AS I PROMISED IN A PREVIOUS POST, HERE’S THE POST ABOUT DEATH PANELS
Many major provisions of Obamacare have not yet been phased in, and won’t be for about another year and a half. However, the partial implementation of Obamacare has already resulted in rationing of care on at least one of its key promised features: pre-existing conditions.
The infamous “death panels” are ALREADY operating under the cover of bureaucratic rules which have the INDIRECT BUT UNAVOIDABLE effect of increasing deaths amongst certain demographic groups. The EXACT mechanism which enables this, and which prompted the use of the phrase “death panels” in the first place, is now operational.
In the case of pre-existing conditions, by removing certain types of “pre-existing conditions” from the “approved list,” the panel in charge basically signs the early-death warrants for huge categories of people. The same effect is produced by freezing people out of applying for special kinds of coverage they need, using red tape as the weapon of death.
These are unelected bureaucrats, and their mandate is to cut expenses, and this is exactly what we now see as the reason for denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.
The VAST majority of health care spending occurs in the last years of life. That should come as no big surprise, the older you get, the more things go wrong with the aging body. So NATURALLY, if that’s where the most money is spent, that’s where the BIG cuts are going to be concentrated.
As the full implementation of the law progresses, we’ll see this same mechanism operating on more and more demographic groups, with emphasis on seniors. A young or middle aged person’s health care expenses are pennies compared to the dollars spent by seniors, on average. When the per-capita budget has to be cut by a dime, it would be necessary to deny all care for younger groups in order to accomplish that, which would make no sense, especially since they have a lifetime of voting left, so why infuriate them to no political advantage? But a mere 5 or 10% cut for seniors would do the same budgetary trick—either across the board or by eliminating all coverage for certain conditions—and10% will look at least reasonably modest. Over time however, a succession of these will send more and more of our seniors to early graves.
Not only is this efficient budget cutting, but it also targets all the pain onto the group that won’t be voting much longer anyway, so it’s a double benefit for the powers that be in government.
Only when they become older will today’s youngsters realize what a bill of goods they’d been sold with Obamacare. But it will be too late, their doom will be sealed—if Obamacare is allowed to stand.
The decisions to cut benefits or coverage will be made in large measure by the idiotic, inhumane, and immoral “cost/benefit” approach adopted in England and followed by Obamacare. The benefit side of the formula is the number of years of life for the patient who will be enjoying the treatment’s benefits, and if it’s a few years for a lot of money, then that treatment will not be permitted and the patient will just die from his condition, UNTREATED, and he will be FORBIDDEN from getting that treatment even if he can pay for it himself unless he can also afford to get it overseas.
Consider a 65 year old when the nation’s life expectancy is 75. His life expectancy is for another 10 years, so a treatment costing 100,000 dollars will have a beneficial effect for only 10 years, and thus it is to be expected that this beneficial effect will cost “society” $10,000/year. But as seniors are killed off, life expectancy will drop still further. A few years from now, someone of the same 65 age with the same condition will, based on national averages, have only an expected 5 years to live because the average age at death will have fallen from 75 to 70 as a result of the recent years of kill-offs. Thus, the cost/benefit will have become $20,000/year of expected life, a doubling, and the treatment will be denied to even younger seniors.
Therefore, the effect of the system is SELF-AUGMENTING as it FEEDS ON ITSELF. THIS IS THE REALLY, REALLY SINISTER ASPECT OF IT. By shortening lives, the average age of death will come down, and thus the statistics will arithmetically reduce the TIME of any medical benefit’s duration to a shorter one BY THE OPERATION OF THIS VERY PROCESS. By killing off seniors, the expected remaining statistical life of EVERYONE OF EVERY AGE will also drop, thereby reducing the statistically expected “benefit period” following the procedure, and thereby raising the cost/year of that benefit by spreading it over fewer years. This in turn will INCREASE the number of refusals of treatment, because they will automatically appear to have an ever-worsening cost/benefit as time goes on, even under exactly the same circumstances. This in turn will accelerate the decline in the average life-expectancy, which takes us back to step 1. In short, the self-feeding nature of this scheme will automatically continue to increase the likelihood of being denied coverage with every passing year, as we see steady increases in the number of “death panel” decisions to deny coverage which steadily reduce statistical life expectancy, which causes cost/benefit calculations to worsen, which causes more denials of coverage. It’s going to be a vicious circle which steadily intensifies its own effects toward wiping out the population of seniors.
This is purely a consequence of the laws of arithmetic. It cannot be denied. This kind of change in the numbers over time CANNOT be avoided, because the laws of arithmetic are the only thing determining it.
In very brief summery: The operation of the death panels in killing off seniors, MAKES IT EASIER FOR THEM TO JUSTIFY IT THE NEXT TIME, ever-easier every time.. The more seniors who die courtesy of the death panels, the MORE become targets for death.
ObamaCare was sold to the American public as a WONDERFUL plan for “cutting the costs of health care.” Well Yeah, “costs” will be cut. The costs to the government, and the total costs of health care spending will indeed be cut.
All you do is gradually kill off those who need most of the medical care, and VOILA, spending (“cost”) goes down. And the more you cut, the more this scheme of Obamacare will be able to cut on the next round. (Of course, other factors will more than compensate for these cuts, and costs will rise anyway, just not quite as fast. That’s another story, but of incidental interest is the fact that the rising costs for those other reasons will provide an added impetus for the practice which does successfully cut costs—killing seniors and others with high individual medical expenses.)
Most people—but especially those over 50—who supported Obamacare and helped enable it to pass, effectively put a time bomb in place to commit suicide a few years earlier than they would otherwise have died. Unfortunately, they also helped put similar time bombs in place to murder those more perceptive than themselves, whose pleas to prevent these atrocities were dismissed out of hand through ignorance, willful denial, or the naïve gullibility of accepting political promises on faith.
Of course, there are some liberal/progressives who supported Obamacare for reasons of envy, sheer malice, or a general hatred for free markets and a society of free, self-responsible people.
It’s not just seniors that need to be concerned.
Here’s more information about “death panels” for your
reading enjoyment.
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