Healthcare reform

[lostfan]

What is being lost in the usual stereotyping of the nutjobs as representatives of the mainstream is that a governmental agency will be in charge of your loved ones lives. Even if the vast majority of the time they are going to force/allow treatments, there will be a time where the government is going to sanction the killing of someone. It is just not going to be nearly as often as some would like to indicate it will be.

That's the status quo though. Insurance companies already have been dealing with issues like this for decades (not that I'm using that to make them sound evil, just stating a fact). It's a very difficult thing to have to think about, but the nutjobs have really dumbed this one down.

[southsider2k5]

That's the status quo though. Insurance companies already have been dealing with issues like this for decades (not that I'm using that to make them sound evil, just stating a fact). It's a very difficult thing to have to think about, but the nutjobs have really dumbed this one down.

 

The point is that this issue isn't just being made up, like the left wing nutjobs are trying to convince the country.

[lostfan]

The point is that this issue isn't just being made up, like the left wing nutjobs are trying to convince the country.

It's not that it's being made up, it's that it's being badly and hypocritically misrepresented.

[Balta1701]

What is being lost in the usual stereotyping of the nutjobs as representatives of the mainstream is that a governmental agency will be in charge of your loved ones lives. Even if the vast majority of the time they are going to force/allow treatments, there will be a time where the government is going to sanction the killing of someone. It is just not going to be nearly as often as some would like to indicate it will be.

So, let me turn this back to you...how would you advise us to put together a better system? The other option seems to me to have the government encourage everyone to turn a blind eye to these issues. Even in our current disastrous system, the government plays a role here, because it regulates how doctors deal with patients in those scenarios. If society doesn't set some sort of rules here, then you have everyone in tears blaming everyone else for killing people, rather than having these things worked out in some intelligent way.

[southsider2k5]

So, let me turn this back to you...how would you advise us to put together a better system? The other option seems to me to have the government encourage everyone to turn a blind eye to these issues. Even in our current disastrous system, the government plays a role here, because it regulates how doctors deal with patients in those scenarios. If society doesn't set some sort of rules here, then you have everyone in tears blaming everyone else for killing people, rather than having these things worked out in some intelligent way.

 

I don't have a problem with the private system now when it comes to this.

[Balta1701]

I don't have a problem with the private system now when it comes to this.

Have you ever had a relative hit the lifetime maximum?

[southsider2k5]

Have you ever had a relative hit the lifetime maximum?

 

Yes

[Balta1701]

I don't have a problem with the private system now when it comes to this.

And another thought...really, do you know how much of the current rules are set by the government? A whole ton of them. Not just because of medicare. But because the government is working to try to make things not wind up adversarial. It's not like this is just a "Private" system, outside of the lifetime caps/decisions by insurance companies about whether or not to provide coverage.

To its credit, California was the first state in the country to pass the Natural Death Act in 1976, allowing patients to indicate in writing if they did not want their life prolonged when they were terminally ill. Later, the durable power of attorney for health care allowed people to choose a surrogate who could make decisions for them.

 

In 1991, Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act, which not only reinforced that adults (or their designated surrogates) have a right to accept or refuse medical treatment, but also required most health care organizations to provide information to patients about these rights and about advance directives.

 

California's advance directive forms have continued to change over time, more attuned to the needs of patients and their loved ones. But the intent of these forms is unchanged: the rights of patients to decide when medical treatment is more burden than benefit.

 

Yet the interface of personal wishes, medical practice and legal authority is never simple. In the early 1990s, a new controversy arose when some doctors and nurses objected to providing endless life-prolonging interventions to dying patients whose families insisted on "doing everything." Where families saw hope, health care professionals saw torture and futility.

 

Facing two different dilemmas – doctors who did not give patients the options they needed and families with unrealistic expectations – Sacramento began in 1994 what became the first large-scale community-based project in the country to seek a broad consensus on the decision-making process for terminally or irreversibly ill patients.

 

Called ECHO – Extreme Care, Humane Options – this two-year effort involved committees of health care professionals from every hospital in the region. Nearly 1,000 local residents also provided their input on the changes needed to assure that treatment decisions reflected the wishes of informed and involved patients and families.

 

In early 1997, the ECHO Community Recommendations were published with specific strategies for hospitals, health professionals, health plans and medical groups. Endorsed by local hospitals, these recommendations advocated communication, education and decision processes designed to respect, not defy, the values of patients and families without undermining the professional standards of physicians and nurses.

 

Within several years, every hospital in the greater Sacramento region began palliative care services, physicians were taught communication skills and community members attended workshops on advance care planning. In 2001, a local coalition was formed to help sustain and expand these educational programs.

[southsider2k5]

And another thought...really, do you know how much of the current rules are set by the government? A whole ton of them. Not just because of medicare. But because the government is working to try to make things not wind up adversarial. It's not like this is just a "Private" system, outside of the lifetime caps/decisions by insurance companies about whether or not to provide coverage.

 

Saying that the government is getting more involved in health care, as it has gotten worse according to lots of people, isn't a real great argument for getting them even more involved.

[Balta1701]

Saying that the government is getting more involved in health care, as it has gotten worse according to lots of people, isn't a real great argument for getting them even more involved.

I'm just going to hope you realize how silly that statement is. It's about as intelligent as me saying "The last 3 declared recessions all started under Republicans, thus Republicans are terrible for the economy". The government might be making things worse. The Republicans might be absolutely godawful for the Economy. But that's a classic correlation equals causation argument.

[southsider2k5]

I'm just going to hope you realize how silly that statement is. It's about as intelligent as me saying "The last 3 declared recessions all started under Republicans, thus Republicans are terrible for the economy". The government might be making things worse. The Republicans might be absolutely godawful for the Economy. But that's a classic correlation equals causation argument.

 

And yet it was made during the last Presidential election right here.

[Balta1701]

And yet it was made during the last Presidential election right here.

Basically...if you want to make that argument, give me some reasoning. I can give you reasons why I believe the republicans suck on the economy. Their zeal for deregulation lets business run wild, and that has helped get us the 2002 and 2008 messes. Their tax policy creates concentration of wealth in the hands of people who don't spend it, and thus the increased wealth doesn't stimulate job creation or purchasing, their defense of this health care system is destroying small business. You can go on, and you can make counterpoints to those.

 

You want to explain to me how having the government more involved makes things worse, fine, do so. Expect to then be hit with things like the fact that Medicare's cost growth is well below that of the private sector, other countries do even better, and so on.

 

Please, if you want to explain to me how the steps the government has taken to make end of life issues easier to deal with are a bad thing and how that is driving up healthcare costs, I'm listening.

[mr_genius]

Rick Perlstein makes the case for why it really is different now...it's not that the crazy hasn't been there in the past, it's that right now there's a group of people in the media who are explicitly promoting the crazy.

 

I like the author's over the top Self-righteousness: reminds me of a George Clooney acceptance speech. Good stuff.

Edited August 16, 2009 by mr_genius

[mr_genius]

Basically...if you want to make that argument, give me some reasoning. I can give you reasons why I believe the republicans suck on the economy. Their zeal for deregulation lets business run wild, and that has helped get us the 2002 and 2008 messes.

 

Bill Clinton was a Democrat. He was pro-outsourcing, embraced the economic race to the bottom (a few trillionaires with billions of peasants), did a whole lot of deregulation, ect. His economy was a complete bubble, which burst. He basically did everything that idiot Greenspan told him to do on the economy. What we got was an unsustainable mess that has now created a situation where there is long term massive unemployment; the US is becoming an economic has been. We don't innovate, we can't produce, we have an economy based around paper pushing and bailouts. The truth is both Clinton and GW Bush were total disasters.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_plummeting_taxes

 

Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression

 

Fed tax revenue is crashing, but we are still wasting money. The deficit this year is going to be 4 times higher than the previous record.

Edited August 16, 2009 by mr_genius

[Balta1701]

Bill Clinton was a Democrat. He was pro-outsourcing, embraced the economic race to the bottom (a few trillionaires with billions of peasants), did a whole lot of deregulation, ect. His economy was a complete bubble, which burst. He basically did everything that idiot Greenspan told him to do on the economy. What we got was an unsustainable mess that has now created a situation where there is long term massive unemployment; the US is becoming an economic has been. We don't innovate, we can't produce, we have an economy based around paper pushing and bailouts. The truth is both Clinton and GW Bush were total disasters.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_plummeting_taxes

 

 

 

Fed tax revenue is crashing, but we are still wasting money. The deficit this year is going to be 4 times higher than the previous record.

Not going to turn this into an economic thread, but the debt grew by over $1 trillion last year. It's going to be $4 trillion this year? That seems like a lot. Is Goldman in trouble again?

[jasonxctf]

Bill Clinton was a Democrat. He was pro-outsourcing, embraced the economic race to the bottom (a few trillionaires with billions of peasants), did a whole lot of deregulation, ect. His economy was a complete bubble, which burst. He basically did everything that idiot Greenspan told him to do on the economy. What we got was an unsustainable mess that has now created a situation where there is long term massive unemployment; the US is becoming an economic has been. We don't innovate, we can't produce, we have an economy based around paper pushing and bailouts. The truth is both Clinton and GW Bush were total disasters.

 

 

but lets be fair in that comment, he also did a great job managing the US Budget. Turning a deficit into a surplus, is not an easy task. On the other hand, turning a surplus into a deficit, seemed might easy, didn't it.

[mr_genius]

Not going to turn this into an economic thread, but the debt grew by over $1 trillion last year. It's going to be $4 trillion this year? That seems like a lot. Is Goldman in trouble again?

 

Poor Goldman Sachs. If they need a few more trillion I think we should wire the money directly into Lloyd Blankfein's personal bank account. I wouldn't want them to have any undue hardships.

 

As far as the deficit; it's already at 1.8 trillion for this year (double from the record). It will keep going up with constant spending and sinking revenue.

[kapkomet]

It's only evil if the government sits in a room and decides it. It's not evil if the private sector has panels that sit in a room and decide whether or not they're going to pay for people's treatment.

Lie. (I still have 7 more pages to go through this damn thread.)

[kapkomet]

The thing that no one is talking about, as usual, is individual economic freedom. That is the one thing that this country was really founded on. We keep losing more and more of our rights and freedoms "for the good of the masses", but no one seems to care about it. It amazes me that the same groups of people who could throw the Franklin quote about sacrificing liberty during the freedom of speech and privacy arguments, have no problem sacrificing their own economic liberties permanently.

Woo hoo. Someone gets it (I'm down to 5 more pages in this thread).

[Balta1701]

How being locked in to a job you might not want so you can't afford to lose your health insurance, or not being able to start a small business because you won't be able to have health insurance, or not being able to work because you're sick, or having health insurance but then being cut off when you actually get sick, or having your employer choose your health insurance, or having no choice in health insurance because 80% of the country is considered "Highly concentrated" and run by only 1 or 2 insurers could possibly be interpreted as having any economic freedom at all is beyond me.

[kapkomet]

How being locked in to a job you might not want so you can't afford to lose your health insurance, or not being able to start a small business because you won't be able to have health insurance, or not being able to work because you're sick, or having health insurance but then being cut off when you actually get sick, or having your employer choose your health insurance, or having no choice in health insurance because 80% of the country is considered "Highly concentrated" and run by only 1 or 2 insurers could possibly be interpreted as having any economic freedom at all is beyond me.

How our government gets all access to all of our life's decisions is economic, or better yet, any freedom is beyond me.

[southsider2k5]

Basically...if you want to make that argument, give me some reasoning. I can give you reasons why I believe the republicans suck on the economy. Their zeal for deregulation lets business run wild, and that has helped get us the 2002 and 2008 messes. Their tax policy creates concentration of wealth in the hands of people who don't spend it, and thus the increased wealth doesn't stimulate job creation or purchasing, their defense of this health care system is destroying small business. You can go on, and you can make counterpoints to those.

 

You want to explain to me how having the government more involved makes things worse, fine, do so. Expect to then be hit with things like the fact that Medicare's cost growth is well below that of the private sector, other countries do even better, and so on.

 

Please, if you want to explain to me how the steps the government has taken to make end of life issues easier to deal with are a bad thing and how that is driving up healthcare costs, I'm listening.

 

That's where you and I differ. Costs are secondary to me. I value individual freedom more than costs. You have no problem turning your life over to the federal government. I do.

[kapkomet]

And here comes the trojan horse that I've been saying they would do. Drop "PUBLIC OPTION". This is just as I described, a trojan horse, to "public option". All it does instead of one big mass program, it breaks it up into these "co-ops" and the mechanisms are all the same - they will shut down private insurance. This is just a rebrand, just as I called it 30 pages back in this thread, to get this passed.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul

Edited August 16, 2009 by kapkomet

[lostfan]

What? You've been saying the public option was the trojan horse. Consistency please?

 

edit: nevermind, you edited what you said. Cheating ass admins

Edited August 16, 2009 by lostfan

[KipWellsFan]

I don't really give a hoot what program is implemented but I want to see a system where everyone is covered no matter what their socio-economic position and I don't think anyone EVER should go bankrupt because of medical problems. I don't care if you think that's socialism or not. So I guess what I'm saying is... is this co-op thing supposed to cover everyone not already covered?

Edited August 16, 2009 by KipWellsFan