Future looks poor for health care 11/26/2009 12:33 AM By Jim Wetzel Future looks poor for health care
The current controversy over the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as to breast cancer health care is only a harbinger of more serious consequences that might come to pass. I speak to the ominous shadow of medical care rationing cast by the Task Force that could come to fruition under the ObamaCare program.
That report is not about proper health care; it's about health care spending based upon what the panel considers to be life benefits versus costs in doing breast scans. In recommending the banning of mammograms for 40- to 50-year-old women, the report's data supports the conclusion that cases of breast cancer will go undetected in that group, to a consequence related to the individual case. If that consequence happens to be death from a lack of proper treatment, it puts money over the value of life and government as the arbiter of continued life.
This is serious because the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force is designated as a decisional participant in the ObamaCare scheme. On the basis of accounting exercises and impersonal assumptions, it will make recommendations, as it has done here, based upon costs and group data. The individual and his doctor will not be considered or even play a role. If a person dies because of their recommendations, it will be of no consequence to them; but the death will be of consequence to the person who dies and to his family and society.
The sum of this is that under ObamaCare, it is likely that if you are over 80 (even 70 if the health budget is tight), and you come down with an event that can't be cured with a couple of aspirin, you may find that you have crossed the government's cost-effectiveness line and be disqualified from further care.
The lesson is that if women under 50 can be scratched from mammograms at the whim of a health panel, a person over 80 with a bad health report and subject to the same whim, could find himself sliced from the rolls and made toast.
Jim Wetzel
Aiken
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Comment Title:
That is why he was not elected.
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Posted by: Fbowman On: Friday, November 27, 2009 7:11 PM
Comment Title: Progressive talking points
I've seen this newly launched excuse. This would have been different under McCain comment over and over. Now that progressives can't "Blame Bush" anymore they'll start blaming someone that has never been president. It's all just a bunch of hooey! McCain isn't for Government controlled health care. Therefore, it would never never have been an issue. Period!
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Posted by: Bruce On: Thursday, November 26, 2009 11:11 PM
Comment Title: All things considered
I listened to a good interview on this subject on "All things considered" on NPR. And you are right.
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Posted by: On: Thursday, November 26, 2009 8:38 AM
Comment Title: all things considered
The recommendation is to change the recommended date of initiation of mammograms from age 40 to 50. What would have resulted if the data had resulted in a recommendation to change the date from age 40 to 30. Surely some additional lives might be saved while all the negative considerations mentioned in the report would begin ten years earlier. All the distress is over a recommendation from a scientific panel. The same recommendations would have occurred if we had a President named McCain now. Would the same level of distress, by the same people, be circling the globe if that were the case?
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