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A Must
Read at FoxNews...
Gambling With Our
Very Lives -- A Senior’s Take on ObamaCare One Year Later
By Jim Martin
Published March 22, 2011
The one-year anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare arrives Wednesday
and as I reflect on the battle that gave us this bill and everything
that’s happened since, I am reminded of the game liar’s poker. Liar’s
poker is a game of chance made famous by Michael Lewis’ book of the
same name, where players use any tactic to convince their opponent they
have a stronger hand than they really have.
So why am I reminded of liar’s poker? President Obama came to office
promising to better our health care system and fiscal discipline but
instead has played “liar’s poker” with the American people. Desperate
to substantiate claims that his trillion-dollar health care entitlement
plan would somehow save taxpayers money, the White House fudged the
numbers.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius’ recent
admission that the administration “double counted” Medicare savings in
order to pass health care reform was just one example of the duplicity
that was conducted to ensure the bill became law.
This is upsetting and insulting particularly to America’s seniors. As a
senior citizen myself, I can tell you that life changes with aging.
Even those of us in the best of shape begin to ache in odd places and
find that we can’t do everything we could a few years ago. Health and
health care are no longer abstract concepts. They are parts of our
daily lives. For many, access to health care is a question of downright
survival.
That’s what makes this game of liar’s poker so frustratingly
frightening for millions of seniors. To politicians and policy wonks,
health care is an ideological issue. And the president’s health care
scheme is a grand experiment. But seniors understand the real world
impact this experiment will have if the ObamaCare numbers don’t work
—and it is now painfully clear that they never will. Inevitably, care
and treatment will be rationed because denying access to care and
treatment is really the only way government can “reduce its costs.”
It’s that simple.
This is not the stuff of B-grade horror movies. These types of
decisions about care and treatment are made everyday in countries with
a government-run health care system. And experience has repeatedly
demonstrated that when care is rationed, the elderly and the sick are
hardest hit.
To those who say that this could never happen in America, I would point
out that it already is.
In the fall of 2010, a senior breast cancer patient in South Carolina
told me about the impact that a devastating decision by the Food and
Drug Administration will have on her life. Avastin is an expensive
life-extending drug that she depends on, literally to keep her alive.
In order to “bend the cost curve,” as the president has demanded, the
FDA wants to allow Medicare and insurance companies to deny coverage
for the drug in order to save money. Medicare would save millions of
dollars if it doesn’t have to cover the cost of Avastin but it would be
a death sentence for this woman in South Carolina and thousands of
breast cancer patients like her. This is the sad reality of
government-run health care and the Avastin decision appears to be only
the opening crack in the rationing door.
The sick are being targeted as well. The president of the AIDS Health
Foundation blasted President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal for
“rationing” lifesaving drugs, even though the community he serves has
historically been among the President’s most ardent supporters.
If one of the president’s most loyal constituencies is up in arms over
rationing, you can bet we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and
just a taste of how rationing will become the norm as it is in
countries with socialist health care systems.
So while some may be wishing ObamaCare a happy first anniversary, those
who are paying attention are wishing it good riddance. Unless common
sense returns to our nation’s capitol, ObamaCare is repealed and
overall spending is brought under control, seniors will inevitably find
their drugs and care are rationed. And that makes the current health
care and budget fights more critical than ever – not only for breast
cancer and AIDS patients who have become the Guinea pigs in an
experiment to “reduce the cost of health care” – but for future
generations of Americans who will be buried in an avalanche of debt.
Read it with links at Foxnews
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