A package of pork

Toledo Blade
2/14/2009

There was an awkward moment Tuesday for Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania’s sort-of Republican, when Megyn Kelly of Fox News asked him about a provision of which he evidently was unaware in the stimulus package for which he’d just voted.

The provision would create a national coordinator for health information technology who would monitor treatments to make sure what your doctor is doing is what the federal government deems cost effective. It’s modeled on the practice in Britain where elderly patients are denied expensive treatments because they are likely to die soon anyway.

If the provision had been law, Mr. Specter, 79, might have been denied coverage for the cancer treatments that have kept him alive.

The story continues …..

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