Anyone over 70 will not receive curative care under the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare)"), which has the explicit task of reducing the rate of growth in Medicare expenditures. It will implement the rationing by setti...ng Medicare reimbursement rates to physicians and hospitals for medical procedures, therapies, drugs and so forth. By setting reimbursement rates prohibitively low, IPAB will have a strangle hold on what treatement is provided to which "units." Although the reimbursement rates established by IPAB are technically only “recommendations,” under the law these “recommendations” automatically go into effect unless Congress overrules the agency’s decisions, a highly unlikely occurrence.The IPAB rationing board will have unprecedented control over patients’ personal medical decisions, but limited medical expertise. ObamaCare limits IPAB's membership of doctors who have real experience caring for patients, selecting instead numbers-crunchers focused only on costs.
A man who identifies himself as "Jeff a neurosurgeon from Chicago." In this audio clip he tells radio talk-show host Mark Levin what he has learned about the government’s latest move to introduce rationing for stroke victims and those at risk of strokes. He said he had just returned from Washington, DC, where he and some of his fellow physicians were discussing implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
He said he got a peek at the government’s new, unpublished protocol for “units over 70” under ObamaCare, and this is what he found: ObamaCare will make use of so-called “ethics panels” modeled after similar panels already legal in many states where they operate as part of health facilities’ “risk-management process,” making life-and-death decisions motivated primarily by the desire to reduce expenses and liability exposure.
If the family of a patient objects to the medical facility’s decision under the “futile-care protocol,” there are review procedures under which hospital “ethics committees” are given adjudicatory authority to determine whether patients receive treatment or have it withheld or terminated. These “ethics panels” originally were established as mediating bodies to help families and physicians negotiate the proper approaches in difficult cases but they evolved into rationing boards with extraordinary power. Typically, once an “ethics panel” decides to terminate or withhold care, the treatment can never be provided in the hospital even if the family or patient finds a doctor who wants to provide the care.
Now, it appears, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) intends to nationalize and expand this form of healthcare rationing by standardizing it under federal rules and regulations. And, there will be no consultation or negotiation with families. According to "Jeff the neurosurgeon," HHS intends to use such “ethics committees” of administrators, not physicians, to decide, for example, whether a “senior unit over 70” can receive advance neurosurgical care under Medicare. Typically, this type of surgical care is required after a stroke or to prevent a stroke through aneurysm therapy.
According to Jeff, the new HHS protocol sets a high bar for “units over 70” to hurdle before they will be entitled to life-saving care rather than simply receiving “comfort care” to ease their passing. This seems too horrifying to be true, but thus far the Administration remains silent…
Newt Gingrich has pledged to work to repeal this terrible legislation and return the sanctity of life to Americans!
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