Deadly Doctors

[Zoom-boing]

DEADLY DOCTORS
ADVISERS WANT TO RATION CARE

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president's budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

Read the rest of the story here. It gets worse:

DEADLY DOCTORS - New York Post



Anyone who's on board with Obama-care want to spin this for me?

 

[Centrism'sVoice]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

 

[editec]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

Not might as well.

Already are!

 

[Zoom-boing]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

Not might as well.

Already are!

Did I get that wrong? Crap, better go check The Wrong Word Challenge again.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Some middle class bureaucrat making decisions about policy coverage based on published rules and guidelines subject to public debate or a million dollar insurance executive making decisions about coverage based on whether or not he can cover his country club dues this year...

Bureaucrat 'A' or Bureaucrat 'B'.... Decisions, Decisions!!

-Joe

 

[geauxtohell]

M'eh.

It annoys me when people cite the Hippocratic Oath as some sort of binding entity that matters in the modern practice of medicine. At best, it's a philosophy. At worst, it's feel-good window dressing for white coat ceremonies.

Plus, it was never quite the same after they pulled out the elements of polytheism and sleeping with slaves.

 

[Amanda]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

Wow... you could use that kind of logic to justify all kinds of unsavory things. You'd only do that for our own good, right?

 

[Political Junky]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

 

[Meister]

Health care is rationed everywhere in the world, one way or another. Welcome to real life.

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

 

[johnrocks]

Ration of care does indeed happen,rationing happens with all goods and services sold,if this didn't happen,things from gas during hurricanes to food during droughts would be so scarce that we all would suffer, this free market miracle helps keep things more in equilibrium, govt. intervention creates unintended consequences and results in more severe moral uncertainty than normal since no one can compete with government,things from people going into other,more lucrative careers to overcrowding to people not having as much of an incentive to better themselves and do the things to be healthy results,imho anyway.

 

[AVG-JOE]

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

'Really going to hit the aged hard?!?' You're kidding, right? The government has been practicing running a health insurance bureaucracy on the aged since 1965! The aged are already in the system... a system that works pretty well, in spite of congress.

-Joe

 

[Meister]

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

'Really going to hit the aged hard?!?' You're kidding, right? The government has been practicing running a health insurance bureaucracy on the aged since 1965! The aged are already in the system... a system that works pretty well, in spite of congress.

-Joe

Joe, make no mistake about what i posted. That's all going to change because they can't finance what they have on the bill. The bill cuts back on Medicare, and Medicaid. Missed that part. You think a person that is 80 years old is going to get a hip replacement? if you think so your the one that is kidding. Remember, it's about cutting costs, and they will, they will look at stats and see if its cost effective, or not. You can have that kind of coverage, but I will take my "paper laden" private insurance company. By the way, did you watch Soylent Green on television today? I hope some of the liberals did.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Why doesn't this bother more of you?

"Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

"Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public."

"But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else."

"But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it."

"No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

 

[Political Junky]

The article is an opinion piece from a wingnut paper, with selected quotes.

 

[Old Rocks]

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

Silly ass. If there is a choice of an expensive procedure for a young person with their productive life ahead of them, or for me, with my most productive years past, it would seem to me that the right decision is obvious. No matter how much I dislike it.

This is obviously a red herring, in any case. Were it not, the nations with national health care systems would have lower longevity than we do. However, that is not the case. They not only have much longer average longevity, they have seniors that are healthier than those in this nation.

But whine and cry all you like. We are going to have a health care system in this nation, finally. And you will help pay for it.

 

[Old Rocks]

Ration of care does indeed happen,rationing happens with all goods and services sold,if this didn't happen,things from gas during hurricanes to food during droughts would be so scarce that we all would suffer, this free market miracle helps keep things more in equilibrium, govt. intervention creates unintended consequences and results in more severe moral uncertainty than normal since no one can compete with government,things from people going into other,more lucrative careers to overcrowding to people not having as much of an incentive to better themselves and do the things to be healthy results,imho anyway.

Really? The free market miracle is what created the equilibrium that we experianced over the last year? That is quite some miracle. Of course, since this miracle creates no unintended consequences, the economic debacle was planned, correct?

And why are the European Health Care Systems getting better results than our free market system? Longer average lifespans, much lower infant mortality, healthier seniors, and no familys going bankrupt because of medical bills.

 

[xotoxi]

That's it? That's your answer? 'Everyone else is doing it so we may as well do it too'?

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

Do you REALLY think that if Blue Cross Blue Shield was insuring 80 year olds they wouldn't ration care as much, if not more, than the government insurance does???

When you think about it, these private insurance companies have it made in the shade! They insure people only up to age 65, after which time most people go onto Medicare at a time in their lives when they likely will have the MOST medical expenses.

And if an insurance company has the unforunate luck of having one of it's 30 year old beneficiaries get cancer or another expensive disease, they only have to insure them up to the point that the individual is declared disabled and starts early Medicare coverage.

And from my experience, Medicare does not ration ANYTHING. There is no prior authorization needed for any test and everything that is done is paid for. If it is found that tests were performed inappropriately, the provider ordering them will be royally fucked...but at least there is never a denial of care for any test that your provider orders or performs (except for preventive care which makes no sense at all).

 

[mskafka]

M'eh.

It annoys me when people cite the Hippocratic Oath as some sort of binding entity that matters in the modern practice of medicine. At best, it's a philosophy. At worst, it's feel-good window dressing for white coat ceremonies.

Plus, it was never quite the same after they pulled out the elements of polytheism and sleeping with slaves.

What?

 

[mskafka]

We do it already ... your private insurance company rations care.

They do ration to an extent. But, with the government, the rationing is going to really hit the aged hard, the ones that need it the most. This I cannot subscribe to, this is the area where private insurance stands out from the government solutions.
If your young, it's easy to say the "duty to die" crap. But, as the young grow old, I guarantee that attitude will change.

Do you REALLY think that if Blue Cross Blue Shield was insuring 80 year olds they wouldn't ration care as much, if not more, than the government insurance does???

When you think about it, these private insurance companies have it made in the shade! They insure people only up to age 65, after which time most people go onto Medicare at a time in their lives when they likely will have the MOST medical expenses.

And if an insurance company has the unforunate luck of having one of it's 30 year old beneficiaries get cancer or another expensive disease, they only have to insure them up to the point that the individual is declared disabled and starts early Medicare coverage.

And from my experience, Medicare does not ration ANYTHING. There is no prior authorization needed for any test and everything that is done is paid for. If it is found that tests were performed inappropriately, the provider ordering them will be royally fucked...but at least there is never a denial of care for any test that your provider orders or performs (except for preventive care which makes no sense at all).

Here's someone who understands the business.