Seniors' Health Care Expendable

I wrote about the Dems health care plans and about lawyers ruining the search for new drugs--Marijuana your only drug of choice--now we learn of a stealth health care provision inserted in the porkulus bill, with no notice, no debate. Betsy McCaughey, Bloomberg. Seniors, you're expendable, no hope just change for you, the hallmark of "universal" health care--it may be "free" but you may not get any:

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

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.

Given the ObamaNation is skewed toward youth, those who voted him in may be unsympathetic to spending much on their elders, especially when they figure they're paying onerous Social Security taxes and it'll go bust before they retire. When it comes, this debate won't be pretty, especially when the president seems unable to face up to the truth himself, at least publicly.

Oh, but Congress, retired or still there, will doubtless be insulated from the hard choices. Former Dem majority leader Tom Daschle and his tax-cheating limousine liberal ilk will surely have their own luxury plan at our expense.