Another Grim Tale of Health Care Denied

Congressman Bart Stupak's words about ObamaCare from his resignation speech this morning:

Last month, we finally accomplished what I set out to do 18 years ago - we passed comprehensive national health care reform.

I'm proud to have helped bring it across the finish line for an important reason - it will significantly improve the health and prosperity of our Michigan families.

32 million more Americans, including 38,000 people living in Northern Michigan, will now have health insurance.

More than 197,000 in Northern Michigan will see their costs lowered, and all families will receive important consumer protections so that they no longer have to live in fear of being one illness or injury away from bankruptcy.

And from Don Surber, the grim reality of nationalised health care:

That’s right. Nikki Phelps, a 37-year-old mother of twin 2-year-old boys, and her husband, Bill, have to sell their $300,000 home in order to pay for a cancer fighting drug that her insurer shamelessly won’t provide.

The couple already has depleted its life savings on this drug in her 10-year battle against cancer.

The drug, Sutent, is said to double her life expectancy from her kidney cancer.

Yet there is nothing President Obama can do to force this insurer to do the right thing.

That’s because the insurer is the British government.

You see, Nikki and Bill Phelps live in England, where the mission of the universal health care program is to save money, not lives.

In England, the life and death decisions are made by a committee called the NICE panel.  As Paul Krugman admitted a week ago, ObamaCare empowers an "advisory board" whose decisions on care will be, Krugman said between fits of laughter, final.  Final, indeed.

Haven't heard Nancy or Harry, or even good ol' Bart say too much about the "advisory board".   Never a good idea to let the cat out of the bag too early.  But look to Great Britain or Canada for a clear picture of the future of health care here.  And then vote in November.

Thanks for Clearing Everything Up

I found a nifty little video at At The Point of a Gun in which Paul Krugman clears up once and for all any misconceptions about "the panels" (note how everyone laughs about death panels and saving money, as if it is some kind of inside joke):



So, there you have it.  In Krugman's own words-death panels save money and we have one but it is called an "advisory board".  The panel will decide which treatments are "worth" the money and which are not and their decisions will be binding. 

A friend of mine was showing off pictures of his great niece and great nephew the other day.  The twins, who were born weighing barely a pound each at 27 weeks are cute as can be.  Their great uncled beamed at the sight of the (now) healthy and happy infants.  Whatever their care cost was worth every penny.  But of course, that is my opinion and my opinion, unlike that of a faceless advisory board, is not binding.

It wasn't too long ago that Krugman mocked the ignorant Right for believing in death panels yet  now, he embraces them as necessary to ObamaCare.  It says a lot about Krugman's honesty and the honesty of the Left who have made it clear that they are more than willing to lie to get their agenda through.

A Preview of Things to Come

Forty thousand women die of breast cancer in the United States every year. This number has steadily declined since 1990 and that decline can be summed up in two words-early detection. Consider this from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

What a difference six months — and a health-care overhaul proposal — can make! Just six months ago, the U.S Preventive Services Task Force, which works within the Department of Health and Human Services as a “best practice” panel on prevention, sounded a warning signal over a slight decline in annual mammograms among women in their 40s. In fact, they warned women of this age bracket that they could be risking their lives if they didn’t get the annual preventive exam (via HA reader Devil’s Advocate):

The downward trend, however slight, has breast cancer experts worried. Mammograms can enable physicians to diagnose the disease at early stages, often before a lump can be felt. “When breast cancer is detected early, it often can be treated before it has a chance to spread in the body and increase the risk of dying from the disease,” says Katherine Alley, medical director of the breast health program at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.

The U.S Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts working under the Department of Health and Human Services, recommends that women older than 40 get a mammogram every one to two years. The task force finds the test most helpful for women between ages 50 and 69, for whom it says the evidence is strongest that screening lowers death rates from breast cancer. Other groups, including the American Medical Association, suggest a more rigorous schedule, saying the test should be done every year; insurers often pay for annual tests.

But today, that same panel says … never mind:

“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully.”

What changed? ObamaCare. Government run health care programs universally cut funding for preventative tests in order to hold costs down. What is the government panel’s reasoning? Consider this:

While annual mammography for all women beginning at age 40 reduced the death rate from breast cancer by at least 15 percent, the modeling studies indicated that the added benefit of starting before age 50 was modest, the researchers concluded. (emphasis mine)

The panel admits that screenings save lives but not enough to justify the cost. Welcome to nationalize health care ladies, your life has just been reduced to dollars and cents. But wait, it gets even better-the panel is also recommending against women performing self examines!

Think you’ll just ignore the new recommendations? You are free to do that and your doctor is free to order a mammogram, but any tests outside of the panels recommendations will be paid by the patient and not covered under the government program. Your covered by a private program? Guess how private companies decide what procedures to cover-yep, the decision is based on the panel’s recommendation.

I’ll leave you with these words from Wizbang:

ObamaCare hasn't even passed the Senate yet, and already this task force seems to be implementing cost cutting measures in anticipation of the government's increased financial stake in the health care of millions of Americans. And if this doesn't concern you, keep in mind that Pelosi's health care bill that just passed the House is chock full of new government health care task forces that will issue all manner of new recommendations, the vast majority of which will probably be that citizens should postpone screenings for various cancers, illnesses, and disorders.

And President Obama said no one should come between you and your doctor. What he meant is that no one should come between you and your doctor - except a government health care task force.

h/t Memeorandum

Pages 80-81 Of The Baucus Bill: Death Panels

Via Memeorandum:

From a Washington Times editorial-Death Panels by Proxy:

Yes, there are death panels. Its members won't even know whose deaths they
are causing. But under the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance
Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, death panels will indeed exist - oh so cleverly disguised as accountants.

The offending provision is on Pages 80-81 of the unamended Baucus bill,
hidden amid a lot of similar legislative mumbo-jumbo about Medicare payments to
doctors. The key sentence: "Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five
percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the
90th percentile of national utilization." Translated into plain English, it
means that in any year in which a particular doctor's average per-patient
Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the
doctor's payments by 5 percent.

If I understand this provision, the more care a physician gives, the less they will be paid. Doctors are already paid less for treating the elderly through Medicare so the bill would cut reimbursement even more if a doctor exceeds a threshold set by bureaucrats. This creates a disincentive for doctors to provide for their patients as they see fit. And because doctors won't know when they are about to cross the threshold, it means that they will be forced to cut treatment for all seniors.

This will lead to rationing and as we've seen in Canada and particularly Great Britain, rationing leads to premature death.

Forget results. This provision makes no account for the results of care,
its quality or even its efficiency. It just says that if a doctor authorizes
expensive care, no matter how successfully, the government will punish him by
scrimping on what already is a low reimbursement rate for treating Medicare
patients. The incentive, therefore, is for the doctor always to provide less
care for his patients for fear of having his payments docked. And because no
doctor will know who falls in the top 10 percent until year's end, or what total
average costs will break the 10 percent threshold, the pressure will be intense
to withhold care, and withhold care again, and then withhold it some more. Or at
least to prescribe cheaper care, no matter how much less effective, in order to
avoid the penalties.

The National Right to Life Committee concludes that this provision will
cause a "death spiral" by "ensur[ing] that doctors are forced to ration care for
their senior citizen patients." Every 10th doctor in the country will fall
victim to it. Libertarian columnist Nat Hentoff calls the provision "insidious"
and writes that "the nature of our final exit" will be very much at risk.

The cynic in me wonders if provisions like this might be the reason that Baucus is fighting the full release of the bill prior to it being voted on. Baucus claims that it would delay the bill but when spending a trillion dollars a two week delay is not only reasonable but full disclosure is necessary. The only logical reason for not putting the bill online is to prevent the public from knowing what is in it until it is too late.

Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., himself admitted that “This probably sounds a
little crazy to some people that we are voting on something before we have seen
legislative language.” Indeed.

Crazy and sneaky.

Distorting The Terri Schiavo Case

Via Memeorandum:

If the Left wishes to bring the heart breaking case of Terri Schiavo in to the health care debate something more honest than The Schiavo Saga and “Death Panels”. The author attempts to smear those who tried unsuccessfully to protect Terri as hypocrites:

This isn't just an amusing example of hypocrisy, however. It's worth noting that both the demand for federal intervention in the Schiavo case, and the "death panel" smear, have largely emanated from the Right-to-Life movement (the latter via their most prominent spokesperson, Sarah Palin), which routinely suggests that legalized abortion will eventually lead to government-sponsored euthanasia. Indeed, though it hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as the "death panel" talk, health reform opponents have often claimed (without any real evidence) that reform is intended to promote publicly-financed abortions as well as euthanasia.

The abortion-euthanasia connection matters because the people promoting the "death panel" meme are not, in fact, opposed to government intervention in end-of-life decisions, any more than they are opposed to government intervention in a woman's decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term. They simply want the intervention to follow their own absolutist views about human life.


First, Conservatives are not now nor have they ever been opposed to advanced directives. Making end of life decisions when healthy spares loved ones from guessing at what somebody might desire when they are no longer able to speak for themselves. Had Terri Schiavo had a Living Will, none of the drama that occurred after her heart attack would have taken place. Unfortunately, she had not made her feelings known and her family disagreed. Her husband, who had been living with another woman and fathered two children with her, wanted Terri disconnected from life support. Her parents disagreed and contended that Mr. Schiavo had forfeited his rights to Terri by living in a ‘marriage arrangement’ with another woman. In the absence of any directive by Terri, conservatives agreed with the parents and felt that if there were an error to be made, it should be made on the side of life.

There is no hypocrisy. Conservatives consistently favor preserving and protecting innocent life. Liberals consistently have shown no interest in preserving life, at least not human life. Perhaps if Terri had been a whale, things would have been different.

This Is What Our President Wants For Us?

From Mark Steyn:

Okay, You Don't Like the Term 'Death Panels' . . .

. . . so how about "life-and-death panels"?

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

I am trying to wrap my head around this. Mr. Mercado couldn't receive life saving treatment in his own (advanced) country, but he needed permission to receive treatment in the United States?

And, where will our loved ones go when their treatment is refused here?

Why Are Elitists So Dumb?

Rationing and Rationality in the National Review has set off quite the little web war. Stacy McCain thinks that Rich Lowry should be fired:

Accusing Sarah Palin (and her supporters) of "hysteria" over health care?
Once again, as I said two weeks ago, National Review contributes more evidence for the prosecution in the continuing case of Why Rich Lowry Should Have Been Fired No Later Than 2001.

Riehl World View:

NRO: Palin Is Hysterical

I suppose the boy Editor will eventually argue, "Well, it was only her words, you see". As if the childish looking dupe could ever pull off a decent Buckley imitation.

What is it going to take for conservatives to finally accept that William F. is dead, the heirs to the throne, with too few exceptions, are a bunch of 2nd and 3rd generation elitist brats who belong to the Inside the Beltway set? They are not a part of the conservative movement that must re-define American politics, just as Reagan did, if there is to be anything like conservatism going forward in the nation's political discourse.

And from Andrew McCarthy:

I did indeed say, "few people worried about death panels think the process will be anything so crude" as what the editorial describes as "deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved." From this, you conclude that, "in other words," I agree with the editorial that the death panels won't be "literal death panels." That's just wrong. I most certainly do not agree that the editorial's narrow description of a death panel's function — namely, "deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved" — establishes the "literal" definition of what a death panel is.

I am getting the feeling that Rich Lowry is what my mother calls “an educated idiot.” He really shouldn’t write about things that he obviously knows nothing of. Nobody is saying that there will be a government team whose sole purpose will be to travel from hospital to hospital pulling the plug on Grannie. However, it is reasonable that a public option will lead to rationing. Rationing will lead to certain care being allowed or disallowed. As a result of these decisions, under a government plan some people will not receive treatment which could reasonably result in death.

Let me break it down. Let’s say that I earn forty thousand dollars a year. Based on the resources at my disposal I make decisions, ration, my housing, food intake, vehicle usage and my medical care. I can choose not to ration and live off of my credit cards but at some point the deficit in my budget will catch up with me.

The government has no real money of its own. Therefore, its resources are limited and it must make decisions, ration, how those resources are spent. When medical dollars are limited, it is reasonable that available dollars will be spent on the most productive members of society. That is reality and denying it is either delusional or disingenuous.

Sarah Palin was right. Is that simple enough for you Mr. Lowry?

"Doctor Death" Dislikes Being Quoted

Via Memeorandum:

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and currently acting as Special Advisor for Health Policy, is upset that is own extensive writings as a medical ethicist are being cast in a negative light. Emanuel is claiming that his writings are being intentionally misconstrued. You judge:

Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an article for The Hastings Center Report in 1996, in which he suggested that public deliberative forums should decide which health services should be socially guaranteed, and that those services "that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations" might be considered by this deliberative body as "basic", while "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed".

Then there is this:

May 31, 2008 (LPAC)—Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, called for a reinterpretation of the physician's Hippocratic Oath to take account of "costs" and "effect on others" (like HMOs), in an article in JAMA of June 18, 2008. The brother of Obama's chief of staff, Ezekiel Emanuel is a top designer of Obama's Hitlerian medical-care "reform," as health-care advisor to Peter Orszag's OMB and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness research. He wrote:

"At least 7 factors drive overuse [of medical care], 4 related to physicians and 3 related to patients. First, there is the matter of physician culture. Medical school education and postgraduate training emphasize thoroughness. When evaluating a patient, students, interns, and residents are trained to identify and praised for and graded on enumerating all possible diagnoses and tests that would confirm or exclude them. The thought is that the more thorough the evaluation, the more intelligent the student or house officer. Trainees who ignore the improbable 'zebra' diagnoses are not deemed insightful. In medical training, meticulousness, not effectiveness, is rewarded.

"This mentality carries over into practice. Peer recognition goes to the most thorough and aggressive physicians. The prudent physician is not deemed particularly competent, but rather inadequate. This culture is further reinforced by A UNIQUE UNDERSTANDING OF PROFESSIONAL OBLIGATIONS, SPECIFICALLY, THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH'S ADMONITION TO 'USE MY POWER TO HELP THE SICK TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY AND JUDGMENT' AS AN IMPERATIVE TO DO EVERYTHING FOR THE PATIENT REGARDLESS OF COST OR EFFECT ON OTHERS."

And there is the now infamous"Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions" in the journal The Lancet which attempts to assign "value" to patients based on their life stage.

As repugnant as I find Dr. Peter Singer, I give him credit for standing by his body of work. Emanuel feigning "hurt feelings" that his work is misunderstood smacks of incredulous, self-serving political theater. Like Singer, he said it, he should stand by it.

Is One "Death Panel" Better Than Another?

When I saw Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin by Southern Beale at Memeorandum I expected ugliness but I wasn’t prepared for what I read when I clicked on the link.

You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.

At first glance, my reaction was what a vile, nasty person Southern Beale must be. But I read on.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

Southern Beale faced something that no one should have to face. The death of a loved one is unbearable. She is angry because restrictions written into her mother’s insurance policy left her with little choice. If I were in her shoes, I would be angry as well.

My day came ten years ago. My father suffered a series of devastating strokes. The doctor told my mother and I that his chance of survival was almost non-existent. They could try the “clot buster” but if, big if, it worked, my father would be brain damaged and at least partially paralyzed. It was a horrible decision to make. My father had a Living Will but my mother didn’t want to giver her husband up.

I love my father very much and thank God that I didn’t have an insurance company telling me what my decision would be. I thank God that I have my dad for ten years longer than I would have had the decision been taken out of my hands. I can only begin to imagine how hurt and angry Southern Beale must be.

What I don’t understand is why Southern Beale would take that decision out of the family’s hands and give it to the government. I am not against insurance reform but for my dad I’ll be damned if I will support ObamaCare.