Thread: Welcome to SOCIALIST Healthcare

Originally Posted by SurferGirl

I have more faith in my dog's vet than I have in most doctors.
I do know that sometimes they have even more medical training.

We have a joke in the medical field.

"Do you know what happens to people that drop out of veterinary school?
They become doctors"

What should anger EVERYONE, no matter whom......

is that your representatives tried to slip this in without your knowledge. And, Mr. BHO with all his talk of transparency and the website where they were going to post everything for you to review before it's signed????..........

didn't happen. When are we going to start holding our representatives accountable??

Rasmussen: Many Believe Health Care Reform Should Be Delayed Until Economy Improves http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblog...eve_health.asp

Rasmussen has released a poll that finds a plurality of voters believe health care reform should be delayed until the economy improves:

President Obama told the nation last week that health care reform is one of the top three priorities of his administration, but 49% of U.S. voters say the president should wait until the economy improves before moving forward on the health care front.

The numbers break predictably on partisan lines –- 72 percent of Republicans believe reform should be delayed until the economy improves, but only 24 percent of Democrats share that view. Interestingly, 57 percent of independents (or those who claim “other” as their party affiliation) also want the economy to improve before tackling reform.

President Obama often uses the current economic morass as a justification to reform health care. He may want to rethink that argument. It looks like economic anxiety is also an obstacle to a major health overhaul.

Read the full Rasmussen poll here.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...nomy_is_better







see aslo http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...-s-chip-4.html

Elderly face NHS discrimination under new UN death targets

Elderly people will be treated like second-class citizens and denied medical care under new targets which give priority to saving the lives of young people
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
12:01AM BST 29 May 2015

The NHS could be led to discriminate against the over 70s to meet ‘highly unethical’ UN health targets which seek to reduce premature deaths in younger people, senior medics have warned. Under the proposed Sustainable Development Goals, UN member states will be given targets to cut the number of deaths from diseases like cancer, stroke, diabetes and dementia by one third by 2030.

However because many are age-related illnesses people who succumb to those diseases from the age of 70 are not deemed to have died prematurely and so are not included in the target.

In an open letter published in The Lancet, an international group of ageing specialists say the new guideline sends out the message that health provision for younger groups must be prioritised at the expense of older people. Prof Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, professor of social policy and international development at the University of East Anglia, and lead author of the letter, said: “This premature mortality target is highly unethical, since it unjustifiably discriminates against older people.

“We already know that there is age discrimination in cancer care and surgery and these targets give that the stamp of approval.

“The targets are not quite set in stone yet, so we have a final opportunity to impress upon the UN the need to alter this explicitly ageist health target. “If this doesn’t happen, people aged 70 and over will become second-class citizens as far as health policy is concerned.”

The letter warns that the UN target: “has the potential to undermine cherished, fundamental principles of universality and health as a right for all.”

“Put simply, it tells policy makers, particularly in poorer countries that older people do not matter,” the signatories warn.

Others who have signed include ageing experts from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University as well as representatives of The Alzheimer’s Society, Age UK, and HelpAge International.

Baroness Sally Greengross, former director of Age Concern England who also signed the letter said: "If adopted, this UN target could lead to institutionalised discrimination against older people in health care, both here in the UK and globally.

“This target will inevitably reinforce the ageist bias that pervades many aspects of health care decision-making.”

The Sustainable Development Goals which are due to come into effect later this year, replace the Millenium Development Goals which ran up to 2015 and include ambitions for climate change, health care, development and policy.

If the target was met, around 42,000 lives would be saved each year for the under 70s. However if older people were included in the target an extra 130,000 lives would be saved.

Although the guidelines are not binding, health experts warn that the UN is likely to take a dim view of countries who fail to comply.

Last year the Royal College of Surgeons warned that elderly people are being denied life-saving operations because of age discrimination within the NHS.

Data released for the first time showed that across large areas of the country, almost no patients above the age of 75 are receiving surgery for breast cancer or routine operations such as gall bladder removal and knee replacements.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), was also criticised for attempting to change its funding criteria to take into account "wider societal benefits" when deciding on whether to fund drugs.

Health experts branded the move ‘deeply suspect’ and said the elderly, may lose out because they do not contribute as much to society as younger people.

Tom Gentry, policy advisor at AgeUK said that people were living far longer than in the past, with even the average 70-year-old expected to live for at least another decade.

“We know that access to surgery is getting worse for older people, and yet we are talking about people who still have years left to live,” he said.

“We need to improve. We are fighting entrenched cultural attitudes about the value of older people and this target will not help that.”

In 2013, the Government introduced age discrimination laws which mean patients should not be denied procedures on grounds of age. Doctors are supposed to assess patients based on their fitness for an operation, and likely benefit from it.

A spokesman for the Department of health said: “It is wrong to deny people treatment just because of their age, which is why we made it illegal. “Decisions on care should only ever be based on clinical need.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/heal...h-targets.html

Canadian pediatricians recommend letting 22-week-old preemies die.
Should doctors try to save the tiny newborns?
Tom Blackwell | May 29, 2015 1:57 PM ET

Measuring just 10 inches long, Carter Lake should never have made it past his first few desperate hours outside the womb.

When his mother Jennifer’s water broke barely half-way through her pregnancy, doctors warned her they would let the baby die if he was delivered at less than 24 weeks. Resuscitation and life support at that point were futile, they insisted. But four days later, Lake spontaneously gave birth at home and the minuscule, 22-week infant was sped to hospital by ambulance, where staff took him without question to the intensive-care unit. In the ensuing days, though, doctors and nurses at St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ont., repeatedly urged he be taken off life support.

“They told me every absolute horror story in the book,” says Lake. “They told me that he wouldn’t survive, and if he did by some miracle survive, he would have no quality of life … and most likely be a burden on me.”

But the young mother resisted their entreaties. Today, despite some physical and neurological disabilities, Carter is a happy six-year-old preparing to enter Grade 1. “He lights up my whole entire life,” she says. “It’s incredible.”

The case underscores a simmering dispute over widely followed guidelines on how to treat such extreme preemies, unable to survive without intensive medical care. The Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) strongly recommends letting babies born at 22 weeks or less die naturally.

Some doctors and ethicists defend the policy — reaffirmed this year — as a sensible guidepost that recognizes the high risk of death or serious disability for a baby born so under-developed. Others argue infants’ gestational age is too difficult to pinpoint accurately, making the 22-week cut-off an arbitrary threshold between life and death, when flexibility and open communication are what’s really needed.

“We have to get our hands dirty, and not just lie to people to keep it simple,” says Dr. Annie Janvier, a neonatologist at Montreal’s St. Justine Hospital and blunt critic of the CPS approach.

“Doctors don’t actually say, ‘We don’t think it’s worth [treating a 22-week preemie].’ They say, ‘It doesn’t work,’ and that’s a lie. It’s not true … When you realize you have been lied to by doctors, it’s extremely hurtful.”

Janvier, who addressed the issue at this past week’s conference of the Canadian Bioethics Society, does not advocate intensive care for every 22-weeker. But she says doctors should discuss the merits of individual cases with parents, before deciding collaboratively what to do. Her stance was backed by more than 30 colleagues in an article last year opposing the CPS’s position.

The guidelines have faced increasing criticism this month in the wake of an American study that found a small percentage of under-23-week preemies not only survive, but do so free of even moderate disabilities.

Dr. Thierry Lacaze, head of the CPS’s fetus and newborn committee, conceded this week basing life-and-death decisions on gestational age is flawed and promised the guideline would be revisited, after consultation among health-care professionals and parents. Still, he said the position statement does help guide doctors in local hospitals who lack deep expertise in the area, but still care for 20 to 30 per cent of such infants.

And in making any changes, it is important to hear from parents who find it difficult to cope with the consequences of very premature birth, not just those who embrace the challenge, said Lacaze, a neonatologist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. “You can imagine a family caring for a severely handicapped child, they certainly cannot express in a negative way the fact they have to care for their child,” he says. “But there is still a struggle, there are consequences on brothers and sisters, on the parents themselves.”

Relying on gestational age to judge the viability of a preemie may be inexact and arbitrary — like setting a speed limit or legal drinking age — but it does provide some useful guidance, argues Arthur Schafer, head of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Professional & Applied Ethics. “It’s a kind of red flag,” he says. “Maybe we shouldn’t go here, maybe this is pushing our scientific, technical abilities beyond a point where they are of benefit to families and society and, most of all, the tiny babies.”

On their own, infants born at 22 or 23 weeks cannot live more than a few hours; their ill-formed lungs mean they must be hooked up to an artificial breathing machine, while their inability to eat requires tube feeding. And if they survive, the risk is high of disabilities ranging from blindness and deafness to cerebral palsy and cognitive impairment.

Parents often must decide in the delivery room itself — if given a choice — whether to let their child die or send him immediately to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

The CPS strongly recommends only palliative care for those born at up to 22 weeks and six days, “since survival is uncommon.” For neonates of 23-25 weeks, it suggests counselling and discussion with parents about whether to provide intensive care. Yet the margin of error for estimating that crucial gestational age — dated from the mother’s last period — is considered as high as a week or more. While policies differ from centre to centre, Janvier said she knows of hospitals that follow a strict cut-off for treatment. Indeed, a Newfoundland couple complained last year a St. John’s hospital refused to keep alive their 22-week preemie, citing the CPS guidelines.

One set of twins born at 22 weeks was saved only because a health-care worker deliberately changed their gestational age to 23 weeks, says Barb Farlow, a Toronto-based patient advocate and researcher.

Audrey Hogarth, a high-school teacher in Georgetown, Ont., gave birth to the first of her twins at 23 weeks, and noticed no one was helping the tiny baby. “I looked at the doctor and I said, ‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ ” she recalled of the episode eight years ago. “He just kind of looked at me and said, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ ”

Hogarth, 42, held her dying son, Cole, for two hours at the regional hospital, before she was transferred to a Toronto facility that specializes in extreme neonates. Staff there asked whether she wanted them to resuscitate her daughter, Breanna, when she was born. She chose to let the second baby go, convinced by the doctors’ predictions of dire outcomes. Before Breanna passed away, Ms. Hogarth did feel the infant’s finger curl around her own and the baby’s “whole body grasping for air.”

She says she actually found it easier to have a physician decide the fate of the first twin than to make the decision herself. After grappling with “lots of resentment and guilt,” though, she says she has come to terms with her choice.

In his days as an ethics consultant to the NICU at Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre, Schafer says he would wonder about certain of the infants who were saved. “Some of the time I had to struggle to suppress the thought ‘How unlucky for these families that their child was born with access to an NICU,’ ” he says.

“Wouldn’t they have been more fortunate if they had been living in a remote area … where the baby would have died instead of being put through days and weeks of intensive, high-tech medicine, with virtually no chance of surviving, or surviving without overwhelming impairments.” When extreme preemies are kept alive, even some nurses feel they have “created” a disabled human, says Janvier.

Yet mounting evidence calls into question just how hopeless those 22-week cases really are.

The new U.S. study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found when 22-week babies were actively treated, 23 per cent survived and nine per cent survived without even moderate impairment. The rates fell to five per cent and two per cent when infants given only palliative care were included in the total.

Meanwhile, by the time very premature babies become teenagers and adults, most rate their quality of life — despite disabilities — as similar to that of others, research carried out by McMaster University neonatologist Saroj Saigal has concluded.

It all suggests a double standard is at play in the treatment of the most premature of births, says Janvier.

No one would balk, for instance, at trying to save an older child hurt in a car accident, even if their chances of survival were — like those 22-week preemies — 23 per cent, she said. Likewise, many adults receive intensive, costly treatment for advanced cancer despite negligible chances of cure.

And hospitals have long since ended the practice of leaving Down’s syndrome babies to die, though these infants are at much more risk of cognitive impairment than extreme neonates, notes Farlow.

Janvier suspects the super-preemies are sometimes viewed as “disposable,” not least because of their appearance.

“A full-term baby is nice, and a little blond girl who is hit by a car is kind of cute, but there’s not the feeling of compassion when people see a preemie. They go ‘Eww’ more than they go ‘Aww.’ ”

Lake says her hospital’s initial insistence Carter be allowed to die remains a bitter memory. But she still attended an NICU reunion this year, where those same staff seemed amazed at how he had turned out, one nurse bursting into tears.

Although he has vision problems in one eye, and for now relies on a wheelchair, he enjoys and fully participates in life, says his mother, who believes even the tiniest of newborns deserve at least a chance.

“I am so happy,” she says. “I am so proud of him and everything he has done.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/health/...st-of-preemies

Princeton professor calls for killing disabled infants under Obamacare
Posted on Monday, April 20th, 2015 at 5:41 PM.
by: Juliette Washington

According to an article published Sunday by World Net Daily, a Princeton University professor has suggested that severely disabled infants be killed to cut health care costs and for moral reasons.

In a radio interview Sunday with Aaron Klein, broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia’s NewsTalk 990 AM, Princeton University ethics professor Peter Singer argued it is “reasonable” for government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to severely disabled babies.

Several times during the interview Singer argued the health-care system under Obamacare should openly acknowledge health-care rationing and that the country should acknowledge the necessity of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.” Singer also repeatedly referred to a disabled infant as “it” during the interview.

According the WND, Singer is well-known for his controversial views on abortion and infanticide. He essentially argues the right to life is related to a being’s capacity for intelligence and to hold life preferences, which in turn is directly related to a capacity to feel and comprehend pain and pleasure.

Singer told Klein rationing is already happening, saying doctors and hospitals routinely make decisions based on costs. Klein is the host of “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” a syndicated radio program that airs in several markets across the US. Klein is also a columnist at WND.

“It’s different in the U.S. system, in a way, because it doesn’t do this overtly; maybe it doesn’t do it as much,” Singer explained. “And the result is it spends about twice as much on health care as some other countries for very little extra benefit in terms of the outcome.”

During the interview Klein quoted from a section of Singer’s 1993 treatise “Practical Ethics,” titled “Taking Life: Humans.” In the section, Singer argued for the morality of “non-voluntary euthanasia” for human beings not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including “severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved.”

http://www.teapartycrusaders.com/oba...der-obamacare/

'Euthanasia vans that come to your home': Katie Hopkins reveals what she would do if she ruled the world... and says there are 'too many' old people taking up hospital beds

Outspoken TV star interviewed by Sir Michael Buerk for the Radio Times
Katie, 40, claims that old people are filling up hospital beds

Says that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it's not necessarily the right thing to do

Panel show If Katie Hopkins Ruled The World airs in August

by Toni Jones for MailOnline
Published: 02:34 EST, 28 July 2015 | Updated: 11:54 EST, 28 July 2015[/I]

In his latest interview for the Radio Times, newsreader Michael Buerk admits - rather sheepishly -that he had actually started to like Katie Hopkins.

Right up until she told him, in not so many words, that she wished he was dead. 'We just have far too many old people,' she said, looking the 69-year-old up and down after he enquired about her latest TV venture, If Katie Hopkins Ruled The .

Did he know that one in three NHS beds was being blocked by the elderly and demented? That a third of our hospitals are filled up by people who apparently don't even know they're there?

Motor-mouthed TV personality Katie, 40, who is famous for her extreme opinions, was interviewed by Buerk ahead of the launch of the new TV panel show set to air on TLC next month.

And if Katie Hopkins did rule the world?

Well, she'd soon put a stop to old people like her interviewer taking up hospital beds. 'It's ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.' she says.

Her solution? 'Easy. Euthanasia vans – just like ice-cream vans – that would come to your home. 'It would all be perfectly charming. They might even have a nice little tune they'd play.

'I mean this genuinely. I'm super-keen on euthanasia vans. We need to accept that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it's not necessarily the right thing to do.'

Katie, a mother-of-three, first found fame as a no-nonsense contestant on TV reality show The Apprentice in 2007. She beat more than 10,000 hopefuls to make the cut and told Buerk: 'I thought I was doing well. People would see this fairly smart girl, quite tough, didn't cry, didn't take any crap. 'I thought everybody else was doing that honest bit. But it was just me.'
After filming she went back to her job at the Met Office.

'And then,' she says, 'six months later, this show, this monster, came on air and the stuff really hit the fan.

'This character, me, this evil, white witch person, this vicious cow with her killer one-liners became the thing.'

The blonde personality has now made a career out of her outrageous rants, both on film and in print.

She recently admitting to 'identifying with murderers'.

And an attack on would-be migrants in her Sun newspaper column led to more than 300,000 people signing a petition calling for the editor to sack her (which she thinks 'is a good enough reason for him to say: "Not bloody likely!" Well done, you lefties!').

She's not quite apologetic and says she doesn't mind the hatred, which is vitriolic on Twitter and other social media but not, she says, on the street, where she feels 'buoyed up' by waves of public support.

'The rest genuinely doesn't matter. I can park it and walk away.'

'Would I change a couple of words in that column? Yes I would.

'Do I ever feel bad about the rest of what I say? No I don't, actually. I feel I want to say more.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...#ixzz3hEJ0S7yu
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Feminist Celeb: We Need ‘Euthanasia Vans’ To Drive Around And Get Rid Of All The Old People
January 24, 2016

Hopkins suggests that we create “euthanasia vans” that drives door-to-door and kills off the elderly.

“We just have far too many old people,” the feminist says. “It’s ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.”

According to Hopkins, this can be carried out stylistically, you know, with a flair.

“Euthanasia vans — just like ice-cream vans — that would come to your home,” Hopkins says “It would all be perfectly charming. They might even have a nice little tune they’d play. I mean this genuinely. I’m super-keen on euthanasia vans. We need to accept that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

Hopkins’ off-color comments weren’t made completely out of the blue. Great Britain has been wrestling with whether or not to allow assisted suicide for some time now, an idea that’s repeatedly been shot down by the Parliament. But Hopkins is tired of all this concern for human life and wants to see all those gray-hairs six feet under as quickly as possible.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Hopkins has shown such disdain for the more vulnerable members of society. A recent “tweet” she posted to Twitter openly mocked dementia patients and their propensity towards forgetting things, writing:

“Babe I’m here again, I’m here again, where have you been. Babe I’m back again. I’m back again Where have you been? Take That Dementia style.”

And just like how she views the elderly, Hopkins is of the persuasion that dementia patients are pointlessly taking up space in hospitals and care facilities, and should be put to sleep. The Mirror Online reported on a related Hopkins tweet that stated, “dementia sufferers should not be blocking beds.” It proceeded to question the point of their lives.

It’s inevitable that Hopkins will someday become one of the many senior citizens in British society that she so despises. And based on the continued regression of health throughout the West, she’s also got a pretty good chance of developing dementia at some point in the future.

Both of these factors make Hopkins’ distasteful comments rather harrowing for her own survival — who, but the most gracious among us, would repay such a vile woman with kindness in her old age? Considering Hopkins isn’t married and loves to run her mouth off at every chance possible about the merits of euthanasia, it’s difficult to see how she’ll even make it into her sunset years.

http://www.truthandaction.org/femini...-old-people/2/