He's in Bristol...

**TheBeast** · July 30th, 2009, 09:23 AM

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president's budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors' lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they're "associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it "debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you'll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically delivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist "embedded clinical decision support" -- a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Americans need to know what the president's health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians' offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms" (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Do we want a "reform" that empowers people like this to decide for us?

Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor. For more information on the status health care legislation, visit www.defendyourhealthcare.us.

**Counts** · July 30th, 2009, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by TheBeast

You may want to read the bill as well. You will get to keep you current plan as long as no changes are made in it. This would encompass a rate change that could be an increase or decrease. As soon as anything at all changes you will loose that coverage and have to use the gov plan if you want to or not.

If you would like to know what the bill really has in it....Defend Your Health Care

Here's a video describing what seniors are in for. Newsmax.TV - Newsmax.TV - Home

Nah, I know what the internet is actually for.

Of course that would not be breaking/going back on his word becouse if your policy changes then it is in effect a diferant policy......As with the jobs that have been created OR "saved" it seems like the goverment has found a way to say what the avg Joe wants to hear then do whatever they want to do but technacly not lie.........Looking at it from the outside it is a briliant stratagy and one that I think the next generation of politations will pick up on and run with.........Looking at it from the inside it scares the crap out of me not becouse of Obama (will/will not do) but who may come after him and what they may do

IMHO if we get Gov health care priviat insurence will over time drop out of the main stream and will most likly become suplmentry coverage.....think of it like the Gov plan will cover the basics but the priviat insurance will be the upgrade.

I am not anti Gov health care BUT I am unsure that it would/will be a net positive thing

**TheBeast** · July 30th, 2009, 12:42 PM

And just like everyone else on here NO I have not read the bill. But unlike most on here I do get my information from someone that HAS and can understand the bill.

My favorite one so far.

?I love these members, they get up and say, ?Read the bill,?? said Rep. John Conyers. ?What good is reading the bill if it?s a thousand pages and you don?t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill??

That?s an elected member of Congress explaining why lawmakers shouldn?t bother themselves with reading bills. It?s just too gosh-darned difficult. And who?s ever heard of lawyers working in congressional offices? Not me, no way.

Seriously, as a representative of a district, congressmen should know what they are voting on and, if they need help, they employ people who can help them read the bills and inform their decision-making process on behalf of their constituents.

Rep. Conyers appears to have disdain for this notion. It makes me wonder about two things. When the Democrats won back control of Congress in 2006 their proposed ethics reform package included a Read the Bill section. The committee with jurisdiction over the reform process was headed by Conyers. Did his disregard for bill reading leave this section on the cutting room floor? Also, this video from Michael Moore?s ?Fahrenheit 9/11″ has a completely different context now:

**R13** · July 30th, 2009, 01:11 PM

And you wonder why I keep calling you out on your sources. Jesus Christ, wow. You slap up a site that looks like a 5th grade computer class put together along with a newsmax link with and even worse video. Now I know you get all your info from right-wing/anti-obama sites, but at least post something with a little more quality. Getting embarrassing.

The "Defend Your Healthcare" site is what? Betsy McCaughey's BS that's been proven wrong, she's been lying herself for awhile now on healthcare. Factcheck has debunked a lot her rhetoric.

http://www.factcheck.org/politics/doctors_orders.html

So, nice one. Really doubt you'll find out what "the bill really has in it" from that site. lmao.

Really no need to touch newsmaxs(looks like youtube homade) vid. Conservative site that's about as bad as that video he posted about water and pennies or whatever. Not too mention the entire interview with BETSY MCCAUGHEY.