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August 20, 2012

Obama’s Death Knell for the Elderly

Under Barack Obama, America is facing an explosion of the elderly poor. The facts are in, the strategy revealed. If Barack Obama and the Democrats win the upcoming election, an ugly era of population engineering, the steady elimination of our elderly through Obamacare will lead to a crisis in humanity. In addition to Social Security, America’s retirees rely on varied combinations of their savings, investments, company pensions, and Medicare for their existence, all of which are targets of Obama’s war on the elderly.

During a 2008 televised political debate candidate Barack Obama was asked were he to become President, where would he first cut spending. Obama stalled and stammered hoping the clock would run out so he could avoid answering. The debate moderator again demanded an answer. Seconds before the buzzer sounded, a reluctant Obama answered, “Medicare.” Sounding along with that buzzer was a death knell for American seniors. Obama had set his sights on America’s greatest generation and those following swiftly on their heels. At a 2010 House Retreat, when asked directly, Obama responded to now Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, that his answer to fixing Medicare is Obamacare. During a CBS 60 Minutes interview, citing numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney pointed out that Obama’s destruction of Medicare is well underway, “There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare – $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare.”

Built-in delays put off the Obamacare nightmare until after the election. Denying control of medical decisions normally made by patients, their families and doctors, Obamacare outsources your personal decisions to a bloated government bureaucracy run by unelected, leftist ideologues. Extensive cuts to senior care are in the offing with fill-in-the-blank clauses purposely left open to be completed at the discretion of those who control Obamacare. On CBS 60 Minutes, Paul Ryan stated he has a personal reason to fight for seniors to remain on Medicare as it now exists. “My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida. Our point is we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they’ve organized their retirements around. In order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger.” Ryan stresses that everyone over the age of 55 will keep Medicare as it now exists for the rest of their lives. Proposed is the option for those under 55 to choose Medicare or new alternatives.

America’s seniors are not Obama’s constituency. A majority do not vote for him. Obama’s radical positions on faith, economic irresponsibility, the Constitution, the rule of law, basic freedoms, medical care, increased taxation, spiraling national debt and deficit, abortions, sterilizations, traditional marriage among other of his affronts to their patriotic sensibilities are at odds with America’s most revered generation. There is an almost palpable resentment from Obama of American seniors who worked, fought, and sacrificed to build this country. It was their tax dollars, like generations before them that built the roads, the bridges and America’s infrastructure. That they rejected welfare and favored hard work appears to be an aberration to Obama – values foreign to his ideology. Obama’s resounding message to America’s seniors is that you will be penalized for your longevity, your hard work and frugal savings.

Bluntly, it is a simple strategy, less medical care coupled with less money means less elderly. What younger Americans cannot see coming is that under Obamacare, reduced medical care with limited access to fewer doctors will force parents and grandparents to rely heavily on younger generations for their physical needs and financial support. Life savings are being drained by inflation under Obama’s failed economic policies. Returns from dividends are down, yet Obama wants to crush seniors with a 35%-plus tax rate on dividends. Americans for Tax Reform report that, “According to the Tax Foundation’s analysis of IRS data, 70% of households over age 55 receive dividend income. 71% of all dividends paid flow to these households. To raise taxes on dividends is to raise taxes on seniors.” Obama’s plan would trigger IRS enforcement with the government having direct access to all American’s bank accounts and financial records. By his own words, actions and policies, Obama clearly has seniors in his bulls-eye.

Doctors are already turning away older patients because of Obamacare. In National Review Online, James C. Capretta writes about Obamacare’s deep cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and care providers: “Actuaries who oversee Medicare’s spending projections have warned repeatedly that these cuts will compromise access to care for seniors because many facilities will be forced to stop admitting Medicare patients. What will seniors do then to get care they need?” That is where Obama’s bureaucrat-laden Independent Payment Advisory Board comes into play. Whether young or old, care to prolong your life has a price on it. Obama’s plan supports rationing as a cost cutting mechanism. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to Obama’s former Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, designed a life chart with a “priority curve” that conceptualizes population control by age groups. Americans under age 15 and over age 45 are designated as being less productive to the government. Senior Americans and the very young are relegated as being less valuable and expendable. According to Emanuel, there should be limits on how much should be paid to lengthen a life, expressly targeting those over age 65.

Obama’s catastrophic financial policies are deeply personal as Americans of all ages are tightening their financial belts at every turn. Hardest hit are retirees on fixed incomes who feel the pinch in higher food, gas and energy costs that further gut their retirement funds. A great tragedy for many seniors is they know, under four more years of Obama, they will virtually have nothing left to pass on as inheritance to the younger generations. It is lose-lose under Obama for both young and old as the young become more inextricably tied financially to the old. Families will be increasingly torn between elder care, college funds, daycare costs and the need to put money away for their own retirement. Hard times will decimate family budgets no matter their neighborhood, income or skin color. Obama’s failed policies fail everyone.

Obama has cleverly delayed much of the coming pain until 2013, after the election so the elderly will never know what hit them. Obama’s tactic to mislead Americans about what is already underway is simply not to allow the developing crisis into the political debate. The tactic is called omission. Obama’s assault on the elderly is being deployed on numerous fronts. According to The Heritage Foundation, “Obamacare radically changes Medicare through 160 provisions that increase government’s control over the delivery of care, hit doctors with unsustainable payment cuts, and leave taxpayers with higher deficits. Even the program’s chief accountant says many Medicare providers cannot survive the cuts. Obamacare undermines and weakens the doctor-patient relationship by linking payment not to patient [care] outcomes but to adherence to government protocol.” Americans for Tax Reform sees further attack on seniors through Obamacare’s 2013 medical device excise taxes on medical device manufacturers. “These companies will surely build the cost of this new tax into the price of what they sell. Who buys medical devices? Who buys pacemakers, wheelchairs, and other costly medical devices? Seniors do.” Under Obamacare, medical device companies expect to go bankrupt or out of business, leaving the hip, knee and surgical devices to be manufactured in China by cheap labor. Forbes’s John Graham writes: “The medical-device tax is much more than a job-killing tax. It’s a patient-killing tax, too. National Review Online’s Patrick Brennan notes that Obamacare’s excise tax has put MRI machines and pacemakers in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol.”

In addition to Obamacare being bad medicine, Obama’s policies have already caused severe cut backs in funding to nursing homes, in-home therapy, and health care services. Less funding has led to fewer staff unable to provide proper care. Staffs already complain that they are being reduced to warehousing patients. Seniors whose savings and investments have been gutted by Obama’s failed economic policies have to forego assisted living facilities relying on their cash strapped families to provide for their medical, physical and financial needs. Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan warns on The Kudlow Report that Obamacare will cause an “…implosion of the health care system and an explosion of our public debt…” collapsing quality health care for both the very young to the very old.

Obama made provisions under Obamacare to deal with the coming collapse of quality health care for seniors. They are called “Death Panels” with their end-of-life counseling that will be administered by doctors chosen by the government who will be the ones writing the final ticket for patients of all ages who no longer warrant the expense of further medical care.  End-of-life decisions are not to be made by you, your family or your doctor, but by a faceless bureaucrat whose priority is to crunch numbers and downsize the population – especially the elderly.

It is time for seniors to join the battle full force. Urge friends to vote, carpool to the polls, volunteer for hometown campaigns, monitor voting booth locales. Caught in the cross-hairs, America’s greatest generation is once again being called upon to protect themselves, their children, their grandchildren and this great land – this time their battle is with the demagogues of Washington’s radical Left who seek political power at any costs.

See Sharon Sebastian’s insights on YouTube here.

Sharon Sebastian (www.DarwinsRacists.com) is an author, writer, and contributor to various forms of media including cultural and political broadcasts, print, and online websites. In addition to the heated global debate on creation vs. evolution, her second book, Darwin’s Racists - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, highlights the impact of Social Darwinism’s Marxist/Socialist underpinnings on the culture, the faith and current policy out of Washington.

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