Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aLzfDxfbwhzs

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).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

It will be a ###### to get old in this country. Anyone from england care to comment on this article.

[Peikko 1,575]

I thought Daschle was out of the running re the health-care reform because of his dodgy tax record. Perhaps I am wrong.

[Ban Hammer 14,293]

I thought Daschle was out of the running re the health-care reform because of his dodgy tax record. Perhaps I am wrong.

daschle is like a freaking boomerang, he'll never go away.

[Lyuba 0]

And do you think it is easy to get quality health care now? My mother-in-law is disabled and old and she can't go to a good doctor of her choice and medicare doesn't even cover an MRI.

It isn't that the system is working perfectly now. Actually it sucks and needs to be fully reformed.

[britty 1]

this is just the beginning. The elderly in the UK wait years for certain treatments or operations, and some naturally die before their hospital letter arrives in the mail. So many are misdiagnosed and simply not informed of the latest treatments that could cure or help them, instead left with older less effective measures so costs can be kept to a minimum. Welcome to socialized healthcare !!! Do not think for one minute that this is a solution - with so many people in the US, care will certainly be rationed, and the public will simply not be told about certain procedures that could help them or save their lives. If you have no healthcare right now then something is better than nothing, but I for one will not use a socialized system when the private one has already helped me in what could have been a life threatening situation. I have a cousin in the UK who has fibroids. She was rushed to the emergency room recently with terrible pains, and she thought something had ruptured or similar. After spending a night in the hospital, the doctor on shift told her that he could inject her through her naval to shrink the problematic fibroid. Luckily, she decided to call her private healthcare doctor who went nuts, and asked for the doctor's details. Apparently, she should have been offered a much more expensive operation as the naval injection would have brought on a very early menopause and rendered her unable to bear children - she is 31. Shocking.

[lostinblue 1,989]

I thought Daschle was out of the running re the health-care reform because of his dodgy tax record. Perhaps I am wrong.

Why not read the article before making a comment.

These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.”

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aLzfDxfbwhzs

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).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

It will be a ###### to get old in this country. Anyone from england care to comment on this article.

? What... you expected the UK health system to be free of controversy?

Who knew...

They prioritise... If there is a shortage of donor organs, they'll give the liver/kidneys etc to the person most likely to derive the most benefit from the procedure. Its a budget issue.

While there are consistent standards sent down from the Dept of health to ensure the availability of care for all, its local Primary Care Trusts who set the spending priorities in different parts of the country. That can mean that some procedures aren't available, or that some treatments must be paid for privately.

Certainly the UK health system is far from perfect (or even ideal) but on balance its easily on a par with the standard of care I've received here under private insurance. Certainly I've seen enough here to understand that the only people who really benefit from private healthcare are the very wealthy, and the whole thing is sold on this rose-tinted notion of "freedom of choice", that in all practicality means very little to people living on low or medium incomes.

Of course the real measure of how healthy the population is can be seen in things like the average life expectancy, infant mortality, and survival rates of common diseases.

Edited February 10, 2009 by Paul Daniels

[Jasman0717 9]

I thought Daschle was out of the running re the health-care reform because of his dodgy tax record. Perhaps I am wrong.

daschle is like a freaking boomerang, he'll never go away.

Kind of like a bad habit, keeps coming back