End Times and Current Events
March 28, 2024, 03:44:07 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." John 5:39 (KJB)
 
  Home Help Search Gallery Staff List Login Register  

Obama adviser admits: 'We need death panels'

Shoutbox
March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
View Shout History
Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Obama adviser admits: 'We need death panels'  (Read 1730 times)
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« on: October 02, 2012, 01:33:48 pm »

A top Democrat strategist and donor who served as President Obama’s lead auto-industry adviser recently conceded that the rationing of heath services under Obamacare is “inevitable.”

Steven Rattner advocated that such rationing should target elderly patients, while stating, “We need death panels.”

Rattner serves on the board the New America Foundation, or NAF, a George Soros-funded think tank that was instrumental in supporting Obamacare in 2010. Soros’ son, financier Jonathan Soros, is also a member of the foundation’s board.

Rattner was the so-called “car czar,” the lead auto adviser to the Treasury Department under Obama.

Last month, Rattner penned an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Beyond Obamacare” in which he proclaimed “We need death panels” and argued rationing must be instructed to sustain Obama’s health-care plan. His comments have been virtually ignored by traditional media as the president campaign’s for a second term.

“We need death panels,” began Rattner. “Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health-care resources more prudently – rationing, by its proper name – the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”

rest: http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-adviser-admits-we-need-death-panels/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2013, 08:14:47 pm »

Do penalties for smokers and the obese make sense?

Its all about control, stand up America!! The forefathers fought for way less!!!!!!!  HELLO!! i might not agree with smokers and such but to just let them die is a form of control that starts with you eat what we tell you to.

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die prematurely from their unhealthy habits?

rest: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_HEALTH_COSTS_REALITY_CHECK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-26-10-03-12
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Psalm 51:17
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 28357


View Profile
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2013, 08:31:35 pm »

Do penalties for smokers and the obese make sense?

Its all about control, stand up America!! The forefathers fought for way less!!!!!!!  HELLO!! i might not agree with smokers and such but to just let them die is a form of control that starts with you eat what we tell you to.

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die prematurely from their unhealthy habits?

rest: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_HEALTH_COSTS_REALITY_CHECK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-26-10-03-12

Yes, I agree with you, Mark.

Rom_14:5  One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
Report Spam   Logged
Kilika
Guest
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2013, 03:52:20 am »

Quote
Do penalties for smokers and the obese make sense?

Well no, of course not. That's just stupid, biased, and outright discrimination by people who could care less about others because they are more motivated by money, rather the love of money. If those people really loved their neighbor, the cost would be irrelevant, they would help their neighbor be healthier. Instead they whine about alleged costs and want to penalize and punish people. That's the attitude of people who live by the law, an eye for an eye. They insist on being "compensated" for their actions, like a tax break for "charity". As in, "What's in it for me?".

Quote
a form of control that starts with you eat what we tell you to

Good point. It's that "nanny state" method. They try to convince people that they can't take care of themselves, that the public should let the "experts" take care of it for them, that the experts know what's best for people. And if they say people are sick and need a vaccine, their reasoning is how can people dispute their "expert" doctor's opinion? Will an insurer accept their customer refusing doctor's orders? Not likely.

Employers are firing people for no flue shot, and they are experts on vaccines? Nope, but the "medical experts" say so, and corporations go by what the lawyers tell them. In a court room, lawyers reason the average person has no medical expertise, while a doctor does, so the testimony of a medical doctor will trump a parent's medical decisions for their child, or for themselves for that matter.

That corner we are being backed into is getting smaller and smaller.
Report Spam   Logged
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2013, 06:04:51 am »

Howard Dean: ObamaCare has a ‘rationing’ panel, after all

Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate, chairman of the Democratic Party, and proponent of universal health care, has said a key provision of the president's health care law will not work – and amounts to “rationing.”
 
“One major problem is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board,” Dean wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today.
 
“The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body,” he wrote. “By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.”
 
The IPAB would consist of a panel of 15 unelected “experts” who would determine appropriate treatments for maximum “cost-effectiveness.” Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said the group would have “an enormous amount of potential power” to set medical policy nationwide.
 
Dean wrote Monday that this approach would not work to control costs and had a “40-year track record of failure” – including similar measures he signed into law as governor of Vermont.
 
Instead, the result of government-mandated procedures is that “bureaucrats in... [the] public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients.”
 
“Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs,” he wrote. “The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.”
 
IPAB, whose members’ decisions about health care are fast-tracked by become law with no amendment and little oversight, cannot be annulled until 2017, and then only with a supermajority of both houses of Congress, even if the entire health care plan is repealed.
 
Critics are concerned the rush to keep prices low, while adding millions of newly insured Americans and decreasing the number of doctors, will lead to British-style denial of care.

Most outspoken was former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was widely attacked when she said health care rationing would target the weakest Americans.
 
"Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick and the elderly, and the disabled,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page in 2009. “The America I know is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's death panel, so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment on their 'level of productivity' in society, whether they are worthy of health care.”

She concluded, "Such a system is downright evil."
 
At the time, Politifact made her statement and others like it the “lie of the year.”
 
Dean personally joined the fray four years ago, saying her allegation was “made up” and suggesting it might constitute an “incitement to violence.”
 
The editorial makes a tone change for the 2004 presidential contender, who now represents the health care industry as a senior adviser to lobbying firm McKenna Long & Aldridge.
 
Rep. Phil Roe, R-TN, introduced a measure to repeal the IPAB, which he calls the “real death panel,” and 22 Democrats have signaled they wish to abolish the panel. Before his retirement, Barney Frank of Massachusetts was among them.
 
This week, he blamed the lack of progress in repealing IPAB on “the extraordinary partisanship on Capitol Hill and Republican threats to defund” ObamaCare – something Republican leadership, particularly in the Senate, has sought to avoid.
 
“In his tacit admission that the IPAB equates to a death panel and will not actually control health care costs, he's (somewhat unintentionally) hit on the argument that fiscal conservatives have made all along - the only way to get health care costs under control is to have less government intervention and more free market pressures on cost growth,” Jeff Reynolds of FreedomWorks wrote. “What Dean fails to realize is that no matter which parts of the law are tweaked, ObamaCare will always have exactly the opposite effect. ”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/howard-dean-obamacare-has-a-rationing-panel-after-all
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Psalm 51:17
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 28357


View Profile
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2013, 06:54:19 am »

Howard Dean is the Dem's version of Ron Paul - he knows how to play "good cop" and appeal to people who are fed up with the system.
Report Spam   Logged
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2013, 07:56:02 am »

UK doctors given bonuses for placing patients on ‘death lists’ - report

General practitioners in England have been receiving £50 bonuses for placing patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in order to reduce the number of occupied hospital beds. The move is yet another tactic aimed at cutting NHS costs.

http://rt.com/news/nhs-gp-bonus-deathlist-457/ 
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Psalm 51:17
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 28357


View Profile
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2013, 11:35:23 am »

UK doctors given bonuses for placing patients on ‘death lists’ - report

General practitioners in England have been receiving £50 bonuses for placing patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in order to reduce the number of occupied hospital beds. The move is yet another tactic aimed at cutting NHS costs.

http://rt.com/news/nhs-gp-bonus-deathlist-457/ 

They're going to wish they didn't at the Great White Throne of Judgment.
Report Spam   Logged
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #8 on: October 21, 2013, 07:48:53 pm »

Canada Has Death Panels
And that’s a good thing.

 Roll Eyes



Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.
Advertisement

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.

Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act has been on the books for nearly two decades. Like similar laws in many Canadian provinces—and American states—it sets out the process for making treatment decisions when a patient cannot provide or withhold her consent—when she is in a coma and on life support, for example. In such cases, power automatically shifts to a “substitute decision maker,” usually a close relative. When these family members disagree with a patient’s doctors, and when the doctors are nonetheless determined to act, the dispute generally goes to court, where it can take months or even years to resolve. That is how it works in other Canadian and American jurisdictions, anyway. In Ontario, by contrast, the provincial legislature decided in 1996 to create a quasijudicial tribunal, the Consent and Capacity Board, to make these life-and-death decisions more quickly. If a patient’s substitute decision maker withholds consent, then doctors may apply to the board—comprised of lawyers, mental health professionals, and community members—for a determination that the proposed treatment is in the patient’s best interest. If so, the board has the power to consent on the patient’s behalf.

At issue in the Ontario case was the fate of Hassan Rasouli, a retired engineer who has been comatose in a Toronto hospital since he suffered complications following brain surgery three years ago. When Rasouli’s doctors determined that he had no reasonable prospect of recovery, they sought to pull the plug. His family, convinced that Rasouli was slowly recovering, took his doctors to court.

Last Friday, they won. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5–2 that Ontario doctors may not decide to withhold treatment from patients in Rasouli’s condition without consent from the next-in-line decision maker. In Rasouli’s case, that is his wife. But, if she refuses consent, then her husband’s doctors can still ask for a ruling from Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board. The Supreme Court confirmed last week that the board has the power to overrule her.

Most media coverage of the Canadian ruling has focused on the first part—that doctors cannot overrule family members—rather than the second—that an administrative tribunal can. Most Ontarians are evidently content with—or indifferent to, or simply ignorant of—the fact that the Consent and Capacity Board has the power to make difficult, even existential health care decisions on behalf of patients who are still (technically) alive. Americans, I expect, would be apoplectic.

In Canada, with our single-payer health care system, Rasouli’s situation has a very public bottom line: Should taxpayers foot the bill for his family’s indefinite goodbye?

But American critics of Canadian health care will declare that merely asking this question is unacceptable, unethical, even unthinkable—and that it proves that the Canadian system gives doctors a dangerous incentive to kill off their patients as quickly as possible. They are wrong. The Hippocratic Oath’s promise to do no harm still applies. But they are also only wrong in part. When taxpayers provide only a finite number of acute care beds in public hospitals, a patient whose life has all but ended, but whose family insists on keeping her on life support, is occupying precious space that might otherwise house a patient whose best years are still ahead.

The incentives in the American health care system point in the opposite direction. In the United States, keeping an all-but-dead patient alive on life support in a hospital bed generates income for the hospital, for as long as its bills get paid.

Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board provides an objective process for resolving these difficult, end-of-life dilemmas. The board is instructed by law to focus on the patient’s best interests, not the health care system’s, or the government’s bottom line. Still, the law recognizes that, though it is usually in the patient’s best interests to be kept alive, it is not always so. As Rasouli’s doctors told the Supreme Court, prolonging his life would entail the risk of infection, bedsores, and organ failure. When recovery is out of the question, in other words, there may be fates worse than death.

Yet, the question remains: Who decides? Remember that, outside of Ontario, the resolution of these end-of-life disputes is generally reserved for judges. Ontario has simply replaced them with experts and wise community members. That’s a lead other jurisdictions should consider following when families’ emotions and doctors’ judgments collide.

Perhaps it is easier for Canadians to trust government-appointed panels, rather than judges, with decisions like these. For reasons that arguably go back to our respective foundings, Canadians tend to have more faith in our government and our bureaucratic processes than Americans do in theirs. Look at gun control: Canada lacks a constitutional guarantee of a right to bear arms in part because we never fought a war of independence that made one seem necessary. Similarly, when conservative politicians in the United States condemn Obamacare as a “government takeover” of health care, a lot of Canadians roll our eyes.

Still, the Rasouli family’s situation is familiar, and it will only become more commonplace. Modern medicine increasingly allows us to extend life indefinitely, and so the question is no longer whether we can “play God,” but when, how, and who should do so. When humanity demands haste, and justice demands expert knowledge, Ontario’s death panels offer a solution—whatever Sarah Palin says.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/10/canada_has_death_panels_and_that_s_a_good_thing.html

 Shocked
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #9 on: October 30, 2013, 11:43:39 am »

UK's top court: OK for hospital to stop treatment

Britain's highest court has ruled in favor of a hospital that gained court approval to withhold treatment from a terminally ill man despite the family's opposition.
 
In a unanimous judgment handed down on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeal was correct in allowing Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool to withhold treatment from David James, 68, who suffered colon cancer, organ failure and a stroke, among other problems.
 
James' doctors estimated he had a 1 percent chance of survival and applied to the Court of Protection for a legal declaration allowing it to discontinue some types of treatment, like restarting his heart if it stopped and a kidney replacement therapy. The court rejected the application on Dec. 6, but 15 days later the Court of Appeal reversed the decision. By that time, James' condition had worsened, and he died on Dec. 31.
 
Until his death, James had been dependent on a breathing machine, had a tube to provide him with basic nutrition and hydration. His doctors said "daily care tasks" caused him pain and suffering.
 
James' family argued that his care should have continued.
 
The Supreme Court judges concluded that where treatment is futile, "it would be in the best interests of the patient to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment," even if this results in the patient's death.
 
James' family said they believed he would have wanted to continue being treated and that he had not reached the point where treatment was hopeless. But lawyers for the hospital said James had severe physical and neurological damage, was steadily deteriorating and that further invasive treatments would put him at greater risk.
 
"When you can't consent, the law says we only treat you when it's in your best interests," said Penney Lewis, a professor and medical law expert at King's College London. She said British courts have previously ruled that preserving life is not always in the patient's best interests and that judges must weigh whether treatment would have any benefit for the patient, even if it doesn't cure them.
 
Though some treatments which result in minimal improvement might be considered worthy for some patients, such as those in intensive care, Lewis said that criterion wasn't met in James' case by the time the case went to the Court of Appeal, which ruled he had no chance of improving.
 
"The time had indeed come when it was no longer premature to say that it would not be in his best interests to attempt to restart his heart should it stop beating," the judges wrote in their decision.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_MED_BRITAIN_WITHHOLDING_TREATMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-30-07-25-07
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2014, 11:09:26 am »

Look DEATH PANELS in action

Sick Kids Denied Specialty Care Due to Obamacare in Washington

In Washington state, some sick kids have been denied specialty care due to Obamacare, a local news outlet reports:



"Administrators at Seattle Children's today said they predicted this would happen, and it's even worse than they expected," says the local news anchor. "Patients being denied specialty treatment at the hospital by insurance providers on the Washington health benefits exchange. Children's filed request on behalf of 125 of their patients. Of those, they say they got only 20 responses, eight of which were denials. Dr. Sandy Melzer says all this comes after reassurances of certain unique specialty cases would still be covered."

Dr. Sandy Melzer says, "Well, some of the patients who were denied are ones who clearly would fall into that unique category. A two-year-old with new significant neck mass that was being evaluated for infection or malignancy, an older child with a chronic severe medical condition requiring multidisciplinary care here, a baby that had a skull abnormality."

The anchor explains, "Children's went ahead and treated those cases anyway, but Dr. Melzer said they can't afford to keep doing that it way."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sick-kids-denied-specialty-care-due-obamacare-washington_776030.html
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #11 on: May 19, 2014, 06:43:34 am »

Death Panels: Sarah Palin was Right, Again
"Watch for this gradual, but driving, descent into statism."


 Roll Eyes

t looks like Sarah Palin was right again and this time it is with her prediction of death panels inside Obamacare.

Palin haters have long ridiculed her for suggesting such an evil practice, especially through legislation written by Democrats who have America's best interests at heart. Now, those haters are faced with the recent revelations that 40 U.S. veterans were allowed to die after being placed on secret waiting lists to receive treatment in a VA hospital in Arizona, while hospital officials hid the evidence. In a Facebook post Friday, Palin suggested that this is a prime example of her predictions under Obamacare.

In the post, Palin takes a "stroll down 'death panel' memory lane." She reminds that on Facebook in 2009, she warned of "Obama's 'death panel'" which would decide if the sick, elderly or the disabled would be considered "worthy of health care" -- a system, she says, that would be "downright evil." As Palin points out, Politifact labeled her statement 2009's "Lie of the Year." And though they agreed with her in regards to a pick-and-choose health care system would be evil, Politifact said, "It's definitely not what President Barack Obama or any other Democrat has proposed."

But Palin warns that this exactly where it is all heading and it will happen through a single-payer system:

    What happens next is the Left will subtly suggest moving America toward a single-payer system, which was their intention all along. Watch for this gradual, but driving, descent into statism.

Using President Obama and Senator Harry Reid as examples, Palin uses their own words to show this was their intention all along. In a video link, Obama is shown multiple times while as a senator, a candidate, and president touting a single-payer system. In one instance he outright says, "I am a proponent of a single-payer health care plan."

Senator Reid told the Las Vegas Sun in 2013 that he wants the country to "work [its] way past" insurance-based health care and have a system apart from private insurance.

Palin's "Lie of the Year" does not seem anywhere close to a lie now. With the breaking news of the deaths of these veterans inside a VA hospital, Palin is finally seeing America "awakening" to the reality of what big government is up to:

    I love this American Awakening when finally more voters can’t say they weren’t warned. Stamped with the media’s 'Lie of the Year', I had the sticky label on my back for years used as convenient 'proof' that commonsense conservatives just don’t know what we’re talking about. Denouncing from the Orwellian Left and a squishy Right ensued. But the truth stares us in the face and pocketbook, especially as we see the unworkable Obamacare.

She concludes:

    And speaking of the VA scandal, we’ve seen how Obama merely gives lip service to his bureaucrats 'investigating' his bureaucracy, so don’t be surprised if he finds nothing wrong in the government’s VA health system – 'NOT EVEN A SMIDGEN'!

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/death-panels-sarah-palin-was-right-again
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Psalm 51:17
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 28357


View Profile
« Reply #12 on: May 19, 2014, 12:10:12 pm »

Make no mistake - Palin is on the evil side as well - she's merely playing a similar role Ron Paul has in the "truth" movement, where she plays "good" cop(in terms of acting like a friend to the Patriot/GOP et al movements).

As for Palin - one of Obama's federal court nominees also happened to be one of Palin's Alaska SC nominees(where this judge supports abortion).

Ultimately, beware of all of the snakes in the room!
Report Spam   Logged
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #13 on: August 31, 2014, 10:37:11 am »

Coverage for End-of-Life Talks Gaining Ground

 Five years after it exploded into a political conflagration over “death panels,” the issue of paying doctors to talk to patients about end-of-life care is making a comeback, and such sessions may be covered for the 50 million Americans on Medicare as early as next year.

Bypassing the political process, private insurers have begun reimbursing doctors for these “advance care planning” conversations as interest in them rises along with the number of aging Americans. People are living longer with illnesses, and many want more input into how they will spend their final days, including whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, and whether they want full-fledged life-sustaining treatment, just pain relief or something in between. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, recently began covering the sessions for Medicaid patients.

But far more significant, Medicare may begin covering end-of-life discussions next year if it approves a recent request from the American Medical Association, the country’s largest association of physicians and medical students. One of the A.M.A.’s roles is to create billing codes for medical services, codes used by doctors, hospitals and insurers. It recently created codes for end-of-life conversations and submitted them to Medicare.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, would not discuss whether it will agree to cover end-of-life discussions; its decision is expected this fall. But the agency often adopts A.M.A. recommendations, which are developed in meetings attended by its representatives. And the political environment is less toxic than it was when the “death panel” label was coined; although there are still opponents, there are more proponents, including Republican politicians.

If Medicare adopts the change, its decision will also set the standard for private insurers, encouraging many more doctors to engage in these conversations.

“We think it’s really important to incentivize this kind of care,” said Dr. Barbara Levy, chairwoman of the A.M.A. committee that submits reimbursement recommendations to Medicare. “The idea is to make sure patients and their families understand the consequences, the pros and cons and options so they can make the best decision for them.”

Now, some doctors conduct such conversations for free or shoehorn them into other medical visits. Dr. Joseph Hinterberger, a family physician here in Dundee, wants to avoid situations in which he has had to decide for incapacitated patients who had no family or stated preferences.

Recently, he spent an unreimbursed hour with Mary Pat Pennell, a retired community college dean, walking through advance directive forms. Ms. Pennell, 80, who sold her blueberry farm and lives with a roommate and four cats, quickly said she would not want to be resuscitated if her heart or lungs stopped. But she took longer to weigh options if she was breathing but otherwise unresponsive.

“I’d like to be as comfortable as I can possibly be,” she said at first. “I don’t want to choke, and I don’t want to throw up.”
Continue reading the main story

With reimbursement, “I’d do one of these a day,” said Dr. Hinterberger, whose 3,000 patients in the Finger Lakes region range from college professors to Mennonite farmers who tie horse-and-buggies to his parking lot’s hitching post.

If Medicare covers end-of-life counseling, that could profoundly affect the American way of dying, experts said. But the impact would depend on how much doctors were paid, the allowed frequency of conversations, whether psychologists or other nonphysicians could conduct them, and whether the conversations must be in person or could include phone calls with long-distance family members. Paying for only one session and completion of advance directives would have limited value, experts said.

“This notion that somehow a single conversation and the completion of a document is really an important intervention to the outcome of care is, I think, a legal illusion,” said Dr. Diane E. Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care. “It has to be a series of recurring conversations over years.”

End-of-life planning remains controversial. After Sarah Palin’s “death panel” label killed efforts to include it in the Affordable Care Act in 2009, Medicare added it to a 2010 regulation, allowing the federal program to cover “voluntary advance care planning” in annual wellness visits. But bowing to political pressure, the Obama administration had Medicare rescind that portion of the regulation. In doing so, Medicare wrote that it had not considered the viewpoints of members of Congress and others who opposed it.

Politically, the issue was dead. But private insurers, often encouraged by doctors, began taking steps.

“We are seeing more insurers who are reimbursing for these important conversations,” said Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade association. The industry, which usually uses Medicare billing codes, had created its own code under a system that allows that if Medicare does not have one, and more insurance companies are using it or covering the discussions in other ways.

This year, for example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan began paying an average of $35 per conversation, face to face or by phone, conducted by doctors, nurses, social workers and others. And Cambia Health Solutions, which covers 2.2 million patients in Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington, started a program including end-of-life conversations and training in conducting them.

Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield of New York does something similar, and its medical director, Dr. Patricia Bomba, has spearheaded the development of New York’s advance directive system. Doctors can be reimbursed $150 for an hourlong conversation to complete the form, and $350 for two hours.

Dr. Hinterberger learned of Excellus’s coverage when he called recently to ask about end-of-life discussions, but even if he undergoes Excellus’s training to qualify for reimbursement, most of his older patients have only Medicare.
Continue reading the main story

End-of-life planning has also resurfaced in Congress. Two recent bipartisan bills would have Medicare cover such conversations, and a third, introduced by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, would pay Medicare patients for completing advance directives.

But few people think the bills can pass.

“The politics are tough,” said Dr. Phillip Rodgers, co-chairman of public policy for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. “People are so careful about getting anywhere close to the idea that somebody might be denying lifesaving care.”

Burke Balch, director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, said in a statement that many doctors believed in “hastening death for those deemed to have a ‘poor quality of life.’ ” If Medicare covers advance care planning, he said, that plus cost-saving motivations will pressure patients “to reject life-preserving treatment.”

Doctors deny that.

“Honestly, sometimes I’m making an argument that treatment is not as bad as you think because of our ability to mitigate side effects,” said Dr. Thomas Gribbin, a Grand Rapids, Mich., oncologist who recently persuaded two Michigan insurers to cover end-of-life conversations.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Ed
11 minutes ago

I thought the idea of death panels was supposed to be absurd. Looks like it's happening. Only I didn't think insurance companies would be on...
EJZimmerman
24 minutes ago

There's a lot of money in terminal care. The politicos who are lobbied by health care interests do not want anyone to die before they are...
John Poggendorf
29 minutes ago

SWELL! NOW.....where's what we're REALLY needing here, to wit: a "right to pull the plug at a time of YOUR OWN choosing when you've had...

    See All Comments
    Write a comment

It is unclear if advance care planning saves money, but some studies suggest that it reduces hospitalizations. Many people prefer to die at home or in hospices, so cost-saving can be an inadvertent result, said Dr. William McDade, president of the Illinois State Medical Society, which asked the A.M.A. to create codes for the discussions.

The conversations do not lock people into decisions, and studies show that some change their minds in a crisis.

But evidence suggests that discussions can make a difference. One study found that cancer patients who previously discussed end-of-life preferences with doctors more often received care matching those wishes. Other studies suggest planning lowers stress in patients and families.

Reimbursement rates for talking are much lower than for medical procedures. But doctors say that without compensation, there is pressure to keep appointments short to squeeze in more patients. “Not to be crass about this, you’re just giving that service away,” Dr. Rodgers said.

Recently, Dr. Hinterberger took time from other patients and his duties at Schuyler Hospital in Montour Falls, N.Y., to conduct end-of-life conversations in his frank, casual style.

He told Ms. Pennell that if she experienced severe pneumonia or a serious accident, doctors might consider putting her on a ventilator or inserting a feeding tube. She could stipulate that she wanted only pain relief, essentially instructing doctors to “just kiss me and tell me you love me,” he said. Or she could ask for short-term interventions in case “you perk back up.” Or she could indicate, “I want everything. Just do it, do it,” he said.

“The middle option,” she eventually decided.

When Janice Ryan, 89, a former protective services worker with a bone marrow disorder, said she wanted nothing “unless I can recover and feel wonderful,” Dr. Hinterberger gently suggested allowing doctors to try.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

“Give the doc some options,” said her husband, Dick, a retired professor. She agreed, but added, “I want quality of life; I don’t want to just be a vegetable.”

Dr. Hinterberger spent 40 minutes with Helen Hurley, 83, whose lung disease requires her to use nasal tubes connected to an oxygen tank she carries in a flowered bag. Then she tired, asking to finish the discussion in future visits, “a little at a time.”

But Mary Ann Zebrowski, 75, a retired vineyard worker with diabetes and arrhythmia, had a lot to say. She described her husband’s collapse in 2008, saying she was glad he had been resuscitated, but felt pressured to agree to a feeding tube because a doctor said, “What are you trying to do, kill your husband?” She eventually decided to remove the tube and let him die.

She said she wanted no feeding tube for herself, but short trials of other measures. Afterward, she seemed relieved, saying, “I just don’t want to put my kids through having to make these decisions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/health/end-of-life-talks-may-finally-overcome-politics.html?_r=0
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #14 on: September 01, 2014, 06:10:05 am »

Feds May Reimburse Medicare 'End-of-Life Discussions' After Mocking Palin's 'Death Panels'

Years after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was mocked for being concerned about "death panels," the federal government may reimburse Medicare doctors for end-of-life consultations that critics say would only encourage sick patients to reject costly treatments to prolong life.

The New York Times reports that "Medicare may begin covering end-of-life discussions next year if it approves a recent request from the American Medical Association," which is "the country’s largest association of physicians and medical students" and creates "billing codes for medical services, codes used by doctors, hospitals and insurers."

According to the Times, the group "recently created codes for end-of-life conversations and submitted them to Medicare" and The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to make a decision in the fall that could "profoundly affect the American way of dying."

As the Times notes, "end-of-life planning remains controversial," especially after Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's "'death panel' label killed efforts to include it" in Obamacare. The Obama administration tried to sneak in a provision in a 2010 regulation before it "had Medicare rescind that portion of the regulation" after intense political pressure.

Now, the federal government may try again.

Doctors and bureaucrats have insisted that end-of-life counseling would not lead to rationing, but "Burke Balch, director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee," disagreed, telling the Times that many doctors actually believe in "hastening death for those deemed to have a ‘poor quality of life.’" He said that doctors and bureaucrats may use these sessions to pressure patients to “to reject life-preserving treatment," according to the Times.

That was exactly the point Palin hammered during the "death panels" debate. She wrote that Obama's "Advance Care Planning Consultation" would have a "coercive effect" on patients because consultations would be "unauthorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is 'to reduce the growth in health care spending.'"

"Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?" she wrote in 2009. She pointed out that even left-wing Washington Post "columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described 'true believer,'" agreed that "If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.”

On August 7, 2009, Palin injected "death panels" into the Obamacare debate:

    And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

“Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that Obamacare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life and death decisions about health care funding,” Palin later reiterated. “It’s called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and its purpose all along has been to ‘keep costs down’ by actually denying care via price controls and typically inefficient bureaucracy. This subjective rationing of care is what I was writing about in that first post.”

Politifact, though, crowned her statement as its 2009 “Lie of the Year": “We agree with Palin that such a system would be evil. But it's definitely not what President Barack Obama or any other Democrat has proposed.”

A lot has changed since then.

Prominent liberals like ">Paul Krugman, Howard Dean, and former Obama adviser Steve Rattner have since conceded that "death panels" had to be added to Obamacare.

Rattner even lamented that Palin's "rant about death panels even forced elimination from the bill of a provision to offer end-of-life consultations" and Obamacare “regrettably includes severe restrictions on any reduction in Medicare services or increase in fees to beneficiaries."

“We need death panels,” Rattner simply wrote. “Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”

Rattner continued by noting that "Medicare needs to take a cue from Willie Sutton, who reportedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was."

“The big money in Medicare is not to be found in Mr. Ryan’s competition or Mr. Obama’s innovation, but in reducing the cost of treating people in the last year of life, which consumes more than a quarter of the program’s budget," Rattner emphasized.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/31/Feds-May-Reimburse-Medicare-End-of-Life-Discussions-After-Mocking-Palin-s-Death-Panels
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Psalm 51:17
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 28357


View Profile
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2015, 12:28:06 pm »

http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/health-insurance-startup-collapses-in-iowa/
Health Insurance Startup Collapses In Iowa
By   Clay Masters, Iowa Public Radio January 14, 2015

It was a heck of a Christmas for David Fairchild and his wife, Clara Peterson. They found out they were about to lose their new health insurance.

“Clara was listening to the news on Iowa Public Radio and that’s how we found out,” Fairchild says. They went to their health plan’s website that night. “No information. We still haven’t gotten a letter about it from them.”

The two are the sole employees of a cleaning service and work nights. Fairchild has chronic leukemia but treats it with expensive medicine. Last year they saved hundreds of dollars switching from the insurer Wellmark to a plan run by CoOportunity Health. For the first time in a long time, Fairchild says, they felt like they had room to breathe.

Married couple David Fairchild and Clara Peterson stand in the living room of the Story City home. They own a small cleaning business and were on CoOpportunity Health before it faltered (Photo by Clay Masters/IPR)
Married couple David Fairchild and Clara Peterson stand in the living room of the Story City home. They own a small cleaning business and were on Co-Opportunity Health before it faltered (Photo by Clay Masters/IPR)

“Basically it covered our office visits; covered exams,” he says. “It covered all but $40 of the medicine every four weeks. It was just marvelous. It probably was too good to be true.”

It was for them. CoOportunity Health has failed. The Affordable Care Act set aside funding for health care co-ops, to enable the organizations to compete in places where there aren’t many insurers. CoOportunity Health was the second largest co-op in the country in terms of membership, and one of the largest in terms of the federal funding it received.

But then CoOportunity hit a kind of perfect storm, says Peter Damiano, director of the University of Iowa’s public policy center. First, the co-op had to pay a lot more medical bills than those in charge expected.

“CoOportunity Health’s pool of people was larger than expected, was sicker than expected,” Damiano says. “So their risk became much greater than the funds that were available,”


The reason the co-op’s customers were sicker has a lot to do with what the insurance market looked like in Iowa before Obamacare. The largest insurer by far in the state was and still is Wellmark. But Wellmark decided not to offer any plans on Iowa’s health exchange, leaving just CoOportunity and one other insurer — Coventry — offering plans on the exchange throughout the state.

On top of that, when the Obama administration in late 2013 allowed people to keep the insurance plan they already had, many customers happy with Wellmark stayed put. Damiano says this meant many of the customers who flocked to CoOportunity tended to be like Fairchild — people with expensive health problems who’d had trouble paying for insurance before, in the market Wellmark dominated.

“It was always going to be a challenging market to try to reach,” says Damiano, “and on top of that, the whole idea of co-ops was relatively new and experimental. But it was to try to create competition, on that private sector approach,” says Damiano.

Not only were the patients sicker, but CoOportunity’s leaders initially thought they would enroll about 12,000 people in Iowa and Nebraska. They got about ten times that, according to Nick Gerhart, Iowa’s insurance commissioner.

Also, Gerhart says, the co-op thought it was going to get more federal money.

“On December 16 around 4 o’clock we were informed they weren’t going to get any further funding,” he says. “Nothing was pulled — it just wasn’t extended further.”

Gerhart is now essentially the CEO of the co-op because the state has taken it over. He likens the situation to a small business suddenly having its credit shut off by the bank. Even though CoOportunity is not officially dead yet, Gerhart is telling its customers to switch insurers.

He says it’s too early to make predictions about the fate for all co-ops.

“Ours was the second largest in the country, so you’ve got to look at it that way.” Gerhart says. “If the second largest can’t make it, how viable are the other ones? I don’t know. But at the end of the day they didn’t have enough capital to support 120,000 members.”

In a written statement, Dr. Martin Hickey, chairman of the board of the National Alliance of State Health Co-Ops, said, “The news about CoOportunity Health is not a statement on the health insurance co-op program or the co-op concept. It’s a reflection on the fact that all insurers — not just co-ops — are operating in unique markets with unique business plans and varying state regulations. The circumstances for CoOportunity Health in Iowa are not the same as those in the 23 other states in which co-ops are currently operating.”

But the co-op’s failure in Iowa has left David Fairchild and Clara Peterson scratching their heads.

“I mean the whole Affordable Care Act is [about] competition between insurance companies, and now we’re back down to what?” says Peterson.

For them, only one option: Coventry. They’ve already applied through healthcare.gov and now they’re now waiting for approval for a plan that will cover a lot less of Fairchild’s medicine expenses.
Report Spam   Logged
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #16 on: March 01, 2015, 08:04:19 am »

Death Panels: New 29-Point Checklist Determines if Elderly Person May Die in 30 Days

“Obamacare’s shoddy implementation doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its great evil,” reported Breitbart late last year, referring to the healthcare rationing that is insidiously hidden within the pages of the evasive law. Perhaps the most alarming criterion of healthcare rationing found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the plan’s death panel language.

Democrats vehemently denied that death panels would play a role in the ACA, but the law itself states that doctors will be paid to have discussions with patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life options.

Killing patients whose perceived utility is declining is not exclusively an American phenomenon. The idea has shaped the healthcare system in the UK for decades, where the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) has been a fixture of end-of-life care.

Unfortunately, however, the LCP has morphed into a utilitarian means of freeing hospital beds and lowering healthcare costs – the unavoidable slippery slope that is presented any time the value of human beings is measured in monetary terms (as socialized healthcare plans do).  The LCP has been engulfed in controversy in recent years and has signaled a possible end to the program.  After repeated cases of shocking abuse, LCP will be phased out through the elimination of pallative care options for patients in the final days or hours of life.

Similarly, Australia has just released a 29-point checklist to be used by physicians to determine whether an elderly person is likely to die within 30 days. The checklist includes criteria such as low blood pressure, high- or low pulse, hypoglycemia, and low urinary output. But critics of the checklist posit the fact that human beings routinely defy mathematical odds and believe that aligning the probabilities of life or death with a checklist is demeaning.

With the ACA, America descends down the same dangerous paths. In addition to the ACA’s death panel language, there are shocking discrepancies between mainstream medical recommendations for preventive and diagnostic care, and provisions for such care as recommended by the federal government.

Click here to sign up for daily pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

The US Preventive Services Task Force (PSTF) is the Congress-appointed body whose job is to recommend guidelines for preventive services, screenings, and medications. In conjunction with Obamacare, the Task Force recommendations have become conspicuously stingier.

For example, the Task Force only recommends routine mammograms for women ages 50-74, while the Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society both recommend annual mammograms for women over age 40 (without the cap at age 74). In fact, findings from a large study indicate that breast cancer deaths decreased by nearly 30% in women who obtained annual screenings starting at age 40.  Similar discrepancies exist between Task Force recommendations for colonoscopies and prostate cancer screenings, and those of widely-respected medical associations.

According to the Annals of Family Medicine, Breitbart continues, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (currently Sylvia Burwell; formerly disgraced Kathleen Sebelius) possesses the power to add and remove preventive services based on their rating by the Preventive Services Task Force. Checks and balances? We think not.

http://www.lifenews.com/2015/02/13/death-panels-new-29-point-checklist-determines-if-elderly-person-may-die-in-30-days/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #17 on: December 11, 2015, 06:19:12 pm »

TEXAS 'DEATH PANEL' RULES CONSCIOUS PATIENT MUST DIE



A bioethics committee at Houston's Methodist Hospital has ruled that a patient's life support treatment should be ended, despite the fact that the patient has consciously expressed the desire to live and continue receiving support. According to Breitbart:

Dunn is a former sheriff’s deputy and has worked as a Homeland Security officer but had no health insurance when he got sick. He has been in the hospital for eight weeks since a noncancerous mass was found where his small intestine connects to the pancreas. Ms. Kelly says the mass is squeezing off the small intestine and is affecting his liver and kidneys.
Dunn's mother believes that decision was influenced by the fact that Dunn has no health insurance. Texas is one of the few states that allows a panel to determine the life and death of patients when there is disagreement between the patient's physician and their family or the patients themselves. Under Texas law, if an attending physician refuses to honor a patient's requests for care or an advance directive, that decision then goes before an ethics or medical committee.

Dunn's lawer believes that the Texas statute denies a patient all due process rights and is unconstitutional. “A criminal on death row in Texas has more rights than a patient in a Texas hospital" he said.

A Harris County judge has granted two consecutive two-week extensions thus far, but Houston Methodist Hospital has countered these interventions with additional court filings to remove Chris’s mother from the process. His mother, Evelyn, has been vigilant in protecting Chris since he is intermittently sedated.

Please sign the petition to let Chris live!

THE PETITION

https://actright.com/petition/182
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
Free SMF Hosting - Create your own Forum

Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy