My mother is 84 going on 85 and going through a hard time of it lately. She has several issues that have been exacerbated by losing my father about six months ago. He was her partner of nearly 60 years and had become her caregiver. Recently she began losing weight and so has been seeing her doctor on a near monthly basis as he, and her family, nurse her through this downturn.
She had one of those appointments earlier this week. I took her there and accompanied her into the doctor's office for the examination.
The exam itself was not remarkable other than she is showing improvement and gaining weight. The part of interest though for this community, was the discussion she and the doctor had on their way out the door.
Now from comments he has made previously I assumed her doctor is very conservative, to the point of being a tea-party sympathizer, if not supporter. Still my mother and father both liked him as a doctor and he seemed to genuinely like them and be looking out for them, so I let his politics and any comments slide.
On their way out we were talking about his being busy enough to have hired an additional physicians' assistant for the office. The discussion continued, took a few turns about modern economic realities of the medical world, and eventually my mother made a comment along the lines of "who knows what's going to happen now", meaning the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), usually referred to as Obamacare, on medical practice.
That's all the opening her doctor needed. He told her of hearing of a woman who called into an office because something that had been covered in the past suddenly wasn't. It was not specified whether this was a procedure or a prescription. When she called she was told that because of Obamacare, Medicare no longer covered whatever it was because she was older than 80 years of age. So Obamacare was cutting costs by rationing care for the elderly, after a certain age you just get maintenance/palliative care.
The doctor then went on about how if Obamacare wasn't defunded this is what was coming. That there was a panel of 18 people, named by the President and approved by Congress, who were empowered to do what was necessary to cut costs. They could determine what is and isn't covered and it would take a 3/5 vote of Congress to overturn any of their decisions. Sounded like the dreaded "death panels" all over again.
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