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A Blog You Should be
Reading
Part One of Two
By Dave Andrusko
Part Two revisits one of the great (if
unintentionally) pro-life moments on
television. Please send comments on Part One
and/or Part Two to
daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you'd like,
follow me at
www.twitter.com/daveha.
Talk about an embarrassment
of riches! In addition to all the other
invaluable online resources we've talked
about in this space, one I have neglected to
highlight is the blog produced by NRLC's
Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics--http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com.
My oversight is all the most
significant because, like other information
sources we produce, such as
www.nrlactioncenter.org, TN&V, and
www.stoptheabortionagenda.com, this site
is updated almost daily. This constant
stream of information is extremely
important. Just as you have to be up to
speed on the abortion-enhancing properties
of various health care "reform" proposals,
grassroots pro-lifers need to know how to
oppose changes that put the elderly and the
medically vulnerable in the cross-hairs of
rationing, or worse.
Speaking just for me, I know
I have the unfortunate habit of placing bad
news on the back burner (if not off the
stove entirely) when I read assurances that
this or that provision has supposedly been
eliminated. Guess what? They are like bad
pennies; they keep coming back.
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Sen. Jay Rockefeller |
For example, take Sen. Jay
Rockefeller (D-WV). As the blog indicated
yesterday, he "has sought to reincorporate
many of the controversial end-of-life
provisions relating to Advance Directives."
But the blog not only gives the reader a
heads-up, it explains why they are
dangerous, and in reader-friendly language.
In their current form,
Rockefeller's amendments--207, 208, and
210--"would provide for governmental payment
for advance care planning and various other
ways of promoting advance directives.
National Right to Life strongly encourages
the execution of a pro-life advance
directive, the Will to Live. The pro-life
fear is that efforts to push patients and
prospective patients to prepare advance
directives may in practice become a means of
persuading or pressuring them to agree to
less treatment as a means of saving money."
(Just so there is no confusion, backers
predict/promise the amendments will
save money.) One
other example of how the blog alerts
readers. A couple of days ago TN&V wrote
about what I've called the "10 and 5"
provision. However
http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com
gives a much fuller and more detailed
explanation. There
is a provision in the Senate Finance
Committee proposal that penalizes Medicare
physicians who, in authorizing treatments
for their patients, wind up in the top 10%
of per capita cost for a year. And it is a
stiff penalty: these physicians will lose 5%
of their total Medicare reimbursements for
that year.
"If you authorize enough
treatment for your patients, however
necessary and appropriate it may be, you are
in danger of being one of the 1 in 10
doctors who will be penalized each year," we
learn. As a consequence physicians have an
enormous incentive to cut costs.
Let's say a figure of $10,000
per patient ensnares you. The next year the
physician will limit costs to $9,500 per
patient. And the next year $9,000, and so
forth--a downwardly moving target. But even
that is no guarantee.
"By definition, there will
always be a top 10%, no matter how far
down the total amount of money spent on
Medicare is driven. It's like a game of
musical chairs, in which there is always one
chair less than the number of players. No
matter how fast the contestants run, someone
will always be the loser when the music
stops." "This will
create a constant sense of uncertainty in
doctors, since none can know in advance
precisely what the cutoff for a given year
will be." The results?
"Still more pressure to
limit treatment and diagnostic tests to the
bare minimum."
Be sure to visit
http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com
and tell your pro-life friends about it. It
is a great read.
Part Two |
