Sep 15 2009
Newsweek: We Need Those Damn Death Panels To Save Big $$$’s!
Someone needs to tell the liberals that there really is not a dire economic emergency on health care. We are not on the brink of financial ruin. Health care is expensive, but we are still buying cars, luxury toys, houses, vacations, college educations, clothes, food, etc.
We are making do with the rising costs, and in return we are seeing more years with higher quality later into life. 50 is the new 30 (or so I keep telling myself). I would prefer to save the trillions of dollars being proposed to fix the system and keep the one we have than go the route of rationed health care. I don’t need to be paying more and getting half as good as I got now.
Besides, I know whose head is on the chopping block in a few years, when I become an expensive burden on society.
Governor Palin made a political and cultural splash by putting into a two word phrase the summation of what is immoral and wrong about government rationed health care. Government rationed health care requires the choices regarding investing in treatment to be pulled from the doctor-patient and put into the hands of faceless, unaccountable bean counters who never have to face their victims eye-to-eye. Palin summarized the bean counters by calling them ‘death panels’. It was, to this day, completely accurate.
To ration, or more correctly state it, employ advanced triage (yes, there is a formal name for this madness) means to select who will survive, and who won’t survive. The fact the ‘panels’ divvy out both ‘life’ and ‘death’ is irrelevant. They deal out death to some, based on algorithms and check lists and arrogant concepts of superiority. So are these panels a myth?
A Patrick Ruffini Tweet sent me to this incredible Newsweek article, which rips away all the false promises and disinformation the President has been spouting and gets down to brass tacks. Apparently we need these death panels ASAP, so we can save big bucks:
The idea that we might ration health care to seniors (or anyone else) is political anathema. Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma. But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it.
Withholding expensive treatment can easily kill. Delaying expensive treatment can easily kill. You don’t need to ‘pull the plug’ if you have already decided not to pay for the plug in the first place! What a ghoulish example of twisted logic. Made even more bizarre by the example the person uses to lead into this macabre discussion between days alive and dollars saved. Apparently his mother’s dying wishes were overruled by her doctors for a short time – she wanted to die earlier. Not sure the connection, except it was a lame attempt not to come off cold and without feelings.
Anyway, it gets worst:
There is no way we can get control of costs, which have grown by nearly 50 percent in the past decade, without finding a way to stop overtreating patients. In his address to Congress, President Obama spoke airily about reducing inefficiency, but he slid past the hard choices that will have to be made to stop health care from devouring ever-larger slices of the economy and tax dollar. A significant portion of the savings will have to come from the money we spend on seniors at the end of life because, as Willie Sutton explained about why he robbed banks, that’s where the money is.
As President Obama said, most of the uncontrolled growth in federal spending and the deficit comes from Medicare; nothing else comes close. Almost a third of the money spent by Medicare—about $66.8 billion a year—goes to chronically ill patients in the last two years of life. This might seem obvious—of course the costs come at the end, when patients are the sickest.
Well, at least this cold hearted bastard is honest. He is discussing the stealing of days alive trying to survive in return cold hard cash in hand. Willie Hutton indeed.
One would not be wrong to think this guy believes he is being financially put out by all the end of life treatment! He is very much the modern day Scrooge, wondering why he should pay more when these people should get on with their dying and reduce the surplus population. Otherwise we are losing some serious change here.
One has to wonder about the dark nexus that is forming in the halls of the Obama White House as the priests of the Church of Al Gore/IPCC ponder the over population of the Earth and how it is overheating the world, and these Obamacare bean counters keep trying to save money by shuffling more people off their mortal coils sooner than they had hoped or planned or wanted.
I mean, when are we going to get Carbon Credits for talking Mom & Dad into the here-after months or years or days ahead of schedule? Why not get tax breaks and bonus coupons for getting a double whammy for society: reduce CO2 by ending the all that aging exhaling AND reducing health care costs for all us healthy folks! Shazzam – we’ll all be rich!
Sick. If anyone had any doubts about those death panels, this article should have buried them for good (pun intended).
Update: BTW, the options this person proposes should be market driven and individual choices – not government laws. Living wills are an education and communication challenge. Hospices and Palliative care should become normal aspects of plans because of the aging boomers and their demand for the options. More nurses? Duh. I failed to see one recommendation that required Congress to do anything but shut up, sit down and get out of the way.
Hey, I know of a way to save $1 Trillion in health care costs.
(look all around carefully)
Whispering: “tort reform.”
naaah, too radical, no one’s THAT desperate!!!
If a “doctor” is forced to let people die for financial savings, then is he really a doctor?
Medicare, a government mandated system, has forced private insurers out of the market, now can dictate how you live or don’t live your last years. Tell me why I’m forced to support a system with every pay check that has the authority to end my life to save money?
A political party who will abort children for convenience, should not be incharge of healthy solutions.
No where in this debate has the idea of being responsible for your own health come up. If you want to save future health care costs why not outlaw tobacco and alcohol and not allow sweets for anyone with a family history of diabetes. I guess we would get tort reform first!!!
This is the next step that the mindless, unthinking supporters of this fiasco need to realize….once government gets full control (of 1/6 of the economy) they will then regulate behaviors that contribute to rising health care costs. If I have to pay any more for anyone’s health care I am going to insist all dangerous behaviors be verboten—that means no skateboarding or talking on the cellphone while driving (or walking) or eating saturated fats or listening to all those talk show radicals (and internet bloggers) who raise everyone’s stress levels.
Baccus health care bill not liked by dems or repub. Harry said if can’t get repub support will do reconciliation. I wonder which bill they will reconciliate?
Harry is bluffing. It’s been obvious for weeks that there won’t be any Republican support. If they could make this work through reconciliation, they would already have done it.
They haven’t done it because they know it won’t work. (There’s been some good posts on the net elsewhere detailing exactly why this will blow up in their faces if they try it)
[…] Newsweek: We Need Those Damn Death Panels To Save Big $$$’s! […]
I’ve linked to your post from Health Information Technology – Doctors Grade for approved care
Will the Senate remove these too?
The dishonest President, Democrat Party and some Republicans attempt to cut costs at end of life when people need care most, but seek to FORCE Private Insurance Companies to cover PRE-EXISTING conditions thus driving up the costs to Insurance Companies, thus the others in that Insurance pool.
Would your auto insurance carrier insure a new car you drove into his lot with severe front end damage without excluding the damage that is obviously there? Would he sell you a policy at normal rates and tell you to drive on down the block to the repair man and send him the bill?
Why demand the same of Private Health Insurance Companies, increasing costs for all, whilst declining care by the Government programs to sick at end of life?
Disengenuous Liars are what the President and his healthcare supporters are!
I heard on the news this morning that Tort reform in Texas and California has reduced the cost of insurance premiums by 30% and 40% respectively. We also know that competition across state lines would offer competiton and lower prices. So, what is the problem Dems have with those two?
Also, Michelle Malkin gives the link to an IBD/TIPP poll that is shocking:
45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199
ACORN’s Public Option
By Robert M. Goldberg on 9.15.09 @ 6:06AM
Coming to a neighborhood near you: nonprofit health coops administered by ACORN designed to use state Medicaid programs to usher in single payer health care.
A Tea Party conspiracy theory? Hardly. While the catfight over the cost of reform and the nature of the public plan escalated as details unfolded, no one paid attention to what the harmless sounding exchanges actually do.
Best of all, the establishment of and enrollment in these exchange-sponsored public plans would be aided by a familiar nonprofit organization.
Exchanges have to contract with “navigators” — nonprofit organizations that know health care and know how to enroll hard to reach people. Enter Nets2Ladders, “a powerful, automated benefits enrollment platform” designed to “increase the efficiency and effectiveness of enrolling low-income families in federal and state benefits programs” such as Medicaid and SCHIP. By January 2010, all 50 states will be covered by this platform. And nearly 26 states have contracts with the group that administers the program already.
The organization? ACORN of course. No organization is better suited to be a health exchange “navigator.” Which tells you everything you need to know about the real intent and impact of health exchanges.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/15/acorns-public-option
Sen. Jay Rockefeller Dumps on Baucus’ Bill and No Snowe Yet
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/09/sen-jay-rockefeller-dumps-on-baucus-bill.html
Rangel: Health bill harder after Obama speech
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlMpJGn28kqCcgU-aGcYE_ZHW-ywD9ANTUO00
Grassley releases statement, critical of bill
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Grassley_releases_statement_critical_of_bill.html?showall
So, who in the “gang of six” really supports the Senate bill? Sounds like Baucus rushed it through because of Obama’s deadline…..no real bipartisan consensus.
You talk about carbon credits. I foresee the day when families will
consider trading in family members to gain health care credits for themselves. I do not think it is behind rational thought to consider this could and will happen. Human nature being what it is, it is the nature of the beast. It will be all about survival.
AJ,
This is good political advice from a friend of mine you need to pay strictest attention to on healthcare reform:
Keep this point in mind when evaluating articles concerning public opinion polls about likeliness to vote based on a Congressman/Senator’s vote on ObamaCare:
The crucial detail is the over-55 group. Older people are so disproportionately likely to vote relative to younger age cohorts that overall poll results mean nothing. Unless the article about the poll specifically lists results of the over-55 group separately, it isnt worth reading. There is clear evidence that over-55’s are particularly energized by this issue, so the vulnerability of incumbents based on their votes on ObamaCare must be evaluated in terms of likely voters, not the public at large, and that means knowing the opinions of the over-55 group.
Any poll on healthcare reform that does not break out the over 55 age cohort is not worth the paper or electrons it is printed on.
[…] be a need for more money real soon, and these lying vultures will go after seniors again. Because, as I have noted many times, it is the end of life medical costs for seniors that are the treasure trove for DC liberals to […]