Healthcare Reform “Senior Death Warrants” Email Should Be Put to Death Itself
As predicted, the fearmongering, half truths and out-and-out lies about healthcare reform have begun in earnest. I received an email from a dear and respected friend yesterday and was appalled at the dis-information it contained.
So I’ve decided to share the email with you and show you where it is wrong and why you need to question anything you hear in these kinds of emails, blog posts and other pieces you may read.
The email, called SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS is printed here in its entirety. I’ve footnoted my responses below.
The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada. It
took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today. In the United States, we have medical evacuation helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes. (untrue – see comment 1)In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed. (untrue - see comment 2)
Obama wants to have a healthcare system just like Canada’s and England’s. (untrue - see comment 3)
I got this today and am sending it on. If Obama’s plans in other areas don’t scare you, this should! Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants!!
Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a senior citizen, is
getting close or knows somebody that is. (true!)Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the “stimulus” Bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens. (untrue – see comment 4)
The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg (untrue - see comment 5) with the following statement:
Bloomberg: Daschle says “health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.”
(untrue – see comment 6)If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that our esteemed Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes. (true!)
Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level.
We have an election coming up in one year and nine months, and we have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies have begun and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable. Lets do this! (see comment 7)
Comment 1: Natasha Richardson fell and hit her head, and refused to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. No one can be treated if they don’t seek treatment. Yes, later her husband phoned for help, but by then it was too late. Could they have taken her by helicopter for help if she had been in the US? Maybe — but we will never know. This form of condemnation of Canada’s healthcare system is purely speculation. No matter what country anyone lives in, they won’t get care if they refuse help. News articles indicate that helicopters are available for transport in many areas in Canada, but not remote areas. That is true in the US, too.
Comment 2: I went straight to some doctors in the UK for this answer ( I network with many doctors in England on Twitter.) They assure me that there is no such policy. One even asked me “is that a serious question?”
Comment 3: I have scoured the Internet and can find no where where any bona fide news organization has reported that Mr. Obama has made any such statement. There are blogs, comments and editorials on some news websites, but no hard news anywhere that reports this statement or any statement like it.
Comment 4: The stimulus bill has nothing to do with quality of care or delivery of care. It does contain $57 billion for development of an electronic medical records system which will eventually cut the cost of care and will improve the safety and delivery of care. Will rationing take place? Of course it will. It already does. But that has nothing to do with the stimulus bill!
Comment 5: Bloomberg has never quoted Tom Dashle saying any such thing! I checked in with one of my favorite resources, Politifact and they spell out exactly how this rumor came to be.
Comment 6: In fact, that quote came from Betsy McCaughey in the form of a letter to the editor. And while I have admired Dr. McCaughey’s work in hospital acquired infections for many years, I believe she is WAY off base by making such a statement. Inflaming an already contentious argument does not help. (Update: McCaughey is truly going off the deep end, now making statements that the healthcare reform will will make it mandatory for Medicare recipients to go through required counseling to tell them how to end their lives sooner.)
Comment 7: Healthcare reform is going to happen. We can make it easier on ourselves by dealing in the truth, and helping the cause. Or we can make it far more difficult on everyone by fearmongering and inflaming. Sending an email full of half-truths, lies and speculation doesn’t help! If you truly want to get involved at the grassroots level, then I ask you to instead contact your local congress person and share your feelings about what is important to you.
Read more about the Senior Death Warrant at my About.com blog.
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Do you have concerns about healthcare reform? Have a rumor or concern you want clarified? Pose it here and we’ll try to uncover the truth.
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Thank you so much for this, Trisha! You should submit it to snopes.com as well.
Don’t you just have to wonder at the motivation of the people who spread crap like this? What is it, insurance companies or the AMA or hospital associations or what?
Whoever it was, they are (as you make pretty clear) either an uninformed idiot or an outright crook.
This is a great great post. Thanks.
My father-in-law (who is a stroke survivor) was living with us until recently. In his confused state, he’d spend his entire day watching FOX News, which would broadcast half-truths and fabrication like this all day long.
One hour of Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck covering healthcare would contain more outright lies than this. More than once, I’ve been privy to crucial facts that are deliberately left out of Fox’s reportage. My conclusion: once you leave the center, it seems that politics is mostly about bending the truth to match your agenda.
Now that my father-in-law has left, we’re still receiving his mail, and much of it preys on the gullibility of confused seniors. Sadly, this email is more the norm than the exception.
Trisha,
Your commitment to acquiring and sharing accurate information is, as always, essential and commendable.
This example of misinformation is a mirror for how inaccuracies in an individual’s personal medical history can spin dangerous and destructive reactions.
What a brilliant lesson you have shared with us!
Of course, this is fearmongering, but I don’t think that the political left has come clean on health reform. Without question, they have no idea what the final cost will be and each week they have another plan on how to pay for it. The House payment plan for the moment is to tax high earning Americans, but the Senate may not be quite so accomodating to this approach. The ultimate costs will be higher than they predict and the promised gains in the system won’t be fully achieved. As a practicing physician, I am dismayed that so little attention has been devoted to preserving and enhancing medical quality. It seems that so much of the discussion is about the money. There is tons of wasted money already in the system that could be used to reform the system. Castigating the political right heals no one.
http://www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com
Natasha Richardson fell and hit her head, and refused to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. No one can be treated if they don’t seek treatment. Yes, later her husband phoned for help, but by then it was too late. Could they have taken her by helicopter for help if she had been in the US? Maybe — but we will never know. This form of condemnation of Canada’s healthcare system is purely speculation. No matter what country anyone lives in, they won’t get care if they refuse help. News articles indicate that helicopters are available for transport in many areas in Canada, but not remote areas. That is true in the US, too.
This analysis is not accurate -”untrue” as it were.
1. Her husband was not in Tremblant when this happened.
2. She declined (not refused) care when first seen, common in this type of situation. She was seen again roughly two hours later (unclear that it might have been earlier but the resort is not clarifying their claims) . There were still at least 3-3 1/2 hours to make it to Montreal for definitive care, making the initial “refusal” moot.There was still time for her to receive definitive care
3. Tremblant is not a “remote” region – it is less than 90 minutes by ambulance from Montreal’s best medical center
4. Despite the proximity she didn’t make it there until it was too late. Paramedics records indicate that at one half hour after she was put in an ambulance, her neurologic status indicated a 80-90% chance of survival with appropriate care. In less than an hour she would have been in Montreal, probably in the operating room had the system worked.
5. The helicopter is a nonissue in this case as the ambulance travel time would be about the same as helicopter travel time.
6. No one in Canada, medical or official spokesmen has addressed the actual medical care she received. no public inquest has eve been released despite the obvious questions.
Thank you for raising the awareness that these emails are really just propaganda tools.
It is sad to see such fervent anti-government sentiment associated with health care and its reform because the statements do not represent fact. Whether you think the government is competent to manage health care is a valid concern, but statements about the “The Man” taking away our rights are akin to the extreme views of private militia groups and deserve little air time in intelligent dialogue.
Also lost in many of the discussions is how much money is being squandered in not reforming the health system. The private parties, including insurers, have been asked since the 1970s to reform their practices, but given that they stand to lose money, where would there incentive be to do so?
With the US directing considerably more of its GDP to health care than other nations and not seeing benefits in doing so, government intervention is needed to bring costs in line. Whether this is best accomplished with the current plan is a valid point of debate, but ignoring the problem is only allowing it to get worse.
I lived in England for 6 years while I worked for a German company. I am an American citizen and had many opportunities to experience the British medical system. During my 3rd year there, I had a heart attack and was taken to a London medical center, the UCL Hospital to be specific. There, the treating physicians determined that a stent was in order and after a cardiac catheterization they determined in fact that I need three stents. They installed them and three days later I was released feeling well and in time to celebrate my 63rd birthday at my home there.
Who ever is making these wild claims about socialized medicine knows nothing about how the system works. Also, a friend who lives in France had been treated for cancer, and survived for 11 years. Her treatment started at the age of 71, 9 years after she retired and was living off a pension.
The US is the only industrialized nation in the world which does not provide medical car for all of its people. I have been retired now for 3 years and live off a partial government pension and my work pension. I enjoy my retirement and don’t have to worry about seeing a doctor and would never consider living any place that I had to worry about making the choice of buying groceries and medicine. I don’t have to make that choice here in England.
The president says that this is not national health care and won’t effect our current plans. I don’t think that you have any idea what is in the health care bill or how much it will cost. I doubt that most in Congress know or the president understands it. This makes me highly suspicious of the President’s motives. Do you know when it will take effect and how many people that now don’t have health care will have it after the first year? Have you considered that this could just be a power grab by the government?
I am so glad you did this.
I was just talking to my son about the very same thing. How these people tear down and do not build up, they accuse the new President of trying to turn the country Socialist and yet it is THEY who would be the socialists, by saying that everyone who doesn’t think their way HAS to be wrong…..
One of the bills they are talking about to “prove” the President is trying to change the country is one that has been introduced by several, but one in particular, Representative for over 20 years..I don’t think the current President had anything to do with that..
Do these people actually understand the process that it takes to make an amendment or law pass in the first place? Let alone swing a whole country to a totally different type of political system? Has this government, in the House of Congress and Legislature EVER agreed on anything so drastic and profound in its history? I think not. (75% of the States legislatures HAVE to agree unanimously to change add or delete am amendment..and that’s after it goes through the 2 houses of Congress…(and is agreed upon)
The people that send these kinds of emails around prey on the elderly and on peoples fears and lack of knowledge in a time of hardship for many and financial uncertainty..
Shame on them.. It is FEAR that can change a person or a country..and not necessarily in the right direction…
Work together, people..NOT against…