I found myself on Bloomberg.com this morning as I was idly prowling the Google news feeds on information about senior health care. What did I find that sent me to Bloomberg?

Euthanasia Scare Shows a Tough Sell on Health Care

Bloomberg – Heidi Przybyla – 46 minutes ago?
6 (Bloomberg) — Representative Tom Perriello said he was approached by two senior citizens who were trembling with fear. The source of their terror, …

Yeah, I think you can see why I had to read more on that one, huh? It seems that the two senior citizens in question had been given a leaflet that was supposed to be a copy of Obama’s health care plan.  The leaflet is said to have been given to them by some religious group, but the article fails to say which one it was, nor can I locate a copy of said leaflet online.  I would really like to see this thing if anyone knows where it can be viewed.

I find it a bit incredulous that someone would pass out something to the elderly that tells them that the government is going to start euthanizing seniors because of the difficulty of taking care of them. WTF?!!?!??

Okay, first off, let me point people in the right direction, okay?

I tracked the bill down at Thomas – H.R.676 – United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (Introduced in House) The link should lead you to the index page for what the bill has in it, if not then go to Thomas.loc.gov and search for H.R. 676 to locate it.

The first thing that I noticed in the bill is Sec. 101 Part B (bold added by me):

(b) Registration- Individuals and families shall receive a United States National Health Insurance Card in the mail, after filling out a United States National Health Insurance application form at a health care provider. Such application form shall be no more than 2 pages long.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t that say that you need to opt in for this program? You are not automatically tossed off your current insurance provider and forced to let the government determine your fate, you pick up paperwork at your doctor’s office and fill out a form (not over 2 pages long) to request to be included in the government’s health care services.

I strongly suggest that people take a bit of time to at least scan the bill before they listen to any of these groups that scream, one way or the other, about what it says. The “they’re euthanizing the elderly!” scare seems to have come from a proposal to allow for people to be reimbursed for a consultation with their doctor about end-of-life treatment and the preparation of living wills. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but… aren’t people that want to talk about such things already talking to their health care providers about those things? What is the problem with a visit for that being a reimbursable expense? And what makes the continued discussion of it by those who want to talk about it an effort by the government to euthanize the elderly?

I have no idea what the health care plan would do for me personally, although I do intend to read it when I get some time to focus on it and sort through what it says, I can tell you that at the moment I have nothing. I’m one of those non-existant ones that I keep hearing about on television, you know the “Oh there aren’t that many uninsured people in America!” ones. I have talked to a few places about getting health insurance and been told “Oh, oops, no, we don’t offer coverage for your age range where you live.  So sorry.” I can’t afford to go on my own, I’m still trying to pay off the last emergency visit to the local walk-in clinic at $10 a month payments. What happens if something serious happens and I end up in the emergency room? Would it not make more sense that people like me, that can go in for a $100 checkup once a year and stay healthy, to be able to afford to do so than to have a serious condition creep up undetected and end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in care?

I’m a caregiver.  I would rather prevent something than try to clean up the aftermath of ignoring that it is there. I also would like to throttle the dolts that decided it was a good idea to stand on a street corner telling senior citizens that they are going to be killed in favor of youthful 20-somethings.

I was browsing around the Office of the Clerk website and found How Our Laws Are Made over at Thomas. This is downloadable as a 204 K PDF document, 67 pages.

This is the 23rd edition of ‘‘How Our Laws Are Made’’, which was first published in 1953 by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives to explain how laws are made in the 108th Congress.

I am in the process of trying to print this document out and read it over to give me a better idea of what is going on with these poor family caregiver bills that are having such a hard time making it through Congress, but my printer just messed up and droppped two sheets so my booklet was offset and did not print out properly.  :::sighs:::  I need to reprint the document, feeding it into the printer one page at a time on the second run, and then I can read over it.

After having watched Congress for the past couple of years, and seeing a lot of caregiver bills vanish into the abyss, I have decided that I want to take a closer look at it all this year, so, I have decided that I am going to watch what they do in terms of anything that effects family caregivers.  So, I am going to start looking at their work during the week and dissecting it here on this blog.

I will be taking the floor summary from the Office of the Clerk’s website and looking at the relevant parts here on Family Caregiver Info.  I had actually thought to do this back even before congress first convened, but trying to get the house heater repaired and working to earn a little money writing got in the way, now I am going to be working on catching up for the past week of Congress.

We will start with day 1 here and look at what they did.   You can find the Floor Summaries archived in the forum under 11th Congress, please feel free to join in discussion about the things that Congress is up to, particularly where it concerns family caregivers.

The other day on CNN, Anderson Cooper 360 was talking about how congress was taking the time to decide what was going on with the Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee steroids issue. What caught my attention was when one of the congressmen said that they were not overlooking more important things as they talked about steroids use in sports… wait… excuse me? What coverage has been given to things such as H.R.1161? The bill that is seeking to amend title II of the Social Security Act. The bill that would credit prospectively individuals that are serving as caregivers of dependent relatives with deemed wages for up to five years of such service.

According to the Thomas search engine, the bill has been sitting in the Subcommittee on Social Security since March 7, 2007. Why has it taken a year for them to do anything with that bill? Is it really not as important as steroid use in sports?  Are they just going to leave it in subcommittee where it will be forgotten to die in congress?  That is what happened to H.R. 175 Family Caregiver Security Act 2005. That bill would have allowed family caregivers to have the same recognition as anyone else that did the work the family caregiver does. It died in congress…

Latest Major Action: 2/4/2005 Referred to House subcommittee.
Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Health, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Chairman.

Apparently the chairman felt it was not important to discuss… I wonder what it was that they had to talk about that time? Why is it that things like steroid use in sports are so important that it has to be pounced on by congress, but someone that can not afford healthcare or medicine is ignored?  There have been multiple efforts to help those who sacrifice their own health for others, each case I have found has been shunted aside and ignored.  Where are the priorities of our congressmen?  Why is it that we have placed concern about sports ahead of concerns about people?

::shakes head::

I have noticed, thanks to the little sidebar widgit thing, that there have been a couple of visitors here now that have come here to find information on things such as the Family Caregiver Security Act of 2007.  It makes me feel really good to see others are coming here to find information on something that I have a very intense interest in, and it makes me more determined to start getting good and accurate information on things like that posted to this website.