Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun – “Nutbars are ruining health care”
Does it meet the test of critical thinking and intellectual honesty to allege Barack Obama and the Democrats want to kill grandmothers and disabled children by creating government-run “death panels”?
Further, if Obama and the Democrats were insane enough to attempt this, would they telegraph it from page 424 to 434 of their 1,017-page health care reform bill under the heading: “Advance Care Planning Consultation”?
Finally, does having their government murder helpless loved ones sound like a vote-getter with the American people? C’mon.
Jim Towey, WSJ – “The Death Book for Veterans “
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”
And talk about rapid reaction. In the wake of the attention drawn to “Your Life, Your Choices”, a disclaimer appeared this morning on the front page of the PDF version available on the net.
I don’t much enjoy taking a whack at Lorrie over his op-ed, as I admire 95% of what he writes, but in this case I get the sense that he might benefit from reviewing commentary by well-known nutbar Charles Krauthammer and right wingers like Nat Hentoff.
So much “political commentary” is just class snobbery.
Many who are nominally on the right have such a hate on for Palin, that they will attack any issue she get’s involved in. Her death panel comment may have set LG off
“Finally, does having their government murder helpless loved ones sound like a vote-getter with the American people?”
With some of them, yes it does.
It wouldn’t be murder, in the sense of actively doing something to cause death; it would be not doing anything to preserve life. Or as Obama himself said, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”
I am a physician, and these end of life discussions are extremely important. There is nothing worse than treating a cancer patient in respiratory distress, intubating him and sending him to the ICU only to find out later his wishes were not to ever do that and it was his family that couldn’t let go, making his decisions for him that had us go down that direction.
At the same time I recently attended a conference that had a well known American speaker who is a serious advocate of public health care who spoke quite clearly that his intentions were that the state should regulate who gets what treatment, and that certain people wouldn’t deserve certain treatments.
I think there is fear mongering go on in the “right” wing sector but there are also legitimate fears that they have which were most certainly advocated and mandated by the Nazi regime.
the health care issue won’t be resolved until it crashes, ala GM/Chrysler, when the gubmint doesn’t have any cash to prop it up.
langman:
Excuse my ignorance.
Why would doctors need government apparatchiks to define how doctors should talk with your patients?
Isn’t the relationship between you and your patient; not you, your patient and the state?
As I understand it, doctors would receive payoffs from the state based on what percentage of their patients sign a living will.
I may be totally naive, but that does seem quite mercenary to me.
Comments?
Yep…Lorrie’s op-ed was a real disappointment.Looking forward to response to your challenge.
I’ll count that as a h/t. 🙂
I guess one could ask Lorrie why Obama has voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA), where if an infant survives an abortion it is afforded the same legal and constitutional protections as other individuals.
We are not talking about a “mass of cells” here, but babies who have been born, that are then killed because they are not protected by the above law. Obama supports that.
Is murdering an unloved or unwanted helpless one different than a helpless loved one?
langman…of course these discussions take place. I think the problem lies with Big Brother looking over the physician’s shoulder, and setting the parameters, and rewarding the effort.
What about patient confidentiality?
Why involve beaurocrats?
The fears of what Lorrie Goldstein calls “the insane right” are not unfounded. The combination of government control and rationing of healthcare is, especially in the context of some of the views expressed by some of Obama’s advisors, unsettling.
Betsy McCaughey of the New York Post wrote, in a piece called Don’t trust Obama’s health advisers,
“Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.”
(….)
“Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, ‘as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.’
“Emanuel…believes that ‘communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care.’ He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled…
(…)
“He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: ‘Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.'”
Important medical decisions should be made by family and physicians, not by anyone connected with the current administration. Goldstein, whose columns I generally agree with, is targeting the wrong side on this particular issue.
Lorrie Goldstein being the good fellow he is, can’t imagine just how vicious & evil the Marxists are.
I mean BC is already rationing seniors under a Conservative Government.
The problem is the Government. The cure is less.
Let private insurance run along side.
Lorrie Goldstein is usually like Kate said right but here he just wrong when dealing with soft tyrrany. Like the Islamists, socialists will do anything for our good including killing us when where old or in their opinion useless.
Please read Lorrie? Mark Levin’s Liberty & Tyrrany.
Sometimes dude you care to much, it clouds your mind. Thats what Statists do. Obstrificate everything while pleading care & sharing. while ploting death.
JMO
The MSMers have made up their minds.
Now quit arguing and get in line.
Maybe Goldstein ought to do an investigation into obammy’s czars. Maybe then he could start putting two and two together. Maybe he needs to look at the Big Picture, as do most of the msm.
I know, wishful thinking.
RD:
Is not the B.C. government Liberal?
I guess you mean conservative in relation to the not-so-new NDP.
It is a trust issue and fact based issue.
First of all trust, Obama and some of his Czars have openly mused about eugenics, population control and/or senior health cuts via “quality-adjusted life years”. It is not a big stretch to believe that rationing and death-care are in the future for seniors. For your entire life the state will force you to pay for “universal” health-care and then in your later years, when you need services, a statistical table judges your worth. No matter how much you paid in or how few health care services you used, if you are deemed to have a low quality-adjusted life years, you are given a handful of painkillers, a living will and then sent to the back of the line. Unless, of course, you have the right connections or a government gold-plated health plan which is paid by the taxpayers (the final slap in the face).
The second part is the difference between the dream of universal health care and the cold, hard facts. Look at Canada…the health care budget grows at a much faster rate than inflation or economic growth. Now, because of our aging population and newer treatments, we see provincial health care costs reaching rates of 30% and threatening to continue to grow to 40%, 50% plus. So, by necessity, the lineups must grow as the services are rationed. But as stated above, it will not be up to the individual or the free market to decide on but a nameless, faceless bureaucrat – I have visions of a Jennifer Lynch- type sitting at a desk with a thumbs ups or thumbs down rubber stamp in one hand and a file with your social justice rating in the other. The facts are that universal care will always lead to degenerating services, supply and demand problems and an administration explosion.
I fail to see any justice or accordance with life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in these scenarios
Langman and goldstein should really take the time to read krauthammers column. In goldsteins case he should be whacked over the head with a copy of it.
Sure “death panels” is an overheated term. So is using CHANGE as a policy platform.
The underlying point – that these new entities are intended to encourage people to make less expensive end of life choices and that that encouragement is to come from a very powerful non-peer – a doctor who would be paid presumably to steer as many people as possible to the cheapest option – read: an earlier death – is a very valid one. The rhetoric achieved it’s purpose – it drew attention to the issue.
Goldstein falls for the defensive disbelief it takes for appoligists of socialist rationing systems to blind themselves to self evident reality.
Anyone who has experienced soviet era communist block health care will tell you that the rationing inherent in collectivist state systems always culled the old, disabled and handicapped from the critical top tier medical treatments reserved for skilled workers an and party bureaucrats. The were damn few poor old, handicapped and chronic disease sufferers who got curative treatments and surgeries if they were unusable to the labour force. Unless they had party pull they were relegated to the lower tier palliative care system reserved for the portion of the population the government deemed nonproductive and expendable.
Raw socialist technocratic resource rationing is cold blooded. When politicos control the purse strings to the medical industry the Hippocratic Oath is subordinate to collective expediency.
All socialist regimes are eugenic in social principle and they use the health systems as a culling tool through demographic weighted rationing. Any doctor who has worked in a pure communist (technocratic socialism) syatem will verify the hippocritic principle of respect for life is subservient to the continuity of the collective state.
Goldstein deludes himself if he sees any other reality in other socialist jurisdictions. Canada has rationed health care as well. Perhaps not as openly heartless as the old soviet systems but sufficient to see that the Hippocratic principle is deeply compromised in rationing treatment in our unsustainable public health system.
The BC governmnet is “BC Liberal” . . no association with the LPC.
The BCLP is a coalition to organize “the anyone, anything but the NDP” folks in BC.
Federal CPC & LPC members work to save us fromm the socialist, sooooo progressive, sooooo smart, sooooo smary, soooooo my crap doesn’t stink NDP.
@ the people who have asked me,
Yes I do agree that bureaucrats should not be telling me how to discuss end of life. Physician renumberation may be part of the reason for those forms.
However I know for a fact that there are physicians in the US who do strongly feel that health care should be both completelyh public and be allocated according to state wishes and not personal wishes. In their opinion we are spending too much money on elderly care rather than ending poverty or other social- medical issues. I honestly think those physicians and bureaucrats are dangerous.
While I do occasionally run into discussions with people/family/patients who expect miracles for the most part when things are well explained, people make reasonable decisions about end of life.
Death Panels
Let me give a quick synopsis of what I want through regarding my daughters education. I believe it relates closely to the fears accompanying the healthcare debate and death panels.
To make a long story short(a story that some of you may know) it was my wife and I’s desire and decision to fail my daughter in grade 8. After much negotiating and research the final meeting to decide what my daughters fate would be was booked. When I walked into the meeting, there were a few more people than I expected. At one end of the table was me, and the other was the principal, the vice principal, the social worker and my kids teacher. For two hours they each took turns politely explaining to me that I was wrong, and it was in my daughters best interest to do as they said. Two hours of professionals trying to persuade me using what I believe was passive intimidation. Fortunately for me it was expected and I’m a strong negotiator. The negotiation went my way and the rest is history, but there were many points in the discussion where I thought my hand would be forced.
Now, imagine the situation my mother-in-law was in when she was told by doctors that they wouldn’t be operating on her husband because they’re afraid he might die in surgery ;so, it’s best to pull the plug now, instead of pulling the plug later. That was her choice, now or later because they wouldn’t risk killing him in surgery!
I empathize with every Canadian woman, man, mother, father, brother and sister who finds themselves in a room with four healthcare professionals explaining to them that they’re wrong, and it’s in their loved ones best interest to do as healthcare professionals say is best.
Indiana Homez – you make it seem like all the people in the room are going to have evil intent.
Here’s my anecdote. My aunt-in-law had an intracranial hemorrhage some years ago. She was comatose and completely noninteractive for about 2 weeks. During that time a number of physicians looking after her counselled the family to let her die by cutting off the ventilator because the nature of her brain damage was that while she might survive, she would never be independent again, not even able to look after her most basic needs. At that time she needed the ventilator to breathe, so cutting it if off would led to death within minutes. Morphine could be give to suppress “air-hunger”.
Her son did not do as advised.
After 2 weeks she no no longer needed the ventilator. She ended up spending 2 years in a chronic care hospital, and had an endless series of complications and invasive procedures. She was mostly semi vegetative, but at some point she was able to be moved to her home, where she still is now.
Sounds good right?
Well, here’s the rest of the story. She is totally bed-bound. She has to be fed, cleaned, rolled over. She will focus on someone if they are in her field of view, but will not turn to them. She grunts when she has some pain or wants something. How much cognition goes on is uncertain.
Her 80 year old husband has been caring for her daily x 9 years. The son who insisted she be kept alive moved to the US. His two siblings stayed here and helped care for the mom, but had their own lives, and eventually could not continue. They are not on speaking terms with their brother. The father is not on speaking terms with any of his children. A cousin has been imported into their house from another country to provide care.
This woman’s quality of life? NIL.
Her family? Destroyed by the burden of trying to look after her.
If she had any cognitive function, what would she think of what had come of things?
Would end-of-life counselling been a useful thing for this family? Perhaps she might have expressed an opinion before she was no longer able to?
Anyway… just saying.
Lorrie Goldstein’s take on the health care issue is much less impressive than his take on Global Warming and carbon trading.
C’mon, Lorrie!
Another thought to remember, Lori, is how government rather quickly transforms voluntary into involuntary, should into must and choice into obligation. At least your relatives family had the opportunity to make a choice and face the consequences. In the future, the choice could very well be taken out of citizens hands and turned over to a committee of “experts”.
“Finally, does having their government murder helpless loved ones sound like a vote-getter with the American people? C’mon. ”
Well, she’s right, it doesn’t sound like a vote getter. So it makes you wonder why Obama took the man who co-authored this paper in The Lancet, just this January, on as an adviser in the area of medical ethics:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960137-9/fulltext#article_upsell
It almost makes you wonder if this was what Obama was talking about when he said this:
The reason she can’t understand it is that she hasn’t groked yet that Obama is an idiot. As stupid as she thinks Bush was.
He isn’t just talking about the elderly here, he also throws in the “chronically ill”. What a creep.
Tim..Lorrie Goldstein, of the TO Sun is a guy.
Just sayin’
Most of the stuff Goldstein writes is good and I agree with him most of the time. But he is flat-out wrong in suggesting that a government run health care system might not attempt to put granny down.
Just look at the case of Ellen Westwood under the British National Health System – Elderly Woman Rescued by Family from NHS Dehydration Order. Deemed “due to die” by doctors in February, Ellen Westwood is now home and recovering.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070205.html
Truly frightening and Lorrie, if it can happen in the UK, it can happen in the USSA.
set you free
I meant the Harper Government.
Tort reform & tax return rebates. Along with real private care options could turn this around. It will never happen.
The Statists like friends of health care dupes with the MSM will see to that.
Of course BC has a “Liberal Government” about as much as Alberta has a “Conservative” one.
Pick your choice. Left, Lefter, or plain Communist.
I’m sorry but Krauthammer is wrong. (I am usually with him)
If I am going to spend time councelling on end of life I expect to be paid. I know it sounds mercenary but I have to eat too.
Secondly those end of life discussions are extremely useful to patients and families, especially those who don’t know what to expect with the progression of their disease. Most people aren’t stupid (even lefties) and education helps them come to terms with what is happening as well as actually saves the system money (private or public) because they don’t over-react and jam up the emergency with something that can be dealt with if they already have a plan in place. ie: even simple things like how to increase pain medication, oxygen, suction, or use of bowel preparations.
The living wills are extremely important in my field because quite often I have people show up unconcious with some chronic disease. Those people who show up with a living will get treated how they WANT to be treated. Which often means I am not breaking an old lady’s ribs to resuscitate her into a world she doesn’t want to come back to.
Secondly there are times when family members tell me they have no idea what their loved one would want us to do. Having a living will present means that I can show them and we can discuss the disease and prognosis and act based on the patients likely wishes. Family want to make the best decision they can and they want to feel like they made the right decision and this helps them. Not all living wills choose death, btw, many are very specific based on the situation.
Thirdly having a living will means that people often have discussed their wishes with a loved one and that is very helpful because when the time comes that person feels like they know what their loved one would have wanted.
Living wills sound esoteric. Often they are. Krauthammer is right, that we always ask a patient at the time, if it is possible, what they would want, regardless of their pre-existing will.
But i don’t always have that luxury.
In medicine nothing is perfect, no one can make 100% predictions. However we can provide fairly accurate advice and allow people to choose what they would like to do. Most people are quite capable of grasping the realities if you spend the time.
Now that being said, I agree 100% that there are notable physicians in the US who hold views that the State should allocate and decide who gets what care. I have heard some of them speak, and I find them scary.
“Finally, does having their government murder helpless loved ones sound like a vote-getter with the American people?”
Dead people regularly vote Democrat, so yeah, it does.
“Your Life, Our Choices”.
It’s not murder.
It’s much better described as “non-assisted assisted suicide”.
Langman: being paid is one thing, being paid by the government with the explicit specific task of talking people into earlier, cheaper death options is quite another.
That some doctors in the US think a govt run system is the best option proves nothing.
My take is that medicine is the only commercial enterprise that rivals public sector endeavours such as the military and putting a man on the moon. In the latter two cost is almost irrelevant – lives are at stake. Lives are at stake in medicine as well and marginal improvements in longevity or pain relief can attract almost limitless expenditure. For example, how much would bill gates be prepared to pay for a procedure if it would save his or a loved ones life? Such market potential attacts a myriad of companies and people pushing the edge of technology to meet the demand and reap the financial rewards.
Compare that to a product that meets 99% of ones needs in a non-essential thing – microwave ovens. Back in the day they cost well over 2000 dollars in todays funds. Now they aren’t worth taking in a b&e.
Healthcare has similar stories. An upcoming one is lipitor – the most commonly prescribed drug in the world. Today the maximum dosage of this lifelong chronic med is about 4000 a year. Two years from now when it comes off patent protection it will probably cost less than a tenth of that amount. The problem is, unlike microwave ovens there are several new gotta have it hyper-expensive drugs soon to available to the public. It’s like we have been to the moon and now we want or rather need to go to mars ASAP and after that, Venus.
When we wanted to go to the moon for the first time or deemed it necessary to build an atomic bomb for the first time we looked to the deep pockets and long term stamina of the government to direct,fund and assume all risks in these highly risky, nil fiscal payback endeavours. But would we expect government to play that role on the hundredth moonshot, or the hundred thousandth satellite launch, or the production of the once highly advanced lee enfield 303?
The same goes for the field of medicine. The vast majority of healthcare expenditures are pedestrian – low cost and low risk. Government should be no where near this sector of the business other than to perhaps – like education – fund and require parents and guardians to provide for their children’s healthcare needs. And like education, specific healthcare taxes should pay for it. (the delivery mechanism should be a hsa with catastrophic pooling but that is a topic fo another post). Use of Bleeding edge (pardon the pun) medical technologies could be funded by government and liability exemptions provided but this would be a very small part of the whole.
Should the populace deem it important that adults have some degree of government read: universal coverage for procedures that are necessary but of lower cost, then the method of delivering that funding is via government funded individual health spending allowances that allow the individual to shop for the care provider of their choice with the incentive to conserve this allowance into the future – a bonus on their old age security perhaps.
“(Sarah Palin)’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.”
A remarkable political talent who lies and debases the debate.
Tells you all you need to know about Krauthammer.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just put the elderly on a long waiting list until they die, or their condition has progressed far enough that treatment is short, and sweet, and useless? Worked well for my father.
The literal interpretations being used by Goldstein are not only dismissive but just plain stupid and as any politics watcher will tell you that 10% truth in a criticism is more than enough to sink an agenda.
So far based on the conversations and texts of the HCR acts in either house or senate there is enough truth in the claims to sink these reforms. Yet the big push on the reality of the plans should be that they do not do what they set out to do, reduce health care costs and insure the uninsured.
The core Democratic Party argument for a Public Option is so stupid it is beyond the bounds of reality, that is competition. Here is what the Insurers have been wanting for years to help increase competition and reduce costs.
1) Re-Regulation on Inter-state Health care Plans
2) Health Care portability
3) Larger Pools for Personal Plans and increased flexibility in employer provided options (Custom Planning)
4) Standardized Capital Requirements
Guess what the Private sector still will none of these, BUT the Public Option will have all of these as well as NO CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS because they are backstopped by the taxpayer.
Additionally Obama has admitted that the Public Option would have an advantage when it somes Capital REquirements and will have lower funding costs, taxes and be exempt from state regulations.
That is not competition that is creating a competitive regulatory disadvantage. This is about anti-competition as you can be, and the Democrats say there is mis-information out there from the right… oh really?
Hey, isn’t there some simple English word that can easily be substituted for “end-of-life”?
You guys need to pay particular attention to langmann, he’s giving you the straight goods.
The danger is not in paying doctors to have “end of life” discussions with patients. That’s called “treatment planning” and it happens with every patient.
The danger isn’t even offering a monetary incentive to doctors for getting a particular outcome from those discussions. Doctors for the most part are not going to be impressed with a few bonus bucks for a DNR order. One has to be able to look in the mirror every morning, right?
No, the real danger is letting bean counters decide what treatments will be available to what patients based on some statistical cost/benefit calculation. Cost to the state vs. benefit -to the state-, not benefit to the patient.
“Rationing based on projected outcomes” in technocrat speak, or “screw it, she’s too old” in the common parlance.
That’s what they do in England, because the National Health is pretty much broke. Its not the catastrophe it could be though, because there are PRIVATE FACILITIES that take cash money AND health insurance is available. But in a single payer system such as Canada or Obamacare, the family can’t BUY treatment for Grandma. There’s no private pay-to-play option. You get what you’re issued, and that’s IT baby.
Mr. Goldstein would no doubt be shocked to hear that those precise discussions are underway right here in his province, Ontario. Let Grandma Die(TM) is going to be a Liberal Party plank real soon.
Mr. Goldstein is, in short, far too trusting a gentleman to be writing about Obamacare.
langmann:
>>>
There is nothing worse than treating a cancer patient in respiratory distress, intubating him and sending him to the ICU only to find out later his wishes were not to ever do that and it was his family that couldn’t let go, making his decisions for him that had us go down that direction.
Sorry but I keep thinking “Bladerunner” here…it’s not execution…it’s retirement
It has been my experience that Doctors will recommend pulling the plug on anyone on life support. I have personally witnessed this occur twice. Once for a 5 year old boy seriously burned in a fire – close to 80% 3rd and 4th degree burns over his body (yes there is such a thing as 4th) Doctor told his parents they had just taken the boy for a scan and his brain stem was dead. Parents refused to believe it and asked that the paralysis drugs be reduced. Went in two hours later and their boy spoke audibly and coherently to them. He is 25 years old today – engaged – living a fulfilling life and a multi millionaire due to suing the hotel chain for his injuries he received in the fire.
The second was a 16 year old girl who was sitting in the back seat of her grandparents car with the window open. A tow truck drivers huge tow hook came unhinged while the tow truck drive passed them on the highway and struck the 16 year old girl in the head removing a large piece of her skull and rendering her in a coma for over 10 months. The grandparents – who had custody – were quite elderly (80’s)were told by the doctor she would never recover and would be a huge burden to them and that they would be better off taking her off intubation and the ventilator. Being Christians they refused – that was ten years ago. The grandfather is still alive and so is his Granddaughter who is now married and has a six month old daughter. She has only mild learning disabilities – reading is difficult for her, but she is an excellent conversationalist.
There are people in this world that are selfish and care only about themselves, money and power. They lack compassion, unfortunately these people are usually either politicians or lawyers.
Mr. Goldstein your lifeclock is blinking time to report to the Carousel….
“Tim..Lorrie Goldstein, of the TO Sun is a guy.”
Well, it is hard to tell when the rational side of the brain has been disabled in some way.
@ Phantom, thanks, you have articulated precisely what people really need to be afraid of. And it is a real threat to personal freedom, and why I favor private medicine.
@ Some others, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I have explained the real reason for end of life and living wills and how they are very useful for both a practising physician and nurses in the Emergency as well as to the patient themselves so that their RIGHTS and specific WISHES are respected.
Some of you need be careful we aren’t just behaving like the left wing nutbars and voicing off without a full analysis of the situation and examination of the facts.
@ CERDIP,
Sorry friend, but we know I am talking about medical issues here and not things like rape or mass murder. Lets not beat straw men.
However when it comes to resuscitation and treatments available in the ICU, I have the ability to inflict a lot of pain and suffering with medicine. As well some would describe it as experimentation, as we don’t always know the end result of our therapy. Some people want to endure that, and others emphatically don’t. While my intentions might be noble, if I do things to someone that doesn’t want those things done, I am behaving no differently from Nazi physician scientists who performed human experimentation. As well if I do not respect a person’s wishes I am behaving exactly like those boards Phantom has described. And to me there is nothing worse in my profession than that.
(Sorry to double post, but I want to add simply in order to provide credibility to what I am sayin, that the above comments are from a practising physician involved daily in high acuity medicine and often in end of life issues. I am not trying to be arrogant, I am simply trying to provide perspective and facts that allow us to make rational decisions unlike our left wing buddies who spout off all the time with no knowledge of facts.)
I do not think that the major issue is end-of-life care and living wills but on whom will make that decision.
Once the government takes on the role of provider it also sets up the rules for rationing. They can ration through many means and the death panel scenario is the least likely of the alternatives. A more insidious multi-layer approach is more in line with big government – its the least efficient, most costly and allows the maximum distance between voters/patients and politicians. Governments simply create an army of taxpayer paid employees making life and death decisions for its subjects. A very rational combination of bureaucratic bean counters, expert committees and hospital administrators telling an overworked, dispirited medical staff how to more quickly ease the patients transition.
LC explains it well – in one paragraph.
“Why bother with “death panels?” It’s better to make private health services so unaffordable that the patient just decides that he’s better of killing himself.”
Uli, you must think things through. Nobody makes the prices anything. Market forces ensure that services are provided at the best possible price for the consumer because they have choice and competition. What Obama is offering is no competition and artificially fixed prices. It’s the leeches in the system that expand the cost, like ambulance chasers. What Obama is proposing, is to add more and more layers of leeches to the system which will drive the costs up further. Federal employees and public sector unions just for start. Remember BO plans to fight unemployment by expanding government programs. That means adding more useless people to the healthcare feeding trough. The healthcare professionals are already in the system, we don’t need laid off auto workers and coal miners changing beds in hospitals for $35.00/hr and benefits. That’s what the Mexican’s are for! I’d rather nationalize them, pay them fairly, and tax them. How’s that for a compromise?
Old Lori
Point taken. Believe it or not, I’m one of the suckers that believe individuals will for the most part make the right decision. I’m not a self loathing leftist that believes people are corrupt and do things like “making a lot more money if I take a kids tonsils out” like some Presidents I know. I can just see scenarios where people make decisions they are not comfortable with. I believe the tactic I mentioned in my story is a tried and true practice taught to the teachers to persuade parents into such decisions. I wouldn’t want “tactics” used to persuade people to make hasty decisions about life and death. We spend millions of dollars preserving the lives of those that murder, rape and terrorize; I’m at a bit of a loss why we’d not give the same consideration for those that need care; and, have already paid for it. Like I’ve said, it’s all politics! I wouldn’t be so anti-public care if the advocates of it didn’t use it as a scary political football. Level headed people believe in a hybrid system with CHOICE; but, if I can’t trust the bureaucrats, and the public sector employees because of an inherent conflict of interest, or more accurately, the struggle for health dollars between the customers and the providers. I choose 100% private care.
I spent the first 10 years of my working life in commission sales, five of it in pressure type sales. People would be very surprised how effective tactics can be when used to persuade people. I’ve had more people than I can count hand me their credit card the same day they told me there is no-way they’re purchasing anything.
“We spend millions of dollars preserving the lives of those that murder, rape and terrorize; I’m at a bit of a loss why we’d not give the same consideration for those that need care; and, have already paid for it.” ID
Good point !!
Just how does a Bleeding Heart, Latte Lib’s mind work ?
maybe some day Mr.Goldstein will have a loved one in the hospital and will have to sign a consent form for treatment.He will also have signed a form for NON treatment.