Latest ObamaCare ‘Oopsie’: HealthCare Destruction Act Already Killing People

“It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.” – Robert Reich, lifelong Democrat “expert”

“A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people” – Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.” – The Hussein himself, informing a woman that it’s basically time to let her mother die.

“ObamaCare Factoid: Access To Health Care Doesn’t Mean Squat When Hospitals, Doctors And Pharmacists Bail” – Title of article by Michael Eden now factually demonstrated to have been completely right.

Before I provide the article of the day, allow me to show you some things that I posted/wrote nearly a year ago:

This is nothing compared to what might happen under Democratic health overhaul plans, which would slash Medicare spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years. As Medicare actuaries recently pointed out in understated fashion, such cuts “may be unrealistic.” But, if Congress actually carried them out, about one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies could lose money, they warned in their report. As a result, such providers could drop Medicare, leaving seniors with less access.

[…]

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t directly related to the disaster known as ObamaCare.  Democrats are gutting Medicare reimbursements and blocking the essential “doctor fix” from their bill to create the contrived and bogus illusion that their boondoggle will provide “deficit neutrality.”  They are playing all kinds of games and gimmicks, such as taxing for ten years and only providing benefits for five, to support that illusion. It will fail, and a lot of people will die.

[…]

And so, what do you think will happen when Democrats cut the reimbursement rates?  People who have commons sense know: hospitals and doctors will begin to see fewer and fewer Medicare patients, as a matter of simple economic necessity.   That isn’t a “reform,” but a disaster.

And this stuff is why the dean of the Harvard Medical School gave ObamaCare a failing grade.  It’s why the California Medical Association recently came out strongly against the bill.  It’s why more and more state governors – Democrats as well as Republicans – are beginning to scream that ObamaCare merely turns Medicaid into a giant deficit-creating unfunded mandate on the states (again, to create the illusion of being “deficit neutral”).

And, now, without further delay, the article of the day’s latest demonstration that the Democrat Party is the political arm of the devil and Barack Obama is leading America into ruin not seen since the last time socialism devastated Europe when our grandparents were young kids…

It is somehow ironically fitting that this destruction of our health care system would be described in Obama’s hometown.

Medicaid cuts: teeth pulled, transplant called off
By The Associated Press
Posted Dec 15, 2010

CHICAGO —

In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father’s liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won’t pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn’t pay for root canals.

Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some states have cut payments to doctors, paid bills late and trimmed benefits such as insulin pumps, obesity surgery and hospice care.

Lawmakers are bracing for more work when they reconvene in January. Some states face multibillion-dollar deficits. Federal stimulus money for Medicaid is soon to evaporate. And Medicaid enrollment has never been higher because of job losses.

In the view of some lawmakers, Medicaid has become a monster, and it’s eating the budget. In Illinois, Medicaid sucks up more money than elementary, secondary and higher education combined.

“Medicaid is such a large, complicated part of our budget problem, that to get our hands around it is very difficult. It’s that big. It’s that bad,” said Illinois Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and co-chairman of a bipartisan panel to reform Medicaid in Illinois, where nearly 30 percent of total spending goes to the program.

Medicaid costs are shared by the federal and state governments. It’s not just the poor and disabled who benefit. Wealthier people do, too, such as when middle-class families with elderly parents in nursing homes are relieved of financial pressure after Medicaid starts picking up the bills.

Contrary to stereotype, it’s the elderly and disabled who cost nearly 70 cents of every Medicaid dollar, not the single mother and her children.

In California, Medicaid no longer pays for many adult dental services. But it still pays for extractions, that is, tooth-pulling. The unintended consequence: Medicaid patients tell dentists to pull teeth that could be saved.

“The roots are fine. The tooth could be saved with a root canal,” said Dr. Nagaraj Murthy, who practices in Compton, Calif. “I had a patient yesterday. I said we could do a root canal. He said, ‘No, it’s hurting. Go ahead and pull it. I don’t have the money.”’

Murthy recently pulled an elderly woman’s last tooth, but Medicaid no longer pays for dentures.

“Elderly patients suffer the most,” Murthy said. “They’re walking around with no teeth.”

States can decide which optional services Medicaid covers, and dental care is among cutbacks in some places. Last year’s economic stimulus package increased the federal share of Medicaid money temporarily. But that money runs out at the end of June, when the federal government will go back to paying half the costs rather than 60 to 70 percent. So more cuts could be ahead.

During the Great Recession, millions of people relied on the Medicaid safety net. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of uninsured Americans grew by more than 5 million as workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance. Another 7 million signed up for Medicaid.

Just when caseloads hit their highest point, the nation’s new health care law required states not to change the rules on who’s eligible for Medicaid. That means states can’t roll up the welcome mat by tightening Medicaid’s income requirements.

So states have resorted to a variety of painful options.

In Arizona, lawmakers stopped paying for some kinds of transplants, including livers for people with hepatitis C. When the cuts took effect Oct. 1, Medicaid patient Francisco Felix, who needs a liver, suddenly had to raise $500,000 to get a transplant.

The 32-year-old’s case took a dramatic turn in November when a friend’s wife died, and her liver became available. Felix was prepped for surgery in hopes financial donations would come in. When the money didn’t materialize, the liver went to someone else, and Felix went home. His doctor told him he has a year before he’ll be too sick for a transplant.

“They are taking away his opportunity to live,” said his wife, Flor Felix. “It’s impossible for us or any family to get that much money.” The family is collecting donations through a website and plans a yard sale this weekend, she said.

The choices are difficult for states that have already cut payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone.

“If we don’t see an economic recovery where state revenues rebound, they’re really going to be very strained on how they can make ends meet,” said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

States may consider lowering payment rates to nursing homes or home health agencies or further reducing payments to doctors, Rowland said.

“The problem here is the program is pretty lean, and payment rates are pretty low,” she said. Patients can’t find care because fewer doctors accept the low payments.

Prescription drug coverage in states is an optional benefit, another possible place to cut, Rowland said. “But if you cut back on people’s psychotropic drugs, is that penny-wise and pound-foolish? Do they end up in institutions where Medicaid pays more for their care?”

In Illinois, late payments became the rule.

Tom Miller closed his pharmacy in rural southern Illinois this summer and is going through bankruptcy, largely because the state was chronically late making Medicaid payments to him. Most of his former customers are in the program.

With the state sometimes months behind in payments, he couldn’t pay his suppliers. Five workers lost their jobs when his business closed.

“You can only fight it for so long,” said Miller, 54. He now works as a pharmacist in a hospital. He misses his old clients, the families he grew to know.

“I was in my third generation. I’ve had moms who had kids. I saw the kids raised, and they had their own children,” he said. As a neighborhood pharmacist, “you’re their friend. You’re family.”

The death panels are right around the corner.  To the extent that they’re not already here right now, as with the case of Francisco Felix, who is being denied life by being denied a liver by Medicaid.

Francisco Felix never stood in front of a death panel; but bureaucrats don’t need you wasting their time with bothersome questions when they decide to let you die a slow and agonizing death due to medical neglect (or maybe you’re fortunate enough to get that pain pill from Obama?).

We told you so.  We told you so.  We told you so.  WE TOLD YOU SO.

As one speaking from the lofty vantage point of one having a one-thousand percent batting average, let me forewarn you Democrats yet again: Someday, when you’re burning in hell for all eternity for your direct participation in the murder of 52 million innocent human beings in America alone through abortion, realize that God is going to turn up the fires a few billion extra degrees for the coming horror that is going to come to this country as a result of your ObamaCare disaster.

What Lies In Store For Your Parents Under ObamaCare (It Will Be Even WORSE For You!)

ObamaCare, in a picture:

Thursday, April 29, 2010
This Is What Government-Run Health Care Looks Like

Those of us who see Obamacare as a distinct step backwards are often branded as alarmist and out of touch. When we point to the regular horrors of government run systems, especially the UK, we’re shouted down with healthy dollops of “it-can’t-happen-here-because-the president-said-it-won’t.”

Read on.

But before you do, look at this photo from London’s MailOnline:

Not pretty.

It’s a photo taken in a UK (government run) hospital of 84-year-old Clara Stokes. The photo was taken by her outraged daughter who discovered that her mom was living a nightmare – starved, dehydrated, and lying in her own feces.

Apparently, the ward was very short-staffed, to the point that Clara’s family members were not only forced helped her, but also other patients who were in similar circumstances.

Here’s a partial list of horrors. If this isn’t clear, cold abuse of a person with a severe medical disability, I don’t know what is:

Maltreatment 1:

Doctors and nurses who misplaced health notes even thought Mrs Stokes was a man for the first two days, after she was admitted on December 16.

Maltreatment 2:

A temporary nurse misread Mrs Stokes’ notes and forced uncrushed tablets down her throat, almost causing her to choke to death.

Maltreatment 3:

She [Clara’s daughter] added: ‘We finally walked in and my daughter said what is that under her arm? We lifted it up and she was covered in her own diarrhoea.

Maltreatment 4:

Helpless and confused after suffering a stroke, the 84-year-old was left dehydrated, hungry and lying in her own faeces in a hospital bed for six hours. . . . ‘She was paralysed and couldn’t call for help. This was after 3pm in the afternoon and the last time she had been checked was at 9am.’

Maltreatment 5:

Just 24 hours later the family found a stricken Mrs Stokes’ foot trapped between bed posts caused by a faulty bed pump. It was not known how long she was trapped and had to be freed by the matron.

The hospital, of course, denies, denies, denies. Here’s part of the snippy statement issued by the hospital spokesperson:

‘We regret that Mrs Stokes’ family have felt the need to complain about her care while she was on ward 17 and ward 15 and the hospital has apologised for any distressing circumstances recognising how upsetting some aspects of personal care can be for relatives.

Stay tuned, because I’ll bet my last dollar that the pro-death crowd will spin the horrible photo above as a case of people dying “without dignity,” and use it as a propaganda tool, captioning Clara’s abuse with: This is not dying with dignity: Support legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia.

If anything, the Daily Mail article referenced reveals that the story of this poor woman who was abandoned to die in her own filth by the government health care system is even worse.

And what the author of this article points out in the last paragraph is exactly right.  The federal government took over a massive chunk of the health care system with Medicare and Medicaid.  They broke it, and then they used the fact that the system was broken (thanks to them) to call for ObamaCare so they could finish the job of socializing the system.  You don’t think that the same people who did that will ultimately point to the fact that the people who are dying in their own filth (thanks to the left) should instead be humanly euthanized?

I think D. James Kennedy put it best when he said:

“Watch out, Grandma and Grandpa!  Because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after you!”

It’s happening.

Sarah Palin desribed her fear of her Down Syndrome son Trig being forced to one day stand before an ObamaCare death panel.  There are 111 death panels under ObamaCare in a byzantine bureaucratic maze that looks like this:

It’s now an obvious and open fact that the death panels are real:

Via Breitbart TV:

Amazing. First [New York Times columnist Paul] Krugman and now Obama’s own OMB Director confirm what Governor Palin has been saying all along: the advisory panel within ObamaCare responsible for rationing health care will effectively be a death panel for those deemed unworthy of the cost of the care. More on Orszag’s vindication of Governor Palin from Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey here  and Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft here.

The Democrats’ have flat-out stated it: “We’re going to let you die.”  And Obama’s own handpicked czars already have a policy (“the Complete Lives System”) to carry that policy out.

The horror that ObamaCare will quickly become will be biblical.  So it takes the Bible to put it into proper perspective:

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools – Romans 1:22

For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wickedness of those who in their wickedness suppress the truth – Romans 1:18

You love evil more than good, Falsehood more than speaking what is right. — Psalm 52:3

But he who sins against Me injures himself; all those who hate Me love death — Proverbs 8:36

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! — Isaiah 5:20

You who hate good and love evil, Who tear off their skin from them And their flesh from their bones — Micah 3:2

In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of the Messiah, who is the image of God. — 2 Corinthians 4:4

.

Contrary To Obama Democrats’ Demagogic Lies About Private Insurerer Profits

Do you want to have one-sixth of the economy – and literally life and death decisions – to be taken over based on lies and demagoguery?  If not, you’d better start calling your elected officials and demanding that Democrats finally start dealing with facts rather than demagogic lies.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making “immoral” and “obscene” returns while “the bodies pile up.”

But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. Ledgers tell a different reality.

Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Insurers are an expedient target for leaders who want a government-run plan in the marketplace. Such a public option would force private insurers to trim profits and restrain premiums to compete, the argument goes. This would “keep insurance companies honest,” says President Barack Obama.

The debate is loaded with intimations that insurers are less than straight, when they are not flatly accused of malfeasance.

The insurers may not have helped their case by commissioning a report that looked primarily at the elements of health care legislation that might drive consumer costs up while ignoring elements aimed at bringing costs down. Few in the debate seem interested in a true balance sheet.

A look at some claims, and the numbers:

THE CLAIMS:

_“I’m very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers’ “obscene profits.”

_“Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants. Their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed.” Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership.

_”Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe.” A MoveOn.org ad.

THE NUMBERS:

Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries. As is typical, other health sectors did much better — drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10.

The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent.

HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That’s a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers.

The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin.

UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue.

Van Hollen is right that premiums have more than doubled in a decade, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found a 131 percent increase.

But were the Bush years golden ones for health insurers?

Not judging by profit margins, profit growth or returns to shareholders. The industry’s overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never cracked 8 percent.

The latest annual profit margins of a selection of products, services and industries: Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent; Yahoo, 5.9 percent; Hershey, 6.1 percent; Clorox, 8.7 percent; Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent; construction and farm machinery, 5 percent; Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent.

Half of Americans are actually covered by not-for-profit insurers.

A pro-liberal, pro-government universal health care proponent has the following:

But this is not “change.” Nonprofit organizations have always had an important role in the financing and delivery of health care services in the United States. Nonprofit health care organizations are part of the U.S. economy’s “third sector,” the other two sectors are government and for-profit businesses. In the early 1900s the first health care prepayment/insurance plan was founded as a nonprofit organization—Blue Cross—by a nonprofit hospital in Texas. Today, nearly 50 percent of people with private health insurance coverage are enrolled in nonprofit health plans.

Unfortunately, the strong and persistent presence of private nonprofit health insurance companies has not prevented any of the structural problems leading to our current health care crisis.

So the Democrats are deceitfully and demagogically claiming that insurance companies are the villains due to their “excessive” and “immoral” profits when in fact they DON’T have such profits – and HALF of them are NON-PROFITS – and they are offering a “solution” to a problem which isn’t even part of the problem to begin with.

I’m sorry to have to point out that what the Democrats are doing is right out of Adolf Hitler’s and Joseph Goebbels’ playbook, but it is.  They are telling lies about innocent companies.  They are deceitfully trying to create villains using propaganda and demagoguery so that they can then impose their “final solution” onto one-sixth of the national economy.

The clearest one sentence explanation of the result of the Democrats’ health care agenda comes from the mouth of Obama economic adviser Robert Reich:

“… So we’re going to let you die.”

The so-called “crazy claims” about death panels turn out to be all too real.

Democrats claim that you can keep your private health insurance if you want to.  It’s a lie.  And they know it’s a lie.

Their real goal is to put health care under total government control, so that they have the power to reward their allies and punish their opponents.  They are using their current legislation as a backdoor to universal, socialized, government-controlled health care.  And again, when they say that isn’t true, their own words reveal their lies.

Right now, Democrats are trying to take over life and death decisions.  And they are the documented liars.  Trust them at your peril.