Sarah Palin is right- CBO recommends Death Panels (income, laws, security)

[newhandle]

There is a contradiction, not surprisingly, in Palin and the Tea folks position. They want limited Federal spending, yet they want no caps. There is only so much money. When it comes to death, the cash register is always open, so people get expensive care that adds a few weeks to their lives or pap smears for people months from dying; the list goes on and on. Right now there is no cap on this and so medicare spending is out of control. Insurance companies ration care already yet Palin supports the industry and its allegience to their bottom line - not to their customers.

57% of Americans don't have wills, more than that don't have living wills. If these folks are so ignorant or lazy not to have a living will without instructions, why should I pay for them to be on a ventilator forever? Right now the default is if there are no instructions, keep them alive. Perhaps the new rule should be, no instructions pull the plug.

[EDnurse]

Originally Posted by Driller1

I do not want or, need anyone to take care of me.

Good.

Please get that tattooed on your chest in case you have a stroke and can't talk or move.

Your wishes will be respected and nobody will waste their time on you.

[pollyrobin]

Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge

It's not our debt that's going to bankrupt us. It's trying to care for the baby-boomers that's going to bankrupt this country.

The reality is; we need a single payer system and we
need it now. Besides Medicare, have you considered
the cost of TRICARE FOR LIFE which has already
tripled in cost. Why are we using the next to retire, and
retiring military, as the scapegoats, when it is our
present system that is to blame.

Baby boomers are the first generation that has paid
a Medicare payroll tax their entire working life, unlike previous generations before them.

Their tax dollars went to pay for their parents (silent generation) and grandparents (greatest generation) who have used the Medicare system to date, often and without
regard to expense.

And speaking of death panels:

Baby boomers do have a different mindset
than previous generations. Most baby boomers have living wills.

How many folks are in nursing homes now, just laying there. None of which had living wills.
Look at the Terri Schiavo case. Her parent's (silent
generation) wanted to continue her life, and the husband
(baby boomer) said "let her go".

In 2003, a court-appointed guardian for Schiavo wrote that during the protracted legal struggle, her parents had "voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Terri alive at any and all costs", even if that required amputation of her limbs. "As part of the hypothetical presented", the guardian's report stated, "Schindler family members stated that even if Terri had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it."

I think after baby boomers retire, and age, you will see an increase in membership of the End Of Life Choices, e.g. Hemlock society. We won't have to kill them off, they will do it themselves

Unlike the Silent Generation, they don't want to
linger, simply just to live out an existence. It really
doesn't have it's basis in cost, but a better understanding
of what "life should be", and a greater acceptance of death.

[brien51]

Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge

Why then, is healthcare in the United States so much more expensive than anywhere else in the world? Look at healthcare expenditures as a consumer of our GDP---healthcare in the United States is easily the least regulated in the world, and yet it hasn't driven costs down, it's allowed those costs to skyrocket. Healthcare costs are going to destroy our country. You don't have true competition in the healthcare market, and you never will have. And when you de-regulate healthcare, all you get is a caste system, the rich get the best healthcare, the poor get nothing.

BUllya. The US Health Care market is extremely regulated from prescription drugs to bandaids. So don't come here and try and put over the health care industry is less regulated than anywhere in the world. That matters for nothing. We are addressing the US health care system.

What matters is the US health care system is over regulated by the US government and it alone is repsonsible for the price. Remove the regulationas and let the free market operate, and the heralth care system will be fine.

People like you only trust the government to run programs like this but you ignore their failures time and again in the schools systems to SS, to Medicare, the USPS to Amtrak.

When will you people ever learn government can't run much very well at all, and to hand them over a billion dollar industry, after they have already proved to be a failure through their incessant regulations, is insanity. People like you are merely afraid because they have been taught not to trust the free market when it should be exactly the opposite. It is the government that should be mistrusted based upon their own history of failures to regulate industries. Wake up.

[ozzie679]

Originally Posted by brien51

What matters is the US health care system is over regulated by the US government and it alone is repsonsible for the price. Remove the regulationas and let the free market operate, and the heralth care system will be fine.
Wake up.

Again...for the 100th time...the free market does not exist in the health insurance industry. Your point is moot!

[carterstamp]

Originally Posted by SilverOne

CBO on Medicare ? ?We need a Death Panel? | zero hedge

Doug Elmendorf of the CBO gave a speech on Medicare and the concept of rationing Health Care is coming, we are not as rich as we think.

You ever hear of a living will? My suggestion is to draw one up to make your wishes known.

We ration healthcare now, insurance companies do it all the time.

[chielgirl]

Originally Posted by brien51

Well, I don't expect people who don't appreciate how the US saved the enite free world from the Nazis to think this nation is great. Sure it was no great task to save the Jews from annihilation and the entire free world from the slavery of Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

You sure are right that the word "great" is subjective. and the participation of the US in WWII, indeed defines the word.

For ford's sake.
The US didn't do it alone and what happened 70 years ago is NOT recent.
Cut it a break, you going to rest on your laurels because you did something good 30 years ago?

[ozzie679]

Originally Posted by carterstamp

You ever hear of a living will? My suggestion is to draw one up to make your wishes known.

We ration healthcare now, insurance companies do it all the time.

A living will is a must!

[pommysmommy]

Originally Posted by DC at the Ridge

We already ration healthcare. We ration healthcare when insurance companies determine what treatments they will cover and what they won't. We ration healthcare when doctors quietly determine that an 87 year-old woman does not merit an aggressive treatment approach to the major heart attack she's just suffered. We ration healthcare when the widow down the street doesn't fill her subscription because she has to choose between food or medicine.

And whether we like it or not, we'll be doing a lot more healthcare rationing as more and more babyboomers age and become more dependent on health services. Because we have a broken healthcare system that's going to break the American economy. It's not our debt that's going to bankrupt us. It's trying to care for the baby-boomers that's going to bankrupt this country.

We don't ration health care as in refusing to treat if you are elderly, have significant co-morbid complications, and/or have a life expectancy of less than five years. Are Americans ready to denied life saving treatments? I don't think people are going to accept that.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by brien51

You buy your own insurance in a free market. There would be plenty of companies that wouold foot the cost of cancer treatment.

Surely you jest! They'll reject people for acne, let alone cancer!