Healthcare rationing and the swine flu vaccination

  I wrote a post not too long ago called “Has healthcare rationing already begun in America?” In this post I relayed part of a conversation that I had heard an older man having with another man while I was at a flea market. This older man was shocked because he had gone to his doctor to get the swine flu shot and was told that he was not eligible for the shot because he was too old. Needless to say, this man was incredulous that he could not get the shot– he was stunned. I was not.  This was the first salvo fired in the rationing of healthcare. The second salvo was fired when we learned that a government panel loosened the guidelines on mammograms that would delay examinations by ten years. Both of these are examples of healthcare rationing and we can expect it to get much worse after the healthcare reform bill is passed.

  Now we have more examples of older people being denied the swine flu vaccination because of their age. Barack Obama declared a national emergency because of the threat of swine flu and the government is responsible for the allocation and administration of the swine flu vaccine. So far the response to this crisis that the government has warned us about has been pathetic. Considering it was the government that told us how dangerous this flu could be it is almost a crime that they have not been able to provide adequate amount of vaccinations. Because there are not enough vaccinations to provide for the care of the American people the government has been forced to declare some groups more at risk than other groups. This is nothing more than healthcare rationing. And the older generation is being left behind, they are not happy about it and who can blame them?

But when I try to get a shot, I’m told I’m too old

I feel that they see me and other older people as garbage and are just waiting for the trucks to come pick us up

I served my country. I enlisted during the Korean War. You don’t treat people this way just because they’re older

  The bottom line here it that there is not enough vaccine to go around and so somebody has to be left out. That is rationing no matter how you look at it.

This is typical of what we can expect after the healthcare reform bill is passed, Sarah Palin took allot of shit for her use of the term “death panels” to describe the end of life counseling that is included in this legislation. She was using an exaggeration to make a point, and that point is that once a person reaches a certain age the government may decide it is too expensive to treat the patient or that a younger person would be better served to receive a treatment instead of an older person. While this rationing is due to the lack of vaccinations and not on the basis of costs, we can expect more of this in the future that is based on costs and I would argue that the new mammogram guidelines are based on future cost savings.

  Deciding who will get treated and who will not get treated is healthcare rationing and that is what we are seeing currently with the swine flu vaccination. So I now ask you, who is really full of shit?