By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A nationally known women’s health specialist and healthcare activist is warning people over the age of 50 about how severely the rationing built into ObamaCare will affect their medical treatment options in the future.
In an editorial published in the Cypress Times, Lee Vliet, M.D. said that some aspects of the health care reform law that went into effect last week are already reflecting the kind of age-based cutbacks we can expect in the future.
Quoting Dr. Donald Berwick, newly appointed head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services who once said, “the decision is not whether we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open” Dr. Vliet shows how a “medical gulag” is on its way.
For instance, planned cuts from Medicare advantage plans 2022 services range from $500 to $700 billion dollars. “Experts believe these funds will be redistributed to fund new entitlements for Medicaid for younger people, including abortion services,” she said.
Half of Medicare Advantage customers will lose their coverage by 2017 as Democrats slash this popular program to shift money to Medicaid for younger patients.
Private insurance companies are raising premiums to cover required Obamacare services, even when services were touted as “free.”
Large insurance companies had to stop offering child-only policies because of the enormous cost of providing coverage for all pre-existing and future illnesses.
“What else lies ahead for current Medicare patients, plus the wave of baby boomers soon to swell the Medicare ranks?” she asks.
The answser can be found in the UK’s National Health System (NHS) which Dr. Berwick would like to see copied here in the U.S., she says.
For example:
1. Prostate cancer primarily affects men over 50. PSA screening is not done in the UK as it is in the US. The impact on life? Men in the US have a 92 percent 5-year survival rate vs. 57 percent in the UK.
2. Screening mammograms for women in the UK stop at age 70, Dr. Vliet says. There is not now an upper age limit on mammograms in the US. If we have an age cut-off like the UK, lives are at stake. Survival for breast cancer is 25 percent lower in the UK than the US.
3. People over 50 with congestive heart failure (CHF), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are seriously affected by new restrictions on Medicare reimbursements for hospital re-admissions within a month of discharge. For CHF, denial of re-admission to clear fluid backing up in the lungs means a terrifying, painful death by drowning in one’s own body fluids.
4. In the UK, older patients with double vision are not approved for corrective surgery that is available in the US. They are just told to wear a patch over one eye to eliminate symptoms. “Cheaper, yes. Better quality of life? No. Humane? Not if you are the one suffering loss of vision,” Dr. Vliet writes.
“For those over 50, The ‘Patient Protection Act’ [ObamaCare] may be lethal, “she says. “Procedures and medicines that are not approved by government panels will not be reimbursed by any insurance plan, since all insurance plans will have to meet the government requirements, whether they are private insurance companies or Medicare or Medicaid.”
Nor will people have the option of paying for denied procedures themselves.
“Lest you think that if you can afford to pay you won’t be affected, think again. Physicians who remain in practice – and as many as 45 percent say they will not – won’t risk losing their licenses by going against new laws and treating you, even if you are able to pay for it yourself.”
Dr. Vliet is predicting that people over the age of 50 will see more and more restrictions on access to life-extending medicines, imaging studies, hospitalizations and surgeries.
“The government is hiding financial decisions behind language like ‘clinically meaningful’ or ‘attenuate’ or ‘redistributive justice’,” she says. “The truth is age-based denial of care to save money to be ‘redistributed’ to younger, more ‘valuable’ lives in the eyes of government drones.”
She concludes: “Welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare’s version of ‘Patient Protection’ and ‘Affordable’ care.”
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