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Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
The interesting party I have bolded out for you. It's worth to read it, as the author makes a complete ass of himself.
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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticle … 3006516877
How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Rationing: In the recesses of the House health care "reform" bill is a provision for end-of-life counseling for seniors. Don't worry, granny, they're from the government and they're here to help.
At a town hall meeting at AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C., President Obama was asked by a woman from North Carolina if it was true "that everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die."
At first, the president joked that not enough government workers existed to ask the elderly how they wanted to die. The idea, he said, was to encourage the use of living wills and that critics were misrepresenting the intent of the "end of life" counseling provided for in the House bill. He did not say, "No, they wouldn't be contacted."
This administration, pledging to cut medical costs and for which "cost-effectiveness" is a new mantra, knows that a quarter of Medicare spending is made in a patient's final year of life. Certainly the British were aware when they nationalized their medical system.
The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror movie script.
The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year."
One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.
The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
The British are praised for spending half as much per capita on medical care. How they do it is another matter. The NICE people say that Britain cannot afford to spend $20,000 to extend a life by six months. So if care will cost $1 more, you get to curl up in a corner and die.
In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer.
The British have succeeded in putting a price tag on human life, as we are about to.
Can't happen here, you say? "One troubling provision of the House bill," writes Betsy McCaughey in the New York Post, "compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, Pages 425-430)."
One of the Obama administration's top medical care advisers is Oxford- and Harvard-educated bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel. Yes, he's the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and has the ear of his brother and the president.
"Calls for changing physician training and culture are perennial and usually ignored," he wrote last June in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "However, the progression in end-of-life care mentality from 'do everything' to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible."
Emanuel sees a problem in the Hippocratic Oath doctors take to first do no harm, compelling them "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others," thereby avoiding the inevitable move toward "socially sustainable, cost-effective care."
During the June 24 ABC infomercial on health care broadcast from the White House, Obama confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care."
Not, apparently, if it's your grandmother.
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Who wrote this article? Stephen Hawking IS British! He was born in Oxford and is employed by Cambridge University!!! Someone needs a good slapping.
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
Whilst people do die on waiting lists or die in hospital corridors, the stories of people in the US being flatout refused treatment because they can't afford it is more of a horror story.
actually it's pretty common. my father's friend got very sick recently and the docs thought he needed a heart transplant. The were going to send him to Shands, because he wouldn't last another week. Well the hospital messed up on his insurance info and had him as uninsured. Shand's wouldn't take him.
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
Axl S wrote:Whilst people do die on waiting lists or die in hospital corridors, the stories of people in the US being flatout refused treatment because they can't afford it is more of a horror story.
actually it's pretty common. my father's friend got very sick recently and the docs thought he needed a heart transplant. The were going to send him to Shands, because he wouldn't last another week. Well the hospital messed up on his insurance info and had him as uninsured. Shand's wouldn't take him.
That's a clerical error. Cant blame the health care system on that. Blame the air head with no experience(probably an immigrant) they hired to do that.
the stories of people in the US being flatout refused treatment
That is a myth. You are NOT refused treatment here. We even coddle illegal immigrants, but you think americans don't get care? 
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Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
There are times where the American system is better but it's only with semi-emergencies. The awkward condition in between necessary immediate care and non-threatening problems. A nationalized system handles real emergencies just as well, possibly better, and makes non-life threatening diseases and conditions much cheaper to manage. But it does have trouble providing for those conditions that steadily worsen and are expensive to deal with. Or at least the process is slow.
But the current system doesn't work and I don't know why we should be so afraid to try something new. I know a lot of people that practically went broke from having kids because the price of staying in a hospital recovering is so severe. That's unacceptable and it should be fixed, and only the government can.
And while coverage isn't flat out denied, it's made so expensive when considering pre-existing conditions that it's barely different from being denied. Health care is part public service and part profitable business, and the see-saw tipped too far in favor of profit so some reform has to put it back in balance. I agree the current plan is flawed but it's better than nothing, which is the Republican alternative.
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
True story.
Last year, I got three months of asthma medication for my son for $5. Great insurance from my employer. Well, it got too expensive for them.
This year, under the new system, the same prescription costs $300.
Guess what. I'm not getting it. Let's hope my son doesn't have a fatal asthma attack at school. He has a mild case, so I'm crossing my fingers.
The health-care system is fucked from every which way. If people don't see that, they aren't looking hard enough.
How to solve that? I don't know. But the costs for simple shit is just astro-fucking-nomical. It needs to change.
When my wife went into early labor and gave birth to our premature twin girls, guess what the hospital bill was? She was in a week, they were in for three weeks.
I'll come back and tell you how much that cost.
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
Obviously its fucked. Its now a huge part of our economy, which is quite funny. Wasn't health care supposed to be super duper uber cheap after they attacked tobacco companies in the 90s? Funny how that worked out. That caused it to soar. Now what are all the non smokers doing? Begging for more bullshit to be tacked on to tobacco companies. Guess who winds up paying for that?
YOU.
People need to think twice before jumping on the various bandwagons. Bandwagons that are supposed to make things cheap wind up sending costs into the stratosphere.
I agree that the system needs a major overhaul. I think all uninsured should be added to medicaid as a temporary band aid to the problem until the MANY other issues can be ironed out.
As far as children who are american citizens go, they should be denied NOTHING. Whatever they need, give it to them, and placing them on medicaid would do this. In your case, using my temporary band aid as a solution, you and your wife would be covered by your employer while your children would be on the medicaid program.
Problem solved. This makes too much sense though. It doesn't create a big enough bureaucracy.
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
When my wife went into early labor and gave birth to our premature twin girls, guess what the hospital bill was? She was in a week, they were in for three weeks.
I'll come back and tell you how much that cost.
$50 Grand... over or under?
Re: How House Bill Runs Over Grandma
Yeah, it always ends up being a pain in the ass. From top to bottom. I just had eye surgery a week ago, and the events leading up to it, I had a doctor that refused to do a physical, which he could do within a 30 day window, he wanted to wait until 24 hours before the surgery, I had to spend two weeks, just trying to get blood work ordered, by myself, because the staff at my regular physician refused to do it for whatever reason. So when I have a cold, I can get seen immediately, but SURGERY, everyone runs in the opposite direction to help me. Finally I said, "why do I pay these people? I'm doing their job for them". Either way, I was not happy. And that's just the basic experience, not even counting the hassel with costs.
Bri, best of luck with that whole situation.
