Seniors - Don't Get Sick If Stimulus Bill Passes!

I thought I had seen it all with the bank bailouts and the automobile bailout but THIS is just beyond the pale. The aptly called "Porkulus Bill" aka the Stimulus Bill is not only the biggest piece of pork ever stuffed down Americans' throats but it has provisions to start the process to proceed to socialized medicine.

I don't know how or what socialized medicine will do to "create jobs" or stimulate the economy. The only thing I can think of is that it will reduce the number of sick and/or invalid elderly citizens which will cut down on Medicare and Social Security spending. I am not kidding - if you are a senior citizen you should be quaking in your boots about what is "hidden" in this pork legislation.

Betsy McCaughey has a piece on Bloomberg News were she has broken down several disturbing aspects of the bill. I encourage everyone to read it and click her embedded links to see the actual bill. But here's a little taste to whet your appetite...

Remember when HMO's were all the rage and everyone was signing up because it was so cheap? Remember how you had to jump through hoops to get an appointment to someone other than your "preferred provider" and everything from clipping a toenail to clipping a brain aneurysm had to be "pre-approved"? Yes I know this is still happening but quadruple it and make someone in the government in charge of the approval process. The same government that can't get tax checks out on time, that botched social security and is spending us into our great-great-great grandchildren's inheritance.

And heaven forbid you are a senior citizen - it gets worse. According to McCaughey's analysis, the bill will institute a "cost effective standard" set by a Federal Council. If anything like the Federal Council in the UK, this means that care for the elderly will be judged on whether it is cost effective to provide the treatment to someone in that age bracket. Here is one of McCaughey's examples from the UK...

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Does that send chills up your spine or what? If you develop cancer and you are in the senior citizen range, you may end up dying without treatment because someone younger is judged more cost-effective. Think about it for a minute... what about those with handicaps either mental or physical? How will they fare under a "cost effective" treatment plan. This makes the Terri Schiavo case look like a picnic and it scares the beejebus out of me.

Seeing as the bill just passed cloture, it looks as if this is going to be a done deal. May God have mercy on us all especially the senior citizens.