ObamaCare: Death Panels Are a Real Concern After All

I guess the Death Panel notion is still at play.... We'll see.
We all talked about it when the various copies of HCR were first released. Keep your eyes open.

It was an article of faith among Obamacare supporters that worry over so-called death panels was simply a cynical ploy by conservative leaders to scare the peasants. Blatant fearmongering, they claimed. Now it’s looking more and more like a valid concern. Writing at the Daily Caller, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute highlights quotes from Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to be director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which suggest that death panels might be on his wish-list.

rationing

“I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,” he has said about the British health care system. His favorite part of British health care seems to be its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE). NICE is responsible for determining whether or not the life-extending benefits a patient receives are worth the cost to the government. Dr. Berwick calls this institution a “global treasure.”

How much is a human life worth? About £30,000 per year, according to NICE. Anything more than $44,000 per year of extended life, and NICE is likely to deny treatment. Important drugs that prolong the life of cancer patients, such as Lapatinib and Sutent, are not allowed. Alzheimer’s drugs are also heavily restricted for those in the early stages of the disease despite the fact that the early stages are when treatment can provide the most benefit. Originally pitched as nothing more than a board to promote “best practices,” NICE has become a rationing, death panel machine.

Dr. Berwick thinks this system is so wonderful, we should implement it right here in America. “It’s not a question of whether we will ration care,” he explained in a magazine interview, “It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” His idea of rationing with eyes open is when “collective action overrid[es] individual self-interest.” The individual he is referring to here, whose interests should not matter, is the patient. The collective action is the death panel.

biggovernment.com...-125982

Is the British model really worth repeating here in the US????

Berwick was referring to a British health care system where 750,000 patients are awaiting admission to NHS hospitals. The government’s official target for diagnostic testing was a wait of no more than 18 weeks by 2008. The reality doesn’t come close. The latest estimates suggest that for most specialties, only 30 to 50 percent of patients are treated within 18 weeks. For trauma and orthopedics patients, the figure is only 20 percent.

Overall, more than half of British patients wait more than 18 weeks for care. Every year, 50,000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed.

Please read here for a little more depth on the concept.
dailycaller.com...

Alright, Sarah Palin

It's been proven, over and over again, death panels are a lie concocted by the far whacked out right because they were out of ideas.

biggovernment.com ?

A bunch of conservative cowards who don't want us to know who they are, as they make this non sense up, so they hide their information behind a proxy?

Or maybe it's just liberals baiting the water with stupidity to see how many conservatives will bite?...which would make sense seeing as it was registered in 2003

(kind of like how The Colbert effect got to conservatives who honestly thought he was "on their side" when he would say out of whack, disproportionate things about liberals and the DNC)

Either way - i'm getting a good ol' laugh out of it.


[edit on 28-5-2010 by Snarf]

reply to post by jibeho


Rationing will be practiced as it is the only way to reel in those expenses of health care. HCR was never meant to reduce premiums and it sure as hell is not going to reduce costs for the government. . Physicians have come to a realization that the government will be dictating what type of services can be rendered and life saving measures may not be covered if certain criteria is not meant by patients. Older patients are pretty much going to be told to walk off the plank.

Many physicians have realized that practice of medicine is now under attack. First it was the insurance companies & now you will have DMV qualified individuals telling you how to run your practice. You will see many physicians pack up or retire early to emigrate to other countries. US doctors are in high demand across the world, especially in South Asia.









[edit on 28-5-2010 by prionace glauca]

Originally posted by Snarf
Alright, Sarah Palin

It's been proven, over and over again, death panels are a lie concocted by the far whacked out right because they were out of ideas.

biggovernment.com ?

A bunch of conservative cowards who don't want us to know who they are, as they make this non sense up, so they hide their information behind a proxy?

Or maybe it's just liberals baiting the water with stupidity to see how many conservatives will bite?...which would make sense seeing as it was registered in 2003

(kind of like how The Colbert effect got to conservatives who honestly thought he was "on their side" when he would say out of whack, disproportionate things about liberals and the DNC)

Either way - i'm getting a good ol' laugh out of it.


[edit on 28-5-2010 by Snarf]

Hmm.....seems to me a your a liberal.....

Obama Appointee: We will ration care with our eyes closed

Obama's Nominee to Run Medicare: 'The Decision is Not Whether or Not We Will Ration Care--The Decision is Whether We Will Ration Care With Our Eyes Open'

“The social budget is limited—we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t.”

This is the newest pick by Obumbus head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, is a strong supporter of the government-run health care system in Britain.


The below video just highlights the values he holds dear "Redistribution". No wonder he made it on Obama's team of Death Experts, I mean Health Experts.


[edit on 28-5-2010 by prionace glauca]

That should certainly thin out the organ transplant lists.

There is a long list of people waiting for organs.

That won't be an issue anymore, it will just cost too much!

[edit on 28-5-2010 by butcherguy]

Death panels were always true. The problem was that idiots like Sarah Palin called them "death panels".

It's the laws of economics. A "free" health care system is, in economic terms, a price ceiling. And price ceilings always create shortages (for a variety of reasons). Shortages then lead to rationing, either on a first-come-first-served basis (i.e. insane waiting lists) or on a "rational" basis (i.e. screw old people).

Another thing people forget in this debate is that the USA's healthcare system, back when it was more free of licensure regulations and insurance mandates and Medicare, built the healthcare system that the world uses. The overwhelming majority of modern medical technology, procedures, practices, that are now used all around the world, even in socialized systems were invented here in the USA. Command economies, on the other hand, are notoriously stagnant.

Anyone seriously interested in this topic should read the following:

mises.org...

It contains a wealth of information that nobody, left (socialist) or right (socialist lite), seems to be putting out.


[edit on 28-5-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

Originally posted by Snarf
Alright, Sarah Palin

It's been proven, over and over again, death panels are a lie concocted by the far whacked out right because they were out of ideas.

biggovernment.com ?

A bunch of conservative cowards who don't want us to know who they are, as they make this non sense up, so they hide their information behind a proxy?

Or maybe it's just liberals baiting the water with stupidity to see how many conservatives will bite?...which would make sense seeing as it was registered in 2003

(kind of like how The Colbert effect got to conservatives who honestly thought he was "on their side" when he would say out of whack, disproportionate things about liberals and the DNC)

Either way - i'm getting a good ol' laugh out of it.

[edit on 28-5-2010 by Snarf]

Classic and predictable response. Attack the source and ignore the very comments of the new man in charge of your destiny. Good Luck!

Now that's Funny Stuff.

edit to add:
Stay Healthy!!

[edit on 28-5-2010 by jibeho]

Well, Sebelius is totally on board with the new rationing advocate.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday that Dr. Donald Berwick, an advocate of health-care rationing nominated by President Barack Obama to run Medicare and Medicaid, is “absolutely the right leader at this time” to run the government’s largest health-care entitlement programs.

Under the health-care reform law signed by President Obama in March, hundreds of billions of dollars will be cut from the Medicare program over the next decade. Berwick is nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees Medicare.

Sebelius danced around the question of whether or not she agreed with this well known statement made by Berwick.

“The decision is not whether or not we will ration care--the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open,” Berwick said in a June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare.

She claims she answered the question. I guess her answer was lost in the rhetoric. I failed to see any direct answer to the question.

cnsnews.com...

reply to post by Snarf


You didn't even read the OP did you?

What a shame.

I've studied ways to get state run health care at State level to be more in accordance with the Constitution than the travesty we got. It's a shame you'd rather name call than find solutions to these problems.

Americans can't afford to replace a broken system with a corrupt one. This isn't a liberal or conservative issue, but there are those who have a vested interest in keeping the discussion firmly gripped between those two sides so as to stagnate what needs to be done.

Thanks for helping that a long.


[edit on 28-5-2010 by projectvxn]

reply to post by jibeho


Sure there is going to be death panels they just wont be called that , they will be called something inocent like cost reduction through life sciences or something like that .

You can always spend your own money to get better service (if you have it)! The death panels are run by the insurance companies now, so whats the difference. The insurance company is not going to pay for those expensive treatments anyway, so what are you so worried about.

[x] Source: opinion blog
[x] Talks about UK healthcare system
[ ] Relevant for US healthcare system
[x] Fear mongering
[ ] Based on facts

Love how the far right is wasting energy coming up with INSANE and FALSE statements to make people scared. Scared people are easier to control, so I have to give it to them, it makes sense. I mean, it still makes them look stupid but whatever

reply to post by MrXYZ


Did you care to look at Mr. Berwick's quotes?

How about even caring to look at the video clip presented x 2?

Just denying based on where the story is presented makes you stand out as a Kool Aid drinking puppet than someone who took the time to review several sources to make a point like the OP.

Find some facts to present your stance, I highly doubt you will be able to.

Well, duh, health care is already being rationed. Has nobody heard of insurance companies?

My sister has a mental illness and her insurance only covers 50% of treatment, up to a fairly low lifetime cap. Her coverage is pretty typical of what is available to the mentally ill. Mental health care is often prolonged and just takes too much money, according to the insurance companies.

If we can't, or don't, somehow come up with the remainder of the enormous costs she is out of luck. If it weren't for her family she would be one of those street people, off her meds, who wander around talking to themselves.

The same is often true of patients who need organ transplants. There are a limited number of organs available at any given time and so health care providers must make choices about who gets a transplant when.

End-of-life care is also very often a difficult process for families. What if the insurance company pulls the plug on the expenses?

I personally recommend everybody have their last wishes in writing, preferably with the help of a lawyer, and notarized. Specify exactly how long you would want to be on a ventilator, for instance, or whether you want to be fed with an ng tube indefinitely. How about if you're in a coma? My husband and I have these last wishes in writing, and hopefully they will spare our families the agonizing decision about when to terminate life-prolonging procedures, assuming the insurance company hasn't already made that decision for them. There is, of course, the horrifying possibility that one who is in good health now may want to specify that they want no unusual measures taken to prolong one's life in the unimaginable event that would ever become necessary, and then when they actually get to that point suddenly decide they want to keep fighting for their lives. It's always agonizing for the families.

In short, health care is already rationed now, has always been rationed for the poor, and hard choices will still have to be made by physicians and families and health care providers after HCR goes into full effect.

Some people would prefer to leave their fate in the hands of an insurance company, as they do now. That's fine. There's nothing in the new law that would prevent them from doing that.

It's clear that the government cannot guarantee any and all conceivable medical treatments for everyone (what about chiropractors, for example) all the time and there will necessarily be some limits on what the government can provide. That is not to say that people with the means to do so cannot provide whatever they want for as long as they want, as they do now.

HCR is not a perfect solution and nobody has ever claimed it was. It is, however, a way to deliver more quality care to more people than exists now.

The fact that the government cannot provide infinite resources indefinitely (and nobody can) should not be a reason to deny Americans a better health care delivery system than exists now.


[edit on 29-5-2010 by Sestias]

reply to post by Sestias


Medicare denies more claims & services than any other insurance company.

Medicare is not a proven better health care delivery system, they are the worst. The level of bureaucracies alone make it one of the toughest to deal with and they do not care for the patient but only their bottom line.

HCR is MEDICARE.

Originally posted by Sestias
The fact that the government cannot provide infinite resources indefinitely (and nobody can) should not be a reason to deny Americans a better health care delivery system than exists now.
[edit on 29-5-2010 by Sestias]

Except that the proposed solution won't. It's all great and wonderful to imagine a Beneficient Goverment that can do all the things you mentioned in your post. But the fact is it cannot. As Ringo Starr once said, "everything government touches turns to crap." Spend some time at mises.org and you will understand why you, and everyone who supports government healthcare, are asking for the literally impossible.

The supposed "superior" health care systems of Europe and Canada (that of course rely on technology and medical procedures developed in the free* US system, but that's beside the point) are on the verge of financial ruin (just ask them; don't ask US socialists).

Spend some time at mises.org (but I repeat myself). Long-term viable entitlement programs that do not eventually drive their entire countries into ruin are literally impossible. It's not about what we wish the world were like; it's about reality. Such hypothetical systems violate basic principles of human nature, and therefore do not exist anywhere. Educate yourself.


*free as in freedom not free as in unlimited resources for everybody


[edit on 1-6-2010 by NewlyAwakened]