The original article in the British Journal of Medicine was as follows:
The rationing debate: Rationing health care by age: The case against
J Grimley Evans, professor of clinical geratology a Division of Clinical Geratology Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford
I can't reproduce it all for copyright reasons but the Introduction gives some idea of the paper's thrust:
Introduction
Older people are discriminated against in the NHS. This is best documented in substandard treatment of acute myocardial infarction and other forms of heart disease, where it leads to premature deaths and unnecessary disability. The care for older people with cancer is also poorer than that provided for younger patients.
Age discrimination in the NHS occurs despite explicit statements from the government that withholding treatment on the basis of age is not acceptable. Ageism is mostly instigated by clinicians but condoned by managers. Fundholding general practitioners have a financial incentive to deprive older patients of expensive health care, but there is no ready way to find out whether they do so. Whatever its full extent, the documented instances of age discrimination, together with the occasional published apologia for ageism, show that the morality of age based rationing should be a matter of public concern.
Further on the writer states:
What I am objecting to is the exclusion from treatment on the basis of a patient's age without reference to his or her physiological condition
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Finally:
The article being discussed:
Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer, Ezekiel J Emanuel
Abstract:
In health care, as elsewhere, scarcity is the mother of allocation.1 Although the extent is debated,2,3 the scarcity of many specific interventions—including beds in
intensive care units,4 organs, and vaccines during pandemic influenza5—is widely acknowledged. For some interventions, demand exceeds supply. For others, an increased supply would necessitate redirection of important resources, and allocation decisions would still be necessary.
Allocation of scarce medical interventions is a perennial challenge. During the 1940s, an expert committee allocated—without public input—then-novel penicillin
to American soldiers before civilians, using expected efficacy and speed of return to duty as criteria. During the 1960s, committees in Seattle allocated scarce dialysis machines using prognosis, current health, social worth, and dependants as criteria. How can scarce medical interventions be allocated justly? This paper identifies and evaluates eight simple principles that have been suggested. Although some are better than others, no single principle allocates interventions justly. Rather, morally relevant simple principles must be combined
into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three existing systems and then recommend a new one: the complete lives system.
Ultimately, the complete lives system does not create “classes of Untermenschen whose lives and well being are deemed not worth spending money on”, but rather empowers us to decide fairly whom to save when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.
It's not about Obama's health care, it's part of a continuing debate in medical circles which has an ethical basis.