What needs to be done about healthcare reform

[wyomingpatriot]

I have worked in various longterm healthcare facilities and agencies for the developmentally disabled. What people don't realize is that next to greedy, unregulated health insurance companies, this is the root cause of our problem. Medicaid and Medicare are out of control. Do you know why?
BECAUSE WE SPEND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS KEEPING COMPLETELY DISABLED, USELESS PEOPLE ALIVE AND BETTER THAN THE TAX-PAYING, WORKING UNINSURED IN NURSING HOMES AND OTHER FACILITIES.
Some examples: A client with profound mental retardation is 63 years old, has resided in an institution for his entire life, is completely immobile, incontinent, unaware, mostly unconscious, an IQ of maybe 10, obviously could never pay taxes but will live to be a 100 because he has all the attention in the world from doctors and nurses... The median cost of keeping him alive and giving him the best healthcare in the country next to a congressman: $200,000 A MONTH!!!! THAT ADDS UP TO MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR HIS LIFETIME. WHY DO WE KEEP THEM ALIVE? SO THEY CAN LAY THERE IN THEIR OWN SHIT???
Another example: A resident in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer's, 98 years old. Fits a similar description as above. Medicaid has spent millions on her over the last 15 years when her money ran out, so she can also lay in a bed in her own shit staring at the ceiling.
This is where your tax dollars are REALLY going people. I dont think even congress understands that. As you can see, altogether with at least a million inherently worthless beings in our society, this is costing us - the real working people who must die if we cant afford insurance and those who do have insurance - trillions.
I SAY LET THEM DIE!!!
Let the Nazi accusations fly. Whatever. You're an idiot if you believe that. How are we any better than Nazis when we deny care to a 20 year old with cancer who doesnt have insurance, but value the life of a worthless retard in a bed more?

 

[007]

Very simple...

Repeal OWEbama care. It's unconstitutional, and another of OWEbama's monumental disasters.

Simple things that could have been done like allowing for interstate competition between insurance companies and TORT reform after OWEbama care is repealed will be a good start on tackling health care reform the RIGHT way.

 

[wyomingpatriot]

Youre just buying into that lazy, keep the status-quo Fox News ideology. That still doesn't do a thing for all the millions of uninsured that must either a) Don't get sick, or b)If you get sick, die quickly.
What about those people?
REPUBLICAN PARTY = PARTY OF NO SOLUTIONS

 

[Madeline]

I have worked in various longterm healthcare facilities and agencies for the developmentally disabled. What people don't realize is that next to greedy, unregulated health insurance companies, this is the root cause of our problem. Medicaid and Medicare are out of control. Do you know why?
BECAUSE WE SPEND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS KEEPING COMPLETELY DISABLED, USELESS PEOPLE ALIVE AND BETTER THAN THE TAX-PAYING, WORKING UNINSURED IN NURSING HOMES AND OTHER FACILITIES.
Some examples: A client with profound mental retardation is 63 years old, has resided in an institution for his entire life, is completely immobile, incontinent, unaware, mostly unconscious, an IQ of maybe 10, obviously could never pay taxes but will live to be a 100 because he has all the attention in the world from doctors and nurses... The median cost of keeping him alive and giving him the best healthcare in the country next to a congressman: $200,000 A MONTH!!!! THAT ADDS UP TO MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR HIS LIFETIME. WHY DO WE KEEP THEM ALIVE? SO THEY CAN LAY THERE IN THEIR OWN SHIT???
Another example: A resident in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer's, 98 years old. Fits a similar description as above. Medicaid has spent millions on her over the last 15 years when her money ran out, so she can also lay in a bed in her own shit staring at the ceiling.
This is where your tax dollars are REALLY going people. I dont think even congress understands that. As you can see, altogether with at least a million inherently worthless beings in our society, this is costing us - the real working people who must die if we cant afford insurance and those who do have insurance - trillions.
I SAY LET THEM DIE!!!
Let the Nazi accusations fly. Whatever. You're an idiot if you believe that. How are we any better than Nazis when we deny care to a 20 year old with cancer who doesnt have insurance, but value the life of a worthless retard in a bed more?

It took guts to write that Op, and I applaud you, wyomingpatrot. I dun think many people are emotionally equipped to face the realities of our "choices" to save every baby No Matter What and to prolong life No Matter What (often, disregarding the patient's wishes).

I represented a Neurological Birth Injury Fund for awhile, and I agree with you completely. Yes, we have the medical knowledge to sustain life in a 18 week old fetus with drug addiction and birth defects and birth injuries. But sooner or later, we have to face the question: should we? Is this best for that baby? For its family? For us, as a society?

And you are 100% correct. When we react without thinking, in some Disney-fied haze that "all life is precious" and save these quasi-viable fetuses and mostly-dead elderly, what we are actually choosing is to deny health care to the young and healthy.

We NEED "death panels". We need Medical Ethics Boards that will reach humane decisions about allocating care...because there just is not enough to go around, and there will be less and less in the future as science advances ever onward.

 

[wyomingpatriot]

I dont support Obamacare and other Obama legislation specifically, but I agree with its underlying principle of healthcare being a right and not a privilege. I merely suggest taking away the trillions squandered on retards and invalid elderly or at least most of it, and give it back to us, the working tax-payer. Why hasn't anyone thought of it? Oh, right...because everyone in Washington is a politician, and their first concern is getting re-elected.
There's simply no way of justifying the death of the young and the uninsured when an invalid for life gets the best of health care!

 

[Madeline]

Very simple...

Repeal OWEbama care. It's unconstitutional, and another of OWEbama's monumental disasters.

Simple things that could have been done like allowing for interstate competition between insurance companies and TORT reform after OWEbama care is repealed will be a good start on tackling health care reform the RIGHT way.

Pale, the reality is no matter how we structure insurance vs Obamacare vs universal coverage, this issue will have to be dealt with. If not by my generation, then by my daughter's. It is already having a very heavy impact, but few people are willing to admit that yet. In another 20 years, pretending will not be an option.

Mebbe in 10 years, even.

 

[wyomingpatriot]

Madeline,
THANK YOU!! (i'd say God bless you, but I don't believe in God)
I've just never thought it fair that the life of profoundly retarded person or a crack baby is more valuable than mine, but apparently it is. And yours too.

 

[007]

Youre just buying into that lazy, keep the status-quo Fox News ideology. That still doesn't do a thing for all the millions of uninsured that must either a) Don't get sick, or b)If you get sick, die quickly.
What about those people?
REPUBLICAN PARTY = PARTY OF NO SOLUTIONS

You asked, I candidly responded, and this is the reply I get?

Fuck you dick head.

 

[Madeline]

Madeline,
THANK YOU!! (i'd say God bless you, but I don't believe in God)
I've just never thought it fair that the life of profoundly retarded person or a crack baby is more valuable than mine, but apparently it is. And yours too.

What chaps my ass the most is the elderly who are not allowed to die with dignity. I am 57, and so I can imagine being very old. The idea of being trapped in that nightmare you describe horrifies me and I have got documents meant to prevent it, but as you well know, a meddling social worker or whatnot can easily avoid them as a practical matter.

My brother's MIL is 96 years old and has been in a nursing home for about a year. She has stopped eating, and they are having a devil of a time getting the home to agree not to IV and tube her. It should not be like this...why should this lovely woman have to use starvation to get her wishes carried out? What happens if she slips a few more gears before she passes away?

We both know, they'll tube her...and she'll linger indefinately, in pain, lost to the world. I think that is what is "Nazi-like".

 

[wyomingpatriot]

And the name calling begins! Yes! You see, that's why it's impossible to have a coherent discussion with anyone that can even remotely construed as being in support of Obamacare - the second you make a logical point that easily collapses the same stupid argument we hear everyday on Fox News, they just yell louder and walk away.
Doesnt it piss you off that your life means shit, Pale? Go to a nursing home and take a walk around. You'll walk away pale as a ghost and realize what I mean. You need to see someone with Alzheimer's, or who is profoundly retarded. It ain't pretty.

 

[Big Fitz]

Uhhhh... repeal the whole shebang back to Medicare and Medicaid. Get government out of the medical industry except in regulation of fraud and consumer protection.

Include also ending industry getting to write off health benefits for tax purposes, but allow individuals to do it. That ONE change in the tax code would revolutionize this nation and in how we get paid and secure our ability to insure ourselves and never fear job loss meaning insurance loss.

 

[wyomingpatriot]

Madeline, I feel for you. I've watched a woman have a stroke, but since she WANTED to die, you know what they did to her? Let her just lay there until she eventually died of dehydration. How is that not torture? Why couldnt they have just put a pillow over her face, given her a cyanide pill, anything???
Basically, I believe everyone has their time, and too often people surpass it. You know they're trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's? A CURE??? So people can live to be a 150! Isnt that awesome?
In Plains Indian cultures, when the elderly became a burden to their society, they walked away into the forest to die of exposure. That is what it means to be dignified.

 

[uscitizen]

And the name calling begins! Yes! You see, that's why it's impossible to have a coherent discussion with anyone that can even remotely construed as being in support of Obamacare - the second you make a logical point that easily collapses the same stupid argument we hear everyday on Fox News, they just yell louder and walk away.
Doesnt it piss you off that your life means shit, Pale? Go to a nursing home and take a walk around. You'll walk away pale as a ghost and realize what I mean. You need to see someone with Alzheimer's, or who is profoundly retarded. It ain't pretty.

ahh he can just look in a mirror.

 

[2Parties]

Not specifically directed at the OP but many here with a similar opinion not only have no issue with the "our" government spending hundreds of billions of dollars on war, death, and destruction; they encourage it.

 

[wyomingpatriot]

Everybody who reads this!
Your life doesnt count for shit unless you can pay for it. Unless youre retarded. Or brain injured. Or a hundred with Alzheimer's. Or a crack baby. Let's kill all of them who fit these obvious preconditions, and put the money we get taken out of our paychecks for them given back to us. This is how to fix healthcare.

 

[2Parties]

 

[wyomingpatriot]

Excuse me, on my earlier post. I meant to say the opposite, but it was a type error. Whenever you support Obamacare, people just shout you down and walk away because they can't stand your fundamental argument that Republicans offers no solution to the healthcare problem, and tells forty million people to go die if they get sick.

 

[uscitizen]

It would fix Medicare and SS as well.
cold, but would work.

 

[Madeline]

Uhhhh... repeal the whole shebang back to Medicare and Medicaid. Get government out of the medical industry except in regulation of fraud and consumer protection.

Include also ending industry getting to write off health benefits for tax purposes, but allow individuals to do it. That ONE change in the tax code would revolutionize this nation and in how we get paid and secure our ability to insure ourselves and never fear job loss meaning insurance loss.

WTF? How in the hell does driving up the cost of health insurance advance anyone's interest? You do realize a deduction is worthless unless there are sufficient, adequate tax dollars prepaid that can be refunded?

I think you've been dipping into the FAUX News kool aid again, my Big Fizzy friend.

 

[Madeline]

Madeline, I feel for you. I've watched a woman have a stroke, but since she WANTED to die, you know what they did to her? Let her just lay there until she eventually died of dehydration. How is that not torture? Why couldnt they have just put a pillow over her face, given her a cyanide pill, anything???
Basically, I believe everyone has their time, and too often people surpass it. You know they're trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's? A CURE??? So people can live to be a 150! Isnt that awesome?

In Plains Indian cultures, when the elderly became a burden to their society, they walked away into the forest to die of exposure. That is what it means to be dignified.

People my age have begun to quietly have "the conversation". Most wish they could lay hands on a bottle of Nembutol (it is the drug vets use to put animals to sleep). Some may actually do so. No one should be denied a painfree, dignified death when they have chosen one in a rational and thoughtful manner.

This "every life is precious" routine is utterly unsustainable for the Baby Boom Generation. We have a ginormous grouping of people more or less my age, and far fewer of us will be cared for at home by our children than our parents' generation were. The costs of our care will skyrocket completely beyond the workers' ability to pay, and the science of geriactric medicine will continue to advance so that life expectancies will burst the 100 year mark.

Which one of you relishes the notion of living 20 or 30 years incontinent, suffering from dementia, semi-comatose, in pain and isolated from your families?