This is why we’re screwed as a society.
SCREWED.
From Anthony Mirhaydari, writing for MSN Money, in a piece entitled “Why we need ‘death panels'”
The fact is, 25% of all Medicare spending goes to the 5% of recipients who die each year –with 80% of that in the last two months of life. This is aggressive spending on things like stays in intensive care and critical care units, which research has shown do not meet the needs and preferences of terminal patients despite its increasing use.
Especially when combined with the growing evidence supporting the benefits of less-expensive, palliative hospice care that allows people to enjoy their last days on this earth in peace at home, not poked, prodded and intubated, floating in and out of consciousness under the fluorescent lights of a $30,000-a-night hospital room.
The popular backlash against death panels gave politicians in Washington reason to fear the topic in general.
I don’t know what makes me angrier. The concern over the cost and the debt being left for the future being applied to the subject of the medical care of individuals, or the diagnosis that says if you’re too old, or too sick, you aren’t worth it, rather than re-examining the premise that it was ever something for government to be making decisions about in the first place.
The willingness of the “smart people” to give government such an awesome responsibility when its ability to conduct any duty outside of those specifically assigned to it is such a train wreck. I think that there is every reason to have a discussion about the dignity of life, and what is worth maintaining at any cost, but government has NO place in that conversation, let alone dictating the result to us. When we let government decide when or if we are worth saving, we belong to the government. There is no dignity in the person, save what government allows you to have. Individuals are valued based on their worth to the state; and they will be granted privileges are rights are revoked.
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
-Thomas Jefferson, his First Inaugural Address
I think Tommy will soon have his answer, as this intentionally defective behemoth comes into its full glory, and the body count skyrockets as government lets us know what it thinks each of us is worth. I only hope we can be forgiven for the complete abdication of the gift of the personal sovereignty that his generation risked everything to give us.
Taxes, Stupidity, and Death 
A few years ago I did a bunch of posts about the Brit’s health “care” folks starving old people to death and declaring it “natural causes”.
Some of the stories were heart-breaking as people talked about their grandfather pawing at them, begging for food as the hospital workers told them not to pay attention. The poor bastids felt horrible that they had ignored their father as he was effin starved to death. Imagine the guilt?
So a bunch of people sued and the court decided that it was right and proper and further, perfectly okay to declare it natural causes when they starved people to death.
That’s when I knew Britain was doomed and coincidentally, the last time I called them “Great Britain”.
Say Uncle says it best, ‘Where Great Britain used to be”.
We are all Boxer now.
Perhaps instead of a slow painful death by dehydration they could send us all out with a bang.
Live fast,die pretty and think of the savings!
FX, when I read the story from a friend’s FB link, my first thought went to “Carousel” from Logan’s Run.
Though I find some of what you say valid, I find it to be somewhat misleading as well. It may be true that government has no place in deciding the value of human life, but who should then? A representative for someone’s bare bones insurance company? I may trust adjusters slightly less than politicians. The problem lies in the enormity of expense involved in end of life care, regardless of who pays for it. And it would seem to me the quickest way toward death panels would be to privatize such care; which inevitably brings us back around to the ultimate truth: Cash is king. It’s not nuanced or complicated. Without Medicare, the rich will live, and the poor will die.
It isn’t a matter of “it may well be true that government has no place in deciding the value of human life”. It IS.
And what you have either never given any thought to, or simply don’t want to recognize is that there is a voluntary component to dealing with an insurance company, as you either pay for that relationship, or your employer does…at least for a few months more, but when government is making the decision, it is no longer voluntary, it is compulsory, and unlike having private insurance, you have no other options, even if you have the money to pay for alternate treatment.
And to add insult to that injury, you also have the luxury of being made to pay for the privilege of being told that your value to the state no longer is equal to the cost of keeping you alive. What makes this even more interesting is that a government that cannot help suffering from corruption and abuse whenever is spends the public fisk fully expects us to believe that these issues which really are matters of life and death won’t suffer from the same neglect, ennui, and abuse that we see in the IRS, Medicare, and Social Security.
Simply put, it is the single boldest offense against personal sovereignty, and largest power grab ever made by this government. It provides avenues into behavior modification and control that totalitarians only dream of, and an obscenely large amount of people in this country are still sold on the idea that this will “help” people, and that there is no amount of other people’s money that should be expended in order to so empower people who cannot even deliver the mail efficiently, and pay $500 for hammers and toilet seats when they are doing the duties specifically enumerated to them.
After watching my father go through the neural-invasive bout of
West Nile Virus last year and realizing how barbaric medicine is at its core; and being I had a go at medical school much too late in life with a far different perspective than my 22 year old colleagues; and being I’ve watched my mother dicked around by an uncaring medical profession the last eight months about my father; my opinion has changed significantly. I no longer am a huge defender of professional medicine either.
I agree with you BIC that the worst alternative is to let our grim reaper of a government bureaucratic decide who lives and who dies. I would agree to that only one way. That I get to decide their loved ones fate and method of treatment at the end of life in return. That would be the end of that discussion.
However, the system is so broken that I wish one of these doctors would have the balls to say to my mother, “There is not much we can do for your husband besides make him comfortable. Sending him from one specialist to another is kicking the can down the road and a coward’s way. Why don’t we look into the most affordable palliative care we can provide and drop this nonsense of making believe we can make him whole again?”
No, what these gutless, feckless physicians do is simply send my dad to another specialist, and another, and another…eight so far the last three months. Because of threat of suit, they’re too scared to even speculate to cause and so they prescribe another “pill.” My mother can barely walk. My dad can’t. It takes two hours to get him ready because he is legally blind and unable to move on his own.
My father was on 12 pills a day, last count. I picked the entire box of pills up last week and told my mother, “Go to the pharmacy. Check the synergistic and antagonistic effects. And fire some of this overpriced, unhelpful beef. We’re going to find a Geriatrist that specializes in the elderly.”
Allow the families to administer morphine drips. Make affordable palliative care available, if nothing else to help the elderly go to the bathroom in their own house where they are comfortable.
This is not rocket science. We could do this for a nation for everybody. But we are going to have to come to some hard decisions about end of life issues and I don’t want the government anywhere near making those decisions. I’m not going to allow some faceless government bureaucrat to make those decisions, because government is accountable to know one.
Chris touches on truth but he is way wrong on the most important point: “Without Medicare, the rich will live, and the poor will die.”
No Chris. We all are going to die. With Medicare, government will decide who dies with dignity and who does not. I don’t have enough faith in our government to install a traffic light correctly. I damn sure don’t have enough faith for them to decide who is worth saving. Don’t be a fool to think that only covers the rich. Who it really covers is the connected…
I’m sorry for the situation you were in. And, of course, you are right; we all die. To some this might be the only tax they are willing to pay. I suppose what I was trying to say was that the system is broken, to which we would all agree. To my mind, the government could play a role in fixing it. After all, doctors are the only people you hire who when they fail to help you, blame you. That tells me the market is in need of sensible regulation.
accountable to NO one… sigh.
Tex I think I am with you on this one. The big problem is that the system is broken more so than what some see as solutions. There needs to be a shift and people need to remain consistent.
BiC I wonder how you justify your anti government,pro market pro freedom and pro religion stances. What I mean by that is:
You clearly don’t want govt making the decisions.
You seem to believe those that can enter into relations with insurers should but don’t make account for those that can’t.
You staunchly support that people should be free to choose to have insurance or not but I ve missed where you state I have the right to refuse to insure you or more so pay for you when you make that choice.
Theologically it is pretty clear where you stand on abortion,I wonder where you are on assisted suicide and straight out suicide secondary to suffering ?
You clearly don’t want govt making the decisions.
I don’t want the FEDERAL government making those decisions. The kind of mental gymnastics necessary to formulate an argument about it being even remotely close to its ennumerated duties would leave anyone’s brain looking like a twisted and stretched pretzel.
You seem to believe those that can enter into relations with insurers should but don’t make account for those that can’t.
Have you ever seen this Demotivator poster? I’d love to have a Maserati Quatroporte Fine in my driveway right now, and the keys in my pocket, but the fact is that my resources are very finite, and like everyone else, I make choices about how I allocate them. Now should you live in a state where a majority of the people decide that everyone should have some sort of health insurance coverage, subsedized by the state, then that’s fine. There is an argument to be made that it is a power left to the states, and then you can let those who disagree vote with their feet. But I think that also makes more sense from a practical point of view, because being closer to the eyeballs and checkbooks of thems what pays, there should be a MUCH greater accountability for what is spent and how it is spent.
You staunchly support that people should be free to choose to have insurance or not but I ve missed where you state I have the right to refuse to insure you or more so pay for you when you make that choice.
I’m not sure what you are saying. If you are asking if the insurance carrier has a right to refuse to contract with me, or has a right to set limits on the policy, they absolutely do, within the bounds of contract law, meaning if they can decide NOT to insure me BEFORE they take my money, or they clearly disclose their policy limits before I pay.
If you’re asking if I think that I have a right to dictate to the insurance company how it allocates its payments for services, or that I can tell it it cannot use my premiums to subsedize other insured, no, I can’t.
Theologically it is pretty clear where you stand on abortion, I wonder where you are on assisted suicide and straight out suicide secondary to suffering ?
Theologically, you would be correct, but I also have scientific and logical objections to the practice that I feel are better arguments to make to those who cling to the various justifications for their pro-murder-for-convenience policies, especially since there is another life involved that has been cut right out of the conversation since Roe was decided.
As for assisted suicide and suicide, theologically speaking, I am against both. The reasoning is simple enough. Life is a gift from God, and hastening yourself into the presence of your Creator unbidden is impolite and affrontery. What is more, experience has taught me that sometimes, affliction is good for the spirit, either by placing emphasis on the things that matter, or in the case of Paul and the thorn he begged to have removed, perhaps it is about being kept humble. Therefore, I can’t help but to wonder if the suffering that would drive people to it has a purpose, either for them as individuals, or for themselves and their impact on others. Knowing families where a member has committed suicide also reinforces this belief, as I have witnessed the collateral damage that it has had in a few of these families stretching on for decades.
Logically speaking, I think criminalizing suicide is stupid, and I always have. Assisted suicide is a tougher question, only because I think that we need a clear delination of the line. If someone takes an overdose of pain meds, is the doctor liable? If the doctor hooks up the IV that does them in, has he crossed the ethical limits placed on him, and regardless of the answer, is it an overt act to take someone’s life? I think the only safe answer is that if it isn’t a practice or procedure that the Doctor can be forced to do, either by a loved one, or the State, and it isn’t an overt act, then the Doc should be immune from prosecution.
Thanks for the follow up bic. As for the one about healthcare we’re on different planes so I’ll clarify. If you choose not to have insurance no matter what state you’re in should your fellow citizen be allowed to say “sucks to be you” ?
I actually support that just like
I like motorcyclists going helmet less.
You mean like how hospitals cannot legally turn people away right now, despite Rutherford’s claims of people “dying in the streets?”
That’s a tougher question, and one where I think your ability to pay for your care comes into question. It’s also tougher to prove when someone runs a red light and slams into your motorcyclist, making a fresh skull of brain salad in la capaca. It also opens up the question of what the driver’s insurance and assets can pay for, which is why in emergency situations, I think a strong argument should be made for treat first, and collect later.