Everything's getting so unreal....
(brought over from the Truckalogue)
This Stimulus Bill that passed in the Senate yesterday - $838 billion, just for the record. There's 'hidden legislation' concerning healthcare in the bill that is, according to Betsy McCaughey of Bloomburg.com
"...is virtually identical to what [former Senator and former Health and Human Services secretary nominee] Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.” ...I said all that to say this: I walked through the living room just now to get a cup of coffee. Mother said, in a scared and amazed tone, "Oh amx, have you heard about this health legislation?" I just nodded and told her I couldn't talk about it. She said, "This is so scary." It's scary to me too.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.
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....
The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).
This whole Stimulus package is so frightening and alarming .... I've thought for a long time now that an age was coming when we would revert to the status of a third world country; and we would see days with limited power and food, etc. I think we are closer to it than I thought.
I need to remind myself of what I told Mike: "When it gets really bad, I'll muddle along with everybody else and we'll survive just like everybody else. What good is my Faith if I don't fully trust in God to take care of me & mine? What good is my Faith if I worry about anything for that matter ... Seriously, I want God to handle this stuff when gets down to affecting me personally, so I have nooo problem "turning it over", so to speak."
Started a new blog yesterday - amx's Quest for National Economic Understanding. Worked on it almost all day.
