by Jill A. Boughton
Washington, DC — The news has been full of the Republican proposal to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. What Americans might not realize is that the bill as currently drafted could lead to involuntary euthanasia through the rationing of health care.
Everyone knows pharmaceutical prices continue to skyrocket. Exciting new medicines can treat illnesses that used to have an automatic death sentence, but these medicines come with such a high price tag that the government can't possibly make them available to everyone in the Baby Boom generation without a mammoth tax raise. If drugs are rationed, what chance is there that they will be available to senior citizens?
National Right to Life has consistently sounded the alarm about the dangers of rationing and managed care. In 1997, heeding these concerns, Congress gave older Americans the opportunity to use their own money to join private “fee-for-service” insurance plans. Just as most people set aside money to supplement Social Security when they retire, such insurance plans assure that senior citizens can choose their own doctors and make their own decisions about whether a given treatment is “futile.”
However, the prescription drug benefit in the current draft of Medicare legislation has no such “escape clause” permitting Americans to buy additional drug coverage at their own expense. Although private plans could offer such an unmanaged benefit, they would be at an unfair advantage trying to compete with the 70% subsidy involved in the government's managed care plan. Individuals purchasing such plans would still be charged for Medicare, effectively a double taxation.
Pro-life Republican Senators are urged to communicate these concerns to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist so the legislation (S1, HR 2473) can be altered before it’s too late.
“Older Americans must remain free to spend their own money to save their own lives,” says Jenny Nolan of the medical ethics department of National Right to Life.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
