WhatFinger


Slashed doctors’ pay, reduced services to patients, medical devices and testing equipment made by cheap overseas labor are cutting-block initiatives by the Obama government

Sick - No Appeal - Its Obamacare



Where will you turn? Your seriously ill child is in need of an expensive medical procedure that has a low-percentage chance to save his life. Does his life warrant an available, but costly cure? Under Obamacare you must get in line to ask a government number-cruncher, a bureaucrat, to decide.

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If the answer is -- “No, it costs too much according to Obamacare’s budget allocations based on the boy’s low likelihood of survival,” then you are left bereft with a life-wrenching crisis with nowhere to turn. Once the government panel of Obama acolytes says “no,” they fiducially wash their hands of you and your sick child save possible referral to a hospice or life-ending assistance called “comfort care.” Under Obamacare, you have nowhere to appeal. You are Asian, Hispanic, Black, White or, for heaven’s sake, you are from Illinois or New York. You voted for Obama. Do they care? No. But, you are young, not like older folks who you declare have lived their lives. Does it matter? No. Socialized medicine is a numbers game where expense or cost to treat a patient outweighs the humanity. Sure, there are doctors and nurses, therapists and care givers aching to help -- to give care or cure to their fellow man, woman or child -- but they will not get paid if a Death Panel bureaucrat says no to you, your doctor and your treatment. According to MyGovCost.org, “Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over Obama’s health care reform law.” A third of that loss would be devastating. Doctor shortages impact all patients regardless of age. Welcome to Obamacare. Your grandmother, a naturalized American-Hispanic, has a hip operation. She has a minor complication that requires a quick return to the hospital for a day or two. Is she likely to be readmitted? Not likely. Obamacare’s reworked Medicare is now mandated to attempt to block her return to the hospital, or even being referred to a doctor, by financially penalizing the hospital if they dare readmit her within 90 days. Your grandmother may find it expensive, but necessary, to return to Mexico for treatment and stay with family – if physically able. Accuracy in Media’s recent conference, “ObamaNation: A Day of Truth,” highlighted the abuse and neglect hidden in Obamacare’s new Medicare regulations. Dr. Betsy McCaughey, noted expert on Obamacare, points to hidden cuts in medical services along with drastic cuts to Medicare [$716 billion by Obama] that will create unnecessary suffering:
“In October 2012, the Obama administration starts awarding ‘bonus points’ to the hospitals that spend the least per senior…And it whacks the higher spending hospitals with demerits, not only for what they spend on a patient while the patient is in the hospital, but also what is spent on that patient for the three months after hospitalization. So hospitals also get hit with demerits for recommending physical therapy after the patient leaves the hospital, or even recommending a doctor’s visit; it’s all counted. These regulations are not going to wring out the fraud, waste, and abuse. No, they are going to force these hospitals to provide a lower standard of care.”
Suzanne Monaghan of Philadelphia (CBS) writes that according to Priscilla Koutsouradis with Delaware Valley Health Care Council: “The hospital community is being asked to drive these changes …to do it with less payment,” she says. “And at the same time, many of the conditions that determine whether a patient needs to be readmitted are out of the hospitals control.” AIM further reports that, “McCaughey cited a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which shows that over a four year period, in California, nearly 14,000 seniors with common conditions—stroke, pneumonia, heart attack, congestive heart failure, hip fractures, and others, died in low-spending hospitals—bottom quintile—but would have survived and recovered and gone home had they received the care available at a higher spending hospital.” She said, “…in disregard of this evidence—the Obama administration is pushing hospitals in all 50 states to imitate the low-spending hospitals where the death rates are higher!” McCaughey concluded that “It is reasonable to predict, based on this evidence, that the regulations and cuts in this law will cost at least 35,000 elderly patients their lives every year. That’s 35,000 patients in hospitals, dying, who could have recovered had they received the care available at a higher spending institution.” It is the liberal Democrats sending seniors over the cliff. Welcome to Obamacare. What is your legal redress if your loved one suffers medical mistreatment or dies due to neglect under Obamacare? Do you seek restitution from the government, or a state-run facility that is protected under the law? Not likely. You have lost before you’ve started that legal battle. The article, Obama's Death Knell for the Elderly (LINK), states:
“What younger Americans cannot see coming is that under Obamacare, reduced medical care with limited access to fewer doctors will force parents and grandparents to rely heavily on younger generations for their physical needs and financial support. Doctors are already turning away older patients because of Obamacare. In National Review Online, James C. Capretta writes about Obamacare’s deep cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and care providers: “Actuaries who oversee Medicare’s spending projections have warned repeatedly that these cuts will compromise access to care for seniors because many facilities will be forced to stop admitting Medicare patients. What will seniors do then to get care they need? That is where Obama’s bureaucrat-laden Independent Payment Advisory Board comes into play. Whether young or old, care to prolong your life has a price on it. Obama’s plan supports rationing as a cost cutting mechanism. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to Obama’s former Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, designed a life chart with a “priority curve” that conceptualizes population control by age groups. Americans under age 15 and over age 45 are designated as being less productive to the government. Senior Americans and the very young are relegated as being less valuable and expendable. According to Emanuel, there should be limits on how much should be paid to lengthen a life.”
For a college student, construction worker, senior or a child injured on the playground, downgraded medical care and devices can impact health and recovery for the rest of one’s life.
“Obamacare undermines and weakens the doctor–patient relationship by linking payment not to patient [care] outcomes but to adherence to government protocol.” Americans for Tax Reform sees further attacks through Obamacare’s 2013 medical device excise taxes on medical device manufacturers. “These companies will surely build the cost of this new tax into the price of what they sell. Who buys medical devices? Who buys pacemakers, wheelchairs, and other costly medical devices? Seniors do.” As do people of all ages that have injuries, accidents or birth defects. Under Obamacare, medical device companies expect to go bankrupt or out of business, leaving the hip, knee and surgical devices to be manufactured in China by cheap labor. Forbes’s John Graham writes: “The medical-device tax is much more than a job-killing tax. It’s a patient-killing tax, too.”
Slashed doctors’ pay, reduced services to patients of all ages and medical devices and testing equipment made by cheap overseas labor are cutting-block initiatives by the Obama government. Already targeted are our most defenseless -- our mentally and physically disabled in institutionalized care who require the most medical assistance at a higher cost? Obamacare is not about care. It is not about using America’s advanced medical skills and technology, the finest in the world, to save lives of Americans regardless of race, age or class. It is about control. It is a power play that takes over one eighth of the U.S. economy. If not repealed, it is the unveiling of how a once great medical system became an ugly and deadly government-run “business” in America. Vote wisely.


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Sharon Sebastian -- Bio and Archives

Sharon Sebastian, AGING: WARNING – Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” is a columnist, commentator, and contributor in print and on nationwide broadcasts on topics ranging from healthcare, culture, religion, and politics to domestic and global policy. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses are published nationally and internationally. Website: AgingWarning.com


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