From a friend in the South... At 75, perhaps I should say “good bye” now, just in case. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know why. Something happened that required surgery and not enough Republicans and Independents got off their butts to go hold their nose and vote for Mitt Romney to get this Pretender out of office so we could get rid of Obamacare. Which is worse? You, your parents, your grandparents dying because they’re over 70 and need their appendix taken out? Or using vouchers for Medicare for those under 55 (nothing changes for those over 55). MB

I was talking last night (Sunday) with my son-in-law's brother who is a Neurosurgeon at Emory Hospital in Atlanta , which, if you are not familiar with it, ranks up there with the finest hospitals in the country.



A group of non-doctors, from 'our' (????) country's Department of Health arrived last week at Emory for a two day session and is on their rounds around the country to make sure every hospital fully understands the new rules (which start in December (after the elections) concerning treating all patients over 70 years of age.



You heard of the death squads early on after Obamacare was passed and many people claimed it was not true and that people were misquoting what was in the bill. Well if you believed this you are wrong. DEAD WRONG!



This group informed the staff Emory and all the doctors present that they will very soon not be allowed to operate on anyone over 70 (no matter how urgent or life threatening the situation is), without first having it approved by a board of eight doctors. Failure to comply will result in a huge financial burden to the hospital and more than likely the doctor will lose his/her ability to practice medicine anywhere in the country.



This board is to be established at every hospital in the country and the board members will only work eight hours a day. We will discuss this a little later on as the DOH group almost got lynched at this point by the doctors who were present.



This board of doctors will not be made up of active doctors. All the doctors must be retired - and may even be retired up to 30 or 40 years. Further, Obamacare sees no need or requirement for them to be skilled in surgery. Another very vocal argument broke out here as these doctors likely may not even be aware of what advancements have taken place in surgery over the last 5-10 years nor what is going today as well. Also, anyone who has ever been a doctor can serve on these boards. For example, Individuals with skills only in pediatrics, podiatry, dermatology, etc., may be making decisions as to whether a brain operation is required or not.



The point that got the Emory doctors so upset originally was that the "Death Board" will be available only 8 hours during the day. And once their 8 hour shift is up, they may have to wait 16 hours to get in touch with them and another hour or two or three to get a decision and permission to operate.



But they daily have cases in which it is crucial to operate within 30 minutes.



The staff at Emory Hospital will be coordinating with other hospitals and together they will make a concerted effort to bring about significant changes to this portion of Obamacare.



When the question was raised from the floor by a young doctor as to whether doctors had to get permission to operate on congressmen and/or future members of the executive branch who would later be over 70, the answer was, "Of course not!"



When the same young doctor asked, "Why not." They refused to answer.