Rationing Care Getting Closer As Obamacare Advisers Meet Behind Closed Doors

By Ann Kane

The Hill reported "White House to hold private meetings with Medicare head on healthcare law."

According to a memo obtained by The Hill, the event on Friday with Medicare Administrator Donald Berwick at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House will be the first of several meetings on healthcare's implementation to be hosted by administration officials.

The invitation from administration health policy adviser Zeke Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's brother, marks a renewed outreach to industry stakeholders from a White House that had initially promised to keep lobbyists at arm's length. The invitations for Friday's kick-off meeting were sent to specialty medical societies, which have a lobbying component, according to several sources.

Again with the behind-closed-doors meetings to usher in Obamacare. Zeke Emanuel has one bottom line, money. If you fit his description of a person "worthy" of continuing to live, you may get your doctor to prescribe tests and medicine to keep you alive. Here's a quote from Emanuel-who as far as I know has not retracted any of his death panel language--back in 1996:

Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

Right at Emanuel's side is Don Berwick who Obama appointed last July to serve as the Administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Philip Klein in The American Spectator named him "Obama's Rationing Man." See Berwick's ten rules for replacing private doctors with a government system here.

With these two at the helm, there's no doubt grandmas with dementia will be checking out a lot sooner than their families would like.

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