Death panels? What death panels? Oh, those death panels
Sarah Palin’s warning about the effects of Obamacare on the elderly and infirm have been met with derision and ridicule. William Jacobson has a good round-up.
Meanwhile, the effects of socialized medicine in Britain — engineered by government-run cost-cutting panels on which Obamacare would be modeled — continue to wreak havoc on the elderly and infirm:
*Elderly left at risk by NHS bidding wars to find cheapest care with reverse auctions
*Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections
*Elderly suffer in care shambles
*Twisted priorities that let the elderly suffer
*NHS neglects elderly depression.
*NHS failure on Down’s screening kills healthy babies
Last year, my mother-in-law fell off her Stannah and broke a hip. If that sounds like the cue for a Les Dawson joke (“I was hoping it would be her neck”), it isn’t: I’m fond of my mother-in-law and the result of her little accident, not funny in the least, was that she nearly died. After a belated but successful operation, she developed c diff (clostridium difficile, the nation’s favourite hospital killer bug after MRSA), and three courses of antibiotics failed to clear the infection.
Suddenly a robust, cheerful woman of 79, whose only mobility problem had been climbing stairs, began to talk of never leaving hospital again but of being “laid out on a marble slab” – and when the hospital asked for our permission not to resuscitate her should she lose consciousness, we realised this was no paranoid fantasy.
Thanks to the efforts of her five children, who travelled long distances to see her, brought food, pleaded with staff not to write her off and eventually – because the pleas were falling on deaf ears – moved her to another (I’m afraid, private) hospital, my mother-in-law is still around, less active than she used to be, but alive to see in another new year. She was lucky. We were lucky. But as I’m beginning to discover, many people with elderly relatives are not.
Pauline Pringle wasn’t lucky. Her mother Sarah Ingham died around the same time and in similar circumstances, on January 6 last year: a badly dislocated hip was missed and after the operation that eventually followed, Sarah spent 12 weeks in Tameside hospital, Manchester, failing to shake off a post-operative infection and – denied a proper diet – losing three and a half stone in weight. She was then sent home, where the local GP knew nothing of her discharge and didn’t recognise her as the same woman he’d seen three months earlier. She died within a fortnight. At the inquest the coroner, John Pollard, said that he would be writing to the hospital to demand an explanation for Sarah’s malnourishment: “It is totally unsatisfactory in a major city in a western democracy that families have to bring food into a hospital because their loved ones are not being fed properly by staff.”
…One much quoted figure suggests that up to half a million elderly people in the UK are being abused at any one time. Unlike child abuse, elder abuse is rarely reported beyond local newspapers, and those who inflict it are less likely to be held to account.
When a House of Commons health committee produced its report, Elder Abuse, in 2004, it suggested that “abuse in domiciliary settings is the commonest type”. Overall, though, whereas the old are more likely to be robbed of money or possessions by their nearest and dearest, they’re more likely to starve to death in a hospital or care home. Dr Adrian Treloar, a specialist in geriatric psychiatry, caused a furore in 1999 when he applied the phrase “involuntary euthanasia” to the way in which elderly patients in NHS hospitals were being deprived of food and water and “left at the bottom of the pile”.
*Shame on the doctors prejudiced against Down Syndrome
[D]espite all the progress which children with Down Syndrome are now making in schools and homes up and down the country, the medical profession in general still has a visceral bias in favour of eugenic termination, which its practitioners are often startlingly crude in expressing. This is not based on a realistic and up-to-date assessment of the possibilities open to those with Down Syndrome, still less of the happiness which such people can and do bring to families and even communities as a whole: it is a function of the fact – which is undeniable – that people with Down Syndrome are likely to cost the NHS more in subsequent medical treatment than a child without any disabilities.
Yesterday the BBC News website ran a selection of comments on this issue by members of the public. One in particular, by Heather of Livingston, Scotland, is worth reproducing in full here: “I was told that my daughter had Down’s when I was about 12 weeks pregnant and every doctor, gynaecologist I saw tried to convince me a termination was the best option. I was still offered this at 26 weeks! One reason given to me by a cold-hearted consultant was that ‘these babies put a strain on the NHS’. My daughter was stillborn and when pregnant again, I refused all tests apart from a scan. It’s not society who are looking for the ‘perfect baby’, it’s the medical profession.”
Death panels? What death panels? Oh, yeah, those death panels.
***
Related:
She doesn’t say that the government will kill disabled (or elderly) persons directly, but that death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats with the power to determine who can receive various treatments. I don’t know why “level of productivity in society” is in quotes, nor do I know whether it is the plan to ration care on this basis. Those are actually serious matters, and I’d like to know the answers. What Kleefeld is doing is trying to sweep Palin aside as a big crazy wacko.
Yes, she used a colorful expression “death panel,” but it’s a good and fair polemical expression if in fact life-saving care will be rationed on this basis. I have found myself saying, in conversation, “I’m afraid Obama is going to kill me.” Now, I’m not picturing him or one of his minions coming over to murder me, but I am afraid that as I get older and need expensive care to keep me alive that I will be told I cannot have it, because at my age, in the government’s opinion, there’s not enough life left in me to be worth the money that I would take from the system that needs to pay for everything.
***
Another reality check from Deroy Murdock.
And concern about the Obamacare end-of-life provisions from Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane.
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Categories: Health care,Sarah Palin
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jsmiddleton4
The government doesn’t “ask” people to do anything. It commands them. If you don’t think a request can turn into a requirement or condition for further care, you are kidding yourself, but we’re not fooled.
And btw: just what state or federal law requires people to “address advance directives, such as living wills”??
More to the point, why is it any of the government’s business?
jsmiddleton4 said: “No one writes any one off in health care regarding end of life in the United States. That is a gross mis-characterization.”
Thank you for reassuring us on that, “Mr. Surgeon General”, I am sure if anyone knows it to be a fact, it is you, right? The fact is, bub, you don’t know. One thing you can be sure of is that if we ever get Obamacare or anything like what they have in the UK and elsewhere we will be hearing about the same sorts of cases of willfull state approved neglect here.
May God help us all. I pray daily for a real leader to emerge to bring the USA back to the country our founding fathers planned.
Please protect our elderly, who fought in World War Two for this great nation, and please protect the disabled and unborn who depend on us.
*lgm says Canadian health care is much cheaper than here in the USA; I have news for you; In my last full year of work in Canada, I made 52K, and paid 29K in Federal and Provincial taxes, without getting a penny back; It was much cheaper to come to the USA, which I did in 1994; Now I have a high deductible HSA for my wife and I at 210.00 per month; Now that’s cheap!
And if you weren’t so blinded by ideology, you’d read the House bill for yourself and learn something. Your “world health care rankings” are as worthless as the rest of the garbage you post, because they rank by how much control the government has over the system, not by quality or availability of care. While it can be argued that the singular of “data” is not “anecdote”, it is definitively true that the singular of “data” is not “lie”.
My late father told me 35-40 years ago essentially that, once you accept government money, they own you, control you, and call the shots.
Which gives the BS, in fact the lie, to anyone who claims that there is anything meaningful to the phony, non-existent difference between “socialized” medicine, in which docs et al are employees of the State; and the “single-payer” system, where only the State pays the bills that docs et al submit.
The money, and the control, come from the State – and only from the State – in each instance.
Looks like a distinction without a difference….
Exactly.
I think it’s obvious that there is a concerted attempt by the Left to divert any discussion of government health care into a boring, long-winded examination of the plan currently submitted to Congress simply in order to muddy the waters and to try to confuse those who oppose government health care.
In that light, it would be wise to remember that the plans currently before Congress are only designed to fool the public and to secure consensus approval during the August Recess; and that any actual bill that will be passed by Congress will be radically different because it will be passed in the middle of the night without being read whilst America sleeps, by the totally untrustworthy idiots, morons, and pukes in Congress.
In other words, all of this screaming and yelling over the “details” is a waste of time because you and I know what will be passed will have no resemblance to the current discussion.
The government is totally incapable of running a successful program and has never done so in it’s history. That is proof enough to oppose government control of health care without discussing any details.
These liberal talking points are getting old. WHO statistics…yeah, there’s an organization that is credible.
A careful look at what data is included in this “study,” one sees just how the “rankings” are skewed. For example, “if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from motor vehicle accidents from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth.
Also, the survey does not measure the quality or delivery of health care, but the value judgment that everyone should pay the same “percentage” of their income on health care, regardless of their income or use of the system. It is a fact that as a household’s income increases, the total percentage of money spent on healthcare decreases.
This factor is purposely biased to make countries that rely on free market incentives look inferior, and is designed to favor government intervention.
The WHO ranking system has minimal objectivity in its “ranking” of world health. It more accurately can be described as a ranking system inherently biased to reward the uniformity of “government” delivered (i.e. “socialized”) health care, independent of the care actually delivered.
The American health care consumer needs to understand what the WHO ranking does and does not say about American health. Don’t be fooled by “big government” politicians and the liberal media who are attempting to use this statistic to push for socialized medicine in the United States. It says essentially nothing about the delivery of health care or the quality of that delivery in the US.”
http://smartgirlnation.com/2009/06/01/popular-ranking-unfairly-misrepresents-the-us-health-care-system/
This talking point is nothing more than an attempt to distract us away from the real issue…government control, and restrictions on personal freedom. It order to get there, THEY must control the money, speech, and the delivery system.
It has started. I don’t think there’ll be rocks big enough for the architects, engineers, propagandists of Obama’s plan to hide should they force this through.
Sure Canadian Healthcare is cheaper. But, it’s like going over to the dealer and buying a new Ford for $5000…if you don’t mind paying $40 a gallon for gas. It’s just not paying out of the usual pocket and paying out of the other, for less service.
“Death panels” is the worst part of the hardware store.
Actually, the past few weeks have been a concerted effort by the left to take attention away from the house’s bill. Obama pretends to know nothing about it. One thing you can be sure of, and that conservatives must be aware of, and that is that nothing that comes out of the House or Senate has any meaning whatsoever for the simple reason that the legislative process contains something called “reconciliation”, during which the Senate and House staff will rewrite the bill to be anything they want it to be, and only a simple majority of both houses will be required to pass it to Obama for signature. Thus, the only option we have is to prevent the passage of any bill at all in the Senate.
And in addition, one more thing that I haven’t seen discussed at all. The bill itself will contain vague language that can be interpreted in many different ways, some benign, some not so much. But the rules for implementation will be written by the Administration, ergo by some of the most radical leftists on the planet.
No wonder ACORN and SEIU are so determined to pass the health care bill. There are goodies hidden in the bill just for them:
These people just can’t help themselves. They have to corrupt every bill they write with favoritism and cronyism. This is precisely why the bill will cost more and deliver less than advertised. They won’t be allowed to hire the best candidates or the lowest bidders because the law requires them to “give priority” to special interest groups.
Give me a set of numbers, rankings, whatever and I will make it say whatever I want it to. Rankings lie and liars rank.
drool….
“The government doesn’t “ask” people to do anything. It commands them.”
The current language is that medical providers discuss end of life care issues. It does not say providers nor the government supply the answers. The requirement to have the dialog and provide services regarding documenting the results of that dialog is a good thing. There is nothing “death panel” about it.
“And btw: just what state or federal law requires people to “address advance directives, such as living wills”??”
At any juncture in today’s health care system whatever that juncture is, those folks are required to ask you about your advanced directives. Not sure how long that has been in place but its been that way for some time. If your PCP is not asking, if the admit clerk at the out patient facility where you have outpatient surgery or the admit clerk at the hospital for in patient stays is not asking, they are not doing what is required of them.
There is nothing new about health care providers being required to ask the questions regarding the documentation for end of life decisions.
“world health care rankings” points to a survey that puts the US at number 37, behind every other developed country.”
There are lots of places providing information why those figures are suspect. The US has the best health care in the world.
There is a reason the people who have the most money in the world, the Saudi royal family, will fly to places like Barrows Institute at St. Joseph’s Hosptial in Phoenix, AZ for care.
The left’s strategy is always to first berate something so the left will paint itself as coming to the rescue and fixing some awful problem. They are trying to do that with healthcare in the US. The evidence is self evident that our health care is great. Part of why people aren’t buying Obamacare is because people in general know our healthcare is first rate.
Here, this is general information from the Texas Hospital Association drool…
http://www.tha.org/GeneralPublic/AdvanceDirectives/WhyDoHospitalsAskMe096A.asp
What? You mean to say a debunked socialist list from a decade back that ranks Columbia and Morocco (yes, really) higher than the US, Sweden and Canada probably might not be all that reliable, prendad?
Is it possible that when they need good healthcare, citizens of the world may not be flocking to Morocco & Columbia for treatment afterall?
Yep.
Another instance of:
“There are lies.
There are damned lies.
And then, there are statistics.”
Many speeches I’ve heard by the democrats include a reference to people who don’t have insurance, ending up in an emergency room and ultimately not paying for treatment. There’s this assumption that uninsured people don’t pay for treatment in the ER. I’d like to challenge this assumption but haven’t found any stats yet. Anybody know where to get the facts?
Normally I’ve been on the sidelines for this one, but I have to jump in.
For one year my kids were on S-CHIP in CA, thanks to income guidelines per state that said that my middle income salary was low enough to have the state assist in my children’s insurance. It was good timing as it is very hard to compete in a household with only one salary and paying rent for a 3 bedroom apt when others in the community had 3+ breadwinners per apartment. My employer didn’t contribute to any dependent insurance, so that was the final factor in allowing me to be eligible for S-CHIP – private options would have more than doubled because the options were 1 kid or “entire family of kids”…
The state contractor administering SCHIP violated their own rules and put my kids on two different plans. When I contacted them to correct it, the incorrect plan retroactively cancelled the policy but the correct plan refused to retroactivately reinstate it.
I had to pay for two office visits in cash. Fortunately neither of my kids had a major incident requiring inpatient care, etc….my only recourse was to file a complaint with the state, which I did. It took them 12 months to even review my letter. They found in my favor, but it then took months for the health insurance company to accept my claim (they initially denied it for being filed too late!) and then they supposedly paid my doctor’s office directly even though I paid for the visit!!! At that point I had moved away, and it’s not worth my effort to go after the doctor’s office for the money. Had it been private insurance, I would have been able to file a lawsuit for breach of contract.
The biggest problem I have with federal mandated plan coverages has to do with cost to each person. When office visits are $5, ER visits $5, prescription meds $5 (period, no formulary differentials), what incentive is there for someone to self-ration care? My son has special needs, and only 4 doctors in my county were on the health plan. Three were not accepting new patients, and the last one was 5 weeks out for a new appointment. That is what we are going to see under a federal plan where basically every plan will be the same. It’s in the bill – if you want to enroll new members you have to be part of the exchange, and the exchange has certain requirements for minimum coverage. But if it only costs you $5 a visit, are you going to reduce your visits to the doctor?
This is the problem with the “HMO” approach, for which we have Ted Kennedy to thank. With this approach, one is basically paying for pre-paid medical treatment (in some cases subsidized by others), instead of paying for routine medical expenses out-of-pocket and using insurance as insurance for more expensive or catastrophic events.
When we, in effect, use other people’s money to pay for things for other people, we are never as efficient as when we spend our own money on ourselves. This video by the economist Milton Friedman on the Four Ways to Spend Money is instructive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RDMdc5r5z8
Statistics don’t lie–statisticians do.
lgm–what say you to bjc comment. If you love Canada so much, move there and save on your health care. Do you have health care now. If so, do you like it and has it helped keep you healthy? I have great healthcare, eyecare, dental care and prescription coverage. I don’t want socialist politicians to f### it up. Capiche!!!
LGM says
I’ve been gone most of the day and came back to read MM. Is LGM a comedian? I’ve laughed myself sick over his posts but this one is his funniest. And his comments about watching Fox as the evidence of misinformation. Ahhahaaa Hahahhaaaaaahaaaa, please stop LGM, you’re killing me. Seriously, you need to take this act on the road.
So if it’s already the law, why is it being addressed again in this legislation? Why is the government taking an extra special interest in this sort of stuff?
I’ve talked to Canadians who are not as satisfied with their health care as you seem to think they are. I also have a relative with extended family in both England and New Zealand.
Said family member’s aged grandmother was left sitting in a hospital hallway for TWO days before getting treatment. The hope was she’d give up and die or go home before she was up for treatment.
Over 60% of Americans rate their health care as good or excellent. Why do we need such a major overhaul if so many are satisfied?
middleton’s reference to a Texas program is unpersuasive and irrelevant to what’s in the healthcare bill.
He said “Asking people, as is already the law by the way, to address advanced directives, living wills, end of life care, is NOT the same as “Death Panels””, and then cited texas law
Here’s what Texas says:
“Nearly a decade ago, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Advance Directives Act, which clarifies the rights of adult patients to make important legal decisions about their health care in advance.
Texas law provides for four types of advance directives. You can create one or more, to meet your particular needs and wishes.
Key things to know:
****
•The lack of advance directives will not impact your access to care.
•Having an advance directive will not affect insurance policies or premiums
••You can revoke an advance directive at any time.
*******************
So, hospitals are only required to give you information about “advance directives”. It’s a “patients’ rights” issue.
You are not required to have an advanced directive. It is your right not to have one. OTOH it’s your right to create one at any time.
Remember when Obama talked about giving pain pills to that old lady who wanted (and got) a pacemaker? He was saying that the government would be deciding what your options would be, not the patient. So it’s very clear from the Obamacare bill that people will have limited to end-of-life options approved by the Feds. Some “patient’s right”!!!!
Exactly!
To me, the most likely answer would be that it is needed as one step in the salami-slice, incremental strategy of
boiling a live frogfoisting government-controlled health care and government-controlled existence upon an unsuspecting, unresisting public.Another good section of a good post.
Question asked and answered…we don’t need such a major overhaul.
And, any overhaul that might be needed would certainly not be in the direction in which the socialists are pointing.
“middleton’s reference to a Texas program is unpersuasive and irrelevant to what’s in the healthcare bill.”
Huh? I showed you where the requirement to discuss advanced directives is already in place. And its irrelevant? It was your question that I answered and demonstrated for you the fact of the matter. And its irrelevant? Again, huh?
Good post.
That has certainly been my understanding in my years in practice.
Yup, FDCup, that’s what jsm is totally missing here – it’s not patient-initiated, but rather some unqualified bureaucrat like Obama making the decisions. And as EQ1 noted above, if the law demanded citizens have to obey some current gov’t death panel’s demands – as jsm incorrectly stated was the “law”, then it’s obviously not “needed” again as law.
“Why is the government taking an extra special interest in this sort of stuff?”
Because people are not addressing it, not putting their wishes in writing, and as a result an enormous amount of money is spent in health care doing things to people that those very people may not want done. Regardless of your point of view of a situation like Terry Schivo one of the bigger issues her case illustrated is the need to put the kinds of issues she and her family faced in writing.
Despite anecdotal stories of grandma moses who lives until 103 driving and playing bridge daily, we are spending lots of money on folks who if they had made their decisions clear would not be ending their lives receiving unnecessary procedures and medication/medical procedures.
If I had a dime for every time a friend or a family member said that they knew such and such, and they are pretty sure that such and such did not want to live and end their lives “this way” I’d be competing with Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Once a person’s ability to make decisions is impaired decisions are made for them. And again despite the scare tactics being tossed out about writing people off in the U.S.’s health care, that is not the case. Decisions are consistently made to continue to sustain life and do all sorts of stuff to people so that no one can say anyone “wrote them off”.
Asking the questions and having the dialog about end of life care, end of life counseling, asking the questions, is not the same as providing answers.
Over reacting to what is speculated to be Obama’s meaning is not necessary. And those folks over reacting are mostly indicating they do not have a clue as to what the current situation is nor the current requirements for end of life questions being asked already.
“Yup, FDCup, that’s what jsm is totally missing here”
Sorry, not missing anything. But thanks for your concern purple…
“it’s your right to create one at any time.”
Yep, and its your right to change the one you have at any moment as well.
And by the way you who are doing this chicken little thing, Obama’s current legislation also does not require you to have a living will or advanced directives. It is just about setting a standard for patients to be asked and services to be provided if they want them.
So if you are saying today’s setup is okay because nothing requires you to have advanced directives, Obama’s also does not require you to have them, is Obama’s end of life stuff okay then?
“as jsm incorrectly stated was the “law”
Sorry but there is nothing incorrect about what I have posted nor the requirement for patients to be asked about their advanced directives.
I’ve had my doubts about your accuracy on this thread. Now I’m having doubts about your sanity. You’re claiming to know around 300 billion people, all of whom have claimed to know someone with end-of-life issues?
“This is the problem with the “HMO” approach”
One of the big problems with HMO’s is they did not save any money. All they did was cost shift. Once every payer group caught on to negotiated cost, contractual agreements, capitation, etc, the cost savings that HMO’s appeared to provide disappeared.
Rush talked about this when paying cash for various health care services. Would be nice to have his kind of cash…. What he did was offered to pay cash but he wanted the same rates as the contracted provider rates. The hospital lowered his bill a bunch. He was talking about that a few weeks ago.
One of the things that made no sense about hospital groups going to Washington and signing on with Obama is hospitals have very little control over what they get paid. Their agreement to do this or that is irrelevant. They can charge whatever they want or agree to not charge whatever they dont’ want. They receive what payer groups have contracted to pay not what hospitals charge.
See above. That makes at least two certifiable lies.
Au contraire, the government does provide the “answer” – or more accurately, a “Final Solution”:
HOTAIR, August 3rd, 2009
Oregon says no to chemotherapy, offers assisted suicide instead
txvet…
Ah a literalist.
So when someone says go jump over the moon you start jumping?
“I’ve had my doubts about your accuracy on this thread.”
By the way that’s too bad tx. Cause I’ve been painstakingly accurate.
No purple, what you cite is not why we should make up stuff to get emotionally jazzed about regarding Obama’s end of life verbage. What you have pointed to is the real substance of why there are enough real issues to get excited about that we don’t have to make them up by both ignoring the current state of affairs regarding end of life nor Obama’s phrasing.
There is no way single payer can work without rationing. Rationing is not going to be about the specifics of end of life care. Rationing will be across the board about every issue in a big and general way. We don’t have to misrepresent end of life issues to find plenty of reasons to stop socialized medicine.
“That makes at least two certifiable lies.”
Oh tex, that is just sad. I’m a liar now? I’m a lying RINO John McCain zombie.
I’ve been a nurse since 1985, did medical relief work in East Africa-Kenya-Uganda-Sudan for six years and have worked with disabled kids and have been a hospice nurse for 7 years.
Haven’t seen 300 billion people assuming your math is correct. Have seen a bunch and dealt with many a family.
I didn’t say I bought into the asinine crap you’ve been passing throughout this thread. I just pointed out that you’re as fast and loose with the truth as a liberal, and the rest of your posts can be judged accordingly.
If somehow it is not a requirement for people to be asked about advanced directives and I am lying about that tex, please point me to the place that demonstrates my lie. I’d like to see it by the way.
“as a liberal”
Between you and purple you guys will have to make up your minds. Am I a liberal or am I a RINO?
Purple I was just checking the stuff on end of life care Obama is proposing, I don’t see the physician assisted suicide mandate. Can you point it out to me please?
I’ll check the thread in the morning for the links showing me where the law is not as I stated and Obama’s plan mandates physician assited suicide.
Thanks for the chat.
Please quote the words where you were called a RINO.
If you cannot, then you might at least consider no longer inaccurately posting about what did not occur.
this subject of death care should not even be discussed, just how morbidly sick is this bastard?
we need to get rid of the POS, it has no heart, it has no love for country, it has no love for humanity.
You dems are looking more and more like the culture of death your always protecting, the moooslems.
This POS has taken more action against America and humanity than any president in 233 years. He is sick, he is a sociopath, just listen to it’s words.
So far you’ve failed to even come close to answering the question of what you feel Michelle was supposed to have “lied” about. On the contrary you have “made up stuff” re: non-existent laws that require people choose yay/nay on treatment and/or being euthanized. EQ01 pointed out that incredibly obvious falsehood: if it’s already the law, why do we need it again?
It also put the lie to your claim about the gov’t ‘dialoging’ “is not the same as providing answers”. It give both the question: “C’mon, you’ve been around 50-60 years, ya had a good run – isn’t it time you just went away and made everyone’s life easier?” and the answer “take two of these and have your nearest of kin call me in the morning when you’re dead”. Thanks, but no thanks.
No, it’s not politics, it’s more that you just have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about in this area, jsm. You showed that when you claimed Michelle was “making stuff up”, but were unable to cite just what you feel she lied about.
On the plus side, you were able to dig some tidbits outta your backside and claim them as “law”. Mebbe that could count for something…
There’s a difference?
The only reason people like Obama can be so cavalier about end of life issues is he, with silver spoon in his mouth, one the the protected will never have to worry about it.
Easy for him to pontificate.
I didn’t say you were a liberal, I said you lied like one. Not all conservatives (or RINOs) are entirely truthful either. I do apologize somewhat for my tone, but I get pretty irritated when a thread about a serious problem gets hijacked by an interminable discussion about what is in the final analysis an inconsequential side issue – not because EOL counseling is inconsequential, but because NEITHER YOU NOR ANYBODY ELSE HERE KNOWS JUST WTF THEY MEAN BY WHAT THEY’VE WRITTEN AND IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE 1) THE FINAL LANGUAGE WILL PROBABLY BE DIFFERENT AND 2) THE ADMINISTRATION WILL INTERPRET IT ANY WAY THEY WANT TO.
The original thrust of the thread was about “death panels”, i.e. bureaucrats appointed to decide who gets what health care, and IMHO, that’s a far more significant topic. I tried a couple of times to try to steer things back to that, but was unsuccessful.
You’re an ungrateful, socialism-loving, freedom-hating a$$hole.
F*ck obama. F*ck pelosi. F*ck reid. F*ck that wise lateeneeea that disgraces our court system. And f*ck the lgms and jsmiddletons in the blogosphere.
Michelle, please pardon my words, and feel free to ban me if you must. I can’t take these daily kos idiots anymore.
America was never meant to go down this pathetic road. There are an unlimited number of socialist/communist dictatorships in the world to chose from and move to. Why are liberals so damned hell-bent on destroying this country? I just don’t get it. But, I guess that makes me “unenlightened”.
Obama is the enemy. Every move he’s made has weakened us irreparably and undeniably. NaziCare is just the next to last straw in his conquest; Amnesty will be the final straw.
Liberals: Do you want to win against radical islam, or do you want to lose? Do you want safety and security for yourselves and your families, or do you want to worry everyday about illegal alien drunk drivers, mexican gang wars, suicide bombs and nuclear attacks? Do you want to wait 8 months for a medical exam that could have saved your life if you didn’t have to wait?
God, you’re idiots. What the hell is the matter with you? You spent 8 years trying to trip up George Bush while he protected your sorry a$$es. And now you support a marxist who wants to dominate you.
I’m outta here. The kos vermon have unfortunately taken over this blog, like they’ve taken over everything else that used to be good.
It just occurred to me that this is the beginning of a modern day civil war.
Luckily today’s modern slaves can rebel and fight back.
Semper Fi my fellow future slaves.
Can I have your autograph?
I think you’re being overly harsh with jsm. He/she is apparently fairly conservative, based on other threads, but with a tendency to nitpick to the point of absurdity about relatively trivial disagreements with the hostess et al.
I think lgm is either waiting for the Golden Books version to come out or at least for a version he can color.
Their type isn’t capable of reading and understanding. They do excel at regurgitating talking points, kinda like a parrot that doesn’t speak thoughts of its own but just mimics sounds it hears … “Rawwwwwk! Rawwwwwk! Rawwwwwk! Polly wanna cracker!”
I think we may have found a potential new symbol for the Democrat, er, Statist Party.
ditto what erin said.
make that double ditto.
Why are we still trying to find any merit to the ObamaCare plan?
Just Kill It – period!
Lets see, what does Dear Leader need now? Ah! A diversion, Again!! And what would that be? Now his corrupt Admin. is going to go after the CIA. Thing is, too many times before this has been tried and failed. Everyone, keep your eyes on the ball.
On August 9th, 2009 at 11:45 pm, ErinF said:
I guess we now know what the F in ErinF stands for. And to think, all this time I assumed ErinF was a lady.
Les-
Take it easy on ErinF. Read her post and listen to the tone of it and you will find a blogger who has reached her wits end and is lashing out.
Every conservative on this blog has had those moments when we get annoyed with lgm and et al with thier kos talking ID10Tic posts that don’t add to the discussion, but merely divide.
If there is something that I have learned over the years in the military and observing the thugs in Memphis (as well as Chi-town) is that in order to defeat a superior force-you must do three things: 1) Hit below the belt and play dirty, 2) Find a trivial point of weakness and focus on it, and 3) Divide and conquer.
Its hard to defeat an army of 150,000 with only 25,000-now attack a small segment of 10,000 and you have 140,000.
When you keep doing this, eventually the enemy gives up and moves on to a softer target to hold. This is why the obamabots and their allies are fighting so hard because this time, the enemy isn’t giving up and only getting stronger.
I consider it a badge of honor that obama-thugs have come out after us because they are now in the open for all to see. As it has been posted on other threads-keep it up people, we are starting to get under their skin and they know we are watching them VERY closely.
GSP
P.S. Erin-Keep your chin up girl, things will get better and post when you can.
gunslingerpatriot said:
Right there with you and Erin. The cats out of the bag for everyone to see. Reguloar people voicing their rage and frustration at an entity that completely disregards their input. Vice, Coordinated union thugs in t-shirts no less proclaiming who and what they belong too. This is intimidation in its lowest form but, all of us are wise to that tactic. Filming everything is the best weapon of choise.
This is a good think piece. It at least takes the question on from a free-market position…sort of.
I’d do it differently.
But the MUCH LARGER point is…under no circumstance is the idea of rationed care…death panels…organic to a health care solution. It is only organic to a collectivist plan.
Imagine the scenario when one of our elderly has been denied life sustaining treatment and then has to go in for consulting on end of life choices. Who is going to want to sit on the other side of that desk?
Or imagine the paid acolyte of John Holdern, population freak and eugenicist fan, sitting down with a pain-racked (because she can’t get the hip replacement) granny to discuss…strictly from a neutral position, mind you…her options as she surveys her “quality of life”. Any pressure there?
You’d have to be lgm stupid to believe there won’t ENORMOUS pressure in such settings.
Good morning ErinF and all who feel the same way!
Because they really do not believe that their lives will change.
And gunslingerpatriot, I’d add a forth to your:
4)and always claim victory!
Now, THAT’S interesting… People WITH insurance fear government more…
How many will go into that conversation armed and choose suicide by cop?
John Deaux said:
When I try to think about it I actually find myself in such a rage, I have to go outside and do something/anything to calm me down. I really do not know what I would do if my wife was treated in such a manner and I had to sit by and watch her die knowing something could have been done. I do not know what I would do but it would not be pretty.
It is a question we need never answer.
Kill the collectivist movement to control our lives.
It really is that simple. (Not easy, simple).
Meanwhile back in California where this progressive governing experiment has spun all the way out of control. Californication the Pelosi way.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/09/california-you-owe-us-taxes-on-those-ious/
It’s kind of apparent that ObamaCare is soooo transparent now that the collective populace can see it for what it really is, it’s falling apart by the second, and they’ve resorted to slinging anything at the wall with the hopes that something sticks. So keep on tossing it in the fan and see what scatters
Here’s the final nail in middleton’s inane argument about there being no real difference between the “death panels” and current practice re end-of-life issues:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
“Charles Lane of the Washington Post, certainly no right-winger, has taken a careful look at Section 1233 and finds that he too is concerned.
Lane argues that the “consultations” provided for in Section 1233, while not mandatory, are not “purely voluntary” either as the Democrats have claimed. Thus, he writes, “Section 1233 lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.” As Lane notes, common sense tells us that Section 1233 would place senior citizens in a situation where they will feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign.
The federal govenment should not be in the business of skewing end-of-life counsel, and thus end-of-life decisions. Lane concludes:
Ideally, the delicate decisions about how to manage life’s end would be made in a setting that is neutral in both appearance and fact. Yes, it’s good to have a doctor’s perspective. But Section 1233 goes beyond facilitating doctor input to preferring it. Indeed, the measure would have an interested party — the government — recruit doctors to sell the elderly on living wills, hospice care and their associated providers, professions and organizations. You don’t have to be a right-wing wacko to question that approach. [but you do have to distinguish between the bill's provisions and current practice to understand why the former is so pernicious, something middleton refuses to do --fdc].
As it happens, I have a living will and a durable power of attorney for health care. I’m glad I do. I drew them up based on publicly available medical information, in consultation with my family and a lawyer. No authority figure got paid by federal bean-counters to influence me. I have a hunch I’m not the only one who would rather do it that way.”
QED
But, from the reality bites corner…
they can pass anything they want to pass. They have the votes.
We may yet need to take this peacefully to the streets.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/08/024237.php
This is an excellent clip. It simply lays out the collective’s plan, stripped of the palliation and soft lies.
Show it to your doubtful friends.
Bravo!
A noun made into an adjective!
Next, one or more of us can make it into a verb!
Hey, if Shakespeare did it, why can’t we?!
My error.
A noun made into an adverb.
Apologies….
An Odopeybot.
There is nothing more democratic than our use of our language.
On August 9th, 2009 at 4:50 pm, txvet2 said:
Thank you, TX Vet, for posting the clarity of true facts.
Fascist economics at work.
John Deaux said (#171):
Much of what the right is saying will happen is their imagination. Death boards, …
Probably the same people who do it now, hospice nurses.
Hospitals and doctors already ask about living wills and durable powers of attorney when patients go into hospitals for surgery. In fact, I think Illinois law requires this discussion at admission. My mother signed one fifteen years ago.
And hospitals and doctors already have a financial incentive in the decision to the extent insurance doesn’t pay the “full” cost of treatment or to the extent someone is uninsured.
Just as the notion of an unlimited supply of health care is a figment of leftist imagination.
And just as the notion that adding IMMENSE numbers of people to a plan administered by 45-53 NEW bureaucratic agencies is going to result in–
1. better health care
2. at lower costs
Utterly, completely insane. Or, an utter, complete lie. Maybe both.
It wasn’t in the imagination of the right when you, on another thread said,
You know there will be life and death decisions being made for people by a bureaucracy. You are being inconsistent, disingenuous, or lying.
jim m: if you start at the beginning of the thread you will see that no one is currently OBLIGATED to sign an “advance directive”, living will or any other such doc. Docs are obligated only to tell you what the alternatives are with respect to creating such a doc, not offering you options based on government plans, or your health insurance, or lack thereof, for that matter.
Here’s the funny thing about that statement;
it is, of course, facially true.
It is merely a statement of what economics is–the allocation of scarce resources among conflicting uses.
What is at the root of this whole question is this: who makes the decision about the allocation of scarce resources? You, or government?
I may, had I a million dollars, use it to prolong my life a month. Very likely I would elect to leave it to my family instead. It is my money, my life, and my choice.
If government is making the decision, it has taken a million dollars from somebody (me or lots of others). It will not go to my children, or anyone’s children, having been seized by government.
The decision to use a million dollars to prolong my life will not be mine, but will be someone authorized by government to make that decision.
Any classical liberal (people who believe in self-determination and individual rights) finds that second notion repugnant.
Hospice is for the terminally ill – not necessarily the aged – and their services are CURRENTLY neither mandated nor free. However, if Obamacare passes, hospice will eventually become a dictated, alternate route of care for the less productive members of society – that’s how economics over humanity works.
However, if Obamacare passes, hospice will eventually become a dictated, alternate route of care for the less productive members of society – that’s how
economicsstatism overhumanityliberty works.Merely a suggestion…
FDC, the current bill also doesn’t require anyone to sign a living will/durable power of attorney: “Section 1233 lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.” As Lane notes, common sense tells us that Section 1233 would place senior citizens in a situation where they will feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign.”
And the same financial incentives that are freaking some people out are already currently present if a patient is uninsured or if insurance doesn’t cover the “full” cost of treatment.
Rags–that’s exactly how I answered lgm on the thread in whiche he posted that.
Merely proving…again…you are brilliant!!!