Unless her name is “Terry Schiavo” …
That controversy was an unsettling one: the issue was what to do about a woman who had no medically realistic prospects for recovery, was consuming expensive healthcare dollars, and had left no reliable instructions on what her wishes would be in that situation, and a lot of people were very uncomfortable with either option, continuing to pay for her care or depriving her of nourishment. Public opinion at the time was hardly unanimous on what should be done (indeed, even some high-profile left-wingers sided with those who opposed removing Schiavo’s feeding tube). The conventional wisdom in the pundit class was that the damage done was all to one side – that the flap revealed the GOP to be in the thrall of religious extremists. I don’t doubt that some such damage was indeed done. But little attention was paid to the fact that the Right vs Left narrative of the Schiavo episode – one willingly stoked by Democrats eager to capitalize on precisely the “Religious Right overreach” angle – painted the Left as the advocates of ‘pulling the plug’ on Terri Schiavo. Another anecdote had been added to the public’s collective memory of what the two sides stand for – an anecdote, I should add, that is consistent with other pieces of the puzzle, as the Left has clashed with the same pro-lifers again and again on abortion, assisted suicide, and the destruction of embryos for stem cell research. Sarah Palin’s invocation of her Down’s Syndrome son Trig is another flashpoint: it is the Left that insists that it is appropriate to abort a child when prenatal testing reveals such a condition, and it was from the Left that we heard crude jibes suggesting that Palin should have done just that. A coherent pattern emerges, forms itself and takes root in the public’s mind.
An excellent read.
h/t Ben D.
I remember Ayn Rand writing something to the effect that what collectivists ultimately worship is death. If you repeated that to an “intellectual”, you were sneered at as a simpleton.
However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, yes?
There are some important things to remember with respect to Schiavo. Fisrt, her expensive health care was being paid for. Second, the person entrusted by the courts to make the decision was a lying, cheating husband who wanyed closure for HIS life, not hers. Third, the parents who brought her into this world, no matter how irrational, wanted her to live. I would never override the wishes of my wife’s parents unless my wife made it crystal clear to me what she wanted done in that situation, and perhaps not even then.
While liberals decry ‘death panels’ as a figment of the imagination of conservatives in the health care debate, witnessing a string of anecdotes and policies from abortion to right to die to medical marijuana to Schiavo demonstrates liberals are a cult of self-hatred and death.
I personally witnessed pensioners being allowed to leave East Germany when they were no longer a working slave but a hungry burden. The wisdom of continuing lifesaving care for an elderly person who stands little to gain at high cost is elusive. In the free market, that cost is paid for. But in a government system you have a bureaucrat weighing a person’s life against a system’s deficit. Either way, we lose and I prefer we never give them that choice.
There are some important things to remember with respect to Schiavo. Fisrt, her expensive health care was being paid for. Second, the person entrusted by the courts to make the decision was a lying, cheating husband who wanyed closure for HIS life, not hers. Third, the parents who brought her into this world, no matter how irrational, wanted her to live. I would never override the wishes of my wife’s parents unless my wife made it crystal clear to me what she wanted done in that situation, and perhaps not even then.
While liberals decry ‘death panels’ as a figment of the imagination of conservatives in the health care debate, witnessing a string of anecdotes and policies from abortion to right to die to medical marijuana to Schiavo demonstrates liberals are a cult of self-hatred and death.
I personally witnessed pensioners being allowed to leave East Germany when they were no longer a working slave but a hungry burden. The wisdom of continuing lifesaving care for an elderly person who stands little to gain at high cost is elusive. In the free market, that cost is paid for. But in a government system you have a bureaucrat weighing a person’s life against a system’s deficit. Either way, we lose and I prefer we never give them that choice.
Relevant video. Obama says painkillers might be the better way to go for seniors than surgery.
http://neoavatara.com/blog/?p=7523
we now wait far too long for medical treatment in canada. the elderly are kept waiting longer.
This is from Sarah Palin’s rebuttal to Obama’s vacuous and misleading rhetoric on ‘end-of-life’ counselling. (I erroneously put it in Reader’s Tips). She rebuts his slippery misinformation with facts and points out the slippery slope that his bill sets up, where it actually evaluates human life in terms of its social productivity.
She writes, “Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives…. It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen … should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]
Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]
President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.”
Technology is allowing baby boomer longevity at a time when Health Care is already soaking up escalating portions of the GDP. The ratio of workers to retirees is becoming unsustainable.
Therefore instead of our MPs bogged with what Mulroney did with $300,000 of Schreiber’s money 15 years ago, they should be debating the moral issues of life and death in a clear common sense language that Sarah Palin uses.
Are we sending anyone to Ottawa that can do that?
Obama’s outright deceit to the US citizenry is mind-boggling. His lies are easily refuted by simply reading the bill, yet he continues to lie openly and without shame to his fellow citizens.
Those on the loony left who used “Bush lied, people died” are strangely quiet on this; doubtless they are still dazzled by obama’s cult of personality and haven’t seen him for who he truly is.
Interesting analysis on the healthcare bill is here.
Fortunately, more Americans are waking up to the fact that you have a hard-Left statist bent on removing their healthcare, of which a majority of them are quite satisfied.
Obama: All Alinsky, All the Time.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
nomdeblog – it’s the ratio of productivity to non-productivity that is important. However, this ratio doesn’t only refer to the very young and the old. It also refers to the massive increase in the welfare population in the socialist states.
If you set up a society with a large proportion of its population as only receivers of goods and services and not contributors – your society is unsustainable.
Every society has two sets of consumers; call them the passive and the active. The passive are broken down into two subsets:the children and the elders. Societies place a great deal of value on both subsets in the passive; the children are the future of the society; the elders are the past, the wisdom, the experience.
The active are the middle phase, the population set that is active in production of goods and services.
Now, what happens to a society that transforms a large proportion of members of the active set into passive recipients? A welfare class, a dependent class. Young, but do no work; insist on state care and support. Well, a society can support a minimal number of these people, but it can reach a critical threshold when the number of passive members of the society is unsustainable.
That’s what happens in a socialist societal organization. It removes the necessity, the incentive, the duty and right of individuals to work and self-sustain themselves. It moves them into ‘wards of the state’. This may sound like being on perpetual summer vacation..but no society can economically or even intellectually, sustain a population on permanent vacation.
I think our real concern should not be the population which traditionally are taken care of by the state, the children and the elderly, but the burgeoning movement to transform more and more of the ‘active members of the population’ into ‘passive dependents’ of the state.
POWinCA said “But in a government system you have a bureaucrat weighing a person’s life against a system’s deficit.”
These are the same people that will deny you a job based solely on your race. They will deny you an education based solely on your race. They will be making legal decisions based solely on your race. The next logical step is they will allow or deny you medical help based solely on your race.
These are odious people.
While liberals decry ‘death panels’ as a figment of the imagination of conservatives in the health care debate, witnessing a string of anecdotes and policies from abortion to right to die to medical marijuana to Schiavo demonstrates liberals are a cult of self-hatred and death.
POWinCA, you lost me with the addition of medical marijuana.
I waited two years for a liver transplant.
During that time I watched over 50% of those waiting succumb. They died because of the nausea that accompanies this condition. The constant nausea make eating almost impossible. The lack of nutrition causes understandable weakness and in conjunction with the illness, death.
During this time I did use marijuana. It got rid of the nausea and allowed me to stay stronger by being able to eat.
My family doctor and transplant surgeons were fully aware of this fact. Non of them would prescribe marijuana. All of them recommended privately that I keep taking it.
I’m now recovered and am currently a director at a manufacturing company.
As with all things, there are many who take things too far.
This means the dopers who use medical marijuana as a wedge to attempt to allow them unfettered access to drugs. It also means those with closed minds, who blithely discount it’s life saving properties.
p.s. I currently have an aquaintance who’s dying of prostate cancer. Nausea is also the enemy that is hastening his death. He recently starting using marijuana (in his 80’s) and is now at least getting relief which allows him comfort, and the ability to take food. You may be surprised to learn that when taking marijuana for nausea and pain, the symptoms disappear almost instantly. It’s also of interest that you receive no “buzz” when you’re truly ill, just relief.
Technology is allowing baby boomer longevity at a time when Health Care is already soaking up escalating portions of the GDP. The ratio of workers to retirees is becoming unsustainable.
Yes. But this begs the question: what impact has “sexual freedom” through abortion had on our economy. Let me be clear in saying I dislike turning people into commodities, or looking at them purely as a source of productivity/revenue, but let’s answer this question.
Since Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973, approximately 50 million abortions have occurred in the United States. If you divide that 50 million by the number of years of legal abortion, you get 50 million/36 years = 1,388,888 abortions annually.
If we consider anyone age 18+ (anyone born between 1973 and 1991, 18 years) as being people who could be, say, paying taxes into Social Security, that gives us 1,388,888 x 18 = 24,999,984 million more people who’d be around to help support the American economy.
But, as we see with this health care bill, America is more interested in treating people solely as commodities, accessories, than human beings with worth and dignity. And now we’re setting our sights on the elderly, most of which will BE Baby Boomers in the coming years, because they’re also in our way.
Obama’s outright deceit to the US citizenry is mind-boggling. His lies are easily refuted by simply reading the bill, yet he continues to lie openly and without shame to his fellow citizens.
Not only that, but there are people who believe him. Another blogger commented that Obama could say “I’m not punching you in the face” as he punches you in the face and WE who point out that he is, in fact, punching you would be branded as liars.
Or we’re told we’re “too stupid” to understand the bill. Yet when I read the parts I’ve read, I see that the people who talk about “death panels”, rationing, and the outlawing of private insurance are right. I have a degree, conferred with honors, and am in a Master’s program. So I’m hardly illiterate.
Or liberals say that the bill says X, but it doesn’t mean X. Just like when Obama says something boldly honest, what he said isn’t what he meant.
Here’s my thing: If the language of the bill is such that it can have more than one interpretation, there’s a problem WITH THE BILL. Perhaps having a 1,000+ page piece of legislation that could mean X, Y, or Z is not a wise way to govern a country. If you want it to say X, have it say X.
And if the Democrats were so self-assured this was the way to go, they could put the blunt language (i.e., “the elderly will be euthanized”) in the bill and see how far it gets them.
But they’re not, and the bill isn’t.
However, I can assure you from what I’ve seen on the ground, on blogs, people are realizing Obama’s a liar. He can only do his slick sleight of hand trick so often before people catch on – even the people thick enough to believe his outrageous campaign promises.
nomdeblog – it’s the ratio of productivity to non-productivity that is important. However, this ratio doesn’t only refer to the very young and the old. It also refers to the massive increase in the welfare population in the socialist states.
If you set up a society with a large proportion of its population as only receivers of goods and services and not contributors – your society is unsustainable.
For some reason, this didn’t post…
Thank you for pointing out the obvious. I find it highly ironic, and infuriating, that this health care bill will judge my fellow citizens on their economic worth on the basis of disabilities and age – two things they have no control over – while others who are young and able-bodied, are as equally non-productive (and encouraged by liberal socialists to remain so).
Remember the woman who glowingly boasted Obama would pay her mortgage and her gas? Yeah. She’ll get health care, but the baby with Downs syndrome or the grandma with heart trouble – screw them.
Interesting comments by Sarah Palin in clarification of her “death panel” remarks.
On the topic of Ezekiel Emanuel, to say that he “advocated” what Sarah Palin quotes him as saying isn’t accurate. His thoughts in the paper in question, taken somewhat out of context, are presented as possibilities and hypotheses. But they are still very interesting to read in the context of this debate, and Palin was right to draw attention to them.
The main, simple point that lends weight to those who fear that the elderly won’t have their lives prolonged through expensive treatments is that “end of life counselling” is being sold as a means to “bend the cost curve down,” in other words, as a cost-saving measure. So how else does the White House expect people to interpret the meaning of this provision?
In public policy, in our liberal world, unless something is specifically excluded — in this case, denial of medical treatment for the elderly — it tends to be accepted. Even excluding it is no sure safeguard, of course.
Man, that is exactly like the story of the Zen master from Charlie Wilson’s War.
In this village, a little boy is given a gift of a horse. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that fabulous? Isn’t that wonderful? What a wonderful gift.”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
A couple years later the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that terrible? The horse is cursed! That’s horrible!”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
A few years later the country goes to war and the government conscripts all the males into the army, but the boy’s leg is so screwed up, he doesn’t have to go. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that fabulous? Isn’t that wonderful?”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
To continue from doowleb…
But you can’t tax marihuana because it is too easy to grow, dry and smoke meaning that governments have already studied it and concluded that if legalized, not enough tax revenue, if any, would flow back as people with enough brains to put together dirt, seed and water would beat the taxman easily. Growing tobacco might be fairly easy but it is the curing to make it smokable that requires expertise and investment. Thus tobacco is ‘taxable’ and so is alcool which can be lethal if not manufactured carefully and with expertise. Furthermore, legal pot would cut existing tax returns from tobacco and more so alcool. Governments can’t have that.
The day marihuana will be legal is the day governments have collapsed and cannot enforce their “prohibition for profit” anymore.
So back to a government run health care…Will it be for your health or the well being of government’s bottom line?
amy – your comments are excellent. As you note, if a Bill is open to several interpretations then this is a dangerous bill. Extremely dangerous.
This puts the interpretation into the hands of those who were not elected to pass the bill, into those who are unaccountable to the electorate. It removes decision-making power from The People.
And, for the socialist state to seek to reduce its costs by devaluation of the young and elderly – those who will in the future contribute and those who have in the past contributed to the society – is in one word, evil. Totally without morality.
Meanwhile, the socialist state increases the number of healthy adults who are transformed into passive dependents on the state. As you note, the woman who gleefully said that Obama would pay her mortgage and her gas. No, someone who is working is paying for his own mortgage and gas; and hers as well. Why?
Then, Obama’s socialist state is turning against its wealthy citizens, trying to grab more and more of their money to sustain and support this expanding non-contributing, non-working adult-dependency class.
But it’s the wealthy who support the foundations, the hospitals, the research centres, the universities, in the US. It’s the wealthy who develop the new businesses, the innovative technology. Obama is destroying the active economic force of the nation.
There is indeed a “slippery slope” element to all of this. I recommend to anyone who doesn’t accept this that they read Gita Sereney’s “Into That Darkness”, her interviews with the commandant of Treblinka before his execution. He started as an official vetting the documents to make sure that no one was euthanized “inappropriately”. Of course, having bought into that, the system had him. The rest, as they say . . .
State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life — taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom — are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found.
The situation is so bad the federal government has forbidden the state to sign up new people until the state makes necessary improvements.
No other state in the nation is under such a moratorium, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
A particularly alarming finding concerns deaths of adults in the programs. In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help.
Sarah Palin’s Alaska…pulling the plug on grandma.
http://www.adn.com/life/health/story/864670.html
philboy – please argue the issue, which is the insertion of the state into evaluation of the right-to-life of its citizens.
Your attempt to denigrate Palin’s analysis of this issue, by the fallacious strategy of attacking the health care of Alaska, is a red herring and is invalid.
Obama’s health ‘Czar’ has openly mused about rationing health services and withholding curative treatment to critically ill seniors (or anyone on permanent disability). That is in line with technocratic collectivist ideologies about euthanasia as a medical option. Perhaps seniors groups like AARP have read the fine print in this bill and see that this health plan could deny seniors much of the services and treatments they currently have access to.
Fox had a piece on Monday about how AARP members are livid with their leadership for not roundly denouncing Obamacare and are now in open revolt of AARP leadership. AARP members are present at many of the Obamacare protests.
Makes you wonder what type of Malthusian degenerates are in charge of public policy these days.
OK, I was thinking about this, and I have to be missing something here. It seems like criminals are the only group that the left unequivocally does not want dead, but that can’t be right, can it?
Obama’s general approval has dipped to 47%, his lowest rating to date. Rasmussen gives him 52% who disapprove and only 47% who approve. His index is minus 8.
Obviously the Democrats wanted to pass this monstrous bill before August so that ‘the People’ would have no say. Just as they rammed through their pork-bill without its being read, and put the US into trillions in debt. Now, how are the Democrats going to get out of this?
They’ll attack those who criticize the Bill in an attempt to denigrate the criticism of those who criticize. We’ve just seen an example with philboy. The Democrats will hurl accusations of racism – where your objection to the bill becomes a sign of your racism against Obama. They’ve already done the ‘mob, astroturf, nazi, thugs’ strategy. They’ll move onto ‘extremist terrorists’. They are deeply dividing and conflicting the population. Will it work? I don’t think so.
Can Obama’s smiles and calls for Love work? Again, I don’t think so.
So, will they try for a diversion? Some crisis to take everyone’s mind off the Health Care Bill?
But it’s the wealthy who support the foundations, the hospitals, the research centres, the universities, in the US.
And, historically, religious groups and orders have staffed schools, hospitals, hospices, etc. Charity goes much further – with deeper significance – than government handouts.
But since charity, especially that icky religious kind, does not give control to a set group of elites, liberal socialists like Obama are destined to hate them. As well as the wealthy who contribute vast sums of money (more than the Obamas, by the way); doing so knocks the government out of the way and it’s absolutely intolerable.
OK, I was thinking about this, and I have to be missing something here. It seems like criminals are the only group that the left unequivocally does not want dead, but that can’t be right, can it?
No, I think you’re pretty much right. The death penalty is a horrible, terrible thing that we cannot do to a fellow human being (no matter how deplorable his crimes), according to liberals. But withholding medical treatment from the mentally disabled or elderly…well, that’s another matter entirely. They’re not really “human”, anyway.
And one last thought:
If Obama, and most liberals, are as capable of ignoring the Constitution as they are – it being the set legal foundation of this nation – all the talk about living wills, end-of-life directives, powers of attorney really rings false to me.
They don’t respect the document that founded this nation; why the hell are they going to care what we type up on our little Hewlett-Packards for our parents, our children, ourselves?
ET, With her inept governance, Palin is not the go-to person where health care issues, or any other issue for that matter, are concerned.
To debate a paranoid delusion dreamed up by a right wingnut quitter, I would have to buy into that delusion. The speed and vehemence with which this nonsense is taken up and propagated by the increasingly shrill, angry right fringe, is as astonishing as it is risible.
Heh! Pillboy’s trollage actually serves to prove the point that conservatives make about government health care.
Place your trust in government, and you’re going to get screwed. Because governments screw up. It’s what they do.
Youtube video; Hannity interviewing Michelle Malkin on Fox;
“what has happened to the media in this country, Michelle, when we are getting more information from your blog, your book, programs like this, than what was know traditionally, historically as the Mainstream Media ? What happened!?”
Michelle’s answer is chilling
Michelle Malkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZi1MkkpGOg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Farchives%2F2009%2F08%2F12%2Fguess-whos-number-one-on-the-nyt-bestseller-list-again%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=115
no, philboy, you still aren’t making a valid argument. You are instead, denigrating the person who criticizes, and not focusing on WHAT they are saying. That’s an invalid strategy.
You see, even to support your rejection of Palin, you have to provide evidence of her ‘ineptness’ (and your example of health care is insufficient – her record of achievements in Alaska is very high).
Then, you have to remove your name-calling because those are not valid arguments. That is, ‘paranoid delusion’, rightwingnut quitter’ etc, are not arguments. They are merely your unsubstantiated opinions and remain with you.
Equally, your ‘shrill, angry, right wing fringe’ name-calling is not an argument. Just as the left-wing immediate accusations of the Town Hall protesters as being ‘nazi’, un-American’, thugs, mob’..etc..are not an argument. I suggest you focus on the issues and stop with the name-calling and fallacious non-arguments. What do YOU think of this health care policy?
Amy – again, thanks. Very astute comments.
Heh! Pillboy’s trollage actually serves to prove the point that conservatives make about government health care.
Place your trust in government, and you’re going to get screwed. Because governments screw up. It’s what they do.
Not quite, gord. This took place under the system
the insurance companies, their useful
astroturf idiots, and their bought and paid for Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to
preserve.
It also demonstrates the truth that conservatives
who constantly whine about the incompetence of government sometimes get elected and prove it.
All this rationing talk…is it purely something that stems from GOP desperation to vilify this program? Lets be honest here: I support government run health care. The GOP never will. It doesn’t matter how good the system is/will/could be; they will _not_ support such a system under any circumstances.
Now that we’ve established my bias and the GOP’s bias, lets look at Canada. I’ve witnessed and heard of numerous stories of children with chronic disabilities and diseases who spend most of their first decade of life in a hospital. Are they denied treatment? Are they treated with less dignity? Not at all. The elderly are a bit of a different story…the struggle for modern health care to support our swollen population of the eldery (due to abortion and the sexual revolution) is felt not only in Canada but in the U.S. as well.
Now the common concerns with these segments of the population is that health care will be rationed for them, correct? That some will die due to a beauracrat insisting they aren’t worth the money it would cost to save their lives. What about the millions of eldery who are already dying because they have no health care coverage anymore and are running out of savings? What about the millions of people without health insurance who will die due to enormous health care costs?
I just find it slightly confusing that we worry about those would die due to a lack of service under this new system when 50 million already lack this service altogether.
I will give a thank you to everyone for at least having the grace not to bring up Stephen Hawking…however it was good for a laugh! 😉
barjebus – I think your facts are missing.
First, as many have pointed out, the ’50 million’ not insured is fallacious. And that number, interestingly, keeps rising day by day with each politician! I won’t go over the details because it’s been done so many times already on this blog, but the number, inflated, is made up of illegals, of those who choose not to insure, those between policies – and the 10-15 million not insured. So, it’s not 50 million. Nor are these 50 million all on the brink of death.
Second – you like the Canadian system. Fine. That doesn’t mean that it’s the best or only system. As we all know, many services are unavailable in Canada, so people go without the treatment or, if they can, they go to the US for treatment, operations, etc.
And, you probably already know that no hospital in the US can deny treatment to anyone. Regardless of whether they pay or not. Or did you not know that?
Do you not know about Medicaid, which is the public medical care system in the US, specifically for people who cannot afford insurance? It’s almost bankrupt at the moment.
Are you aware of the Canadian Supreme Court decision about wait times in Quebec – which resulted in an approval for PRIVATE clinics because the PUBLIC treatments weren’t available?
Are you aware of the gradual increase in private care in Canada?
And what makes it any different from fighting with a government beauracrat than with an insurance beauracrat? It _appears_ (hard to tell with all the accusations from both sides regarding this issue) that Obama is trying to inject political ideology into the health systems decision making process (issues regarding whether abortions are funded, whether assisted suicide will be paid), and that is definitely going to go very badly for him.
Suffice to say, dealing with insurance companies is no more pleasant than dealing with the government.
Bureaucrat … from the root word bureau.
Waiting list … what distinguishes the Canadian system from the U.S. system.
ET at August 13, 2009 9:31 AM
Brilliant post, ET. One of your best.
Thoughts:
1. Notice how the folks who coined the phrase “people before profits” have no problem valuing the lives of old folks and dispensing with them when they’re no longer, er, profitable.
HOWEVER, you’ll not like this one (and I’m 60):
2. It struck me that the elderly, who comprise the majority of the protesting “mob” aren’t protesting against socialized health care or FOR the free market in same, but against any limit on it, which of course is economically impossible. Medicare is bankrupt. Medicaid is bankrupt. Social Security is banktupt. The US of A is bankrupt.
I dunno about you, but that ad in which the old lady proclaims proudly that she didn’t pay a dime for her new scooter gives me the creeps. Couldn’t she and/or her extended family have paid for this. As Kathy Shaidle might put it, “pay for your own damn health care”.
Seniors pay NOTHING for medicare. A price of zero will generate infinite demand. Rationing is inescapable.
The political winner will be the one who disguises this reality most elegantly. Which — LOL — ain’t Obama who has suggested that doctors are cutting off feet for instant cash! God what a dumb phu*k.
Lets address things point by point:
-You’re right, it isn’t 50 million. Read the census report here that states that there are 45.65 million people without health insurance. This number, according to the Census Bureau, included 9.73 million foreigners, leaving only 35.92 Americans who were uninsured.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
-You are correct they are not on the bring of death, but I’m sure many have disabilities or cronic conditions that do not allow them to purchase insurance if they wished. Their numbers are non-trivial and their treatments and medication are expensive.
-Who do you think uses medicaid? The poor, disabled, eldery, pregnant, and chronically diseased. They’re the ones who are too expensive for an insurance company to profit off of. And you wondering why medicaid is bankrupt? In addition to that medicaid is basically subject to the whims and costs of the free market (not always a bad thing as competition can engender cheaper prices, but in most cases in health care it just leads to enormous costs).
-You’re correct that no U.S. hospital will refuse treatment in the case of an _emergency_. Private practices are allowed to deny treatment for non-payment and are obliged to call 911. So your choice is either losing your life, or declaring bankruptcy. I like those options!
-Yes I am aware of the increase in private health care in Canada. As we all know, the eldery are taking up a larger and larger share of medical costs while the number of people in the workforce as a percentage of population has decreased. This is rather inevitable that health care costs will rise due to this disproportion, but I do not feel that private care is the answer. Quebec has long been a mismanaged socialist paradise where money grows on trees.
My late mother experienced Soviet-style health care through correspondence with her relatives.
Some were, in fact, told by doctors that they were too old to receive certain treatments.
When I hear about ‘death panels,’ it does bring a shudder down my spine. I know my relatives have experienced the frightening prospect of being ‘too old for treatment.’
It’s a natural consequence of a state-run, secular humanist systems which only value an individual’s ability to provide labour for the central committee’s economic plans rather than the sanctity of human life.
It is ultimately true that leftist, totalitarian secular humanist systems perfect themselves by eliminating those who a) disagree with them and b) become a burden on them.
barjebus – thanks for your comments.
As for the numbers uninsured, remember, that many people, whom you don’t include in your list, choose, deliberately, to not insure themselves. They feel that pay-direct for their limited medical needs is less expensive than insurance. Some might have policies only for serious situations (accidents).
As well, the number of illegal aliens in the US is not 9.75 million, but at least three to four times that. They aren’t insured and yet, they use the hospital emergency rooms.
I’d remove the ‘pregnant’ from your list of medicaid recipients. Disabled and elderly are ‘moot’, for many of them had insurance packages in their employment years that now care for them in their retirement.
A key factor, as you also point out, is that the percentage of the population who WORK and contribute to the economic strength of the society is decreasing, as the socialist ideology removes people from WORK and on to permanent welfare. No society can sustain itself like that.
As for Quebec, it’s been able to move into this socialist dream because money grows in the federal bank, put there from other provinces – and Quebec insists on getting far more than it itself inputs into that federal bank.
I think that a mixture of public and private is the best system. But a serious, major problem, is the reduction in size of the Contributing Working Class. Without their input into the economic reality of a nation…that nation will dissolve in bankruptcy.
I don’t obviously have THE ANSWER to this moral minefield, but are you seriously suggesting that no decisions EVER have to be made in these scenarios ?
Unless one posits that there is an inexhaustible supply of CASH with which to fund treatment for EVERYTHING at every stage of life, this is in fact a zero sum game. Something has to give.
We don’t have to like it but we do have to accept it. Would you prefer to keep someone such as Terry Schiavo alive at whatever cost or provide ‘better’ treatment for a handful of ‘others’ ?
This is not an informed debate on either side. Just a series of talking points which don’t even address the ‘issue’.
What exactly ARE we going to do when ALL the old fogies(like me for example) begin that inevitable slide down the tubes? Something IS going to be done. That is a given. The only question is by whom and for what reasons. And that something will not be unlimited treatment for all. It just won’t.
dougf- I think that there isn’t ‘An Answer’ to your concerns. That’s because there cannot, ever, be a general or universal answer, akin to a law or rule, about ‘what to do in all cases’.
The reality that we are finite and fallible has to be treated as an individual reality. The decision has to be individual and there cannot be a common rule.
What is amoral is for a government to move this individual decision into a general rule.
[Your Terry Shiavo example isn’t valid, by the way, as her parents were willing to pay for her care.]
The problem with health care as we know it is the simple fact that no one wants to pay for it. Whether private companies run the system or the government runs the system the fact remains that no one pays for it out of their own pocket. Since no one is paying out of pocket the costs get thrown out of whack. After all since the ins. company or the government is paying the provider has no incentive to keep costs down. Since the ins. company or the government is paying the cost incentive is reversed. Ins. companies look at the expenditures as a way to increase premiums which fattens their bottom line just as the government likes increased expenditures because it makes them look important as they justify another tax increase.
The only way out of this pickle is to set up ‘savings accounts’ where the individual is responsible for the expenditures and can add to the account at will.
Amy p “I find it highly ironic, and infuriating, that this health care bill will judge my fellow citizens on their economic worth”
But that is not surprising is it? Socialism is about the redistribution of economic success. It refuses to deal with morality. Marx said religion was the opium of the masses; that’s because values and morality get in the way of socialism where workers are not thought of as a life but as you say , just a commodity.
ET “But it’s the wealthy who support the foundations, the hospitals, the research centres, the universities, in the US”
That’s true here too. Notice as you drive down University Ave in Toronto, the hospital wings and emergency centers are named Munk, Schulich , Riesman and Schwartz. Without the philanthropy of these captain of industry donations to our Health plant and equipment, it would be obsolete. It is the “productivity” of industry (plus the Charity groups Amy p mentions) that keeps us Healthy. The trick is to find the optimum public/private mix.
bar_jebus , Gov. Mitt Romney , a GOPer, brought vast improvements to health care in Massachusetts. He did that by working WITH insurance companies not by vilifying them. Oh well, maybe we’ll get Mitt in the White House in 2012.
[quote]Seniors pay NOTHING for medicare. A price of zero will generate infinite demand. Rationing is inescapable.
The political winner will be the one who disguises this reality most elegantly. Which — LOL — ain’t Obama who has suggested that doctors are cutting off feet for instant cash! God what a dumb phu*k.[/quote]Me No Dhimmi
Me no,
All seniors have paid in advance and are not getting anything free. In the USA SS & Medicare have been/are a BIG deduction (number) from a paycheck. They have been paid by both employer (Medicare) & employee every month since the plan was implemented… The Plan is in trouble because the money was NOT held in Trust (lock Box) & invested…Gov’t bonds are IOUs.
ET:
Your comments are excellent and would, IMO, be shared by the Majority of both Republican & Democrat voters.
It is the past Practices of our Congress that are in “Play”. It’s the game of cronyism where the Congress will pass a Mandate full of “known” problems. The incumbent Democrat (in this case) Senators then will POST negotiate the “changes” necessary to make the bill palatable for thier States. Its a shell game in a sense, Obama will get credit for changing the parts most objectionable, “TRUST ME” actually has a perverted truth. The legislative record becomes irrelevant and the methodology favors the re-election of the local hero toads, like Specter..
The US Supreme Court has ruled that MANDATES must include STATE costs. That requirement should have been sufficient to STOP this nonsense played by the Congress… That is that voting for a flawed bill that they didn’t read, by Congress, would be seen as incompetent.
The voters, of both parties, are demanding a legitiment legislative record such that they can evaluate the true intent of thier representatives..
That’s my take..
Phillip G. Shaw:
Technically, correct. However, if the money wasn’t used for its intended purposes, it was used for other stuff. SO, in reality, my point stands: if there’s no dough in any account, they didn’t pay for Medicare, and they have to be wilfully deaf and blind to have believed they did. They received OTHER government services for their payroll deductions.
And they continue to vote for multi-term representatives who bring home the most pork.
As you well know attempts to put these programmes on a sound economic basis are non-starters politically. See Bush’s tenuous early efforts to deal with Social Security. And also recall the DEM’s screaming about Bush’s attempt to even limit the GROWTH of Medicare to 7% a year — way over the rate of inflation.
I know senior citizenship is a sacred cow, but I’m afraid seniors are getting what they voted for, and as Mencken would say, good and hard!
Rationing is economically inevitable. We can only hope that the Statists don’t prevent people from supplementing state care (sic) with private purchases as is the case in Canada and the UK.
You take away all the bells and whistles, it all comes down to that old saw: He who pays the piper calls the tune.
I’d forgotten about poor old Terry Shaivo, but she’s a pertinent case. In a perfect world Terry Shaivo would have her care paid for by her family, and so long as they paid no one has any say in the issue. Should the family decide NOT to pay, then interested parties (government or philanthropic) could pay, at which point -they- make the decisions. Because they’re paying.
What Obama wants to do is two things. He wants to -forbid- people from paying for their own care, and he wants to decide what care they will get.
So just lean back and wonder if you really want the fat moron clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles deciding what procedures you are going to get based on a laminated chart beside his phone.
You pay, you decide. Big Brother pays, Big Brother decides. That he’s paying with YOUR MONEY is just the added little kicker that takes this whole discussion from the ridiculous to the actively evil.
Trolls, feel free to batter yourselves to death on that. Some things don’t move for your feelings, that is one of them.
ET
When did liberals claim the town hall protestors were ‘nazi’, as you claim?
Nancy Pelosi made mention of the fact that several of the protestors were carrying signs with swastikas (and pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache). She was not calling the protestors Nazis (as some right-wing pundits have dishonestly claimed) but drawing attention that they, in referencing Nazism in their criticisms of the health care reform, were revealing themselves to be a bit, shall we say, extreme.
Have you any basis for your claim?
oh.How cute.Pillboy,barjebers and definitely brain stirred must have each other on speed dial.Do your momm’s know? NO healthcare system anywheres will be right until one problem is solved….kick the ahole beauracrats,unions,and government out of it.Then we may get a functioning system.
Remember Obama denied there would be panels that decide on life and death care of the elderly? Well apparently the right weren’t the liars and the Finance Committee dust binned said piece of legislation.
Link: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/13/breaking-finance-committee-drops-death-panel-provisions-from-senate-bill/
If the elderly and infrim eat up 80 percent of private healthcare why would Obama care it’s not coming out of the taxpayer’s pocket is it? Hum typical socialist they can’t wait to get rid of the weaker members of society and use medicine to justify eugenics.
Help, anyone: Do Americans pay Medicare payroll taxes? I thought they only paid Social Security premiums, which let’s face it, going direct to general revenue, aren’t premiums but taxes.
A nice adult summary, The Phantom.