Obamacare Would the Prevent Proper Treatment of My Back Injury

In early March I was a passenger in a car that was struck by a someone failing to stop at a red light. I have a back injury as a result, which requires epidural steroid injections (ESI) for relief from the pain. On Wednesday I received my first injection, the process was not fun, but hopefully it will help my condition. While resting at home the night of the injection I came across an article from the British publication telgraph.co.uk that highlighted how I would be treated in England under their socialized health care system.

The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.

Although alternative medicines may be worth looking into, that is a decision that my doctor and I should be making, not a government number cruncher looking to shave a few dollars off the overall operating costs to make up for their wasteful inefficiencies. To recommend the use of alternative medicine is one thing, but to be told that it is the only option is a violation of one's liberty.

Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.

So I may have a chance at getting some treatment for now, that is, until I am old and I am not as useful to society-excellent. In the mean time, if my father or grandfather have a similar issue, they will be forced to suffer through the pain or try one of the sanctioned treatments.

The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.

Looks like the chances of me receiving the proper treatment just dropped down to next to none, as I'm sure those 3,000 treatments per year are earmarked for some campaign contributors. In the end though, it is once again proven that you can follow the money to put reason to an irrational situation. There is an alternative to ESIs though...

...the British Pain Society, which represents specialists in the field, has written to NICE calling for the guidelines to be withdrawn after its members warned that they would lead to many patients having to undergo unnecessary and high-risk spinal surgery.
...The NICE guidelines admit that evidence was limited for many back pain treatments, including those it recommended. Where scientific proof was lacking, advice was instead taken from its expert group. But specialists are furious that while the group included practitioners of alternative therapies, there was no one with expertise in conventional pain relief medicine to argue against a decision to significantly restrict its use.

Now it is being suggested that instead of a half an hour ESI procedure, I should instead be considering a risky surgery? This scenario sounds an awful lot like Obama talking about doctors stealing tonsils for money...

Except in this case, doctors are forced to provide sub-par treatment as the result of a government mandate dreamt up by an expert group within the government that is somehow able to give advice on procedures where scientific evidence is lacking! In this case, British citizens with back pain are faced with a grim reality:

Dr Jonathan Richardson, a consultant pain specialist from Bradford Hospitals Trust, is among more than 50 medics who have written to NICE urging the body to reconsider its decision, which was taken in May.
He said: "The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients. It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate."

This type of patient treatment is the status quo in countries with socialized government health care systems and this single-payer system is exactly what Obama wants in the the US. The White House has ramped up it's efforts to portray all those in opposition of the chosen one as evil insurance company lobbyist and paid Republican henchmen, but in my case and so many others, we are informed of the facts and how these decisions will ultimately effect our well being. Based on my job loss resulting from the injuries, I represent one of the people who is supposed to benefit from a government option, but I know better. We are not an angry mob as the Democratic National Committee is suggesting, but an informed electorate concerned about the government stripping us of our liberties by limiting our heath care choices. If congress is so far out of touch with the people that they are supposed to be representing, then their eyes will undoubtedly be opened after the next election. In their attempts to root out disinformation, the White House should scrutinize the false information that they themselves are attempting to spread. We are all well aware of that Obamacare is a Trojan Horse, thanks to the words of the one himself.