Dodd and Kennedy exempt from end-of-life services
By Linda Bentley | August 5, 2009
‘As a member of Congress, I have good health insurance’
WASHINGTON – Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., almost gleefully announced on Friday that he has prostate cancer, said it was caught “extremely early” and he expects to make a full recovery.
Dodd, who turned 65 in May, was apparently diagnosed six weeks ago and has already scheduled his surgery to take place at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center during the August recess.
Temporarily chairing the Senate health committee for 77-year-old Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, D-Mass., who is working a reduced schedule since being diagnosed with brain cancer last year, Dodd has been pushing to get a socialized medicine bill passed.
Dodd posted a press release on his website stating, “I’m going to be fine. We caught this early. The biopsies I had showed a minimal amount of cancer and that it hasn’t spread. My prognosis is excellent.”
He also said, “As a member of Congress, I have good health insurance. I was able to seek the opinions of highly skilled doctors, consider all the available options, and choose the treatment that’s right for me.
“My hope is that we will pass the healthcare bill that we passed in the HELP Committee in the Senate so that every American will be able to get an annual physical and talk to their doctor about screening so that problems like this can be caught early and treated.”
However, Congress has exempted itself from having to participate in the plan it is proposing to foist on the rest of the citizenry as it is probably not something either Dodd or Kennedy would be interested in for themselves.
In fact, according to the 1018 page bill, it blatantly admits health care would be rationed (Page 29).
If both Dodd and Kennedy had to be treated using the same health care plan they are trying to pass for everyone else, due to their ages, surgery would not have been immediately scheduled, they would instead be visited by a government bureaucrat to counsel them on end-of-life services and how to die with dignity rather than waste money on treatment.
They would also be competing for rationed medical care with younger illegal aliens (page 50).
And, because Obama has stated he will not raise taxes to provide everyone with his socialized health care plan, the bill actually states on page 203, “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter ...”
The federal government will not only require every person’s medical records to be immediately accessible through an electronic database, it will also have direct real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfers (page 59).
Page 425 reveals government mandated “advance care planning” through government-provided lists of national and state-specific resources to assist consumers and their families through advance care planning clearinghouses, complete with an explanation of the end-of-life services and support available, such as palliative and hospice care that are available.
The government will decide whether an illness or injury is chronic, progressive, life-limiting, life-threatening or terminal and will decide whether one may be admitted to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility or a hospice program (page 429).
There are also provisions for “community-based medical home,” defined as nonprofit community-based or state-based organizations that provide medical home services and employ community health workers, lay workers or other persons “as determined appropriate by the Secretary …” (page 469). These would be new federal funding opportunities for organizations such as the National Council of La Raza, ACORN and AARP.
Perhaps Obama wasn’t lying when he said, “If you like the health care plan you have now, you will get to keep it,” he just didn’t finish the sentence, which would have ended with something like, “until it is phased out and replaced with the government plan.”