Healthcare Pits Quality Against Quantity

Politics Aside Things Don't Look Too Healthy for Elderly

Aug 12, 2009 Patricia Caporale

Your city or state may be planning its Centennial parade. However, under the Obamacare bill if the local centenarian needs hip replacement, he may not be marching in it

According to thousands of angry Americans, public outcry over the proposed healthcare reform is going beyond political borders and entering into ageism. Key elements of that reform focus on whether certain medical procedures should be performed on the elderly if they are not considered cost effective.

Under the microscope are controversial comments made by Dr. Ezekial Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel currently is playing a key role in the President's advisory committee on healthcare reform.

Last year Dr. Emanuel admitted that cuts in healthcare would not be pain free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,' he wrote, (Health Affairs Feb. 27 2008).

Doctors "Oath" Too Serious

More recently, he wrote "Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others."(Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Further fueling this reverse Kevorkian-type treatment of the elderly, opponents say the "Obama care" plan would not assist the elderly in their decision to end their life - but force it; almost legislate it. They have called it legalized euthanasia. Obama stated that families may have to decide if a surgery is the best thing for centenarians. "Maybe they should just take the pain pill," he said.

The Democrats promise that their healthcare reform will reduce the cost of health care, but according to economist Thomas Sowell, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost.

The "Death Panel"

Exactly who will suffer the most when that health care is rationed? According to political opposite and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the sick, the elderly and the disabled.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have 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", she recently wrote in her daily blog. "Such a system is downright evil." That statement has been the subject of its own controversy. "That is absurd,' said Obama, "It's simply not true."

The debate on the healthcare reform may go on and on but the ageism issue will remain.

Based on figures from the University of Nevada there are currently more than 70,000 people over 100 years old. In fact, it is considered one of the fastest-growing age groups in the United States. Demographers have offered estimates that place those numbers to 834,000 by 2050.

If the Obama healthcare bill goes into effect as it is now, the government may be the one to pull the plug on that number and lessen the burden of America's healthcare cost.

Interestingly enough, if he manages to stay healthy, President Obama will be approaching his 90s then.

The copyright of the article Healthcare Pits Quality Against Quantity in American Affairs is owned by Patricia Caporale. Permission to republish Healthcare Pits Quality Against Quantity in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.