Things are getting stranger and stranger in D.C. and the
promise of change now definitely looks like the same old game with Medicare:
invite the HMOs in to brainstorm cuts in services to people who need them most.
Behind this is a new bill submitted on May 20 by Senator
John D. �Jay� Rockefeller IV (D, W.VA.), chairman of the Senate Finance
Subcommittee on Health Care. It authorizes the Medicare Payment Advisory
Commission (MedPAC, created in 1997) to go even further and set lists of
approved treatment standards and actually have enforcement powers over methods
of healthcare delivery and reimbursement. You just think about that for a
minute.
The bill is called, �The MedPAC Reform Act of 2009,� so
beware when you hear words like �Reform� in an act as in �The Commodities
Futures Trading �Modernization�� Act of 2000 (thanks to Larry Summers and
signer Bill Clinton), which helped bring us �The Enron Loophole,� which helped
bring down Enron and helped get us in the financial pickle we�re in today with
derivatives.
This time �The MedPAC Reform Act� is calling for MedPAC to
be made up of �independent experts� as an �executive agency modeled after the
Federal Reserve.� Is that because the Fed has done such an incredibly super job
of throwing our money after banks and other dinosauric corporations like AIG?
Do we need still another shark tank of �experts� with vested
interests and little transparency over their actions, spending your money as
they will, and as fast as they print it. Yes, just as the Federal Reserve
serves private financial interests, so too the new health care reimbursement
agency will serve the HMOs, demanding their (your) blood money. This is the
opposite of what Obama promised in his �Change� campaign.
But then, politicians as we all know will and do say
anything to get elected. Reality is another thing. And Rockefeller claims that
an enhanced, empowered MedPAC would not be, and get this, subject to the �whims
of Congress.� Excuse me? Jay said this and more about his bill in a recent
interview with Washington Post healthcare writer, Ceci Connolly. He added,
�To truly achieve transformative health care reform, we need to separate the
special interests from the decision makers.� Think about that for a while.
He added �We must take Congress out of its current role
[representing the people?] . . . It is inefficient and ineffective; we are not
health-care experts, and being a deliberative body means that we cannot keep
pace with the rapidly transforming health-care marketplace.� Congress is not
made up of all arms experts yet they appropriate billions every year to the
Department of Defense. When we leave it to the generals to do on their own
buying pell-mell, we end up with them in bed with big defense corporations,
creating multi-billion dollar white elephants that don�t fly, i.e, incredible
waste.
In fact, in the true tradition of the Rockefeller family and
their treasonous involvement and leadership in the Bilderberg Group, Jay
Rockefeller is trying to circumvent the duly elected legislative body of the
people to make side deals with private corporations, utilizing MedPAC�s
�experts,� and hence have more money to pour down the corporations� ever
dollar-hungry gullets, not to mention the bankrupt banks� maws.
The very idea of setting up an �independent� national
commission to declare what doctors and hospitals can and cannot do is odious --
a step totally in the wrong direction for both the right and left sides of the
Obama/Baucus health-care �reform� discussion. It is made to order to keep the
money flowing right down the drain of the financial cadre behind the HMOs.
Until now, the very idea of this flagrantly �special
interest� bill has not been permitted in the United States. Unfortunately, the
model for it comes express-direct from Britain and is called the �National
Institute for Clinical Excellence,� or NICE, more appropriately �Nazi-Inspired
Citizen Eradication,� as statesman Lyndon LaRouche calls it. NICE was set up 11
years ago and passes on what medications, treatments, and services cannot be
allowed to be given in the health-care system. It can easily become the
�euthanasia express,� with its �Kevorkians,� excuse me, �experts� deciding who
lives and who dies and when.
There is a distinctly inhuman, illegal feeling about this
bill. But then Rockefeller�s latest bill is one of dozens that have been filed
recently in Congress, each with various slants, but all consistent with the
un-American, Nazi-medicine edge.
They will all be detailed soon in Obama/Baucus/Grassley�s
�comprehensive health care reform� act in June. For instance, a version that
was filed last week in the Senate called the �Advance Planning and
Compassionate Care Act,� was to help citizens decide when to reduce expensive
treatments in their �end-of-life� experiences. Can you believe it? It is again
sponsored by Jay Rockefeller, Senators Susan Collins
(R-Maine), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), and others. This is not science fiction,
folks. These geeks are for real. They just sound like they�re from another
planet.
In fact, Rockefeller personally desires backing the
principle of providing health care for all, especially kids, so they can
practice these little tricks on everyone. He would also like to have Medicare
open to enrolling people 55 years old and up, to get the �experts� hands on
them earlier. But the caveat, my dears, is that he wants his NICE agency
patterned on Britain�s model to �service them.�
NICE will decide when and how to cut care for the enrollees
so that the HMO systems get their pound of flesh, yours or mine, and more. My
advice, beloved fellow citizens, old, middle-aged and young, is to be careful
of this Rockefeller, this elitist playing Democratic senator and his bunch. And
be careful of all who offer your healthcare up as a honey-pot for the healthcare
and Big Pharma bears -- just like the Federal Reserve does with taxpayer money
for the banks.
As to Obama, he couldn�t care less. He just wants to cut a
couple of trillion from his first term expenditures, the monies he�s already
given away to the banks, so that he has more to spend next time around. Stay
tuned. More to come!
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New
York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, �State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on� is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.