I know, they do it for the love of humanity. NOT! It is eleven or twelve years of hard work to become a doctor. They delay the gratification of a good salary for a better one later on. What incentive is there if they have only a uniform Government pay grade, however good, waiting for them? They would do better becoming lawyers. (Just what we need more hungry lawyers). Do you think you can enslave doctors to serve? Ultimately, we will, like Great Britain, have a shortage of physicians.

I could rant on and on about this (and probably will), but this blog is much too long to read.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!