Health Care Rationing

Long time readers of this site know that my biggest concerns about a "universal" government run health care plan center around the very real possibility of health care rationing. That concern is, in large part due to the circumstances surrounding the health of my 73 year old mother. The Logical Mother has (among other conditions) a weak immune system, rheumatoid arthritis, no thyroid, a bad heart, bad circulation and myriad of other ailments large and small. Four years ago, due to an undiagnosed electrolyte imbalance, she collapsed in her home. She lived alone and my sister (who lives nearby) was out of town when it happened. She had just moved into this home and I had no phone numbers for neighbors when it happened. When my sister and brother in law found her, she was hours from death. It was only due to the heroic efforts of the EMTs and the phenomenonal staff at Alexian Brothers Hospital in Hoffman Estates IL that she is alive today. Based on what President Obama said last Wednesday night - she would have been allowed to DIE THAT DAY under his vision of health care reform. After her collapse, my mother spent the next year and a half in the hospital trying to figure out the cause of her collapse and the many others that followed. We moved her into an assisted living facility annd it was there that a cut on her foot got infected with a MRSA infection. After weeks of fruitless treatments, her doctors went out on a limb and prescribed a long series of treatments that included heavy doses of antibiotics and treatment in a hyperbaric chamber. After 9 weeks of some pretty grueling (for a clausterphobic) treatments, the infection was cleared up and the blackouts, borderline dementia and heart issues that were unrelated to her heart blockage she is healthy (for a 73 year old with rheumatoid arthritis) and talking about travelling - something that 5 years ago would not have been discussed. Again - none of this would have been possible in a Canada Care/Britian care type system that lacks neo-natal ICU beds and mandates that only women between the ages of 39 and a half and 40 are eligible for in-vitro fertilization treatment (among other odd restrictions).

President Obama, last Wednesday night said that we needed to face the reality that we can not treat everyone for everything that sometimes "heroic" measures need to be stopped. Even my mother, a STAUNCH Obama supporter and former health care worker, realizes that his health care plan would have meant that she would not be around today...and she is not fond of that idea at all.