Obama Cuts Elderly Healthcare, Obamacare Funds Abortions
December 21, 2009
This past Saturday night we had a choice of entertainment. We could watch the Dallas Cowboys play the New Orleans Saints or we could read Senator Harry Reid's "Manager's Amendment" to the Senate healthcare bill.
Yes, we're settling into middle age, and 'excitement' has been defined down. Besides, who wants to sit in a crowded theater full of "Avatar" fans? (First weekend's box office $232 million, and it snowed!)
The Cowboys were expected to fold in New Orleans, which was 13-0 at the time, and we'd seen that movie before.
Faced with this choice of horrors we compromised: We turned on the TV but muted it and sat down with Harry's 383-page tome in our lap. Sexy.
If you've read our editorial, "Harry Reid to Cancer Patients: Wait Until Next Year", you know that the previous version of the bill allowed insurance companies to set annual limits on dollar amounts of medical care. If you have cancer, for instance, and you reach your annual limit by July, you might not make it until next year for resumption of cancer treatments.
President Obama vowed to fix that. He didn't. The amendment says that for insurance coverage that commences prior to January 14, 2014, annual limits are at the discretion of the Secretary of Health And Human Services. There are no provisions for plans after that date.
Politicians lie. We're shocked! Shocked!
We looked up from our reading just in time to see Tony Romo complete a perfectly timed and executed pass to Miles Austin, streaking down the left sideline for a touchdown to give the Cowboys a 7-0 lead on their first possession.
We harrumphed cynically and plunged back into our civic duty.
Click Here to Get Email Notifications of New Editorials. It's free, and we'll never sell your information to any other party.
Click here to visit our Store.
Here's what we discovered:
- Government officials, community groups such as ACORN, and unions such as SEIU will conduct "Wellness and Prevention Programs" which will collect data about the habits of individual U.S. citizens and the manner in which their habits impact their health. Databases will be constructed to conduct longitudinal studies to track people over their lifetimes.
- Legal ownership of firearms and ammunition will be exempted from No. 1 above, but weight, smoking, drinking, exercise, occupation, marital status, sexual status, income, age, and political affiliation will all be covered, as well as any other information deemed relevant by the Secretary, ACORN and SEIU.
- HHS, ACORN and SEIU will form a "Working Group" to measure the effectiveness of treatment and the appropriateness of allowing doctors and hospitals to treat various acute, chronic conditions, based upon the age, race and wealth of the patient. If you've read our editorial, "The Gulag Obama", you've seen our citations to passages in the main bill.
- Patients will be allowed to appeal their denial of medical care to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. You'd have as much success at that as you might getting waited on with a smile at the Post Office.
- Exclusions of coverage for pediatric care are permissible.
- Medicare will be cut by $470 billion. If you aren't aware, Medicare is an insurance program for the elderly. They've been paying insurance premiums into it for forty years. The federal government has been borrowing that money from the Medicare Trust Fund, and Medicare is now scheduled to go broke within the next few years. The Democrats' solution is to cut one-half trillion dollars in Medicare benefits to the elderly, not to stabilize the program, but to give medical coverage to other people.
- The other people mentioned in No. 6 above are illegal aliens. That's right, this bill does not in any way prohibit taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens.
- Medical care for the elderly will be rationed in two ways. First, the aforementioned cuts to Medicare will result in lower reimbursement rates to the doctors who treat seniors. As a result, doctors will accept fewer Medicare patients. Second, the previously mentioned "Working Group" of bureaucrats, ACORN and SEIU will decide who gets to have medical treatment and who doesn't.
- The liberals' doctrine of Comparative Effectiveness dictates that people who are old, or who are very young and have not yet been educated or become productive members of society, should and will be denied expensive medical procedures and medication. If you're too old, you won't be allowed to have hip replacements, kidney dialysis, or surgery for colon or breast cancer. If you're born prematurely you'll be allowed to die.
- "Peer Review" by the Secretary, ACORN and SEIU will become part of the process for determining acceptable levels of coverage and for determining which hospitals and which doctors have achieved acceptable patient outcomes. Do you think that doctors might be extorted for campaign contributions at the time of their periodic evaluations? Peer Reviews…they worked so well for the climate hysterics. (See "Copenhagen, We Have A Problem").
- Ten million people, including seniors, will be forced into Medicaid. Medicaid is the federal government's medical welfare program for the poor. The treatment they get is infamous for its inadequacy, and the World War II generation is going to be forced into it.
- The states administer and pay for part of the Medicaid program. This massive expansion of Medicaid will strain severely state budgets, such that spending for public safety and education will have to be cut. Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) sold his all-important 60th vote to Harry Reid in exchange for permanently exempting Nebraska from making those Medicaid expansion payments.
- Abortion will henceforth be funded by U.S. taxpayers. Ben Nelson made a big show of representing the pro-life position on this issue, but he caved. If this bill passes, elective abortions will be funded with federal dollars. The amendment contains meaningless language about segregating federal subsidies to people who can't afford their own health insurance so that they can't be used for abortion, but that would be like segregating the water in the deep end of your pool from the water in the shallow end. Moses might be able to do it.
- The Secretary, ACORN and SEIU are empowered by the bill to engage in "Outcome Measurement" for primary and preventative care for "distinct populations such as healthy children, chronically ill adults or infirm elderly patients". It's not bad enough that the Democrats have engaged in identity politics to segregate us by race, wealth, religion and gender, but now they want to classify us according to our illnesses.
- The bill raises taxes in total by $500 billion. Part of that is an increase of the Medicare payroll tax for people earning more than $200,000 annually, but it's not adjusted for inflation. Those familiar with the Alternative Minimum Tax understand that this tax will soon apply to the middle class. The remainder of the taxes are on medical devices and insurance companies, and they'll be passed on to the middle class as well.
- The taxes begin immediately, but the benefits don't commence for another three years.
In summary, the federal government will become deeply involved in your medical care, will collect data on the most intimate aspects of your life, will pay your doctor based upon his adherence to their rules rather than the choices that you and your doctor make, and for the purposes of controlling costs and buying votes, will deny coverage to seniors and to very young and infirm people.
As we said in "The Gulag Obama", Marxists (in this case, diguised as "Democrats") view people as fungible commodities rather than as God's Children. Old people, in their eyes, are useless and should be thrown away so that they won't consume resources.
There sometimes is a tendency to believe that the last few days, months, and sometimes years of life are not worth living. Our mother died recently at the age of 89. Ten years before her death she had life-saving surgery which would have been denied to her under Obamacare because of her age and the cost of the procedure and subsequent care. She recovered and was well until her final two years. Six month's before her death we hired a young woman to assist with her care. To protect her anonymity, we'll call her "Sally".
Mom loved Sally, and Sally was remarkable with Mom.
Sally lost every one of her worldly possessions in hurricane Ike in September 2008. She and her family lost their houses and everything in them. She lost her cars, and she and her husband lost their jobs. They had to send their three young children to live with relatives in another state so that they could move to a large city and find work.
Two or three weeks before Mom passed away, Sally and her husband moved back home. She's now working three jobs and is hoping to have her children back with her soon.
Here's what she wrote to us after Mom's passing:
"I got all the stuff you sent me. I loved it all but must say it made me miss her. She was such a special woman. I think the time I had with her was a gift from God. I still feel bad for not being there for her in the end but honestly I am not sure I could have endured it. She was part of my healing. In a time of much sadness in my life she brought me joy and made me see the good things in life. She made me strong again. When I first met her I had lost all those things. She was such a blessing. I will always cherish the time I had with her, Sally".
If you love your parents and your children, and if you voted for Barack Obama and the Democrats, you made a bad choice.
Final score: Cowboys 24-Saints 17; Democrats $2.6 trillion-America's middle class…screwed.