Obamacare excludes cancer patients from treatment! Ok…not today, but read about the United Kingdom’s Nationalized Healthcare!

UPDATE: Obamacare will not cover cancer patients who are age 75 and older! OK...not yet...but Obamacare is the first step to nationalized (read Universal) healthcare. So...I thought I would get ahead of the curve, and show you all what is happening in the United Kingdom! Think this won't happen under Obamacare...Think again smart-guy!

 

Too old to be given cancer treatment: NHS is 'writing off' patients who are over 75

• Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 per cent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts
• But pensioners with the disease have 44 per cent less chance of survival
• The figure for stomach cancer – at 45 per cent – is even worse

By Jenny Hope

PUBLISHED: 19:20 EST, 23 January 2014 | UPDATED: 03:04 EST, 24 January 2014

Pensioners with cancer are being written off as too old to treat, campaigners said yesterday.

They cited figures showing survival rates for British patients aged 75 and over are among the worst in Europe.

Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 per cent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts.

But pensioners with the disease have 44 per cent less chance of survival.

The figure for stomach cancer – at 45 per cent – is even worse.

And Britons with prostate cancer are a fifth less likely to survive than Europeans if they are 85 and over.

Just 43 per cent live for five years, compared with up to 67 per cent over the Channel. 

Patients in their 70s and 80s with kidney cancer have a 32 per cent survival rate, compared with 46-53 per cent in Europe.

Ciarán Devane, of Macmillan Cancer Support, which helped produce the figures, said: ‘It’s wrong to write off older people as too old for treatment. With a proper assessment and appropriate treatment, our research shows that many older cancer patients can live for a long time and can even be cured. 

‘While it’s good news that so many older people are benefiting from treatment, many thousands more could live longer if our survival rates for over 65s matched those in comparable countries.

 

The barriers to getting treatment – which include age discrimination and inadequate assessment methods – must be tackled now so more older people can survive cancer and live for many years.’

The research from Macmillan and the National Cancer Intelligence Network shows that more than 130,000 Britons have survived for at least ten years after being diagnosed with cancer at 65 or over.

The study, which is the first of its kind, also reveals there are more than 8,000 people alive today who have lived for the same time period following diagnosis at 80 or over.

Octogenarian women do particularly well, with twice as many surviving for ten or 20 years as men.

Survival rates for the over-75s are worse in Britain than Europe for nine out of ten common cancers.

A small survival advantage is seen for sufferers of melanoma skin cancer.

Caroline Abrahams, of the charity Age UK, said: ‘It’s good news that with the right care and treatment older people can survive for many years after cancer.

'It is often forgotten that people over 75 represent a third of all cancer diagnoses and a half of all cancer deaths. 

 

 ‘People over 80 with the disease are the only age group in which mortality rates have got worse in the last 40 years.

'An individual’s date of birth should not be used as a proxy for health and fitness or influence treatment decisions. 

‘Assessments of older people must be based on their needs and not simply on their age. Anything else is blatant age discrimination.’

Mark Porter, chairman of council at the British Medical Association, said: ‘It is important that all healthcare professionals ensure that patients are treated on the basis of clinical need.

‘With an increasingly ageing population, it should be a key part of medical professionalism to guarantee that older patients are treated with the care and respect they deserve.’

Around 60,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed each year in Britons aged 75 and over.

One in four are prostate sufferers. Gerald Shenton, 78, from Staffordshire, said: ‘I was first diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma in 2000, and I am still here 13 years later, although I’ve suffered from every side effect in the book.

‘I never really had any aftercare because I have always been treated as end stage. I was turned down for a possible treatment twice, being told unofficially that it was because of my age.’

Mick Peake, of the National Cancer Intelligence Network, said: ‘It is vital all patients receive the best and most effective treatment based on the nature of their cancer and their fitness for treatment and that chronological age alone is not the deciding factor.’

Canadians travel to the U.S. to receive Healthcare, but…..Where will Americans go once Obamacare is fully implemented?

Under Obamacare where will Americans go to receive medical care? Canadians come to the U.S. and under Obamacare this will end causing the loss of Millions of dollars to Canadian/U.S. boarder hospitals. Americans will turn to Medical tourism in Central American countries as American Health Systems begin to develop this industry!

Report: Tens of thousands fled socialized Canadian medicine in 2013

9:39 PM 01/16/2014 Michael Bastasch DC Caller

        

Every year thousands of Canadian have no choice but to seek medical care outside of the country’s single-payer health care system, according a report from a Canadian free-market think tank.

In 2013, nearly 42,000 Canucks left their homeland to avoid long wait times and inferior care that plagues their centralized health system.

The report from the free-market Fraser Institute found that 41,838 Canadians became “medical tourists” in 2013 and sought care outside of their hockey-loving country. While there were slightly fewer people fleeing the Canadian health system in 2013 than the previous year, the number leaving still amounts to nearly one percent of medical patients in Canada.

“Canadians may leave for a number of reasons including a lack of available resources or appropriate technology, a desire to return more quickly to their lives, to seek out superior quality care, or perhaps to save their own lives or avoid the risk of disability,” Nadeem Ismail, director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“That a considerable number of Canadians traveled and paid to escape the well-known failings of the Canadian health care system speaks volumes about how well the system is working for them,” Ismail added.

Each year the Fraser Institute surveys physicians across 12 major medical specialties how many of their patients received non-emergency care abroad in the past year. The Institute then combines these numbers with data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

In 2013, 41,838 Canadians went outside the country to get medical treatment, down from 42,173 people leaving the country in 2012. This is interesting since wait times for patients who had consulted with a specialist till the time they got actual treatment increase from 9.3 weeks in 2012 to 9.6 weeks in 2013.

According to the report, there are many reasons why someone would leave Canada to seek treatment. Including “because of a lack of available resources or the fact that some procedures or equipment are not provided in their home jurisdiction” as well as “concerns about quality, seeking out more advanced healthcare facilities, higher tech medicine, or better outcomes.”

A major problem with the Canadian health system is that people may have fled because of “the consequences of waiting for care such as worsening of their condition, poorer outcomes following treatment, disability or death. And some may have done so simply to avoid delay and to make a quicker return to their life.”

U.S. conservatives have often criticized th Canadian health system as being subpar compared to the American health system. But liberals point to the relatively low-cost, fair alternative to market-driven health care.
In fact, failed Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader recently argued that the Canadian system was even a better system than Obamacare.

“Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian-style single-payer full medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal,” Nader wrote.

Canadians, however, may not always be getting adequate care. Patients have had to suffer through long wait times and lack of specialized medical equipment, according to  the Fraser Institute.

“That a considerable number of Canadians traveled and paid to escape the well-known failings of the Canadian health-care system speaks volumes about how well the system is working for them,” the Fraser Institute says. “It leaves open the question of just how many more Canadians might choose medical tourism outside Canada if given the opportunity.”

Obamacare causes Americans to go broke and into debt!

Obamacare will be unaffordable, cause Obama’s insured to go into debt, increase healthcare’s overall costs, and in the end….less Americans will be insured!

ObamaCare’s four biggest lies

By Michael Gartland

January 5, 2014 | 7:47am  Thanks NY Post

President Obama’s famous vow — “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan. Period.” — isn’t the only broken promise of ObamaCare.

Now that the Affordable Care Act has actually been in effect for a week, Americans are discovering more pitfalls associated with the massive overhaul.

Lie #1: “Affordable” Care. Even the president’s ideological allies — like Michael Moore — acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act is far from inexpensive for most Americans and that it “risks being a cruel joke.”

For average Americans, the results are prohibitively expensive. “The cheapest plan available to a 60-year-old couple making $65,000 a year in Hartford, Conn., will cost $11,800 in annual premiums,” according to Moore’s math, as published in a New York Times editorial. “If both become seriously ill, they might have to pay almost $25,000 in a single year.”

The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that represents nearly 11,000 entrepreneurs in New York state alone, said it has yet to find a single member whose health-care costs are going down under ObamaCare. Instead, an “overwhelming majority” of businesses have reported increases in their insurance premiums, said Mike Durant, the NFIB’s New York director.

Lie #2: It will prevent people from going into debt.

Patients with cancer and conditions such as multiple sclerosis or Crohn’s disease can now get insurance and financial but if annual out-of-pocket costs run much higher than expected, they might have to go into debt.

“There are certainly challenges for cancer patients,” said Brian Rosen, a senior vice president of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. These gaps “need to be addressed in order to fulfill the intention of the Affordable Care Act.”

Caroline Pearson, who tracks the health-care overhaul for the consulting firm Avalere Health, put it in even starker terms.

“Chronically ill people are likely to be underinsured and face extremely high out-of-pocket costs,” she said. “While the subsidies help, there still may be access problems for some populations.”

Lie #3: ObamaCare will lower costs overall.

The idea that people with medical insurance go to the emergency room less, and thus, help to reduce the overall cost of health care, isn’t necessarily true, as a study of Oregon Medicaid recipients has shown.

Researchers compared Medicaid recipients with those with no health insurance and found the following: Pthat people with access to Medicaid went to the ER 40 percent more than those without insurance.

Lie #4: More Americans will be insured.

Approximately 2.8 million Americans have signed up for new health-care plans since the Affordable Care Act went into effect on Jan. 1. That’s less than the 3.3 million the federal government predicted would sign up, and is also dwarfed by the 4.7 million whose insurance policies have been cancelled as a result of the overhaul.