Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Salon, Aug.7 –…how far divorced from the reality of our current society must you be to believe that the current president is about to institute DEATH PANELS via a system designed to improve health care availability. Please, Mrs. Palin, point to a place on Earth with a government-managed health system where something like this has happened.
Ottawa Citizen, Sept.19 – Having gone through the torment of finally getting the drug, I didn’t expect to open up a newspaper on a beautiful September morning to find a column [in the Globe and Mail] by leading health reporter André Picard entitled, “We must put a price on life.”
Or, I suppose I might have used the quote from Saskatchewan’s NDP Health critic Judy Junor, who once opined on live radio that Canadians have a responsibility to our government to “live healthier and then die quickly.”
[While Palin isn’t the only major political figure to try alternative means of communication to bypass the media, her unique ability to remain in the headlines while avoiding the spotlight suggests she may be the first to pull it off successfully . ] politico
Of course, the opinion of one journalist
is tantamount to proving
Palin’s paranoid delusions.
And your once opined, unsubstantiated “quote”, like the
verbal agreement, is not worth the paper
it’s printed on.
Is part of the reason Palin has struck such a cord in the health care debate, is her insisting on Tort reform at the same time?
Malpractice insurance costs a fortune, which, of course is just added on to the cost of medical care.
She may have one he!! of a fight on her hands though, as most politicians are lawyers, right?
PALIN/BECK in 2012!!!!!
Excuse me, “philboy”, but that “unsubstantiated” quote was central to a John Gormley interview with Junor at the time.
Some reporter suffering from Palin disfunctional syndrome is evidence of nothing….
I have learned to interpret journalistic opion backwards….and the same about democrats…
Both promote AGW—nuff said—
I can only interpret reaction to Palin’s appearance on the political scene as nothing short of panic….
It seems with very little effort Palin has defeated or badly damaged OBOZO’s health reform agenda…..which would indicate the democrats and their MSM lackey’s called it right.
It does help that the health reform is not reform at all but a blatant seizure of power…..and showed that OBOZO’s support although broad is paper thin….
Who’s willing to jump on Judy’s catheter bag?
I was always a bit conflicted on the issue of tort reform. The libertarian in me says you can’t put a ceiling on economic damages which, after all, is only the present value of expected financial losses over the balance of the plaintiff’s life expectancy.
It’s punitive damages which should be capped or eliminated. Clearly, there can be no objection to this except perhaps in the extremely rare instance of a medical practitioner deliberately harming or killing a patient. However, as that’s not a valid insurable risk (it was under the control of the perpetrator), the insurance company should not be on the hook. The perp would be punished by the state via a fine or even incarceration.
And I would certainly remove all notions of psychological pain from the equation which malingerers can too easily fake.
Finally, wow, that quote: “you owe it to your government”. Just cannot process that phrase. But of course JFK’s famous phrase creeps me out too.
Please, Mrs. Palin, point to a place on Earth with a government-managed health system where something like this has happened.
Here is one such case from the UK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_midlands/7486166.stm. Mrs Ellen Westwood was admitted to a Birmingham hospital with C. difficile (contacted at another Birmingham hospital during a stay for shoulder surgery). She has dementia and the NHS doctors, following NHS national guidelines on “caring” for the elderly, deemed her not to have “capacity” and removed nutrition and fluids and dosed her up with morphine. If her family had not fought the system to save her life she would have been euthanized by the state.
So in fact, it is not Sarah Palin who is divoreced from the reality of our current society but rather the cheerleaders for goverment run health care.
Look, Kate, it doesn’t suprise me that
a politician expressed an idea rather clumsily, or
that Gormley and the SK party spun it
in the way you’re spinning it here, but
Junor said Canadians have a duty to the government to
live healthier and die quickly?
Please.
This is one of those “it only needs to be 10% true to be toxic in politics things”.
Ok people here is reality and why it is so much hyped… a group of healthcare appointees will craft the “guidelines” for the Doctors to use when discussing end of life care planning (paid for by Private and Public Insurance, it is part of the reform). These guidelines will be created like all regulatory “suggestions” by committee, or review “panel”. So in a way a “Death Panel” will be responsible for suggesting what is acceptable options for end of life care.
These suggestions will be driven by Cost Savings vs Level, Cost and Length of Care , not by individual situations, so in fact the end result is Doctors will be “informed and encouraged” by an “End of Life Panel” as to who should be “guided” to refuse life sustaining care and legally block relatives from over-riding that decision.
They will be in fact deciding to “Kill Grandma” not on a case by case basis but on a demographic and statistical one (they will suggest that double bypass / melanoma Grandma should be encouraged to simply die at home instead of burdening the “system”) so the criticism is 50% accurate when looking at it objectively.
Absolutely. That was her position.
By the way, Gormley didn’t take particular exception to that.
I was the one who phoned in to voice my disgust in Junor’s statement – that she had confirmed that the health care system did not exist to serve the needs of the citizens, but that it was actually the reverse – in the mind of the socialist NDP, the citizens exist serve the needs of the health care system.
“Please, Mrs. Palin, point to a place on Earth with a government-managed health system where something like this has happened.”
http://www.euthanasia.cc/dutch.html
They’ve been practicing euthanasia in Holland for years. The “death panels” consist of family members and doctors. The possibility of abuse is always there, but we shouldn’t mention that, it isn’t PC.
Google it.
I can name a time when government-run health-care failed someone deliberately.
A family friend (who was a nurse and pink-slipped for more bureaucrats at her hospital) was diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer. Keep in mind, there are many drugs available in the US for a variety of cancers that are not available here (see the Canadian Cancer Society for more information). Because she was diagnosed with this particular cancer, no one would treat her. Her doctor changed the type of cancer on her chart and she was able to get some medicine. Nevertheless, she passed away.
Is Mrs. Palin wrong because the “deaths panels” she spoke of are nonexistent or because she is Mrs. Palin?
Keep in mind there are people who believe George W. Bush was responsible for the September 11th attacks. The government can kill people in a terrorist attack but not withold vital treatment from the elderly? Some people are smoking some very strange drugs indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands
And though I know it isn’t acceptable to use Wikipedia as a source, this page does mention the Remmelink study on “involuntary euthanasia”.
When we DO come to the inevitable point of establishing death panels, under a nice euphemism, let us hope the first recipient of an award to “Carousel”, for want of a better term, is a socialist politician who’s spent his/her entire life sucking at the public teat.
Absolutely. That was her position.
No, that’s how you want to misrepresent her position.
Just as Palin wants to believe in death panels.
Oh, philboy, do shut up!
Me No Dhimmi said: “It’s punitive damages which should be capped or eliminated….”
I’m not so sure about that. Sometimes a whopping great award of punitive damages is indeed justified.
But I will suggest an alternative. Just ban contingency fee billing by lawyers. (On pain of disbarment, of course.)
That’s where a lot of nuisance suits come from. The trial lawyers don’t give a damn about their clients – they just want their 80% of the booty. Eliminate this element of parasitism, and you can still have a decent punitive award that actually goes to the malpractice victim when it is warranted, but still eliminate most of the predatory lawsuits.
If the State can claim to limit CEO compensation for “the public good”, then they can limit legal fees to an hourly rate (say no more than $75 per hour). Any chance of that happening?
philboy=stuck on stupid
What’s the matter,pillboy? Mommy not teach you how to hit a link and listen to what the beyotch said? One key concept of ANY purely state run “health” care system like ours is “save bucks by hiring more bureaucrats to tell the docs who to kill”. What part of gubbermint do you work for anyways? Never mind.
And BTW,I blame the Docs as much as the commie useful idiots running the system. The Docs should be the first ones demanding the system change,or is the Hippocratic Oath too PC now?
Oh yeah.And what Osumashi Kinyobe said.
she had confirmed that the health care system did not exist to serve the needs of the citizens, but that it was actually the reverse – in the mind of the socialist NDP, the citizens exist serve the needs of the health care system.
If I were to grade socialists, I would have to give them very poor Marx for their performance.
Kate, you reference an article from a journalist, and a comment from a politician, one that can’t be verified without a transcript, yet you didn’t answer the question asked.
Where is the government sponsored death panel?
You have yet to validate Palin’s interpretation that death panels will become part of health change.
How are voluntary consultations on living wills equivalent to a death panel?
One of the “dilemmas” from the now (in)famous VA life choices handbook:
“Lily Chen, an elderly widow, was diagnosed 4 years ago with Alzheimer’s disease, a common form of dementia. Over time she has gradually been losing her ability to think clearly and make decisions. Now she doesn’t remember where she is and she can no longer recognize her daughter who visits her every day. For the last 8 months, she has been completely dependent on nurse’s aides to bathe and feed her. Recently, she stopped eating altogether. Her daughter has power of attorney for health care and has to decide whether to have a long-term feeding tube surgically placed into her mother’s stomach.
The surgery is quick and won’t cause much pain, but the real issue is guessing how Mrs. Chen would value her current life. If they place the feeding tube, Mrs. Chen could live for many more years in the same or worse condition. If they don’t, she will die in about 2 weeks or less, and probably won’t feel hungry or thirsty.
Questions to consider:
Do you think Mrs. Chen’s daughter should decide about the feeding tube based on the fact that her mother isn’t eating, or based on her mother’s memory problems and dependence on others for care? Why?”
….Both my parents struggled with dementia and it never once occurred to me that we could stop feeding them and all our problems would go away. The last sentence in particular is staggering in it callousness (and inaccuracy). Let’s play it again:
“IF THEY DON’T, SHE WILL DIE IN ABOUT 2 WEEKS OR LESS, AND PROBABLY WON’T FEEL HUNGRY OR THIRSTY”.
Palin will be proved right, but it will be too late.
The proof of how much the leftists fear Palin is to be found in today’s polls at AOL. For the Q “Who would be the worst GOP candidate for 2012?” the trolls have come out in force to give Palin a majority http://news.aol.com/article/mitt-romney-defends-record-as-mike/677734?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fmitt-romney-defends-record-as-mike%2F677734″ rel=”nofollow”>of almost 50%. The higher the %, the better the proof that the left are in a panic. Palin as prez will set the Left back by 30 years or more and they know it.
GaryB at 3:25
You ask “Where is the government sponsored death panel?”
The dirty little secret about socialist government run health care is that it is always striving to reduce costs by rationing, delaying or disallowing treatment. The most at risk from the decisions of the medi-bureaucracy are the elderly and the severely mentally disabled.
I’ve cited above the case of Ellen Westwood under the British NHS as an example of medical death panels in action. Here is another link to the same story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070205.html.
I leave with you to ponder this rather frightening quote from this article: Under the UK’s Mental Capacity Act, passed in 2005, patients deemed to be incapable of making decisions in their own “best interests” can have all fluids withheld until they die. The family can do little to stop this process once doctors have made their decision.
In my experience the whole health care debate mostly breaks down along the lines of those who get more than they pay for and those who pay for more than they get. Nothing is going to dissuade people who are dependent on something to see it as a bad thing. They would rather just see the other side as greedy and uncaring. In doing so they really don’t have to think about the loss of personal freedoms from such a system.
Delusions would be reference to the lefties who try to deny the existence of ‘death panel’ provisions in the so-called health care package, philboy.
And what was the purpose of removing them if they ‘weren’t there’?
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/13/breaking-finance-committee-drops-death-panel-provisions-from-senate-bill/
Still waiting for someone to answer my question.
The plural of anecdotes is not data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_systems#Cross-country_comparisons
“Its 2007 study found that, although the U.S. system is the most expensive, it consistently underperforms compared to the other countries. Two differences between the U.S. and the other countries in the study is that the U.S. is the only country without universal health insurance coverage, and the highest cost of malpractice insurance of any nation in the study.”
It looks like something is wrong with this private run health care system. Anyone fathom a guess?
And what situation would be better, a group of MD’s deciding someone’s fate, or a group of insurance salesman? One of these situations exists now.
GaryB: “Where is the government sponsored death panel?”
Well, first of all, you don’t look for “death panel”. Socialists will call it something like “life panel” or “”End Of Life Panel” … it placates the masses.
herb: “And what situation would be better, a group of MD’s deciding someone’s fate, or a group of insurance salesman?”
herb, what situation would be better, you deciding your fate, or a group of government bureaucrats deciding for you? In Canada, one of these situations exists now.
oo2:
Please provide evidence or retract. The article linked, the person was not denied the drug. They could purchase it if they wanted, no one was stopping them.
Philboy, smoking gun can be found here:
http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/across_canada/ac_apr30_issue9.html
“Death Panels” already exist in American legislation. It was passed with the bailout package.
The State of Oregon already has “death Panels”. There was a lady who was refused life lengthening medication because it was too expensive. The drug company supplied it for free. The issue was that she had terminal cancer and it wasnt worth extending her life in view of the cost of the medication. The “death panel” made that decision, not the doctor or the family.
The federal health care for the natives in the US has been known to tape letters on patients legs. That isn’t a ‘death panel’ that is a fact. They have a saying ‘don’t get sick after June.’
@ Kate,
Earlier this year I attended the annual meeting of my specialty (of medicine).
At the meeting a noted member of the specialty, and socialist, in the US gave a speech which in essence stated that we spend too much money on prolonging life.
I also think he wanted to direct more money into fighting poverty instead.
As I have said before there is no doubt that there are some members of my profession who want rationing.
Oregon case cited above:
http://www.jasonpye.com/blog/2009/08/oregon_death_panel.html
Just to round the discussion out, Philboy, I suggest you speak to any group of seniors who have spent any time at all in a Canadian hospital as to their views on the treatment they received. Undoubtedly you will hear them say, “They didn’t care if I lived or died. I’m old so they think they are wasting their time”.
Cancer survival rates are better in the U.S. than anywhere in the world.
I suspect that the reason for this is that treatment is done sooner.
Let us see now……
In a socialist paradise run by communists, the way the system went about getting rid of pensioners, (remember pensioners cost the socialist/fascist/communist upper crust money in more ways than health care), they just let them die in case of stroke, in case of serious injury and other such circumstances.
My late mother told me that she certainly thought that they let my father die.
This is very uncomplicated, don’t do anything in case of stroke or some such and they will die. The explanation is simple, they died.
it’s all been done before:
‘Logan’s Run’. I even read the book before the movie came out.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/
“herb: “And what situation would be better, a group of MD’s deciding someone’s fate, or a group of insurance salesman?”
herb, what situation would be better, you deciding your fate, or a group of government bureaucrats deciding for you? In Canada, one of these situations exists now.
Posted by: ∞² at September 20, 2009 6:17 PM ”
uh mr carbon dioxide: the original Q is the valid one. the full breadth of your followup Q merely affirms that, i.e., if the ‘patient’ is to decide instead of the bureaucrats, THAT decision pulls the HMO boys into the equation. not a smart move. THEY are the PRIVATE bureaucrats, ie not the gov’t bureaucrats, pulling the plug on financial grounds.
it’s all shades of grey, unless you are a multimillionaire and don’t have a family of lecherous squabblers hanging around waiting for that death rattle, then the money comes from private sources or from public sources.
so pls answer Mr Herb’s original question.
Cancer survival rates are better in the U.S. than anywhere in the world.
I suspect that the reason for this is that treatment is done sooner.
Posted by: Lee at September 20, 2009 9:05 PM ”
is that based on all recipients of treatment or all DIAGNOSED some of which don’t get treatment? (see above for the last 20 years)
jest askin’.
The Andre Picard column titled “We must put a price on life” ran in the Globe on Thursday, September 10, in the Life section.
It discussed a number of anti-cancer drugs whose costs are exorbitant (running tens of thousands of dollars for a course of treatment) but which extend life by a month or two at most.
My main concern in reading the article was that people who could afford to pay for these drugs have the right to obtain them, and not be subject to denial through some form of government rationing or other control of resources.
Generally speaking, I have never liked the tone of Andre Picard’s articles, because he’s a typical statist who believes government is the solution to all problems and can do no wrong.
Try this on for size, trolls:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLB658876
Headline: “Greying Britain looks to assisted suicide reform.”
Coming soon to an emergency room near you. If the Liberals get in, anyway.
Don’t tell philboy to shut up. I think that as many people as possible should hear his point of view.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/012233.html#c425032
There, read him again! The texts of philboy should be required reading for anyone entering a voting booth, in my opinion.
The funny thing is, if that extra month or two of life is so worthless and insignificant, why does the state care if rich people waste their money on it?
herb,
1) That study that you refer to is a measure of equality of access to health care, so, by definition, it is going to define a govt run system as best.
2) Did you know that life expectancy in the US has risen by 1.8 years in just the past couple of years? Making a lot of liberal arguments outdated, and that infant mortality and life expectancy have as much to do with poverty, and culture as with health care system. Not to mention that if you compare Canada’s stats and Demographics with a US state that is similar, like say, Vermont, you will find that the US system works as well or better than the Canadian system.
3) Health Plans respond to the marketplace. The price of health care hasn’t been going up so rapidly due to denied treatments. We can see by the article that govt bureaucrats have come down repeatedly on the side of snuffing the patient over spending the money.
If you want treatments denied, you have to go to govt plans such as Oregon. Here’s a link from a month ago. Please remember that all references in the news article to “insurer” and “health plan” refer to the Oregon state run insurance plan.
http://www.katu.com/news/26119539.html
Or this one about death pathways in Britain recently: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6127514/Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html
I could go on. So herb, the answer is that I would rather have the decisions made by an insurance company than by a government which enjoys sovereign immunity from lawsuits.
“is that based on all recipients of treatment or all DIAGNOSED some of which don’t get treatment?” Curious George.
George,
Usually, when somebody has a question about somebody else’s assertion, they do the research themselves, then either shut up or post the rebuttal. Not you though. You seem to want everyone but yourself to do any work in this debate. Find out for yourself, then get back to us.