Medical Rationary Board

Each day I feel more threatened with the bits and pieces of information that falls out of the mouths of news reporters with little explanation. Yesterday came the news of the "Medical Rationary Board", already in position, a group of people with NO medical background who might decide the worth of a patient under a new health plan.

I googled and found nothing. The small explanation given by the reporter only served to make me nervous considering I have 2 major illnesses, I'm almost 64, have high medical expenses and costly drugs each month.

I decided to look at my worth, without considering any of the value I put into life in the past. First question is my present medical problems.

Each month I cost Medicare $1000.00 for a weekly shot to enable me to walk, and walk only sometimes, due to rheumatoid arthritis. Add to that another $50.00 a month to control swelling and pain. Once a year Xrays are taken for about $1800.00 to track the damage.

Then add on the liver disease I contacted from a bad blood transfusion in 1980, something that can be chalked up to the lack of the FDA's screening of donated blood. Minor surgery gone bad after the birth of a child caused the need for a transfusion, thus giving me this killer disease. I've had this disease for almost 30 years without knowing I had it. Now that it stuck out its ugly head, this costs $2300.00 a year for one MRI with contrast to make sure nothing has to be done to control the disease. If I have to take the treatment it will be costly and might not work since it only helps "some" people with the disease.

Besides this, there are always some visits to the ER and some minor surgery to keep me going. These charges are always way out of line, in the thousands. Office visits every 3 months for each specialist range about $100.00 a visit and if they draw blood, it can triple the cost.

Lets not forget the Primary Care doctor that you must have for Flu shots and anything not falling under your diseases. My Primary Care doctor has held my pain medicine from me because I just don't want to go to him every 3 months for nothing.

Primary Care doctors do nothing anymore. They work 4 or 5 days a week from 9 to 4 and want to know what their income will be for the month so they line up people every 3 months and demand you show up so they can charge you. I have no control over this if I want to stay out of pain but in the end, this will go against my worth.

Second question would be what value does my life have on society.

I don't work. I can barely walk most of the time. I keep house for my son and sew. I do give a lot to charity, but put up against what large companies give, my little part has no real value.

The only real value I see is the possible value of what they have and can learn with the xrays they take and the effect the medicines have on my disease that they can learn from. BUT, none of the people on the panel have any medical experience, so I doubt that will even be considered.

My own conclusion about me is that I don't have any value left. Up against what I cost to be alive, on paper, I'm not worth keeping around.

If you are older, have medical problems, need an organ, diabetes, dementia or anything that puts pressure on the "new" medical system, you might fall into the catagory of "Little or no worth", with a panel who has no medical background.

This could turn into a form of genocide.
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Thanks to my friend, Shogun, http://shogunsworld.blogspot.com/, I have been able to read the following, which I feared.


Stealth Rationing of Medical Care Sneaks Into the 'Stimulus' Bill, Says the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Unwanted "change" is coming to senior citizens and all those needing medical care if the stealth rationing in the "stimulus" bill becomes law. Rationing of medical care has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, but it was inserted into the bill before the public realized it.
As the disgraced Tom Daschle planned, the government will gain control over medical care incrementally. The stimulus bill seeks to lay the foundation for rationing and denying care to the elderly and the infirm by setting up the infrastructure for monitoring the treatment of all Americans. Doctors who are not "meaningful users" of the system will be punished by fee cuts.
Americans do not want to imitate Canada and England, where patients are told they are too old to receive a necessary operation or must sit on a long waiting list. It can take over a year in those countries before someone sees a doctor for treatment of a life-threatening condition, such as cancer.
But under the rationing inserted into the stimulus bill, Medicare will no longer pay for safe and effective care. Instead, it would apply a standard of cost-effectiveness in order to ration or deny care to the elderly and those who are sickest.
The stealth provisions of this bill create a massive new bureaucracy for controlling medicine, giving this new bureaucracy more money than the stimulus bill provides to all of our armed forces combined.
The lynchpin of this government takeover is to start building a national electronic database of medical records. Patient privacy will be impossible, and mistakes in medical records will be nearly impossible to delete.
This plan will lead to enormous new costs for doctors' offices and patients, but insurance companies are determined to have full access to patients' medical records, and the stimulus bill will enable that. Employers also want access to private medical records to prove fitness for work.
For more information, see: http://www.aapsonline.org/
NOTE: AAPS is a non-profit, professional association of physicians in all specialties, dedicated since 1943 to protection of the patient-physician relationship. It accepts no corporate or government funding, and its board members and officers serve without compensation.