Obama-care(s): but does he?

By Barbara J. Stock

Some of the dirty little secrets about Obama-care are starting to leak out. It's strange that Obama would let one this big out before the election, but outed it has been.

As a retired registered nurse, I was around when hospitals panicked over the very thought of Hillary-care back in the early 1990's. Both of these "care" packages are nothing more than a one-payer, socialist, government-controlled medical system. Hillary and Obama-care are quite similar but back in the 1990's America was still sane enough to reject it. This time, Obama just rammed it down our throats.

Here is a simple but brutal fact about Obama-Care for seniors: It is a system that wants you to die. You are old. You are over 65. The vast majority of you do nothing anymore to contribute money to the socialistic America Obama is building. You take your social security. You fall and break your hips. Your joints wear out and you want knee replacements. You are having heart attacks and strokes. In the world that Obama and his progressive slaves live in, you have become a burden on society. So, out of respect for Obama, you should just die. If you don't really want to die, Obama-care will take steps to see that you do.

Canada and the United Kingdom have a one payer, or socialist medical system. Both are in free-fall. The UK has a population of about 63 million. Canada has about 35 million. Neither can keep up with the expenses and pay the bills for socialized medicine. They have gutted their military. They have taxed their people nearly to death and still it is not enough.

Both countries have a doctor shortage and import foreign doctors to try and keep up. Waiting lists for doctors, diagnostic testing, and even life-saving surgery are long. Often, the patient dies before even getting near a hospital. Canada often has to close their hospitals in December except for life-threatening situations due to lack of money to keep them open. Every year, it gets worse.

One example is this: You are having severe headaches. This is new, you never had headaches like this before. Maybe your vision is off as well. You feel angry more often and you may even be having noticeable personality changes. So, you go to your family doctor to see what the problem may be. He is concerned. He orders an x-ray but that is "inconclusive" and recommends a cat scan for a better look inside your head. To your horror, you find you are put on a waiting list. You might actually get your CT scan done in four to eight weeks. You had better hope there isn't a ticking time bomb in your head that goes off before you get your scan done. Even if you survive long enough to get the scan done, it may be months before you can have the needed surgery to save your life because you will be put on yet another waiting list.

It is not as bad in the UK, but almost. Why is the wait so long? There is no money. There is no money for the cat scan machine. There is no money for the people to do the test. There is no money for doctors or nurses. So, depending on which part of Canada you live in, your wait for this very needed test could be anywhere from four weeks at best to eight weeks at the worst. This is why many Canadians now come across the border into the U.S. to get these tests and often to get the life-saving surgery as well. Their own doctors tell them to come here.

As a side note, many nurses from Canada come across the border to work in the U.S. because, in their own words to my very ears, they can't make a living wage in Canada.

How does that affect us here in America? It is a vision of the future. It is what we will be like in a very short time if Obama is re-elected and Obama-care is not repealed. It will be swift here because there is over 300 million of us. Family size is shrinking and the older folks, who up until now, have been able to get the medical care they need to live a longer life. Having people live until they 85 or 90 is very costly under a socialized medical program. Not only are they drawing their social security longer (which, when you die, the government keeps) but your medical bills tend to increase. This is why, as soon as you retire, at an age they keep raising, a socialist government would rather see you die then live on. They just can't afford you. To this end, Obama has taken certain steps to give you a nudge towards an early grave.

His plan does have a small group of bureaucrats that will decide if you can have life-saving surgery or treatment, even though he denies it. This decision used to be made between the patient, the patient's family, and the doctor. Age was only a small part of the equation. The patient's general health and mental status were considered. Are they strong enough to withstand the shock of a serious surgery and then have the strength to recover and resume a good quality of life? There are some at 70 years old who are too weak or infirm to even survive the surgery and would not be what is called a "good surgical candidate." Comfort measures and medications would be the prescribed treatment, more than likely. On the other side, some 85 year old folks are still out golfing and jogging and would be a very good candidate.

Some surgeries that might fall into the catagory above could be what we call a "triple A," or abdominal aortic aneurysm, carotid endarterectomy (cleaning out the arteries in your neck so you don't have a stroke) open heart surgery and some cancer surgeries and treatment. Treatments like dialysis might be denied if your kidneys fail.

That group of non-medical egg-heads doesn't care about your medical conditions. All they care about is how old are you and what is your life expectancy based on some standardized chart in front of them. In other words, are you worth the money it will take to fix you? If you are over 65 and no longer paying taxes via the workplace, then no, you are probably not worth it. You are not a person to them, you are a number.

Now another little aspect of Obama-care has come to the fore. If the average hospital stay for a hip replacement is six days, then after six days, Medicare may not pay the hospital or your doctor. Unless they can be very creative in how they submit their bill, it will be rejected. The standard stay is six days and not a minute longer according to some bean-counter in DC. So, if you are not doing as well as the standard says you should be doing, tough. Out the door you go and everyone just hopes for the best.

Sometimes, however, the best doesn't happen and the patient returns to the hospital with a problem. Now, hospitals used to be able to re-admit using a different diagnosis. Example: First admission- Hip fracture due to fall, Total Hip replacement. Second admission: Infection at surgical site or fever of unknown etiology. Something along those lines based on what the patient presents with. Because it was now a different diagnosis, it was accepted.

Even this option will soon be removed. Hospitals, who are forcing their doctors to discharge patients before they really want to, will now be fined for re-admissions. If you have a hip replacement done and are forced out of the hospital before you are ready, don't even think about coming back.

Under Obama-care, if you get home, and because a nurse isn't changing the dressing over your incision and it gets infected, to bad. The hospital will not want to re-admit you for IV antibiotics because not only won't they get paid for it, they will be fined for allowing you back in. It's not that hospitals are greedy, but this will push them ever closer to having to close their doors due to going bankrupt.

Of course, this is just the beginning. Before you realize it, if not repealed, Obama-care bean-counters will decide if you can have that hip replacement, not you and your doctor. If you fall and break your hip and those in DC decide you are too old, too costly and just a general nuisance of medical costs, you will be denied. Your option then will be to lay in bed until you die.

Before you think you can just go to a private insurance company, forget that as well. If they even exist in the future, they will, as they do now, take their cues from the rules that apply to Medicare. Doctors even now, who have contracts with Medicare, are fined if they take cash for treatment. Did you know that? Even the rich cannot buy treatment from many doctors.

Which brings us back full circle to the main problem of socialized medicine: Are you a good investment for the government and society? If not, you are not worth the money it will take to treat you. Without treatment, you will probably die.

It won't just be the elderly who suffer. Those little babies born prematurely will be allowed to die as well. After all, they often have physical disabilities and that costs money and there is no assurance that they will go on to be money producing members of society. These premies are very expensive to treat. So, they will be denied as well.

If you ask true progressives like Nancy Pelosi, they are not only in love with abortion for any reason up to and including the ninth month, even on a perfectly healthy baby, but they are in love with the idea of euthanasia as well. Right now, they push for euthanasia for the terminally ill folks, but that too will change over time. The time will come when a family can bring in Grannie, against her will, and tell the government they can no longer take care of her. So bye-bye Grannie. Like the sick family Cocker Spaniel, Grannie is now a burden and needs to go.

Does this sound far fetched? Remember back to the first days of abortion? It was 1973, abortion was legalized ONLY in the first three months and ONLY to save the life of the mother. But then the right to regulate abortions was removed from the states and put in the hands of the federal government.

Abortion-creep started immediately. Suddenly, a women could have an abortion up until the baby was considered "viable," which, as medical treatments improved, became 24 weeks or six months. That was not good enough for progressives, however, so now a woman, full term and in labor can decide she wants a partial birth abortion. Instead of a healthy live baby, you have a dead baby with it's head pierced and it's brain sucked out and skull crushed. They literally hold its head in so it can't take a breath until they can kill it. Just like that, one minute alive and the next, dead, and it's now legal under Obama-care. In fact, they loved it so much, the Democrats, who took God out of their platform, made sure the right to snuff a babies life out minutes before birth was in there. Death, it seems, is more important to them than life..or God. So do you really think they care about you?

So, take heed elderly of America. Don't listen to Obama's sweet talk about how he is fighting for you. His ultimate goal is make sure you die as soon as he can legally arrange it. You have become expensive. Your medications are expensive. Your hospital stays are expensive and let's face it, you have become an expendable burden on a society geared to the young and healthy and productive.

So consider how long you would like to live before you vote in November. Your very life or that of one you love, may depend on how you vote. Just remember this: Obama lies....a lot.

© Barbara J. Stock