By Wesley J. Smith Media Matters must be running low on targets, since it chose to go after a piece I have in the Weekly Standard this week urging that Congress repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). I argue that IPAB is both unconstitutional — a matter MM ignores — and a splendid vehicle …
Continue reading "Media Matters Fails to Discredit Me"By Wesley J. Smith There is a fight in the UK about whether to keep a seriously ill baby on life support or put her in palliative care to die. Typically of our age, the idea that a person has a life not worth living may really be about discrimination against the disabled coupled to …
Continue reading "Quality (Not Worthy of Life) Danger Ahead"Ask Your Representative to Co-Sponsor H.R. 3251 against Biased “Advance Care Planning” Under Medicare Background: During the debate over the enactment of Obamacare, there was considerable controversy over paying Medicare health care providers to conduct “advance care planning,” which counsels patients on deciding whether to choose or reject life-preserving medical treatment (and even food and …
Continue reading "Tell Congress You Don’t Want Tax Funds to Push Older People to Agree to Premature Death!"By Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics Most state and city government health care plans, as well as many other plans, are soon to be undermined by one of the most serious of the multiple rationing provisions in the five-year old Obama Health Care law — the “excess benefits tax.” A …
Continue reading "Obamacare Rationing “Excess Benefits” tax threatens health care plans of state and city workers"By Wesley J. Smith “Don’t mention death panels!“ the medical technocrats often scream–as they plot and plan to institute death panels. And that’s just the course taken by the New York Times physician columnist, Sandeep Jouhar, as he races past supporting Futile Care Theory (in which doctors are permitted withdraw wanted life-sustaining treatment based on …
Continue reading "Pushing “Social Justice” Medical Bigotry"By Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics A renewed pushback is underway against one of the most serious of the multiple rationing provisions of the five-year old Obama Health Care law — the “excess benefits tax.” The original law deliberately delayed the provision’s implementation until 2018 because of its controversial nature. According …
Continue reading "Serious Obamacare Rationing Provision Again Under Fire"WASHINGTON – In advance of a Friday Institute of Medicine conference in Washington, DC involving policymakers in implementation of its September 2014 report that urged promotion of “advance care planning,” the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee is issuing a report entitled, “The Bias Against Life-Preserving Treatment in Advance …
Continue reading "Report Examines Bias Against Life-Preserving Treatment in Advance Care Planning"By Burke. J. Balch, J.D., director, NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics President Obama has been among the many deploring the reality that despite an improving economy, middle-class wages have remained largely stagnant. Yet there is now evidence that the rationing provisions of Obamacare are partly responsible. Even during recessions, in the past the …
Continue reading "How Obamacare Rationing is Harming the Economy"By Wesley J. Smith Editor’s Note: In his excellent piece Wesley Smith sounds the alarm about a Canadian board that typifies the push to deny life-saving medical treatment against the will of patients and families on both sides of the border. National Right to Life is more pessimistic than he is about the “rarity” …
Continue reading "Who Decides the Harm in “Do No Harm?”"By Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics A report released June 16, 2014, by the Commonwealth Fund think tank claims that although the U.S. spends more on health care, we underperform relative to other countries. This often repeated argument was one of the principal justifications for the Obama Heath Care Law. …
Continue reading "Report claiming US health care worse than abroad distorts facts but ObamaCare may soon make it a reality"By Jennifer Popik, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics Under the Obama Health Care law, the Administration’s stated mission is to limit not only the overall level of healthcare spending but also what Americans may choose to spend, out of their own funds, for their own families’ life-saving and health-preserving health care. This …
Continue reading "Obamacare’s “Reference Pricing” threatens to ration Americans’ health care"By Burke Balch, JD, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics Editor’s note. This appeared in the May issue of National Right to Life News which can be read in its entirety at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsMay2014.pdf While critical access to top health care providers is already being severely restricted in the individual health insurance plans on the …
Continue reading "Healthcare spiraling downwards as ObamaCare takes hold, worse yet to come"