The U.S. House passed H.R. 485, the Protecting Care for All Patients Act, which would prohibit federal health programs from using discriminatory measures known as Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs.) The bill passed by a vote of 211 to 208, with Democrats voting against it.
QALYs let the federal government reduce or end care for people with various disabilities, which can be seen as a form of eugenics — withdrawing medicines, for example, for people the government doesn’t believe have enough value. The term QALY glosses over a policy that can be traced to Nazi Germany. It’s the Death Panel that former Gov. Sarah Palin warned of.
Alaska’s Rep. Mary Peltola was a “no” vote, indicating support for the continued reduction of care for disabled people, per a government formula.
The last known case of “senilicide,” — the Alaska Native practice of putting an occasional elder on an ice floe — was recorded in 1939. It was a QALY way of rationing resources for some Arctic groups during times of tribal hardship.
The House legislation that is how heading to the Senate is led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Eastern Washington and three others — House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), Rep. Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-TX), and Rep. Brad Wenstrup, D.P.M. (R-OH).
“Every human life has value. The government should not be mercilessly placing a dollar value on someone’s life and denying care just because they have a disability or chronic illness. Patients, and those who are fighting for their loved ones’ lives, have pleaded with Congress to fix a system that actively prevents them from getting the care they need. I’m proud to champion this important legislation that will give patients with disabilities and chronic or rare illness hope,” said Rep. Rodgers, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“Bureaucrats in Washington and across the country are trying to put a price tag on life. The Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act, reaffirms that every life has value and stops individual Americans from being reduced to mere dollars and cents on a spreadsheet. An individual has worth, regardless of someone’s age or whether they have a disability or other chronic ailment,” said Rep. Smith of Missouri.
Rep. Rogers is the parent of a son with Down syndrome — he has an extra chromosome: “And like so many in the disability community, I was told by the doctors not to expect too much. As his mom, I’m glad to say they couldn’t have been more wrong. When we put limits on people and instead of setting them up for success, we all lose something, and Cole helps remind me every day that the disability community is full of potential just waiting to be unleashed.”
H.R. 485 would prohibit all federally funded healthcare programs, including the Veterans Administration, Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and federally funded state health care programs from using Quality-Adjusted Life Years and other eugenics formulas.
The use of QALYs may affect Alaska Native children who have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, the condition that results from alcohol use during pregnancy.
“The use of QALYs sends the message that the life of someone living with a disability doesn’t matter as much as a “healthy” person’s life. That’s why I led the Protecting Health Care For All Patients Act (H.R. 485) to ban federal health care bureaucracies like Medicaid and the VA from devaluing the lives of people living with disabilities,” Rep. Rogers said.
Medical professionals are increasingly uncomfortable having the government determine whether a person’s quality of life is worth the expense.
“The prospect of the denial of health care, for those deemed ‘unworthy’ has a long history in the eugenics movement,” wrote Paul Langley, a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota. “If we are to finally rid ourselves of a ‘eugenic’ approach to health care resource allocation, then we must abandon preferences and the QALY calculus.”
In a paper available at the National Institutes for Health, Langley wrote, “There are different types of problems with the use of QALYs and DALYs for measuring health benefits. Some of these problems have to do with measurement, for example, the weights they ascribe to health states might fail to reflect with exact accuracy the actual well-being or health levels of individuals. But even if these weights represent accurately the well-being levels of individuals, there is room for questioning whether these measures capture everything that we care about in these cases, or whether there are important issues that they leave out, including considerations of fairness or equality.”
Langley wrote of how QALYs are a one-size-fits all approach, without regard to individuals’ prospects.
“In this regard, the measures have been criticized for treating the aggregation of small benefits as greater than the aggregation of fewer but bigger benefits, for disregarding fair chances in favor of utility maximization, and for raising problems when applied in the context of variable population size,” Langley explained.
“Perhaps one of the most pervasive ethical issues that has been associated with the use of these measures is the fact that they seem to discriminate against disabled people. Since the measures assume that disabled people have lower well-being and a shorter life span, treating a disabled person’s medical condition contributes less to the maximization of years of life with good health than treating a non-disabled patient’s medical condition,” he wrote.
In another paper published by the National Institutes of Health, a health professor says the QALY formula doesn’t even add up.
“Furthermore, our review of the mathematical properties of QALYs, including an analysis of quality-of-life utility (QOL utility) data recently collected from patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), has led us to conclude that QALYs are an inappropriate metric of drug and treatment cost-effectiveness for all people, both disabled and nondisabled, and should not be the basis for US healthcare policy decisions,” wrote Tia G. Sawhney, a professor at New York University.
“QALYs are time-based, health-related QOL utility measures. Health-related QOL utility measures purport to express the quality of a person’s life on a 0 to 1.00 scale, where 0 is death and 1.00 is perfect health. A QOL utility is converted to a QALY by multiplying the QOL utility by the number of years a person experiences that QOL,” Sawhney explained.
Health is a multidimensional, highly personal experience, she said. “If we ask relatives, friends, and strangers how they measure their health and quality of life, their responses are likely to be as complex and unique as snowflakes. Yet, QOL measurement developers reduce quality-of-life measurements to a handful of simplistic questions. Furthermore, their question sets are inconsistent with each other and with common perceptions of health.”
The Alliance for Aging Research supports the bill, and said it was disappointed there was not bipartisan support.
“Preventing discrimination in healthcare should not be a partisan issue. We encourage the Senate to take up this important issue and reach bipartisan consensus to ban the use of the QALY and similar metrics,” the alliance said in a statement.
Providence hospitalist used this to kill my father. It is murder, pure and simple. No doubt Ms. Peltola thinks it’s just peachy.
I was just thinking about Providence. Back in 2014-2015, I was working there in a support position and found out that Providence was already starting the practice of not giving certain types of care if a person was “too old” or had some other problem that made them a pretty-much “non-productive” human being. It was sickening to hear about elders not being given operations that could have allowed them to walk around or made their lives less painful. Between that and seeing all of the foreigners that they were hiring instead of hiring Americans who needed jobs, I had to leave. I could see the writing on the wall back then that Providence was not a good place. Sad that so many people have been fooled by them.
I’m sure liberals are foaming at the mouth to implement something similar to Canada’s MAID program.
Peltola support of this bill is a slap in our Native peoples faces to encourage more Native people dying. It’s not like Native peoples are producing enough babies to replace those Natives who passed. If Alaska Republican need another good PR topic to begin painting AK Republican candidates in a better light than AKDemocrats. Her vote here coming from a person of color makes another good topic.
Just as the peachy rosy feel good PR posts office holders use to show connection and care for their constituents. That they are interest in what constituents have interest in. Put in a good way these political votes can be used in that PR campaign so people can begin to see Republican candidates are the caring ones.
Sometimes I wish I knew what I wanted at 19. But me and mom weren’t being discipled to know how to read and understand God’s Word. I will had loved to go to college to double major in Human Resources and Public Relations.
The QALY’s are integral to Obama care and the reason no democrat can support a bill such as this one. In order to afford “healthcare for all” rationing HAS to take place, as resources, be it medical professionals or facilities, are of a finite nature, with an inability to scale up on demand by government. It is the “death panels” Sarah Palin was maligned for so many years ago. With the current effort of some states to give free healthcare to illegals and stressing an already taxed system to the breaking point QALY’s are important as well, in order to allocate resources to those, seen to bring the most benefit.
The practice needs to end!
Bringing in so many “migrants” (spooler alert: future Dem voters) the choice of using limited resources means gauging who will have a larger active voting block to buy…. kiss granny and grandpa goodbye for Jose and Juanita. We are already seeing American citizens pushed out the back of the bus. Social Darwinism in action….
Hypocrisy strikes against at MRAK. The author wrote (I quote): “Medical professionals are increasingly uncomfortable having the government determine whether a person’s quality of life is worth the expense.”. However, there is multiple evidences on this side of the support of the so-called pro-life movement. Interestingly in that case she is in favor of the government denying abortion, even in case when the mother’s life is at risk according to medical professionals. Well, who would be surprised that hypocrisy and GOP supporters would be in overlapping category!
An abortion is never necessary to save the life of a mother. If the baby in the womb is threatening the life of the mother, the baby can be delivered via cesarean delivery.
Oh child. Go find some crayons and a puppy. You’re way out of your intellectual depth here.
“in case when the mother’s life”… the Dems use “life”… as in life style, convenience or commitment…not “life”.
Hypocrisy? How so?
Many conservatives here and in general have been very clear that ALL life has value, whether you are 90 or not yet born. Your scenario of “the life of the mother” is a red herring. There is no law in the country that prohibits saving the life of an expectant mother in an life-threatening emergency, as the demise of the mother will also spell the demise of the unborn.
Stretchmarks are not a medical emergency to justify ending a new life!
Killing off an inconvenient elder or disabled person because their life isn’t worth the effort or expense is the same idea as killing off an innocent child in the womb.
Both are evil. Both opposed by practicing Christian conservative Americans.
There is ZERO hypocrisy in opposing both.
It is about valuing and protecting life. Abortion is murder as also eugenics and related evil. No hypocrisy there.
Once again the dims are trying to show that they know more about what’s good for us than we do.
Where would brandon fall on their scale of uselessness?
Are you kidding? He’s actually the most useful idiot they’ve ever had!
“”Trow out de lifeline! Trow out de lifeline; someone is drifting away …hey!”. in the words of the old hymn I am reminded of the career course of Mrs. Pelto. Someone on shore should have known she was going sailing with possibly pirates who have slightly different values than her alleged own. ANB, write her a letter urgently about this matter. Help her with some “lobbying”.
Victim
‘https://circleofmamas.com/health-news/19-year-old-simone-scott-dies-from-heart-failure-after-moderna-vaccine/
And WHO is coming for round 2
We have till may to turn this satanic mess around!
Canada has been using their suicide law to attempt to cull people since its inception. Depression? Try suicide. Handicapped? Try suicide. Addiction? Suicide. Can’t afford life in fascist Canada? Suicide!
I met Canadian indigenous people who moved here because of the medical errors in Canada – the only thing people like Mary Peltola care about are the native corporations, tribal health compact and financial corruption and Democrats – they mostly cannot even keep school superintendents in rural areas without the tribal councils interrupting their education – this is a plan doomed to failure – that they don’t provide oversight or allow competition is beyond incomprehensible and outside of any normal economic structure in the world. Outcomes? Death and dismemberment & infections and a population not educated enough to understand their system is killing them. Leaving Alaska is what’s happening even with the native American… They don’t even provide prescribing data, manipulating…. Manipulation of the numbers – they need to separate healthcare and climate change funding so the non-medical professionals quit taking our healthcare funding and hiring crap practitioners. Getting fungus and mold scraped out of my spinal cavity was the highlight of my experience with Southcentral Foundation and the Alaska Native tribal health consortium. Dr Bitan, director of spine surgery for Lenox Hill Hospital didn’t even get paid for cleaning up their mess. It’s like they are just waiting for me to die, they assumed all my work. These are not healthcare providers. They’re social maggots –
An additional comment – understand Mary supports one system forcing us into poverty while supporting the native corporations expanding – mostly non-native federal.contracting – while admirable – most people in the country do not qualify to work federal securities jobs… It’s all ineffective laws and programs. Only a small group of interlopers are benefiting – I attended an open interior department meeting for Alaska listed on the federal register – once Rosita Worl joined the meeting – I was interrupted and thrown out of the meeting by Gene Peltola and Brian Newland. These systems and programs are corrupted by leadership like Julie Kitka and Willy Hensley – they’re manipulating (gerrymandering) our programs and using these non-profit not all recognized by Congress to gaslight and gain favor through what is known as illegal interlocking directorates to enrich themselves – there is a big chasm between the definition of governance and what they’re doing. I’ve seen the chugach Alaska Corporation board members haranguing the hood – out of their element for sure, or are they? There was a conference here in Denver Colorado called the Cities Summit of the Americas and their leadership, Jessa Rae Growing Thunder said she spoke to Julie Kitka and Julie declined Alaska’s invitation and they had and have again had indigenous communities and leaders from other states, countries and tribes touring laboratory facilities and forensic science stuff and now they’re here in Colorado… They cry for oversight by these actions… Redirecting resources away from who is supposed to benefit to enrich themselves is selfish, unethical, not a native concept in a healthy culture anywhere in the world… This needs to be overhauled because they have no real understanding of the consequences of their actions on population health or human services and financial systems. They’re literally trying to force people on Medicaid regardless if they don’t qualify. They don’t represent me and only 7 people got access to the medicine they needed during my fellowship with caring ambassadors and the Alaska Native tribal health consortium and Southcentral Foundation between 2014 and 2016 because the tribal leaders were so busy creating fellowship and ambassador programs for their own interests; I no longer support them and not for nothing Southcentral Foundation is controlled by CIRI through their corporate bylaws and I think there’s less than 10 thousand CIRI shareholders and they have a confirmed over 100,000 patients and are studying non-natives, not getting consent and destroying people who they are threatened by – if we had competition this could be dealt with – CIRI is syphoning funds from Southcentral Foundation to an organization called coltsfoot which is an investment company at Southcentral Foundation address and CIRI shareholders are getting about 50,000 in cash annually with healthcare funding? This needs oversight and publicly certified elections for the alaska Federation of Natives, the native corporations and tribal councils and we need to be enrolled properly because they’re denying people enrollment in the village corporations outside of how the government authorized. True story.
Thank you for the information. I agree about the native healthcare system trying to get everyone on Medicare, Medicaid, Denali Kids, etc. I never understood it as I thought those programs were separate from the “promised” healthcare that the Alaska Natives were supposed to receive. There is so much corruption within the Alaska Native organizational set-up (corporations, tribes, healthcare, and so on) and deals being made where select people/businesses are making good money for jobs poorly done. The Alaska Natives have been played again and so many have given their souls to the demon because of their overwhelming love for money and physical things of this world. Prayers for the Native people in Alaska and around the world that those who are awake will be able to help wake more natives up to what is happening. Peltola, the Bethel Hoffman family, Murkowski, Dan Sullivan family, Mike Dunleavy family are not friends to the native community – they are walking the native people straight off of the cliffs with jagged rocks waiting below for those that fall.
Those are all very valid points, Ginny, that ‘accepted’ political discourse in Alaska will never, ever touch or acknowledge.
I agree with and thank you for the comment. The tribal connections are very important for preserving a least the record of family connection for future nation to nation diplomacy and continuity.
At the end of the day, the goal is simple. To cull the human herd so the “best people” have more for themselves.
Liberalism is a death cult. It really is that simple.
Soylent green is people, and good for the environment.
A point of note: I wish I could be a fly on the wall when they realize their gaslighting has fallen on deaf ears when the department of justice comes calling.
That they don’t understand they’re committing federal offenses in Alaska under the color of law is really unfortunate for them and their families and extremely telling of the need to overhaul Alaska’s ANCSA ANILCA BIA INDIAN HEALTH SERVICES Compacting & Contracting.
One day light will shine on their inequities & they’ll be forced to change.
Deprivation Of Rights Under Color Of Law
Summary:
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
For the purpose of Section 242, acts under “color of law” include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official’s lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties.
Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as judges, care providers in public health facilities, and others who are acting as public officials.
It is not necessary that the crime be motivated by animus toward the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin of the victim.
The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.
TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Updated May 31, 2021
‘https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law
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