Health Care, 65 Roses and A Prayer

Last year a local news station made a video about a day in the life of my niece, Aubrey Rose. At the time, my niece was an ambassador for Cystic Fibrosis, an incurable disease that she and her family must deal with every day of her life. This emotional video http://www.wftv.com/video/17788642/index.html) shows that life is difficult and the future uncertain for the whole family.

I mention this because in the current discussions of health care I wonder how the government’s plan for health care would affect charities and those with chronic illnesses? There’s been a lot of talk about how the elderly will be treated, but what about those like my niece, Aubrey Rose? Will the government continue to allow her to get expensive medications, participate in clinical trials or go to specialists, particularly if there isn’t a cure? Who will make these decisions? Today it is between you, your doctor and your insurance company. Do you want to have the government become a part of these painful, emotional decisions?

If we had national health care then I could easily see how the government would feel it is looking at the “big picture” and using your dollars to provide the care that would benefit the most. They might ask - is it fair to spend all this money on one child when there is no cure for her disease? Hell yes, if it is your child! And can’t you just see the health care panel denying a CF teen a new lung thinking that she will probably die in another 10 years so let’s give the lung to someone with a longer life expectancy. Wow. This is not what America is all about. A cost-benefit approach is an awful path to go down and we must never take even a first step in that direction. For didn’t some other governments start off with just this kind of questions? First, it was the mentally ill and chronically ill but it went on from there… And even in America, how far might this line of questioning go and where might it lead us?

As I said in the beginning, I am writing about this not only as a concerned citizen but also as “Aunt Patti”. My niece, Aubrey Rose, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis a few days after she was born. The family was horrified to learn that there is no cure and she was destined to have a difficult and shortened life. In fact, right now her life expectancy is only 37 years old. Can you imagine all that you have done or might miss in your forties, fifties, sixties and even seventies if you were to die in your mid thirties?

Yet my niece is lucky that she was born in America. If she had been born in Ireland, where there is national health care, her life expectancy drops from 37 all the way down to 27! CF patients have ten years taken from an already shortened life because of the lack of care in a country with socialized health care. This should be a huge warning to our country as to the detrimental impact of socialized health care.

Of course, one way to avoid the whole nationalized health care problems is to be healthy. To that end, a lot of people are working very hard to find a cure for CF or to at least give CF patients the means to live a healthier longer life. And we are working hard, too, through our annual 65 Roses Golf Classic. When Aubrey was diagnosed we decided that since government doesn’t give a penny to help the CF Foundation then my family would raise money to help find a cure. But unlike other charity functions which raises money, every dollar donated would go to the CF Foundation and not to some dubious “Trust Fund”, plus 90 cents of every dollar donated to the CF Foundation goes straight to research and not to exorbitant salaries or fancy trips. So you know when you donate money that it is going to truly help out.

Eight years ago my family, friends and the Orlando Chapter of CF started the 65 Roses Golf Classic. About 6 of us worked hard to put on this event but it is worth the effort as we have raised tens of thousands of dollars each year for the CF Foundatoin. Now it’s time for the next tournament. But we need your help. The economy is making it tough on all charities, including our own event. Yet if we help each other than there will never be a need for government to step in. Now that is what America is truly all about – people helping each other without any government interference. And here is how you can help us raise money to find a cure for CF…

If you live in Central Florida, we would love if you could join us at our 65 Roses Golf Classic in honor of Aubrey Rose to be held on November 23, 2009 at the Heathrow Country Club in Lake Mary Florida. Many of our golfers return each year for the golf, great food, drinks, good auction items and for the overall comradery of the group. Plus as a special treat, before the tournament begins, the golfers also enjoy a clinic by professional golfer Chris DiMarco. That is just the start to what is always a fun and rewarding day. Click on this link for more information http://orlando.cff.org/65rosesgolf .

If you can’t be here, you can still help out by giving a donation to this wonderful cause. Your donation, no matter the size, is important since every single dollar is making a real differenced in the search for a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. My family and I would appreciate whatever your budget allows, be it your charitable donation of $10, $25, $50 or $250. Plus this donation is 100% tax deductible. To donate to the 65 Roses Golf Classic to help find a cure for CF, click on this link www.cff.org/lwc/auntpatti.

Aubrey Rose is smart and funny and sweet and stubborn, in other words just like most kids her age. Except as you saw in the video (http://www.wftv.com/video/17788642/index.html) her life is different from her classmates. Yet she deserves, as does every CF child, to have a long and healthy life. And it is up to us to help her do just that. So please, help us find a cure for Aubrey Rose and the 30,000 others with Cystic Fibrosis by donating to our 65 Roses Golf Classic at www.cff.org/lwc/auntpatti. And join me in my prayer for my beautiful niece, Aubrey Rose; that some day a cure is found so that that this terrific little girl who is just starting second grade, will live a long life and will die of old age surrounded by her children and her children’s children in the far far future. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

One More Thing...

In my last blog, A Patient’s View of HR3200 I argued against the government sending someone to discuss your medical and end of life options if you are seriously ill or injured. Since then I have had people tell me that it is one thing to discuss end of life options with a 51 year old but a totally different matter when the patient is 91. They reminded me of the burden these elderly people were to the system and that there comes a point when you should say enough tests, operations, medical treatments and to simply let nature take it course. End of Life options are appropriate not only for the sake of the elderly person but also because of the extreme expenses to both the family and the government to keep them alive.

I agree, up to a point. In fact I was a bit angered to learn that a friend’s 87 year old mother-in-law had just had a hip replacement operation. This elderly woman suffered from dementia, diabetes, extreme arthritis and a multitude of other ailments plus her family ignored her the one time she spoke out against the operation since they thought they knew best for her. Or at least most did since some family members argued to stop everything and simply let her die but these voices were drowned out by those wanting her to have the operation. Plus I am sure that the nursing home also encouraged the operation for the practical reason of wanting her to be mobile and able to go to the bathroom on her own and not to require diaper changes. Yet all of the family infighting about treatment could have been avoided if she just had a Living Will. But at this point it was too late as she wasn’t capable of making decisions.

So yes, I agree that this woman probably should not get more medical treatment and should simply be made comfortable as she dies. But this puts you on a very slippery slope. For what is the cut off point? If my 51 is too young but there is a need for end of life options for this 87 year old patient then perhaps at 80 people should be denied treatment. Except I look at my own 81 year old mother. If she were to fall I would be one of the ones arguing for a hip replacement operation. Am I being hypocritical? No. For unlike the first elderly woman, my mother is a sharp, active, intelligent older woman who neither looks nor acts her age. My mother at 81 is as active as many a 65 year old. So you can’t use age as the criteria. What might have worked for my friend’s parent certainly would be wrong for my mother.

In fact, my father was only 65 when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After only one chemo treatment we realized he was dying and we then wanted to make what little time was left to be as easy as possible for him. In this case we turned to Hospice to help him. If a family member is dying then Hospice is wonderful. So why does the government need to create a whole new panel and one more bureaucratic department? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to provide government grants to this organization which is already in place and functioning quite well?

The final argument was the costs associated with health care for the elderly. Wow. How cold is that? Liberals actually worry that keeping mom and dad alive and paying for their health care will bankrupt the government. The same problem of lack of funding concerns treating uninsured people. Who is more important – the people or the government? For if the former, we can find the money. Hell, let the banks pay back their bailouts, take the majority of the stimulus money not spent and gee here’s a thought, fire the 30+ highly paid Czars (the Energy and Environment Czar is getting $172,000 for example) and let the Cabinet do its job instead. Money is not an issue. If Obama could find all these trillions for people to buy a car then he can find the money to take care of our parents. Besides, using existing groups such as Hospice would save billions in the projected salaries for new government employees.

Conservatives have made their point about the major problems with HR3200. Now is the time to start offering alternative ideas. Here are a few suggestions; some are already being discussed while others are my own ideas:

• Let the insurance companies create a co-op through which uninsured people can get health insurance. Restrict this to only US Citizens. Illegal immigrants are a tough situation and this country needs to review and revise their entire illegal immigrant policy as soon as possible. Meanwhile the expenses for treating illegal immigrants or citizens who don’t sign up for insurance should be shared by the entire country and not just the border states and those with high illegal immigrant populations.


• Provide grants to encourage and pay for anyone who wants to be a nurse, doctor, technician, nursing home aide or in any other medical professions. We will need all of these once we insure everyone but other than talking about rationing no one has thought of this.


• Use Hospice as the primary end of life care givers. Provide them with grants to expand their current business rather than the government creating a new parallel department. Offer the same grants to any other private company to insure competition.
  
• Make health insurance mandatory when you get or renew your driver’s license. When you renew your driver’s license there should be a Living Will form with the paperwork sent to you. They already ask about organ donations so why not also include Living Wills? Use Hospice or SS to handle all questions about Living Wills.


• Require all Americans including government employees and union members to be a part of whatever new plan is approved.

So come on conservatives. Instead of simply trashing HR3200 you need to start to come up with alternative suggestions. Forget calling people Nazi’s and instead present your Congressman with some great ideas that they can take back to the Senate and House. For we need a Health Care Plan that is truly by the people and not this monstrosity which is a plan by the government for the people.

The Death Care Bill

The more I hear about this health care plan the more I despise it. The good news is that politicians and people are now talking about the clause in the bill that turns it into a death care bill, not a health care bill. I quoted it in an earlier blog but it deserves to be repeated because people need to know what our government is proposing: “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill” and therefore there will have to be some kind of “difficult” and “democratic conversation” that will take place to give “guidance” as to what patients will receive life-sustaining, and expensive, treatments. Oh great. That's all we need - the government to determine who should get medical treatment. No potential for scandals there, right?

And yet they do have a point. I recently had a discussion about a 93 year old woman who had a hip replacement surgery and I must admit that I thought it was a bit much at that age. I was even more disturbed when told that they had found bone cancer and were reviewing all kinds of treatments to extend the poor old woman’s life for another six months or so. In this case I thought it was a waste of money and the doctor’s time; that the best treatment was to make the elderly woman comfortable and out of pain and let her end her life with dignity.

So in this case I agreed with the proposed health care plan. But this was about cutting off surgeries to a 93 year old. How do you determine what that cut off age should be? Should treatment be stopped at 90 or maybe 80 or perhaps go down to 70? In actuality, the health care plan was written where they could refuse treatment to anyone over 59 years old! Hell, Tom Watson, who will turn 60 in Sept. nearly won the British Open and yet this health care bill will consider him as old and potentially unworthy of medical treatment in 2 months!

Think about the implications of this odious bill. A healthy 60 year old man who has a heart attack could be given minimal treatment while a 64 year old woman with breast cancer could be denied chemo treatment since keeping these “old” people alive would be deemed “too expensive” especially if they lived to the current average age of 78. It would instead be much cheaper and we would free up surgeons and medical centers if we simply give these sick people pain meds and let them die. And yet, one of the first things Obama did upon becoming president was to restore a provision in the Endangered Species Protection Act that Bush had removed that would provide greater protection to animals.

What does this tell us? That liberals seem to be more concerned about the welfare of the spotted owl, titmouse, American burying beetle and other obscure animals than they are for your grandparents, parents, diabetic Uncle, chronically ill sister, paraplegic friend or Cystic Fibrosis niece? And at a time when Obama promises new jobs with shovel ready federal projects he has just hamstrung those very federal projects by reinstating that clause in the Endangered Species Protection Act which would require any federal project to undergo an independent scientific review that might affect a protected species. So these new federal projects needed to provide jobs could be delayed or even stopped because of some mouse or fish or bird. Yet while denying jobs in order to save a damn bug the government is condoning euthansia by denying medical treatment to the elderly. This is insane!

What makes it even more preposterous is if you factor in the liberals religious beliefs. For it almost is forgivable to let the elderly die if, as in most religions, you believe that they will be going to a better place. But liberals tend to be atheists. So they don’t have this comforting belief that those who are dying will go to heaven. To the atheists, when you die, you are dead and gone and that’s it. Believing there is nothing after death makes their proposal to take away expensive treatments from seniors (defined as over 59, mind you) and to simply let them die that much crueler than if they thought the dying would go to heaven. Think about it. How cold is that?

We have got to stop this insanity. Mankind must come first and people should recognize that each life is precious. For if we start to deny aid to the elderly then who will be next? Liberals already deplore using animals to test potentially life saving drugs so they might decide we could save a lot of money (and animals) by not funding research to find cures for chronic illnesses and simply let them die, too. Or will expectant mothers one day be required to take tests to determine if their fetus’s have any chronic illness and therefore the pregnancy must be terminated before the child is born and all the health costs are incurred? What might they decide to do with the mentally ill? Once started how far down that slippery slope will we go?

This is still America. The health care reform is the very antithesis of why this country was founded. For remember that each of us was promised Life, not death, in our country’s Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Truth on Obama's Health Care Plan

Remember when Bill Clinton was trying to avoid lying by asking the court to “define the word ‘is’”? Well, the current President is just as much of a slick lawyer except instead of twisting words to avoid acknowledging an affair this President is parsing his words in order to mislead the American public about his health care bill. And I don’t mean he is less than truthful about some obscure part of it but he is trying to fool us about the primary intent of this bill; to socialize medicine by bankrupting private insurance and replacing it with government run insurance, doctors, hospitals and drugs.

I always thought that something about this health care plan smelled badly but I didn’t have any evidence until I stumbled upon a blog by NewsBusters in which they were discussing an article by Investors Daily Business (IDB) http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/07/16/ibd-individual-private-health-insurance-illegal-under-house-bill. You see IDB did something quite outrageous, they actually read the entire 1000+ page health care bill, something which I doubt any of the lawmakers currently discussing and voting on the issue have done. And within those pages is a total contradiction to what Obama and the Democrats have been promising.

Here is what President Obama recently said in a major speech to the AMA about his health care bill, “…If you like what you're getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift. But if you're not, this gives you some new options. And I believe one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force -- so that we can force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest…”

This is basically what everyone has told us; those with insurance can keep what they have and those without can choose between public or private insurance options. In fact, Obama takes head on the accusation that private insurance will eventually disappear; “So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth.”

But when reading the health care bill, IBD came across a section titled “Protecting the Choice To Keep Current Coverage” on page 16 which stated: "Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of the year the legislation becomes law”.

This is written in typical misleading legalize and I had to read it a few times before I realized what it was saying: Private health insurance companies will not be allowed to enroll anyone new after the bill becomes law. Wow. Take a moment and let the enormity of that sentence sink in. So yes, people can keep their private insurance. But if you were uninsured you won’t be able to enroll in a private insurance company; you would be forced to use the government insurance plan, whatever that might be. And if you are already insured but you like another private insurance plan better, too bad, you can’t have it.

So who is the liar Mr. President? This bill will kill private insurance companies for how can any private insurance company survive without new customers? In contrast to what is being promised, this bill will force the uninsured into a public plan. Although I carefully reread what Obama said and I realize that he never actually stated that the uninsured could get private insurance: “…this gives you some new options. And I believe one of these options needs to be a public option…” Oh yes, he is a lawyer carefully parsing his sentences to sound one way yet actually mean the exact opposite.

And where he said that people are not telling the truth when they say that he is trying to bring about government health care? I can see where a slick lawyer might argue that this is correct, that Obama isn’t trying to bring about government health care – he is succeeding in doing it!

Perhaps this is the key to that teleprompter. Everything that Obama says is a carefully crafted lie or misdirection. He is a master at telling the public what they want to hear while hiding his true intentions. Luckily a few people, including some from his own party and even a couple of journalists are beginning to question his words, his motives and his goals. In fact Obama just might have gone too far with this new health care bill. We need more folks like IBD and NewsBusters to dig into the true intent of the health care bill and then to let the public know that it isn’t what they say it is. President Obama will again address the nation on this topic so listen carefully to what he says and what he omits. And if it smells bad then it probably really does stink.

America’s Evolution – Part 1

America’s car industry is dying… again. Congress wants to bail them out (again) but I am not sure if that is the right thing to do. I can’t help but wonder if the car industry is like a dying person who would be artificially kept alive if given an injection of money. I don’t know if GM and Ford can continue on their own any more and if they can’t then why should we keep them going? Maybe these companies have run their course and it’s time for them to close their doors.

I think what we may be seeing is the final death throes of manufacturing in this country. For the past fifty years we have slowly been evolving from a manufacturing society to a service society. I don’t know if this is even something bad but merely a result of becoming a more advanced nation. This is not an original idea yet I don’t hear people talking about it very much and I think we need to have this national discussion. For my own edification I want to think through how we got where we are and then try to figure out if this is good or bad and what we should do next.

As this country advanced we have continuously evolved and yet each time it took violence to help us move up the chain of evolution. Like most new nations, America first started out as an agricultural nation. Once this country’s metals were discovered then ambitious and sometimes ruthless men began to find ways to manufacture these metals into needed products. Steel, ore, iron, coal and the like were the building blocks on which this nation stepped up a level on the evolutionary chain.

Yet moving from an agricultural society to a manufacturing society was a brutal and bloody transition. It started with the Civil War which was primarily a fight between the manufacturing North against the agricultural South. The final blow to our agricultural dominance was the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression which destroyed millions of acres of farmland.

War World II ushered in the peak manufacturing years. After years of disuse during the depression, our factories were producing at maximum levels to provide the materials and products needed to fight a war. After the war, these same factories continued on peak levels but now to produce all the new products that the young and growing middle class were clamoring for after years of deprivation. Not only was there a demand for goods but there was also a new demand for housing. This country lost for good untold millions of acres of what could have been productive farm land. Now this land was irrevocably gone as the suburbs were being born.

During the 1950’s and 1960’s America couldn’t manufacture items fast enough to satisfy this country. The birth of the suburbs issued in a whole new array of needs from all the things housewives were now demanding to have in their house to the products required to maintain the new lawns. Midwife to the birth of the suburban appetite for products was television which now told everybody what they needed to have.

By the early 70's the high demand for products tapered off yet as the need for big ticket items diminished, the 1970s started a whole new world of consumer goods – electronics and computers. Not only were these products in high demand but due to continuing technological advances products quickly became obsolete thus requiring new purchases. Since the 70's entire industries were born, thrived and then died within a handful of years. Think 8 track cassettes and VCR's for example.

Although our demand for products still remains high, at some point we stopped producing these goods. America is moving up one more step on the evolutionary chain from being a manufacturing country to being a service country. Yet when and how did this happen? Was it inevitable and simply the result of being an advanced nation? If that is true, then government’s plans to “rescue” these factories with obscene amounts of money may be pointless and a complete waste of our money.

I want to explore this some more but its time to take a break so I will finish this up in a day or two. Meanwhile, here is something to think about. If Congress is this upset over the possibility of losing our car industry would they be willing for their children or grandchildren to forego a higher education in order to work in a car factory? Would you?