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.

 

Obamacare plus a lot of money from my pocket…..means I can keep my physician!

Did anyone really believe Obamacare was NOT going to change the relationship between physicians and patients? I like my doctor, I receive good care, and I do not need Obamacare screwing it up!

Obamacare Architect: If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Pay More

10:01 AM, Dec 8, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

If you want to keep your doctor, you might have to pay more for it, Obamacare architect Zeke Emanuel said today on Fox News Sunday:

The host, Chris Wallace, said: "President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Doesn't that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan? Isn't it a fact, sir, that a number, most, in fact, of the Obamacare health plans that are being offered on the exchanges exclude a number of doctors and hospitals to lower costs?"

"The president never said you were going to have unlimited choice of any doctor in the country you want to go to," said the Obamacare architect.

"No. He asked a question. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Did he not say that, sir?"

"He didn't say you could have unlimited choice."

"It's a simple yes or no question. Did he say if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?"

"Yes. But look, if you want to pay more for an insurance company that covers your doctor, you can do that. This is a matter of choice. We know in all sorts of places you pay more for certain -- for a wider range of choices or wider range of benefits. The issue isn't the selective networks. People keep saying, Oh, the problem is you're going to have a selective network--"

"Well, if you lose your doctor or lose your hospital--"

"Let me just say something," said Emanuel. "People are going to have a choice as to whether they want to pay a certain amount for a selective network or pay more for a broader network."

"Which will mean your premiums will probably go up."

"They get that choice. That's a choice they always made."

"Which means your premium may go up over what you were paying so that, in other words –

"No one guaranteed you that your premium wouldn't increase. Premiums have been going up."

"The president guaranteed me I could keep my doctor," said Wallace.

"And if you want to, you can pay for it," said Emanuel.

Obamacare and Medicaid will bankrupt America, and real soon!

ObamaCare created a Medicaid time bomb

By Michael D. Tanner

December 7, 2013 | 9:15pm  NY Post 

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far.

The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments.

Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.

Indeed, already Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 48% of federal spending. Within the next few years, those three programs will eat up more than half of federal expenditures.

And it’s going to get worse. Congress has shown no ability to reform Social Security or Medicare. With ObamaCare adding to Medicare spending, we are picking up speed on the road to insolvency.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in part because of ObamaCare, Medicaid spending will more than double over the next 10 years, topping $554 billion by 2023.

And that is just federal spending.

State governments pay another $160 billion for Medicaid today. For most states, Medicaid is the single-largest cost of government, crowding out education, transportation and everything else.

New York spent more than $15 billion on Medicaid last year, roughly 30% of all state expenditures. The Kaiser Foundation projects that over the next 10 years, New York taxpayers will shell out some $433 billion for the program.

But none of these projections foresaw that so many of ObamaCare’s enrollees would be Medicaid eligible.

To be sure, the health-care law’s designers saw the expansion of Medicaid as an important feature of their plan to expand coverage for the uninsured. Still, they expected most of those enrolling in ObamaCare to qualify for private (albeit subsidized) insurance.

It’s beginning to look like that was just another miscalculation, one that could have very serious consequences for the program’s costs.

Moreover, any projection of Medicaid’s future cost to New York taxpayers assumes that the federal government keeps its promise to pay 100% of the cost for Medicaid’s expansion over the next three years and 90% thereafter. But given the growing burden that Medicare will put on a federal budget already facing high debt levels, how likely is it that changes in the federal share of Medicaid will stay off the table?

In fact, as part if last December’s fiscal-cliff negotiations, the Obama administration briefly considered changing to a “blended” reimbursement rate, somewhere between the current and promised rates. The administration quickly backed away from the offer, but it’s likely to come back in the future. If it does, it would cost New York tens of millions of dollars.

Every bit as bad as the cost is the fact that for all this money, recipients are going to get pretty lousy health care.

Of course, one might say that even bad health care is better than no health care. But, unfortunately, for Medicaid, that’s not true.

The Oregon Health Insurance Exchange study, the first randomized controlled study of Medicaid outcomes, recently concluded that, while Medicaid increased medical spending increased from $3,300 to $4,400 per person, “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical-health outcomes.”

Other studies show that, in some cases, Medicaid patients actually wait longer and receive worse care than the uninsured.

While Medicaid costs taxpayers a lot of money, it pays doctors very little. On average, Medicaid only reimburses doctors 72 cents out of each dollar of costs. ObamaCare does attempt to address this by temporarily increasing Medicaid reimbursements for primary-care doctors, but that increase expires at the end of next year.

Because of the low reimbursement, and the red tape that accompanies any government program, many doctors limit the number of Medicaid patients they serve, or even refuse to take Medicaid patients at all. An analysis published in Health Affairs found that only 69% of physicians accept Medicaid patients. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that individuals posing as mothers of children with serious medical conditions were denied an appointment 66% of the time if they said that their child was on Medicaid (or the related CHIP), compared with 11% for private insurance — a ratio of 6 to 1.

Even when doctors do still treat Medicaid patients, they often have a harder time getting appointments and face longer wait times. One study found that among clinics that accepted both privately insured children and those enrolled in Medicaid, the average wait time for an appointment was 42 days for Medicaid compared to just 20 days for the privately insured. One study found that among clinics that accepted both privately insured children and those enrolled in Medicaid, the average wait time for an appointment was 42 days for Medicaid compared to just 20 days for the privately insured.

That’s one reason why so many Medicaid patients show up at the emergency room for treatment. They can’t find a doctor to treat them otherwise.

This not only increases the strain on already overburdened emergency room doctors, but increases the wait for those who arrive with real emergencies.

As bad as this is now, ObamaCare will make it worse by increasing the number of people on Medicaid without doing anything to increase the number of doctors treating them.

We don’t know yet whether the rush to Medicaid will continue. It may be that the troubles with the ObamaCare website might have skewed the early signups. But if ObamaCare really does lead to a massive expansion of this costly and inefficient program, that’s bad news for taxpayers, providers and patients.

Michael D. Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

 

Obamacare forces healthsystems and hospitals to cut staff!!! Obama seen nodding Approvingly

Top U.S. hospital laying off staff due to Obamacare!!!

Here it comes! Healthcare workers, Physicians, Nurses, PAs and NPs are being fired (health systems call it being laid-off). That means our care will suffer! No two ways about it!

Patrick Howley in the DailyCaller 11/25/13

The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.

“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.

The Cleveland Clinic is reducing its 2014 budget by $330 million.

“We offered early retirement to 3,000 employees,” Sheil said, but noted that the early retirement option recently offered to staff was “voluntary” for eligible employees.

“The $330 million cut is not all layoffs,” Sheil said, noting that the Clinic is also cutting operating-room expenses and paying less to vendors.

“We’re taking money out of vendors, renegotiating contracts, looking at where we can reduce duplications, improve supply chain efficiencies…how we can scale back and use less. How we can take costs out of our operating rooms,” Sheil said.

“We were able to take 23 percent out of common operations procedure by doing things more efficiently,” Shiel said.

The Cleveland Clinic is a Top 4 U.S. hospital for 2013-2014, according to U.S. News and World Report rankings. In 2008, Clinic surgeons performed the nation’s first near-total face transplant.

TheDC has extensively reported on Obamacare’s effect on hospitals, including hefty fines and other penalties facing nonprofit hospitals like the one that treated the final Boston Marathon bombing victim.

“Medicare Advisory Board”…Learn how to say it! These will be the people (the unknown bureaucrats) that will tell your doctor what treatment is best for you!

I want everyone to repeat after me….” Medicare Advisory Board (created by ObamaCare) will not let my doctor give me that treatment” Learn it, know it….love it! Because that is the way of the future! 

This is your life under ObamaCare

By Dr. Marc Siegel

Published July 03, 2012

FoxNews.com

Like all practicing physicians (and medical correspondents), I was glued to the news last Thursday morning at 10 am ET when the US Supreme Court via some questionable fancy legal footwork allowed ObamaCare to survive. Like many of my medical brethren, I was deeply disappointed by the outcome.

But ultimately I am not concerned about America’s doctors; we will survive even if our paperwork continues to pile up, our income continues to decline, and our waiting rooms overflow well beyond capacity. We may feel like quitting but most of us will soldier on, continuing to work even as the new Affordable Care Act committees regulate and restrict us to the point of impotence.

Most of us have no choice; we are super-specialized and we don’t know how to do much of anything else.

We will survive, but what about you, America’s patients? 

I am worried that the more than 250 million of you who already have health insurance will see the quality of care you receive diminish greatly. Doctors will weather the storm of ObamaCare even if we have to see a patient every five minutes and spend most of our time seeking test and treatment approvals, but what about you? How will you feel when you hear about a brand new cure only to find out that your insurance won’t cover it?

You, the patient, will have to get used to less access to real health care solutions, fewer approvals for the very latest, personalized, genetic-based cancer treatment or surgical technology that could save your life.

One of the reasons your doctor isn’t happy is because under ObamaCare he or she will bear the brunt of explaining how come your ever rising premiums are buying you less than they did before.
         
Gone will be the ability to pay out of pocket and receive a tax break for higher quality care. Flexible Spending Accounts will shrink to a maximum of $2,500 and you will only be able to deduct a medical expense from your taxes if it exceeds a whopping 10 percent of your gross income for the year.

With fewer cash payments, lower fees, and more red tape, no wonder your doctor isn’t happy. Recent surveys by Deloitte, sermo.com, and most recently Jackson Health Care reveal that a majority of doctors believe the Affordable Care Act will have a negative impact on their practices. Earlier this month the Doctor Patient Medical Association released a survey of doctors that showed that 90% believe that the health care system is on the wrong track.

Don’t get me wrong, covering you regardless of pre-existing condition with no possibility of your insurance dropping you when you are sick and no co-pay for preventive services are attractive features of ObamaCare.  But these expensive features have to be paid for with a "rob Peter to pay Paul" concept that comprehensive insurance is famous for.

You see, the ACA mandates the kind of expensive insurance that allows you to go to the doctor too easily; if insurance pays for people when they just want reassurance for a palpitation or an upper respiratory infection, it won’t have enough left to pay for expensive state-of-the-art treatment when a person is very ill.

Over the last few years I have diagnosed three cases of curable lung cancer using a screening Chest CT that I fear an Independent Medicare Advisory Board (created by ObamaCare) will deny in the future. I have also witnessed two patients waking from comas and walking out of the hospital long after ObamaCare’s new committees would likely recommend that their breathing tubes be pulled. I am concerned that ObamaCare rulings from on high will interfere with the art of medicine down here in the trenches.

It is one thing to provide a catastrophic insurance for everyone in case they end up in an emergency room, it is quite another to mandate the kind of insurance that restricts some services while blanketly approving others.

ObamaCare will cause your premiums to soar. ObamaCare promises to increase your access to health care but it may actually decrease it because your doctor will no longer have as much time for you. The growing numbers of insured will have difficulty finding a doctor. The current doctor shortage will be compounded by all the doctors who restrict the insurances they accept, beginning with Medicaid and Medicare.

Many physicians chose medicine, in the first place, because of the old-fashioned joy of taking care of people. I am afraid that joy is now in jeopardy. 

My patients are asking me the same question that patients all over the country are asking their doctors this week. "What do we do now?" Unfortunately, my answer, "I will be there for you no matter what," may not apply to all doctors.