Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Below You Can Check Your Chance For Getting Health Services In The COMPLETE LIVES SYSTEM Proposed by Obama's Advisor

Dr. Ezekiel (Zeke) Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, is one of Obama's three closest advisors on the overall structure of a health care system. Zeke is a specialist in medical ethics at the National Institute of Health. Many past comments by Obama and recent comments by Barney Frank, Pelosi, Waxman and the Liberal Democrats about the direction of health care are in line with Zeke's thinking and proposals. Obama has gotten too slick to make these comments since taking the White House, but in the past he has openly favored a single-payer government-run health care system but has noted that it will take some time to get there. Obama's "government option" or "multistate cooperatives" are code words for driving private health insurers out of business and creating a government run system as in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Below is Zeke Emanuel's "age based priority for receiving scarce medical interventions under the Complete Lives System" Zeke shows this as a graph in a paper he authored, but I have taken the points from the graph and made a table which might be easier to understand. Zeke proposes the "probability (chance) of receiving a medical intervention" at different ages, compared to the maximum chance which occurs at age 25 years. Caution: this doesn't mean that you automatically get required medical intervention at age 25; it simply means that at age 25 you have the best chance in Zeke's Complete Lives System and on either side of age 25 your chances are not as good.
The first number in each brackets is your age in years and the second number is your probability (chance) of receiving a medical intervention compared to the best chance which occurs at age 25 (so this chance is set at 1.0).
In other words, if you are a certain age, let's say 55 years old, then you are only 60% as likely to receive the necessary medical intervention you need compared to someone who is 25 years old. Here is Zeke's the probability (chance) proposal,
FIND OUT WHERE YOU FIT IN:
(0 years, a newborn: P=0.10), (5 yrs:P=0.35), (10 yrs:P=0.70), (15 yrs:P=0.85),
(20 yrs:P=0.95), (25 yrs:P=1.0), (30 yrs:P=0.98), (35 yrs:P=0.95), (40 yrs: P=0.90),
(45 yrs, P=0.80), (50 yrs: P=0.72), (55 yrs:P=0.60), (60 yrs: P=0.30),
(65 yrs: P=0.25), (70 yrs: P=0.20), (75 yrs: P=0.18).
Zeke doesn't show any probability after age 75, so I suppose you get end of life counseling rather than medical care.
[If you think this is made-up, you can read it for yourself in a paper authored by Zeke Emanuel and two others, published in a journal called Lancet, volume 373, January 31, 2009, page 423.]
Newborns and the very young better not have any significant medical problems because ObamaCare cannot afford to invest in your health. Evidently, very sick children are not a good investment because they may not turn out to be productive members of society. But, for those that make it into the teen years they can get relatively good care until they are in their 50s. After age 50, one is no longer a good investment and so medical resources should not be wasted upon them under Zeke's proposal. Of course the important word is "relative".Even at the optimum age of 25, services and high cost medicines will be limited and some will not be available due to cost and waiting periods for many tests and surgeries can be extensive. This is the case in Canada and in the United Kingdom with government-run single-payer health care systems. Zeke states that the Complete Lives System isn't perfect but it's the best of various choices that he considers. of course, he doesn't consider just leaving the current system in place and fixing a few things like tort reform, computerizing medical records and vouchers for the 15 million or so citizens who truly cannot afford health insurance.

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