For more than two years now, health insurance experts like myself, Health care experts like the physician activists at www.Docs4PatientCare.org, as well as Tea Party activists like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have been trying to warn the American public about the 2010 Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). Chief amongst our concerns are the unprecedented powers it grants to unelected bureaucrats who will be making decisions on what kind of health care Americans will receive in this nation post-Obamacare and, more importantly, what kind of health care services we will no longer receive.
The Obama administration repeatedly assures us that “no health care rationing of any kind will be allowed.” But with the recent establishment of the “IPAB” (Independent Payment Advisory Board), comprised of 15 unelected government bureaucrats commissioned to “control the high cost of Medicare,” should be of great concern to our nation’s senior citizens who receive their medical treatment via reimbursement from Medicare.
The testimonies from working physicians around this nation has been truly disturbing. Last night a brain surgeon called into Mark Levin’s syndicated radio show and said that he had just recently visited Washington, D.C., to review President Obama’s new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care for patients over 70 years old, issued by HHS (Health & Human Services). The plan, which includes “ethics panels,” states that if you are over 70 years old and on government-supported health care and you visit an emergency room, you will receive what they term “comfort care.”
Here’s an excerpt from the call:
Caller: Basically what the document stated was that if you were over 70 and you’d come into an emergency room and you’re on government-supported health care, that you’d get “comfort care.”
Mark Levin: Wait a minute…what’s the source for this?
Caller: This is Obama’s new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care.
Mark Levin: And who issued this? HHS?
Caller: Yes. And basically they don’t call them patients, they call them units. And instead of – they call it “ethics panels” or “ethics committees,” would get together and meet and decide where the money would go for hospitals, and basically for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated.
Mark Levin: So it’s generally going to be denied?
Caller: Yes, absolutely. …If someone comes in at 70 years of age with a bleed in their brain, I can promise you I’m not going to get a bunch of administrators together on an ethics panel at two in the morning to decide that I’m OK to do surgery.
This should be no surprise to those of us who work in the health care or health insurance field since, unlike most members of Congress who passed it, many of us have actually read the entire legislation. We also know who had the president’s ear prior to the passage of this onerous legislation. People like the physician brother of Rahm Emanuel, Ezekiel Emanuel, who believes in something called “The Complete Lives System,” which disturbingly assigns how much health care you should receive depending on your age and relative “value to society.” Read about Dr. Emanuel’s ‘system’ in the Wall Street Journal.