NYT: Medicare to Expand Coverage of Heart Devices (like Cheney's)

[DeepModem Mom]

Medicare to Expand Coverage of Heart Devices
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: January 20, 2005


WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - Federal health officials said on Wednesday that they planned a major expansion of Medicare coverage for implantable devices that can help prevent sudden death from heart failure and certain types of heart disease.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency was "poised to expand" coverage of the devices, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, based on new research showing that they could increase the chances of survival in substantial numbers of elderly people on Medicare. The move by the agency was reported on Wednesday night by The Washington Post.

"This policy change may increase the number of Medicare beneficiaries who are eligible for an I.C.D., to more than 500,000, two to three times the number who are currently eligible," Dr. McClellan said in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine....

***

A defibrillator is implanted in a patient's chest to monitor the heart's rhythm and to deliver an electrical shock when an abnormal, life-threatening rhythm is detected. Vice President Dick Cheney had a defibrillator implanted in 2001....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/politics/20heart.html

[NVMojo]

1. the thought of that ratbastard being on medicare makes me PUKE!!!!

[UL_Approved]

2. He is a welfare recipient

Cheney is planning on being a welfare recipient after this evidence is shown. The guy goes on and on and on about how this government is too soft on welfare, needs Medicare reform, but wants to put tax dollars on the table to fund their own sorry asses. The height of callousness.