See if this doesn't chill you down to your core.

A pro-Obamacare doctor wrote in Wendesday's Los Angeles Times that the healthcare law may do away with obstacles that "make dying much harder than it has to be."

Uh, is Obamacare making dying easier a good thing?

This doctor thinks so. He writes, "the state of end-of-life car in America is marked by too many treatments and too little attention to alleviating pain," adding that the amount of time and money spent on healthcare would make one think that people can be made to live forever.

Medical miracles abound: antibiotics, sophisticated surgery, organ transplantation, artificial kidneys, mechanical ventilators, implantable defibrillators and pumps to assist failing hearts. But medical science has yet to make one person immortal -- although from the way the healthcare is paid for and delivered, you would think we had.

In the current system, he complains, insurers "reimburse hospitals and doctors for treatments regardless of whether they have been proved to be effective." With Obamacare surviving a Supreme Court challenge, the era of easy reimbursements is ending.

The Affordable Care Act advances a new approach, called accountable care, that aligns financial incentives with high-quality treatment. This key feature of the law transforms healthcare by making local health systems -- made up of doctors, hospitals, clinics, laboratories and imaging facilities -- responsible for the outcomes of care and the costs for the population of people they predominantly serve.

Doctors will be on the hook financially if they prescribe treatments that aren't guaranteed to work.  Obviously, they'll cut back on such "wasteful treatments," as our good doctor calls them, that "make dying much harder than it has to be."

The doctor says that the withholding of these medical treatments is not rationing or death panels, it "gives people every chance of living longer and well and, when the time eventually comes, allows them to die peacefully."

What if patients want those special or experimental or expensive treatments in an attempt to lengthen their life? If insurers won't reimburse doctors for them anymore--a decision presumably made by some group of professionals or the government--the patient dies. A panel makes a decision that ultimately results in death for the patient. Sure, the phrase "death panel" does not appear in the health care laws. It doesn't need to. As the author of the piece shows , they'll form on their own.

Employer-based healthcare is the norm for employees of private companies. A company often agrees to pay a portion of medical premiums for its employees and their dependents, and the employees enjoy the benefits (or drawbacks) of a participating in a group plan where health-related costs are spread around.

A workers' health, therefore, directly impacts a company's bottom line. Premiums are calculated by the age group and family status of an employee, as well as an overall rate adjustment factor that may be higher or lower depending on the costs the group imposes on the medical insurance company.

A hypothetical company with 100 young , healthy employees will realize a competitive advantage over a company full of older workers who incur more healthcare costs, since they will save the company money which may be redirected into more personnel, better facilities, or the output of a higher quality product.

Companies, then, are incentivized to increase the ratio of young, healthy employees versus aging employees. In previous eras, businesses might be adversely impacted by losing the experience of the older workers. However, in the Information Age, many older workers have let themselves fall behind the times and are unfamiliar with computer or software tools that are so essential in today's office environment, limiting their usefulness.

Coupled with skyrocketing healthcare costs and high employee turnover due to a poor economy, it then becomes apparent that employers will find it easier to let go older employees and more difficult to hire them.

The Star touched on this matter in Monday's article entitled, "Unemployed older workers have a tougher time finding work."

While the article mentioned that technological advances in the workplace may have passed "mature" workers by, and that health risks might frighten employers from hiring silver-haired applicants, it was related more in the vein of injured older workers being unable to physically perform tasks--not the fact that older workers raise the healthcare costs for the employer, which is the focus of this article.

This is one of the unintended consequences of employer-based healthcare. If an employee were responsible for his own healthcare--and unable to socialize the cost among the members of a group plan, among the subscribers to an insurance company, or among fellow citizens (as is the case in government-sponsored healthcare)--not only would costs drop dramatically, but perverse incentives to maintain an unwritten "old people need not apply" policy would be removed.

Opponents of universal single-payer healthcare, a system in which only the government pays its citizens medical bills--and which Barack Obama advocated--are often accused of ignoring the needs of the poor. They oppose the socialization of healthcare because they understand where it can lead.  Take North Korea, for example.

The country's full name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. As Jon Stewart notes, there is a direct correlation to the number of "happy" words in a country's name and the suffering of its people (see the People's Republic of China). Stewart fails to note that "democrat" and "people's" are often euphemisms for communism--don't think too hard about that right now.

A clearer delineation of free-market capitalism and communism does not exist when you contrast the two Koreas (except possibly Berlin when it was divided between east and west). A sociologist couldn't dream up a better experiment. Take a group of people that share the same ancestry, traditions, and culture. Arbitrarily divide them geographically and then give the southern group capitalism and the northern group communism.

Result?

South Korea enjoys unprecedented economic prosperity while the citizens of North Korea eat grass, tree bark and roots, according to Amnesty International. [continue reading]

So, the actual experience was 165% higher than the estimate, after all necessary adjustments to achieve consistency were made.

A deviation such as this is nothing to be proud about; it is, however, much better than that based on the dollar values alone. Nonetheless, the only thing for me to do now is to commit hari-kari!

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.

The bottom line is that Congress would spend a lot more; steal funds from education, Social Security and long-term care to cover the gap; and promise that future Congresses will make up for it by taxing more and spending less....The health care legislation would only increase this crushing debt. It is a clear indication that Congress does not realize the urgency of putting America's fiscal house in order.