Here’s Your National Health Care

There are those of you who support the Confiscation Of Your Hard Earned Money To Be Given Away As A Reward To Liberal Cronies Ac t of 2009, commonly referred to as the stimulus bill. According to most polls, you are not in the majority.

This is directed to the 35-40% of you who have expressed support for the massive spending boondoggle making its way through congress. It’s also directed at those who have been clamoring for nationalized health care, and I know most of you who support the one are supporters of the other.

Are you aware of the provisions in the stimulus package that deal with health care? Let’s look at some things that will happen as a result of this ‘stimulus’ package.

Medical treatments will be tracked electronically. This will help prevent duplication of tests and errors. Okay, not so bad so far.

A new government agency will be created to monitor what treatments you are getting. This way, the government can decide what treatments are appropriate and “cost effective.” Most of this was taken straight from Tom “Taxes? What Taxes?” Daschle, who wrote in a 2008 book that doctors have to “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Doctors who are deemed not to be “meaningful users” by a government bureaucracy will be penalized. Specifics such as what constitutes meaningful and penalties are not defined, but are left up to the government, specifically the HHS Secretary and an appointed board that will lord over the medical profession.

According to Daschle, the goal of this board will be to contain health care costs by curtailing development and use of new medications and procedures. Daschle has expressed a desire that Americans stop expecting too much from our health care system (like effective treatments?) and says we should be more like Europeans who accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo (sic) experimental treatments.”

Are you following this? If you’re sick, hey deal with it, it costs too much to make you better. There’s your national health care. Create a new agency with the stated goal of slowing down research and development.

Daschle also says that seniors should not expect treatments for ailments caused by aging, but should accept them and just move on. What chances do you think a person over the age of 70 will have of getting treatments approved?

One provision in the ‘stimulus’ boondoggle will install a cost effectiveness formula that Medicare will have to follow. It involves cost versus expected years of benefit. This means older patients are less likely to have procedures approved. This is already in effect in the UK, where until recently, elderly with macular degeneration could not get treatment until they went blind in one eye.

This new bureaucracy will cost more than the entire military budget.

To those of you who support PBO without even thinking about what you are doing - thanks.