American Thinker: While Bernie Sanders and other Democrats go around the country scaring seniors and others about Republicans talking about controlling entitlement costs in the future, why aren’t they confronted with the fact that President Obama and the Democrats cut Medicare funding twice during Obama’s eight years?
When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they cut Medicare funding by over $700 billion to pretend to pay for Obamacare and say it would reduce the deficit. Cutting Medicare at that time had to reduce the long-term viability of the program.
Then, in 2013, they cut Medicare spending again, and as a result, at least 30 long-term care facilities have closed. I wonder why this story isn’t reported widely on networks and in print.
Democrats also act as if Medicare has no limits (as they forced private health insurance to have no annual or lifetime limits), but as the article says below, Medicare cuts rates 60% to 70% in long-term care facilities if patients don’t spend three days in a hospital before they go to the nursing homes.
I had a personal experience with these Medicare restrictions last summer. I took my 91-year-old mother to the hospital in severe pain, as she had fallen. They shot her up with morphine and other drugs to reduce the pain. They took an X-ray, and it turned out she had a broken back. They told me they probably couldn’t admit her because a broken back wasn’t a good enough reason to stay, but the main reason was that Medicare didn’t want to pay for part of the rehab. read more
No coincidence that US life expectancy has dropped since 0-care was enacted.
I can’t afford the $250 a mo premium for something that won’t pay for a lot of medical procedures and only partially for others. And if you go to the emergency room it’s not considered hospitalization. Found that out $3k later. Any disputes always favor the gov’t.
I have been dealing with the same thing with my 92 year old mother. She fell Thanksgiving eve, broke both knees and one hip. Surgery and one knee brace to immobilize the knee (the other wasn’t a bad enough break) later and she can walk with her walker but only if someone stands her up and sits her down. With one leg straight (because of the brace), she can’t push herself up or sit by herself.
So, kicked out of rehab because she wasn’t ‘improving’. Needs Long Term Care and Medicare won’t pay for it. We are in the process of getting her Medicaid, but to be eligible, she has to self pay until her bank account is below $2,000. So much for a life-time of saving, investing and sacrificing.
I hate the government.
Now wait a minute, I’ve paid into Medicare since my first job at 14 years old….40 years later they won’t honor my commitment?…..If I get some sort of stage 4 thingy I’ll probably level the field….
I can get some sort of Obamacare for 60 dollars a month with the taxpayers (me and you) picking up the rest of the 800 bucks a month….I declined and chose to use the medicare that I already paid for….
Where’s the insurance guru C Steven Sucker on this issue….crickets…..
My dad… died because of internal bleeding, which the coroner told us was due to his surgery a week prior.
(No wonder the hospital didn’t want to perform an autopsy.)
He and my mom are both on government insurance, and it killed him.
I don’t even know if we have his records still because he was seperated from my mom and I was unable to keep close contact with him these psst few years…
Meanwhile my mom had back surgery last year, really invasive stuff, and they sent her home within 2 days of it.
The pain she was in was insane. For the following 6 months she was near impossible to live with or take care of, all because of the shit insurance.
She had another surgery 3 months ago, right before my dad passed away, and the painkiller dose they gave her was like 5 milligrams. She’s 6 ft tall, so it doesn’t cut it. And now the doctors office is accusing her of being an addict.
…Thanks, Obama Care.
No, REALLY. 🖕
….I should add that I pay $150 a month to use the Medicare that I don’t use because I’m very healthy….so, I’m contributing another $1800 a year to the medicare pot….
My husband had to be in nursing home care for the last 5 months of his life. Medicare paid for 100 days. I paid the rest – amounting to around $10,000. We had a cancer insurance policy that is using any excuse not to pay. I am in a legal fight with them now.
But Medicare will gladly pay 100% for hospice the kicker is you have to pay for the housing if not st home. We dealt with all of this when my father-in-law was suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer last summer and an initial issue with edema in both legs that started the diagnosis preventing him from walking. They moved him from the hospital to rehab in three days. Rehab said he’d have 20 days under Medicare max. He opted for no treatment and fortunately had savings to get him into a nice residential home where hospice could be administered. Even though he was originally in the hospice hospital in severe pain and not able to urinate on his own we were told he had to go home or move to the residential home on day 2 because the hospice hospital was only for people that willl absolutely diecin 3 days and though he was iffy he had to go or they’d get in trouble. The move was traumatic and he was in horrendous pain with a bad catheter and hospice service was so-so at best, His nurse assigned went on vacation a day later for 4 weeks. He died 9 weeks after diagnosis. Hospice didn’t even callus the home did. It is a horrendous system where they really just want you off the dole. Hence hospice is 100% paid and gladly offered.
Used to be, people got sick and they died. Period. Trouble is, a lot of the things they died from were easily curable. So, medical science fixed those things. Then they went after the rest.
Now you can keep people alive for months and years after they would have been dead in the 19th and 20th centuries. I am one of those people, and many of you reading this are too, for reasons that can be as simple as early childhood vaccinations. At some point, though, the costs start to outweigh the benefits. After all, nobody lives forever, no matter how much money you are willing to spend. (OK, maybe Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but let’s leave her out of this for now.)
The problem now is this: Given a limited amount of money, where do you draw the line? If I had the answer to that I would be rich and famous, of course.
Remember the movie Soylent Green and the voluntary euthanasia clinics? I can definitely see that happening in the future. And if I signed up for one, they could even use my body for food if they wanted to. I mean, if it’s good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.
😉
You take your chances when you suck off the taxpayer and that includes medicare.
Anonymous, I am so desperately sorry that your family was failed by their hospice. What you experienced is not the standard of care, not even by 10%. I would ask if you’ve come to a point where you could discuss what happened with someone who needs to hear about it. CAHPS is the quality and satisfaction reporting group for all hospices nationwide. They can be reached at 1-844-472-4621. As much as dealing with the bureaucracy sucks, without feedback there can be no correction. Enough feedback can keep a shitty hospice from inflicting further harm. It’s too late for your family, but you might spare others down the road.
Vietvet is spot on. We’ve gotten so good with medicine we’ve settled into a no-man’s land of knowing when to say stop. We offer horrifying medicalized deaths, pushing our bodies well past anything God intended. Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal is very good, an extensive analysis of the simple idea of “just because we CAN, doesn’t mean we SHOULD”. I have had so many people state regret for extensive treatments, pursuing quantity over quality. I’ve also had many ask me to help them end their suffering. There’s an old doctor’s saying “Pneumonia is the old man’s friend”.
Only problem being is oftentimes no one asks the patient what their goals are… that particular discussion time is billed at a much lower rate than a consult that is 100% pursuing curative treatments. Yes, the doctor has to document that time and it gets coded and billed accordingly. Sheer f***ing madness.
This is what happens when you let the bureaucracy get involved in healthcare.