Obamacare’s New Year’s Surprise…Billions In Home Health Care Cuts For Millions Of Poor And Sick

As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors. Specifically, the Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare.

The Administration made this announcement very quietly, waiting to do so until the very end of the last Friday before Thanksgiving, perhaps thinking that most people would not be looking.

To be sure, the timing of the Administration’s quiet announcement did keep it out of sight – for a while. That ended on December 12th, however, when the Washington Examiner broke the story in an article headlined “ObamaCare forcing 14 percent cut in Medicare’s home health program.” FOX News and the Daily Caller have also picked up this story, so full attention is now being paid to this unprecedented cut – and the harm it will do to frail seniors across America.

As the Examiner’s Richard Pollock wrote, “An estimated 3.5 million poor and ill homebound senior citizens will wake up on New Year’s Day to discover ObamaCare has slashed funding for their home health care program.” He’s right: on January 1st, the Obama Administration will sharply cut Medicare funding for home healthcare services.

Totaling a whopping 14 percent between 2014 and 2017, this cut is the maximum allowable under the ObamaCare law. The Administration had the discretion to cut less, or even to make no cuts at all. But they decided to impose the deepest cut made possible by the Affordable Care Act (shouldn’t we be calling this the “Horrible Care Act”?) legislation. And in doing so, they will shift billions of dollars from Medicare to ObamaCare.

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Mark Halperin Trolls Obamacare to Newsmax, Agrees ‘Death Panels’ Are Coming

Time magazine scribe and Obama dick-whisperer Mark Halperin took to the airwaves Monday to troll Obamacare by agreeing with Newsmax TV‘s Steve Malzberg that “death panels” (remember those?) are definitely coming, and that President Obama is a big fat liar. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but if you look a little deeper into Halperin’s puddle-shallow commentary, it sounds more like Mark Halperin supports death panels, not President Obama.

Before you consider Halperin’s commentary, it’s important to remember how the conservative media, followed by the mainstream “villager” media that Halperin represents, have tried to define down Palin’s original “death panel” claim, which was that her specific baby would be forced to “stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”

There was, of course, no part of that claim that was remotely true, but the media tried its damnedest to give Palin the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she meant payment for end-of-life care counseling, which is also not a “death panel” and is already a thing, yeah, that’s the ticket. Or maybe she was referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which the law says “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.”

Or maybe she meant transplant committees, which are also already a thing.

Via: Meidiate.com

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Canada Has Death Panels

And that’s a good thing.

A woman holds the hand of her mother, who is dying from cancer, during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg on July 24, 2010. In the neighboring province of Ontario, a tribunal, rather than a patient's family or doctors, can make final health care decisions.

Photo by Shaun Best/Reuters

See Slate's complete coverage of Obamacare. David Auerbach explains what's gone wrong with healthcare.gov, and David Weigel explains why Republicans are calling for Kathleen Sebelius to be fired.

Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.

Via: Slate

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Death Panels and the WWII Veterans

Ever since the threat of government-run health care became a reality and ObamaCare was signed into law in 2010, clear-thinking Americans have been worried about how the legislation would ultimately affect the elderly and infirm.  Now we know.

Sarah Palin called them "death panels" and was mocked for suggesting that when the federal government ran out of money, health care would be rationed, and the elderly, the infirm, and the chronically ill would be the first to be denied.

America ignored it when Obama told Jane Q Publick, aka Jane Sturm, that he would deny her 105-year-old mother, a woman with a joy for life, a pacemaker.  It wasn't Sarah Palin, but Barack Obama who said that at a certain point, based on their age, old people would be better off with a painkiller.

No American wants to believe that in order to cut down on costs, bureaucrats, never mind the president of the United States, would purposely allow some of us to die. 

But for those who observe President Obama's actions and refuse to compartmentalize his comments, it's been abundantly clear that this is a man who lacks respect for the sanctity of life -- anyone's life.

After all, if a person approves of the unfettered slaughter of defenseless unborn babies and also enthusiastically funds the brutal procedure to end their lives, doesn't it make sense that such a person is capable of just about anything?

That's why it's no surprise that the president recently inflicted abuse on elderly WWII heroes who congregated in Washington, D.C. to visit a memorial erected in honor of their service.

The soldiers were part of Honor Flight, a program that gifts WWII veterans with an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to view the WWII Memorial.

Via: American Thinker

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OBAMACARE AND DEATH PANELS

When my Dad retired in the 80’s he was 65 years old.  He enjoyed his retirement years by volunteering at the local Senior Citizens Center, ran in elections for local offices and was as active as anyone I knew. He loved playing golf and puttering around his yard taking care of the landscaping and even shoveling snow during the winter.   He also worked part time consulting for a number of his long term clients during tax season.  He had as sharp of mind at 85 when he passed away as he did when he was a younger man.  I would always go to him for advice and he never wavered from the messages he gave me as a child and in my adult life.  All the while his health was declining, but this did not stop or slow him down at all.  He would say that he was just like an automobile and when you get older things start breaking down and it is no different for people.  If he were alive today he would be incensed at the thought of someone other than his doctor deciding whether he lives or dies.

When we hear the term “Death Panels” that has been bantered about since the passing of ObamaCare we can only think of one thing, Socialism at its best.  Recently a caller on the Mark Levin Show revealed a very disturbing part of ObamaCare.  It is an inside look at what ObamaCare will do. A panel of government administrators at Health and Human Services (HHS) under the direction of Secretary Kathleen Sebelious, will decide whether it is economically viable to allow advanced neurosurgical care to be performed on a person over 70 which they now refer to as “units” and not patients.  The patients will now receive comfort care. These are not yet published regulations from (HHS). They are talking about our grandmothers, grandfathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors and friends.  This is the United States of America and if you take away people’s right to live with dignity what is left of our valuable freedoms?

At the time ObamaCare was being debated in congress, Sarah Palin said that ‘Death Panels” consisting of bureaucrats, not doctors would be created to decide if we live or die.  She was ridiculed, mocked, and scorned by the main stream media and everyone else that wanted this bill passed.  They all denied that this was the case and that it was just another example of the republicans trying to scare people.  It was done to hide what ObamaCare was really all about.  So if you are 70 years-old or older and your name is Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Maxine Water, Charlie Rangel or soon to be Joe Biden, chances are that you will not be subjected to the “Death Panels” unlike we of us in the general population.

I often get the chance to talk to seniors in this wonderful country and I see a group of people that are still a very important part of society.  They are active with schools, churches, community groups and countless other organizations.  People over 65 make up almost 20% of our population (2010 U.S Census).  They are working longer than ever before to provide for themselves and their families.  They are an invaluable part of our population and they deserve better than this.  They do not deserve to be treated this way by the “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. (Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1865)

This is just a tip of the iceberg when referring to the changes in our life that will occur as ObamaCare becomes fully operational by 2014.  Whether we chose to believe this or not, it is not the time to sit back and wait for the inevitable.  It is time to fight this injustice and get it repealed and the people responsible for this disaster voted out of office.  We are at the precipice of our freedoms and they are being taken away from us one regulation at a time.  It’s now or never.