Cutting Health Care Costs: New Plan for Seniors

Unfortunately, your cartoon hits the nail on the head Pat! Let’s hope America’s seniors don’t believe their “watchdog” AARP and wake up before they are shamed into “choosing” to die rather than use up health care that Obama thinks would be better used by others—like illegal immigrants and ACORN workers.

Obama is guilty of treason by promoting the exact same “T-4″ policy of Adolf Hitler.

U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a nationally-televised press conference at 8 p.m. on July 22nd, in which on five separate occasions he called for health reform legislation featuring the establishment of “an independent board of doctors and health care experts” to make the life-and-death decisions of what care to provide, and what not, based on cost-effectiveness criteria–exactly the infamous “T-4″ policy imposed by Adolf Hitler in 1939, for which the Nazi regime was tried and condemned at Nuremberg.

http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/obama-admits-recently-passed-laws-havent-helped-average-americans/

We have got to beat this thing now, because that represents a strategic forcing mechanism; whereas if they ram this thing through in the short term, which they are really desperate to do, then the Constitution is finished, the Republic is gone. It’s the equivalent of the Reichstag fire.

T4 policy was about actively and intentionally killing patients based on certain criteria, including (for example) people with incurable physical and mental disabilities, often either by coercing their (or their guardian’s) consent or with no consent at all. It was enacted against both adults and children.

Trying to send a message to Washington is like trying to talk to the wind. They are already making excuses about why they can’t read that 1000 page, 14lb. bill. And they don’t have two lawyers, they say, to interpret for them as they read anyway!!
None is so deaf than he who will not hear.

Well, I wonder what he thinks now about Hillary’s failed effort to get healthcare passed?

Obama=Jerk.

Great cartoon!

I am listening to Obama’s virtual Town Hall meeting as I write, and he is assuring everyone that Medicare benefits will not be cut (even though he has said that billions will be cut over the next 10 years)

Confuse, mislead, equivocate…It reminds me of Orwell’s slogans from 1984: “Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.”

This is the way I see it:

Benefits don’t need to be cut as in saying such and such will no longer be covered in order to save money. Just do as the House bill proposes and cut back reimbursements to Medicare/Medicaid providers and say it’s “cutting out waste”. So where the government might have paid $100 for such and such before, only pay $75 now. When providers make less for the same amount of work as before, using the same amount of resources and personnel, more providers will no longer accept new Medicare/Medicaid patients or even drop the ones they currently treat. That means the elderly and poor wait longer to get an appointment, travel longer distances for care, and experience longer turnaround times for treatment after diagnosis which equals more of them dying quicker which ultimately saves the government money.

You hit it right Pat. I will not use Medicaid or their insurance either. I hope everyone will make that decision.

I have been researching and preparing for the last 2/3 years “knowing” that this was going to happen. Consider doing like I have, research medical problems and herbal/nutrition ways to solve them. Do it now.

There are online sites for the plants and seeds. Order OP or heirloom food seeds. Do these things NOW. Don’t wait until the drug companies and their friends, perhaps stockholders outlaw this too.

Print out as well as store this knowledge on disks, flash drives and your pc. Get a laptop. Get solar powered. Get ready.

A little gothic rock sentiment to accompany the ‘toon from Blue Oyster Cult:

All our times have come
Here but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain (we can be like they are)
Come on baby…(don’t fear the reaper)
Baby take my hand…(don’t fear the reaper)
We’ll be able to fly…(don’t fear the reaper)
Baby I’m your man…

Okay, I’m ready! Bring on the O Health Care Plan along with a frosty Sayonara Cocktail with a little umbrella in it! Don’t fear the reaper!

Some candid thoughts and snapshots of healthcare today from the provider side:

I’m just off the phone with my husband (he calls me most every morning from the hospital right before his 9am case management meeting, the sweetie.)

He and his PA have 45 inpatients in the hospital today. Of those, 21 are uninsured, including 3 in ICU beds. The group he works for does manage to pay him $35 a day for uninsured patients, so at least he gets a little something for their very complicated ICU care. His hospital is on the southside, which is the poorest section of the city

Meanwhile, another large hospital here in San Antonio is affiliated with the University. It is politically influential, being a big research hospital affiliated with some big name professors, etc. University hospital gets a very generous allowance from Bexar county, paid for with tax dollars, to care for the uninsured. The deal is supposed to be that they are supposed to accept transfers of the uninsured from all the other hospitals here. NONE of the other hospitals get that chunk of money. Sound suspiciously like a certain well-connected hospital in Chicago?

In the 2 years hubby has worked here, he has had University accept an uninsured patient maybe 5 times. If you call them to try to get one transferred, the answer is invariably “sorry, we don’t have any beds available”. The other docs from outlying hospitals will tell you the same- University almost never agrees to take the uninsured patients they are paid to take. It’s patient dumping, pure and simple, with them making a nice profit from those tax dollars.

Our system is BROKEN. And if we don’t get real reform (not Obamacare), and soon, it’s going to get worse. I can’t tell you the number of medical professionals I personally know who are discouraged enough to say they are going to just say “fuck it” and get out of the whole profession. These docs and nurses and hospitals can’t keep pulling this load forever. Something’s got to give.

Why public health care is philosophically wrong

Forget all the scare stories about waiting lines and denied services. I live in Canada, and I have a million such stories to tell. Like my mother wanting to commit suicide due to her excruciating pain — even though she wore a morphine patch the size of her back — all because she had to wait three long years for a simple disc operation.

These horror stories are everywhere. But they are not the most horrific consequences of a public health care system.

If you focus on scare stories of public health care systems gone wrong (and they all go wrong), you will fall into the leftists’ trap of arguing over the most effective way to publicly manage health.

What we desire is liberty. The freedom to choose. Domain over our own bodies. Our selves.

That is what America stands for. That is what the first Americans fought and died for. It is the very essence of the American character. And it is what these people will destroy if they bring in public health care.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/why_public_health_care_is_phil.html

I wonder why AARP has caved in ?? Something smells fishy concerning this group.

They’d better watch out- those “geezers” might get radical and decide they don’t wish to be shuffled off.

I just cancelled my membership in aarp; I hope we baby boomers can form an alternative organization that will work for our right to the same medical care that the previous generous has had and that the younger generation hopes to seize from us.

If Obama’s health plan is so great, why doesn’t it apply to BO, Congress, and governmental officials? Obama and the AARP are lying to the public!

The US will lose its edge and innovation due to this. We don’t want to be like England, Canada, or Europe. These countries look to us for new breakthroughs in medicine.

Impeach Obama!!!!!!

DANG, Pat - what an outstanding toon!! You have hit the nail on the head.

And good one by HARP, too (”Reaper is Cheaper”)!

“Mama we’re all going to hell
Mama we’re all gonna die,
Mama we’re all full of lies,
Mama we’re meant for the flies.”
Chemical romance

If this atrocity passes the counselor will be at my door. I will tell them to leave now as I have places to go , things to do , and people to see.
When congress persons have to get counseling to die then come talk to me, until then take a hike.
I guess I will no longer be eligible for medical care but if I have to I will go to another country.
Like most Americans I have family that fought and died for this country all the way back to the war of 1812 but now the government just believes those who sacrificed just should get out of the way and die.

WOMEN WITH EXPERIENCE, AND INTELLIGENCE, MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS

PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE

If you go to the Mexican border now the number of people from all over the USA going to Mexico for health care is enormous. Dental care and eye care and prescriptions are affordable for people. In a lot of towns near the border this is a big business.

WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS

PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE

You are absolutely right, grandma and grandpa (or mom and dad, or hell, just me in a few years)are going to get screwed and no amount of Viagra will make them like it.

Perhaps the scariest part of all of this is that the government will know the status of health of every American citizen. Can you imagine the abuses that will come with that info?

Apparently Obama wasn’t kidding when he suggested giving pain pills to the elderly instead of life saving care. He is going to kill them but make certain it doesn’t hurt so bad.

Let’s stop this so-called health care reform nonsense before it/he kills us all.

I guess my last comment was caught in the spam filter.

pparently Obama wasn’t kidding when he suggested giving pain pills to the elderly instead of life saving care. He is going to kill them but make certain it doesn’t hurt so bad.

Isn’t Obama practicing medicine without a license?

From the all-knowing, all-wise Obama:

“We also want to start rewarding doctors for quality, not the quantity of care that they provide. Instead of rewarding them for how many procedures they perform or how many tests they order, we’ll bundle payments so providers aren’t paid for every treatment they offer when they chronic — to a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead are paid for how are they managing that disease overall.”

Oh my gosh–this is unbelievable. Which bureaucrats will be assigned the task of grading the “quality” of your doctor’s care? Cut costs by robbing doctors of their salaries? SLAVERY IS BACK.

I’m reading the full thing now and just taking a break. I’ve read the full Affordable Health Choices Act. But, I’m just 200 pages into HR3200, so I’ll wait till I read the rest. The way they’ve worded the Affordable Health Choices, it looks to me like it will basically be left up to whomever is in charge and how they interpret it.

We all better get to the commune early to get a good spot to pitch our tents.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

Obama now under 54% in the latest RCP average. Gallup has Obamacus at 53% among adults, a new low for Obama.

Beautiful cartoon, Pat! Straight out of a Ingmar Bergman film. . .

Thanks, did that this morning.

Thanks Pat for the ominous Toon.

The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future

The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part “X-Files” and part “Jurassic Park.”

After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997.

Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese 30-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission’s (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.

Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman’s corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie “Jurassic Park,” in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S. government-funded laboratory. The woman’s organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, where the virus’s genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.

The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein’s “Igor,” set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle

In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled “Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?,” it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: “In October, a team of scientists, [CDC’s Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code — essentially the scenario played out in the movie ‘‘Jurassic Park,’’ albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists’ self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today’s population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?”

Military planning for possible H1N1
outbreak

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/

Fox News: After days of intensive negotiations, a group of key moderate Democrats on Wednesday announced that they reached a health care reform deal with the White House and congressional leaders. The compromise would cut the cost of the $1 trillion-plus package by $100 billion, according to one member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition. The deal would also ensure that the proposed government-run insurance program would not be forced on anyone.

http://www.breitbart.tv/blue-dog-democrats-announce-deal-on-health-care-reform/

“So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?
The Obama plan seems calculated to buy time for private insurers, to end the health care discussion for a decade or more without solving the health care problem, do so in a way that discredits the very idea of everybody in- nobody out health care. It will leave tens of millions uninsured, a hundred million or more underinsured, and the same parasitic private interests in charge of the American health care system that run it now.
The Obama plan as it now stands requires us to let another 18,000 die for each of the next three years and allow more than a million additional families to be bankrupted by medical expenses before we can judge whether or not the plan is working. It’s easy to imagine Obama partisans telling us in mid 2013 that it’s still too early to be sure.”

Read the entire article:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing

After I left( escaped) from the communist paradise, my sisters lived tru this ” counseling” health care system. Anytime, my dear old mother get sick, they literally had to lie her age. Otherwise the ambulance refused to came out. First question they ask ” How old is the patient”? So, please, for the love and respect of your old loved one,fight against this inhuman act. Our health care system needs change, but not distruction. Find the right change, that will benefit every American.

Really good column today in the SF Chronicle that dovetails with your post –by a California doc.

In the print edition it’s titled:

Rushing End of Life Decisions

on-line it is titled: Health care reform: What is costly overuse, what is humane?

anyway, it’s not long and worth reading

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/29/EDV218VMTQ.DTL

I think this is really scary and don’t think the public would approve if they actually knew about it.

Excellent piece that does dovetail right in. We need to hear more from doctors themselves who care about what they are doing and have been around for a while.

Thanks for the link.

This is another relevant piece from last year about the high cost of gun violence in Oakland bankrupting the local hospital.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/the_high_cost_of_gun_violence/Content?oid=742997&page=1

Is the govt going to decide these people should be left to die? Or are they worth saving because they’re young? Is this the kind of country we want to live in?

It sounds Orwellian to me.

Stephen King or George Romero is more like it.

I saw another post today that says the whole thing about end of life consultations is not true. It says that the bill is just saying that medicare will pay the cost “if the patient wants such counseling”. I remember that in Dec. 1991 when my father was dying of colon cancer, we had hospice and end of life counseling—but that was paid for at that time by medicare and it was helpful to all of us.

My question is what the hell is really in the bill—if it is just that you can request such counseling every 5 years and it will be paid by medicare, then I have no problem with it. If it is that you must have such a counseling session every 5 years after age 65 or when a health event occurs—then I think that is really going to far.

But this is the problem with all this legislation—we simply do not know what is in the bills and what is not!

I knew the Blue Dogs would cave. And it only took a 100 million to buy them off.

And look at the fraud already rampant in Medicare. If that system is already defective in verifying coverage and validating claims, then why would anyone think adding 47 million more people under the government option would save us money?

Using about a dozen agents in targeted cities, including Miami, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, has recovered $371 million in false Medicare claims and charged 145 people across the country in just two months.

That’s just 2 months. Imagine how much has been lost in the past 20 years!! Here in the Houston area, they arrested a gentleman earlier this week who had received almost $30 million in the past two years from the US Government from filing fraudulent Medicare/Medicaid claims.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99O9QSG4&show_article=1

Pat and Harp, I can’t thank you enough for this spot-on cartoon and caption!

I don’t want the government in my medical records to see if I’ve been a bad girl and worthy of an early death for not taking good enough care of myself. No worries for Bambi and company who’ve done more drugs than I’ve ever done but, then again, I’m not a part of the government elite that won’t have to subject themselves to their prescription for the health care of all of us peons.

I don’t want to become one of those statistics gathered from my imaged medical records–Lord knows what the government does with too much information! (Anyone see the questions that are coming in the census? And you think THAT is invasive?)

FactCheck.org: False Euthanasia Claims

The claim that the House health care bill pushes suicide is nonsense.
July 29, 2009

Summary

On former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio show, former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey said that the House’s proposed health care bill contained a provision that would institute mandatory counseling sessions telling seniors how “to do what’s in society’s best interest . and cut your life short.” House Minority Leader John Boehner made a slightly more measured statement, warning that the same provision “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.”

In truth, that section of the bill would require Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions helping seniors to plan for end-of-life medical care, including designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice and making decisions about life-sustaining treatment. It would not require doctors to counsel that their patients refuse medical intervention.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:

Desktop Users
http://factcheck.org/2009/07/false-euthanasia-claims/

Mobile Users
http://m.factcheck.org/2009/07/false-euthanasia-claims/

The entire issue is so muddied with partisan politics, bull-sheet-rock and mis-understandings of both the bill and the process that this reform is now a waste of both money and time. I will point out the both AARP and the AMA who fought against the Clinton Medical Reform Bill favor this reform package, while there is much more that needs to be done to cut waste, like the practice of defensive medicine…

The real losers here are the American public because the smoke is being blown so thick on this bill from both right and left that the truth is getting lost.

And more people who cannot afford healt insurance will die…

I have to do some research and see if this bill provides for coverage from illnesses like acute contagious moronitius..

I just heard Mitch McConnel do his Kentucky chicken dance on this reform bill. The man makes me sick. I wonder if I can get coverage for that?

We may have to resort to Alinsky tactics ourselves. Re-read Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic and MauMauing The Flak Catchers” about minorities in the 60’s in SF who were expert at intimidation and frightening the bureaucrats. Rather than 7 foot Samoans carrying staffs, it may be 5 foot angry seniors pounding the floor with canes and walkers. Might be enough to discourage some of those “end of life” counseling sessions should they become mandatory. We all need living wills with all the details on care we want or don’t want as well as an advocate to see that they are carried out. We have had that in our family and don’t need government help knowing what to do.

The first story, “Radical Chic” about Lenny Bernstein’s cocktail party for the NY elite and the Black Panthers could be told today with the ultra rich in the Dim party playing at being “revolutionaries”…Soros, Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer and on. Disgusting people.

One thing for sure we have to turn the tables on these thugs.

With all due respect, Mitch McConnell doesn’t BAMBOOZLE anywhere near the amount that Obama does.
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi

Wow, what a great cartoon Pat. Can’t wait to see a full collection for sale in a book.

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren’t Fighting For Health Care For Everybody

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/top-ten-ways-tell-your-president-his-party-arent-fighting-health-care-everybody

Military planning for possible H1N1 outbreak

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.
The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.
The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/

Posse Comitatus laws barring direct military action domestically … Wonder if they will have that flesh eating robot with them? What could possibly go wrong? Now who put that banana peel on this slippery slope?

This sounds quite Dickensian:

“…And if they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Ebenezer Scrooge.

Obama numbers continue to fall. I take great comfort in this trend.

I had my Anatomy & Physiology mid-term yesterday, and am taking a day off today. Going back to school at age 57 is quite an experience. The younger generation frightens me. They would love old people like me to die and get out of the way. They really don’t like people older than 50.

Read Anthony Trollops’s “The Fixed Period” if you can find it.

The reason you won’t see “much of this” in the main stream media is that it is not true.

“…And in times of economic stringency, when the first call on public expenditure is the payment of the salaries and pensions of health-care staff, we can rely with absolute confidence on the capacity of government sophists to find good reasons for doing bad things.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306170677645070.html

Read the whole thing.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/07/obamacare-killing-me-softly-with-his-words-killing-me-softly.html

more on this issue

WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS

PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE

Pat R. I got to tell you about this.
I just spent the last 24 hours in an intensive care unit and regular hospital room. I went to emergency with chest pains around midnight. Had a discussion with interns and nurses about what is happening
w/health care while they are hooking up EKG and afterwards other monitors. I have medicare and a supplement. Nevertheless, AFTER the emergency room I was trounced on by a heart specialist (cardiologist), and then a lung specialist, a gastrointestanel specialist, and last but not least my family Doc a GP.
Later as my male nurse was wheeling me to my car (hospital rules), when I was discharged, he said “all those physicians are working to keep you around to help vote that guy (Obama) out of office next time around”. Then my nurse says “I will push this wheel chair anywhere you want to go, even to the voting booths if necessary”. Oh yeah, the chest pain was a false alarm, I had a spastic (cramps) esophogus. Felt just like the last heart attack I had.

Tango, some of that medicare “false” claiming has to do with hospice patients being kept on past what medicare deems is a respectable time for them to have died. Truly. You have a hospice and they have a client who gets medicare and medicaid for six months, well what if they live past that? Right now you cannot be getting ANY care save for comfort care and get hospice services. You have to have basically agreed to go ahead and die with no extreme measures….sometimes people want to try a few months in the middle of care of chemo again…do it and you are off hospice care..well, if a hospice keeps that patient on for even a few weeks to council them or to continue their meds as a stop gap measure they are so called “wasting” medicare funds.

It’s a hard call but, I know of one hospice fined a million dollars for keeping patients on for a few weeks past the six month cut off…funding is not provided for it but, they did bill medicare anyway….they should not have done that but, it’s NOT as cut and dried as some claim.

Also, under Obamacare, medicare and medicaid ARE being cut and hospices are already letting medical social workers go and cutting medical staff. Even those who voted for the jerk are afraid for their jobs right now. So no hospice care??? Where will those in the dying process and their families go??? HOW will end of life care be paid for???

There was no good way to do this except cover everybody…it will not work Obama’s way but, he’s pandering to the lobbiest who will benefit from this enormously.

You can have a two tiered system with dental, physio in some cases and eye care say being with private insurers and everything else being public medicine. I’ve lived all over the place and my family are mostly all medical care providers in the U.S…..the scare mongering about the Canadian health care system is laughable…we need a similar system or there is NO WAY IN HELL it will even resemble something that will work best for most Americans.

Obamacare is not national health care for all..it’s bullshit wrapped in the language of “health care” as usual Obama using “words” with no meaning behind them. He has not got a clue what he’s doing and on this score a lot of people are going to suffer for it. Not only that but, anything even coming CLOSE to Hillarycare will not ever get passed now because Obama will screw things up SO badly that HIS example will be pointed to in the future as an example of “what might happen by the same people who brought you Harry and Louise.

*sigh* Can this GET anymore fucked up?? The question is rhetorical because with Obama YES IT CAN!!

As we have seen with both TARP and the stimulus bill, something is NOT always better than nothing. Let’s throw the Patriot Act in there, too. Sorry, but this business of Congress or the president running around like chickens screaming “We must DO SOMETHING!!!”, then crafting utterly and completely SHITTY pieces of legislation in response, has got to stop. And I’m sick of supporting it, lest I be railed against for “denying there is a problem.”

I’m done. If I don’t like it, I’m not supporting it, period, and you guys can wail about how I don’t understand the severity of the crisis all you want. Believe me, I understand all too well. So? You don’t want me stubborn and digging in my heels, congress? Then stop giving me the choice of “Nothing or Crap – take yer pick.” in order to browbeat me into picking CRAP.

I’ve decided not to play by those rules anymore. I can and I WILL start choosing “Nothing”, until you morons start doing your damn jobs.

Pat Racimora and NQ are you now getting paid by the health insurance companies? Have they hired you to lobby for killing healthcare reform?

Or do you just take it upon yourselves to spread complete utter falsehoods? I guess Pat, we would consider you one of the “Deathers” conspiracy people. Frankly, it is despicable that people like you are shilling for the health insurance industry. A few trying to destroy a very important reform for our nation by spreading falsehoods or at the minimum not doing the work to know what they are talking about or presenting all sides of the story. I know this fits into your and NQ’s trash Obama no matter what narrative, but this is ridiculous, given this very important issue.

“Deathers point to several parts of the House bill as evidence that health care reform means letting old people die. Most prominent is the end-of-life consultation provision mentioned above. An article on World Net Daily argues that the proposal “specifically calls for the consultation to recommend ‘palliative care and hospice’ for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions.” In fact, the bill says the meeting must include “an explanation by the practitioner of the end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice”—not a recommendation of it. Still, Obama pointed out that it’s not too late to remove the language: “If this is something that really bothers people, I suspect that members of Congress might take a second look at it.”

Another seemingly scary provision is one that permits “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration”—or, more accurately, the withholding of it. Some think the provision is a disturbing example of the government making decisions for the patient. But the bill specifically says that an order to withhold, say, an IV drip, must be one that “effectively communicates the individual’s preferences regarding life sustaining treatment, including an indication of the treatment and care desired by the individual.” In other words, a doctor can’t make you do it.

Yet another bugaboo is “shared decision-making.” The House bill would establish a program that “provide[s] patients with information about trade-offs among treatment options, and facilitates the incorporation of patient preferences and values into the medical plan.” The legislation makes clear that this is an educational tool to help patients make informed decisions about whether a treatment is likely to help.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2223754

What you read is what is really in the bill - people will have access to optional end of life consultations, just like they do now. All the rest is just fearmongering.
BTW I love your blog!