A British National Health Service health trust in Northern England is considering not sending obese people and smokers for certain operations because their unhealthy lifestyles allegedly lower the chance of an operation's success...
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The future of obamacare. Cutting costs, by not treating the unhealthy.
Britain's NHS is horrendously expensive, this is one way they figure to cut costs. They already have rationing, they actually have a lottery system for who gets to see the doctor.
-----------------------Only 80 billion? Pharms only have to cut
what they charge by 80 billion? Pharm executives practically
trampled themselves
signing up for the offer of no further cuts, and why wouldn't
they; they are making 100's of billions of dollars and expected their
profits to go down from the current %2000. Hell yes they signed
up for it, they could have lost hundreds of billions but instead they
promised a 150
million
advertising campaign
to help shove the illegals health reform down everyone's throat.
A
simple pain free way to cut costs would to have been to bring
competition back into the pharmaceutical business, that would have cost
us nothing but instead slammais supporting one and two thousand percent
profits by the pharms. Check snopes & 'truth of fiction' for
verification.
Tort reform would have been another way to cut down on medical costs
but I don't hear that mentioned either. Did you really expect a
lawyer, epically one that lies (that is redundant, redundant) to
sponsor tort reform? I
suspect you will not find a lawyer anywhere on Obamacare, ever.
“I have not said that I was a single-payer
supporter.” This is
directly contradicted by candidate Barack Obama’s
own website
which quotes Obama at a rally in Ames, Iowa form 2008: “If I were
designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a
single-payer system. … So what I believe is we should set up a series
of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such
a system.” So there you have in one paragraph the true purpose of
Obama’s public option: a vehicle to slowly transition all Americans out
of private coverage and into a government-run single payer health care
system. This Trojan Horse view of the public option has been reaffirmed
by Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL),
Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, and New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman.
“Under
the reform
we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If
you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care
plan.” This statement is also plainly false. Again, as
demonstrated above, the true purpose of Obama’s public option is to
move
Americans out of their private coverage and into government run health
care. Independent, non-partisan analysis from the Lewin Group
has confirmed the House bill, H.R. 3200, will do exactly that: About
88.1 million workers would see their current private,
employer-sponsored health
plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.
“That’s what the health exchange is all about, is that you —
just like a member of Congress — can go and choose the plan that’s
right for you.” This
statement isn’t false, but it
is misleading. Members of Congress do purchase their health care
through a health exchange: the Federal Employees Health Benefits
Program (FEHBP).
Through the FEHBP 283 private plans compete for
federal employees’ health care dollars. The Heritage Foundation has long been a supporter of
health
reform that empowers consumers to utilize a FEHBP like system.
But Obamacare is nothing like the FEHBP system. There is no government
run public
option competing with private plans in the FEHBP. So whenever Obama
says that a health exchange already “drives down costs” he is right
… but remember that this cost reduction is achieved purely by private
health coverage without any “competition” from a government
run public option.
“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for
our seniors.” This is just
plain false. The AARP released a statement late yesterday directly contradicting the President:
“While the
President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform
bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have
endorsed any
of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in
Congress are inaccurate.”
“I
just want to be clear,
again: Seniors who are listening here, this does not affect your
benefits. This is not money going to you to pay for your benefits; this
is money that
is subsidizing folks who don’t need it.” Under the current
system, more and more seniors are discovering that it is becoming
harder and harder to find and keep doctors who will accept Medicare
patients. A 2008 survey
found that 29% of the Medicare
beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor
had a problem finding one to treat them. Obamacare will only make this
problem
worse by cutting $313 billion in Medicare reimbursements
to health care providers over the next 10 years. This will only
force more doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients. Obama also
mentioned
yesterday that he wants to pay for subsidized health care by killing
the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage plans cover all of the traditional
Medicare benefits and much more,
including coordinated care and care-management programs for
enrollees
with chronic conditions as well as
additional hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays. 22% of
all Medicare patients, which translates to 10.5 million seniors, are
currently
enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans.
“I said I won’t sign a bill that adds to the deficit or the
national debt. Okay? So
this will have to be paid for.” That is a nice promise, but so
was Obama’s October 2008 promise that he would enact a “net spending cut.” We all know how that has turned out.
The reality is
that the Senate still has not figured out how to pay for their bill and
the House bill would increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over
the next
ten years. CBO director Doug Elmendorf has said: “In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would
probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits
during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget
window.”
“My belief is, is that [Obamacare] should not burden people who
make $250,000 a year or less.”
Both the House and Senate bills partially pay for Obamacare by imposing
“employer mandates” or “pay or play” provisions that
require employers to pay higher taxes if (a) they do not offer health
insurance, or (b) they offer it but have employees who decline it and
instead
use the government system. Multiple studies have shown that such provisions cause both
lower wages and lost jobs for low-income workers.
House's global warming bill: $8B
Tsongas:
"I
won't
take
obamacare because I have better options"

If it is allowed to be implemented, Obamacare will eventually do deep and irreparable harm to our nation’s budget deficit. But while Obamacare is more of a long-term threat to fiscal health at the federal level, it is a clear and present danger to the states. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid.
While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates for states to absorb. That is why 33 Republican governors signed a letter to the White House and Congress making an emphatic appeal that Obamacare’s Medicaid provisions be repealed.
It is also why the newly elected governors of Ohio, Oklahoma, Maine, and Wisconsin have all decided to sue the Obama administration in hopes of stopping Obamacare. Specifically, Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma has announced that the Sooner State will pursue its own case against the law, while Govs. John Kasich (R) and Scott Walker (R) (of Ohio and Wisconsin respectively) will add their states to Florida’s multi-state suit. And yesterday, newly sworn-in state Attorney General William Schneider announced Maine would also join the the Florida litigation. That brings the number of states on the Florida suit to 23 and the total number of states suing to stop Obamacare (which includes Virginia and Oklahoma) to 25.
RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge in Virginia has declared the Obama administration's health care reform law unconstitutional.
The Fraser Institute's 20th annual waiting list survey finds that province-wide wait times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments in Canada have increased in 2010:
From an economic standpoint, a study by Stokes and Somerville (2008) found that the cumulative total lost economic output that represents the cost of waiting for treatment for total joint replacement surgery, cataract surgery, coronary artery bypass graft surgery and MRI scans in 2007 was an estimated $14.8 billion. More recently, Esmail (2009) estimated the cost of waiting per patient in Canada to be approximately $859 in 2009 if only hours during the normal working week were considered "lost," and as much as $2,628 if all hours of the week (minus 8 hours per night sleeping) were considered "lost."
So,
if
Obamacare
is such a wonderful plan, then WHY are the Obama
Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services
(happily) handing out waivers to the bill? 733 to
date. 2-2-11