Obama on Elderly Care - Too Old or ill for Care

Mr. Obama is completely honest in his assessment of elderly care for those who are terminally ill and those that may be deemed too close to their end of life.

He uses his grandmother as an example. Madelyn Dunham had a hip replacement procedure despite her an earlier diagnoses of cancer.

He said he would pay out of pocket himself for the surgery ( which most of us couldn't do even if we wanted to) anyway.

But he points out the cost of that surgery as needless and vows to change the health care once in office.

Now there are a few things that can be said about this. It is true that the cost for this procedure is expensive. That decision to have the procedure or not should be between yourself, family and your doctor.

What Mr. Obama eludes to is that his vision of the New proposed Health Care bill would allow the government (should the public option be used) to be a part of that decision making process. I say that it could even out weigh everyone else's decision on the matter altogether.

I could see the argument that his kind of outcome would not take place right away. But I have no doubt that it would progress to a point where later, should the new health care bill be passed, one would see a progression of intrusion in their health care decisions.

We already see it in Medicare. You have to ask permission to do almost everything. And should you need a special device, be it a wheel chair, or an expensive medication, or medical procedure, that final decision from who knows who makes at the Medicare office, may take an extended amount of time and could very well be a big fat NO!

Look we definitely need some sort of health care reform. But I believe the deception in this process is mind numbing.

I say my answer to this bill is a be fat NO!

Obama Says Grandmother's Hip Replacement Raises Cost Questions

April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

The president’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had a hip replaced after she was diagnosed with cancer, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”
Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.

“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”
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