An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Archive for 16 November 2009
Naughty TOTUS!
Obama’s Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner
Weasel Time
Just For Chris….
….cuz I think she had a bad Monday. 
The “Tolerant” Type
Do you ever get the feeling that some people are from a totally different planet? I’m starting to believe that there are a few folks who just don’t like people, like me, who do not think in the same manner as they do. It’s becoming more and more obvious that the oh so tolerant left are incapable of realizing that not everyone chugged the kook aid.
I’ve been called a lot of names in the last couple of years by those tolerant thumb twiddlers. but this was a first.
The link provided by this genius is not actually a link to anything. I guess he/she/it couldn’t think of anything to put in the line, so had to project his/her/it’s ignorance. What I find so amusing is that the comment is attached to a post from 30 May 2008! Now, being the type of person I am, if there was a legitimate difference of opinion, I would have approved the comment, but since it adds nothing whatsoever to any discussion, I decided to just a make a post about it.
Isn’t it amazing that so many loony tunes forget they are not as anonymous as they’d like to believe?
Obama’s Death Panel
If you haven’t read the WSJ’s editorial from yesterday, do so now. Especially if you believe the push for socialized medicine is a good thing.
The Rationing Commission
Meet the unelected body that will dictate future medical decisions.
As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren’t receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a “global budget” on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.
Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission “critical to our fiscal future” and “one of the most potent reforms.”
In other words, a “death panel”.
As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.
We already have too many unelected bureaucrats making irrational decisions concerning our lives. We surely don’t need more invading some of the most important decisions we make for our own care.
But a decade from now, such limits are off—which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare’s spending explodes. The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.
Also known as ‘rationing care’. The one thing they have said wouldn’t happen.
The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a “naturopath” who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn’t worth the money, then Olympia won’t cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.
So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a “high” efficacy but also a “high” cost.
And really, it’s not at all about the quality of life, is it. The bottom line for the politburo is control.
Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents—simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he’s covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don’t, Washington will not reimburse them for “inappropriate care.”
Heaven forbid that medical doctors actually do their jobs, you know, like relieving pain and saving lives.
A drug-eluting stent (DES) is a coronary stent (a scaffold) placed into narrowed, diseased coronary arteries that slowly releases a drug to block cell proliferation. This prevents fibrosis that, together with clots (thrombus), could otherwise block the stented artery, a process called restenosis. The stent is usually placed within the coronary artery by an Interventional cardiologist during an angioplasty procedure.
Drug-eluting stents in current clinical use were approved by the FDA after clinical trials showed they were statistically superior to bare-metal stents (BMS) for the treatment of native coronary artery narrowings, having lower rates of major adverse cardiac events. (source)
So, if it saves a few bucks, lets use inferior products for those we really don’t want to live anyway, right?
If Democrats impose such a commission nationwide, it would constitute a radical change in U.S. health care. The reason that physician discretion—not Washington’s cost-minded judgments—is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no “right” answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments, and often multiple conditions. A breakthrough drug like Herceptin, which is designed for a certain genetic subset of breast-cancer patients, might well be ruled out under such a standardized approach.
I’m not sure what else to call them, other than ‘death panels’, for that’s exactly what it will be…..deciding who will live, and who will die. Sarah was right.
I’ll repeat the question CNSnews has asked many politicians: Where in the Constitution Authorizes Congress to Order Americans To Buy Health Insurance?
May It Die A Painful Death
A Deathblow for Obamacare
The Foundry
Standing in the Rose Garden on November 7th, President Barack Obama celebrated the passage of the House health care bill claiming: “The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government, while strengthening the financial health of Medicare.” Quite a bold statement if true. But a report released Friday by the non-partisan and independent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, blows the lid off of every one of Obama’s claims. All of the following quotes are from the report itself:
Dithering Duck
Obama Dithers. US Troops Die.
“Broken Arrow” for US Troops in Afghanistan?
by J.D. Longstreet
Just a snippet:
Looking at Afghanistan today it is fairly easy to see what is about to happen there, barring some unforeseen event. The “Vietnam Syndrome” has already set in among the troops in theatre. Look, Obama may fool some of the people, (actually he is fooling a LOT of the people) but he is NOT, I repeat, NOT fooling the Military!
“American Warriors”, know beyond any doubt, whatsoever, that when they find themselves in a tight spot — a call for reinforcements will be answered, immediately, with those reinforcements, Usually more reinforcements are sent than were requested.
The current Commander-in-Chief received a call for 40,000 troops to reinforce the brave American warriors in Afghanistan as far back as August of 2009. It is mid November. Those reinforcements have NOT BEEN SENT as of this writing! There is no excuse, none, sufficient to excuse this lack of action on the part of the Commander-in-Chief and his Administration. We are seeing frequent reports now of low moral among American troops in Afghanistan —and why not? They are being used as “cannon fodder” while the President appears to be searching for some political goal he can announce as an acceptable “Victory in Afghanistan.” My guess is – it will have nothing to do with actually defeating the Taliban.
In other words, dear reader, Obama is playing politics with the lives of our military men and women in Afghanistan. I know of no other way to state the obvious.
Read the whole post here.
I have never, and will never, understand the mindset of the libtard. Since the foundations of this country, it has been the U.S. military that has kept us free, yet all the lefty socialists want to do is destroy them. The sacrifices of the families, the lives of the men and women who serve, mean nothing to them. I, for one, do not believe they deserve the freedoms afforded us by the blood of our heroes.
