klaus
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Nov 18, 2009, 8:22 AM
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A recent column by Jim Brigleb posted on this site, decried the idea of entrusting a national healthcare program to an incompetent government, warning that stealth healthcare legislation might find its way into law by unscrupulous politicians attaching unpalatable healthcare schemes to popular bills.
It’s one of those things that one certainly wouldn’t put past a radical Democrat-controlled Congress in their quest to get their way, regardless of what the majority of Americans really want.
One thing for certain about comprehensive healthcare reform in the U.S. is that, if it is ever passed into law, it will result in the rationing of healthcare resources, with preference given to those who would best benefit “the common good”.
The signals portending rationing are already in abundant evidence in all areas of the federal government. During the recent H1N1 vaccination fiasco, inoculations were given to individuals based on a hierarchy of priorities with shots (rightly) being given to first responders and then (wrongly) being given to children and pregnant women. There were numerous reports of older Americans being turned away in favor of younger individuals.
One outraged senior called into the “Brian and the Judge” show on Fox radio to relate how his doctor told him that he could not give a vaccination to senior patients without written permission from the local county health commissioner.
Another sign of the healthcare rationing scheme being hatched by the Obama Administration is the recent pronouncement by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) that breast cancer screening in the form of mammograms and self-examinations should only by performed on women between the ages of 50 and 74. In a stunning reversal that is at odds with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing recommendation that all women over 40 be screened, the USPSTF claimed that the “risks and dangers” of these examinations far outweigh their benefits, claiming that mammograms and self-examinations are “stressful”.
Not as stressful as breast cancer, that’s for certain.
Other topics the USPSTF is currently working on include recommendations concerning oral cancer screening, osteoporosis screening and ovarian cancer screening. Given their recommendations regarding breast cancer, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to guess what those recommendations will be.
Having lived in Canada most of my adult life, I am familiar with the concept of how healthcare can be rationed. I have utilized the U.S. healthcare system, at my own expense on a number of occasions, because the wait for specialty care was too onerous to bear. In Canada, tests such as MRIs, can routinely involve waits of up to six months. Believe me, a six-month wait can feel like a lifetime to an individual with a herniated lumbar disc or other injuries. But in the U.S., MRIs are available on a next-day basis for as little as $400, which has numerous Canadians making day trips to the U.S. for the test.
Under the healthcare plan envisioned by the Democrat administration in the U.S., costs will quickly rise, while concomitantly, the quality and availability of care will surely fall. Most egregiously, it will be older people who’ll get stuck at the end of the line as policies formed by administration “experts” deem older Americans not worth prioritizing.
Klaus Rohrich is President and Creative Director of Taylor/Rohrich Associates Inc., a marketing and advertising firm that specializes in niche marketing retirement real estate developments
http://www.maturitymarketing.com.
(This post was edited by klaus on Dec 1, 2009, 7:47 AM)
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