"Stealth Health?" If not, just call it Socialized Medicine

by jwright
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Candidate Obama campaigned on the premise that all America would access the same health coverage that he and others in Congress enjoy. Wrong.
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If the current pork-filled “Stimulus Plan” leaves the Congressional Conference Committee intact, count on socialized health care stealthily becoming law because president Obama’s “stimulus plan” contains an unprecedented federal takeover of our current healthcare system.
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According to Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, here is some of what Obama and Company have in store, especially for those of us who are seniors:
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Your current medical records, retrieved from your doctor or hospital, will be tracked electronically on a national database to be monitored and tracked to make sure they agree with what Washington, D.C. deems effective and necessary.
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The new system is compulsory -- doctors and hospitals who are not "meaningful users" will be forced to pay penalties.
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A new Health Czar - a "National Coordinator Of Health Information" - willoversee the system. The bill establishes something called the "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research" that will ultimately establish what procedures are "effective.” A federal HMO in other words.
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A dangerous standard of cost effectiveness will be added to the Medicare equation, which could lead to health rationing among the elderly for whom expensive treatments are less cost-effective. A senior can out live the benefit, in essence meaning that you will be considered too old for further treatments. Good luck. Maybe Good-bye.
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This bill will affect every part of health care, how patients are treated and how much hospitals are paid. This “stealth health” bill allocates more funding for this new bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force combined.
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European style socialized healthcare - attempted more than a decade ago by Hillary Clinton and thrown out, now masterminded by socialists strategists months ago and sneaked into the "stimulus” bill – may become law. Thank you Tom Daschle, who didn't become Secretary of HUD but did write this proposal into the "Stimulus Plan."
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As an Obama staffer indicated in a TV interview, this is what the voters asked for. It isn’t what he promised.
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jaq~