Becoming a slave to the state...for your own good of course. Because government is beneficent, magnanimous and kind, right?

Elder Abuse under ObamaCare

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh  Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Jane* went to bed one night last week, thanking God for her many blessings. She woke up next morning screaming, an entirely different person. Hallucinating, alternating between an imaginary world that only she could see and hear. Her family took her to the local hospital. She was admitted immediately and routine blood tests and an MRI were ordered.

Because Jane is 74 years old and a “unit” under ObamaCare, her utility to society must be low in the complicated formula the bureaucrats have devised to kill as many inconvenient elderly as possible.

New rules under Medicare and Tricare required that a case manager be assigned to her. Jane was no longer a patient with feelings, humanity, personality, but a “case.” Think of her case manager as someone whose sole purpose was to provide as little care as possible to an elderly American in dire need.

Flailing in pain, crying for help, and scared, Jane was tied to her bed to “calm her down” in spite of the fact that she has severe inflammatory arthritis in her hands. Her dentures and glasses were given to a nurse for safekeeping and she promptly lost them. It would be another 24 hours before they were found.

Jane’s husband Rob* served in the National Guard for years in a very blue state* in a predominantly blue collar town. It was the right thing to do for our nation and he had hoped that our country would keep its promise to care for him and his wife medically in their twilight years. After all, a civilized society is defined by its humanity by its treatment of the weak, the old, and the helpless. It turned out not to be the case, the government failed miserably in its promise.

Since the routine tests showed an elevated bacterial count, the infectious disease specialist ordered a spinal tap and counseled the family about the need of such a test. The doctor on duty, however, overrode the order and lied to the family that she had spoken to the infectious disease specialist and that he had decided there was no need for a spinal tap after all.

The family was advised to look for a nursing home to move Jane into as soon as possible since she had dementia and the hospital was unable to help her. Discharge papers were filled out. With teary eyes, her husband Rob was struggling to concentrate in order to complete the stack of papers unceremoniously shoved in front of him.

Several hours later, the infectious disease specialist reappeared during rounds to check on his patient, Jane, to make sure the spinal tap was done. To his surprise, his order had been cancelled by the doctor on duty and the case manager was busy with discharge paperwork. He reinstated the spinal tap order and invalidated the illegal release from the hospital which he had not signed nor ordered.

Infuriated, two family members filed complaints the next morning against the admission doctor and the case manager. As everyone was crying from stress, relief, and hope that perhaps Jane’s symptoms were due to meningitis or encephalitis, treatable illnesses, the case manager walked in and demanded to know in very harsh tones why the family had neglected her instructions the previous day to choose a nursing home from the list provided. She also threatened them with payment liability for the hospital bill if she stayed beyond the discharge date. She said, “We may just have to make the nursing home decision for you.” Although nobody gave this woman power of attorney over Jane, the family was bullied into submission and obeyed. They picked the closest nursing home, 5 minutes away from Jane’s home.

As they visited the nursing home, the family was surprised to find out that Jane’s entire life history and medical records had already been emailed to them by the case manager without the family’s permission. The family made a verbal complaint to the hospital director for the maltreatment of Jane and their invasion of privacy and decision-making.

Jane was calm enough today and had her spinal tap. She is awaiting the test results. In the meantime, her immediate family, generational staunch Democrats and supporters of Obama, was numb with shock and outrage that able-bodied Americans on welfare who refuse to work and illegal aliens are going to be medically insured and treated at the expense of hard-working Americans like Rob and Jane who paid their dues to society in many ways over decades, while Jane is treated worse than an animal, moved back and forth over the course of several days from the psych ward to a regular hospital floor. She became one of the early victims of the much touted ObamaCare that “does not have death panels and rationing.”

Sadly, this country is falling into the hell trap of communism very quickly. What good is medical insurance if the medical care is unavailable, non-existent, sub-standard, and most of all, inhumane?

*Names have been changed and the state withheld at the request of the family, to protect loved ones from more government reprisals.