~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.
When Barack Obama was in the White House, he never addressed the concerns of seniors and the disabled. His staple legislation, Obamacare, fundamentally transformed healthcare for many into a nightmare.
What can be worse than Obamacare?
Medicare for All (M4A) as is being pushed by red diaper baby, Bernie Sanders and his disciple, Progressive Congressional candidate from New York City, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this 2018 mid-term election season.
The polls will open early this coming Tuesday and it is the civic duty of every American to vote. As for seniors and the disabled, voting for Democrats would be the equivalent of shooting onself in the foot.
While we all have much to lose should we not vote or not vote Red, voters on Medicare have much to lose if Progressives are victorious.
Bob Bennett posted a must-read over at Independent Sentinel on the elephant in the room, i.e., Medicare for All (M4A).
Would seniors vote for a party that has PROMISED to destroy Medicare? Maybe—if they believe the lies of Democrats and Socialists. SO, IT’S IMPORTANT TO SHARE THIS.
Democrats have gotten behind Socialist Bernie Sanders’s deranged plan, the Medicare for All Act (M4A), which is nothing more than single-payer health care—a long-time leftist dream for America; but a nightmare for those in other nations who have it.
Professional liars and Socialists Sen. Sanders—no, that’s not the fried chicken guy—and candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez claim that Medicare for All would actually cost LESS than Medicare for seniors or disabled alone costs now. The latter actually told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, on August 8ththat a study “show[ed] that Medicare-for-all is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.” Sanders said in a video that the plan “would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period.”
Of course, any fool knows that’s mathematically impossible. To support their ludicrous promises, these hucksters cite a study titled, “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System,” published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Alas, like everything the Socialists say in order to sell their lunatic agenda, this is a lie: the study doesn’t say that at all.
The true cost of M4A
The paper clearly says the cost of Medicare for All would dwarf what we’re paying now to finance health care insurance for seniors and disabled alone:
The Medicare for All Act (M4A), would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation (2022–2031)…. This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022, rising to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and further thereafter. Doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan. [Emphasis added.]
But, the study adds, “It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than has been estimated from its legislative text. That text requires that healthcare providers —hospitals, physicians, and others—will be reimbursed for all patients at “current Medicare payment rates.”
Sanders based this rule on a projection by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), that Medicare provider payments will be roughly 40 percent lower than those paid by private insurers during the first 10 years of M4A’s proposed implementation (by 2031.) [Figure 2, page 8]
But those cuts in provider payments would only happen if Congress allows adjustments [cuts] that are mandated under current law[…]
“My concern is for people who don’t have resources, who don’t have a choice.”
“You read about Oregon denying someone a lung transplant, but, ‘Here, you can you have these pills.’”
“That’s my fear about what this would become.”
That’s what Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents the San Diego area, told the Sacramento Bee in an interview published in July.
Gonzalez is a Democrat who opposed California’s new physician-assisted suicide law, which was signed Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown, also a Democrat.
Gonzalez is right to be afraid.
In theory, the California law has safeguards ensuring that suicide is solely the patient’s choice. “Before the drugs can be prescribed, two California doctors must agree that the person has no more than six months to live,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “It is then the patient’s choice whether to take the drugs. Those who want to must affirm their intention 48 hours in advance and must take the drugs on their own, without help.”
Oregon’s Example
But there are many ways to influence people, to get them to the point where they do state that their intentions are to die. And the example of Oregon, which enacted physician-assisted suicide in 1997, provides plenty of reason to be concerned that people, especially those who are low-income, are susceptible to ill-intentioned persuasion.
Dr. William Toffler, an Oregon doctor, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in August that “the regular notices I receive indicating that many important services and drugs for my patients—even some pain medications—will not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program” were “concerning.”
“Yet physician-assisted suicide is covered by the state and our collective tax dollars,” Toffler, who is also national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, noted. “Supporters claim physician-assisted suicide gives patients choice, but what sort of a choice is it when life is expensive but death is free?”
Take the case of Barbara Wagner, whom Gonzalez was likely referring to in her remarks. Wagner was a lung cancer patient whose case attracted national attention in 2008, after her insurance company told her it wouldn’t cover a drug costing $4,000 a month her doctor had prescribed but would cover the drugs required for a physician-assisted suicide, according to ABC News. “It was horrible,” Wagner told ABC News at the time.
“I got a letter in the mail,” she recounted, “that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won’t give you the medication to live.”
Health Care Costs and Physician-Assisted Suicide
The situation in Oregon and Washington, which legalized physician-assisted suicide in 2008, also support the worries of Gonzalez and others about the financial incentives created by legalizing physician-assisted suicide.
“Last year, over half the patients who committed assisted suicide in Oregon relied on the government for their health coverage or had no coverage at all,” wrote Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Public Discourse earlier this year. “Over three-quarters of those dying under Washington’s assisted suicide law were partly or completely dependent on Medicare or Medicaid.”
As health care costs continue to soar, physician-assisted suicide could potentially draw more interest as a solution. Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon fellow at The Heritage Foundation, warned in a March report about that possibility.
“Given the increasing number of elderly patients in modern societies, their increasing longevity, and the increasing cost of treating their chronic illnesses,” he wrote, “[physician-assisted suicide] will increasingly be seen as a cost-effective option and one that the elderly should be encouraged to consider….”
Older people with lung cancer are much less likely to be given life-saving surgery than the young, it has been revealed.
Those aged 75 or over were five times less likely to have an operation even if they were in good health and their cancer had not spread.
The research by Macmillan Cancer Support, with Monitor Deloitte and Public Health England, adds to mounting evidence of age discrimination in NHS treatment.
Experts say there are complex reasons why older patients may not receive surgery, including other serious health conditions or if the cancer has spread.
But Ciaran Devane, chief executive at Macmillan, said that isn’t the whole picture…. many older cancer patients’ treatment is chosen based on their age alone…
As reported last year by the Express.co.uk, only14% of seniors over the age of 74 were offered chemotherapy post breast cancer surgery, a treatment that is standard for younger patients.
…In nearly a third of 803 case studies, doctors decided on treatment without looking at the patient’s general fitness or knowing what type of breast cancer they had….
In the United States, seniors will be the sacrificial lambs in order to control costs under Obamacare.
“With the coming advent of ObamaCare, states that are bracing for the huge increase in Medicaid recipients are looking for a way to save money and they think they’ve found one; limiting the number of prescription drugs that Medicaid patients can obtain. The cost for Medicaid will skyrocket under Obamacare because of the expanded eligibility requirements.
As a result of the imminent financial crunch, seven states have tightened the limits on prescription drugs in the last two years, joining nine others that also set limits. Illinois only allows four brand-name drugs for Medicaid patients, Mississippi has a limit of two, and Arkansas adults are limited to six. In Alabama, Medicaid patients were only getting one brand-name drug per month, and HIV and psychiatric drugs were excluded, but on Aug. 1 the state will relax the limit to its previous level — four brand-name drugs — after the state saved more money than expected and received money as part of a settlement with a pharmaceutical company….”
For years, those who counted on the passage of Obamacare most for one reason or another were forewarned that Obamacare would hit these individuals first and the hardest.
Refusing to heed the warnings, this is the perfect example of “be careful what you wish for.”
The White House decision makers (IPAB or better known as the death panels) believe in eugenics; thus, those dependent upon Medicaid [and Medicare] in the sights of these death panels are deemed expendable aka sacrificial lambs.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was created in President Obama’s Health Care law to help cut $500 billion out ofMedicareover 10 years. The only tool it can use for this purpose is formulaic cuts to reimbursements for doctors and hospitals. The panel is barred from implementing or even proposing real reforms that would change howMedicareworks.Medicarereimbursement rates are already low. Cutting them further will of necessity force many providers to stop accepting Medicare patients. For rural and disabled Medicarerecipients, this could greatly impede access to care. If IPAB’s cuts are allowed to take effect, it will inevitably lead to rationing and care denials.
IPAB forcesHealth Careproviders to choose between cutting off access to their patients and eventually going bankrupt. Right after ObamaCare passed,Medicare’s top numbers-cruncher, the Chief Actuary, estimated that IPAB’s 10-years cuts will cause 15 percent of America’s hospitals to go out of business. By the way, none of the IPAB members is allowed to be a practicing physician….”
Received the following email from FreedomWorks last evening.
Obamacare must be repealed and the government’s move to take our over private lives through public programs must be stopped.
Please sign the following petition sending your voice to the Supreme Court and share. Thank you.
“You and I know that since the days of Woodrow Wilson, the progressive movement has been on the march to incrementally take over our private lives with public programs.And this March, progressives across America are celebrating the two year anniversary of ObamaCare as proof that this radical health care takeover will now be permanent.
But there remains hope that we can End ObamaCare Now.
The Supreme Court is preparing to decide the fate of ObamaCare and we’re sending thousands of signatures to the Court with one clear voice: End ObamaCare Now.
Thousands of Americans have signed already…opposing Obama’s individual mandate…his health care rationing board…and the billions in new spending hidden in ObamaCare.
Celebrate the two year anniversary of ObamaCare by committing to do everything you can to help repeal this radical law. Now is the time to act.Sign our petition to End ObamaCare Now.
We’ve taken ObamaCare straight to the Supreme Court, filing a legal brief through our Constitution Defense Fund and rallying our 1.5 million members—members like you—to End ObamaCare Now!
If you want to restore freedom in America’s health care system, challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare is critical and we’re leading that fight. Urge the Supreme Court to respect individual liberty and reject the individual mandate bysigning our petition to End ObamaCare Now!
If we are going to beat back the progressive agenda…if we are going to stem the rising tide of Big Government…we must End ObamaCare Now.
Obama is gathering his army to march on the Supreme Court beginning twelve days from today in an effort to sway SCOTUS to rule in his favor on Obamacare. However, in spite of Obama’s lap dogs marching on the Supreme Court to do their messiah’s bidding, there are far more Americans who oppose this assault on our liberties and the U. S. Constitution.
Let your voices be heard. Send a message loud and clear that Obamacare is an assault on the freedom of all Americans, unconstitutional and MUST BE REPEALED.
WARNING: Patriots, please remember that Progressives are great at distractions. They will use this time to throw all kinds of nonsense in our path to distract us from the task at hand and at the moment, that is the REPEAL OF OBAMACARE and to make Barack Obama a ONE-TERM PRESIDENT.
That being said, far too many of us are gullible and easily distracted.
DO NOT MAKE THEIR DAY.
Acknowledging that there is much to do, we must by any means necessary STAY ON POINT, FOCUSED and on the road to making this happen.
For your reading pleasure and a reminder, check out:
PUMABydesign001's Blog 