Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, reviews Obama's Pork bill.
If You Are Elderly – Be Afraid, Very Afraid
President Obama’s press conference last night was big on fear and short on facts. Once again, he warned the country that our “crisis” will become a “catastrophe” if we don’t immediately pass his “porkulus” spending bill. I always get suspicious when a politician wants everyone to shut up and vote on a 700-page bill. You can bet there are a lot of “surprises” hidden in the fine print.
In the last 24 hours, one of those surprises has been discovered and analyzed by conservative researchers. It is now being exposed by conservative talk radio – the same folks Obama wants to force off the air in the name of “fairness.” Who would have guessed that our president would hide in a “must pass” piece of legislation a provision that “rations” health care and makes it more likely that your Granny will be left to suffer or die?
The legislation sets up a new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. This office will monitor the medical treatments your doctor is providing you to make sure that Washington agrees that those treatments are appropriate and cost effective. Another office, the Federal Coordinating Council of Comparative Effectiveness Research, will slow down the use of new medications and technologies because new treatments drive up costs.
It sounds complicated, but don’t be confused. Europe already has those offices and former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle wrote about them in a book last year. It was this “expertise” that led President Obama to nominate Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services, so he could serve as the architect of the planned nationalized health care scheme.
But here’s the bottom line of how it works in Europe and what Daschle and others want to implement here: The federal government will decide your medical treatment with COST being the main consideration. Daschle argues in his book that instead of treating seniors, they will have to become more accepting of the conditions that come with age!
Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant Governor of New York and a health care analyst, points out that this socialized medicine approach would be disastrous. In 2006, in England, the health care board ruled that elderly citizens with macular degeneration could not receive treatment with a new drug until they were blind in one eye! It took three years of public protests to reverse the policy. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Last year, one thousand British doctors were fighting hard to reform Britain’s health care system because that “progressive” nation also has one of the highest cancer mortality rates in Europe. Why? Because some bean counting bureaucrats in the basement of the British Health Department decided it isn’t “cost effective” to treat cancer patients. Like Nancy Pelosi trying to justify birth control in the stimulus bill, the Left sees people as a burden to Big Government’s bottom line.
Consider this irony. A powerful politician who has long championed government health care had a seizure last year. In Canada or Great Britain, “average Joes” might have to wait weeks for an MRI. Not this politician. In a couple of days, he was diagnosed with a rare form of malignant brain cancer. Unlike “average Joes” in Canada and Great Britain, this politician didn’t have to wait months to see a specialist. Within two weeks of his seizure, he was treated by some of the world’s foremost experts on brain cancer.
Ted Kennedy is alive today quite probably because we don’t have socialized medicine. The free market, while flawed, is still the best system man has devised. I’m sure there is room for improvement, but I’m equally sure that government isn’t the solution. The Europeans and Canadians flocking here to get health care denied them by their socialist governments obviously agree. But where will Americans flee under Obama’s new socialist order?
Here’s the danger inherent in government-run health care. Just like a child living in a parent’s house has to abide by the parent’s rules, you will be treated like a child. If you expect Uncle Sam to pay for your health care, then Washington bureaucrats will dictate whether saving your health is too costly. The elderly always suffer under such a system.
By the way, what the heck is this doing in a “stimulus bill”? And does it help explain why our new president is so intent on spending a trillion dollars after only one week of congressional debate?
As one senator said last week regarding the so-called “stimulus bill,” “This bill stinks. This process stinks. We’re making this up as we go and it is a waste of money.” It’s not too late to stop this stinker. Call your senators and representatives at 202-224-3121 and tell them to oppose Obama’s trillion-dollar spending bill and his stealth socialized health care bill.
If, as many of you have indicated, you can’t get through on that number, go to our website at www.cwfpac.com and use our online Congressional Directory to look up a state or district office number for your senators and representative.
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