Hey - check these lesson plans for the kiddies that will be overseeing our "care" someday.
Posted on 02/25/2011 2:26:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Hey - check these lesson plans for the kiddies that will be overseeing our "care" someday.
and wealth.
If they want to sell organs, just make it legal and be done with it.
With so many young people being killed in the third world, just pay for harvesting organs {of course under UN rules and supervision so no one would take advantage} then the supply problem would be solved.
True, but if it’s a private health insurance company making the decision, you always have the choice to go with a different company - shop around. If it’s the government making the decision, the government essentially has a monopoly. The only alternative then is to seek treatment outside the country.
Sounds like “The Complete Lives System” by Rahm’s brother, Dr. Ezekial Emanuel.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/08/inconvenient-truth-about-death-panel.html
a.k.a. rationing or “death panels”
If the 76 year old had the choice to make - I’ll bet
he would prefer it went to the 27 year old.
One Hundred years from now, everyone participating in this thread will be dead, and most of our children will be dead as well.
You have a point, and (needless to say) I am not for Obama’s idea, however the point I was striving to make was essentially that when it comes to medical decisions, they are inately a zero-sum game. Furthermore, there are committees (be they insurance or the hospital board) that make critical decisions based on a set of factors that share an aspect of either optimized costs, or highest probability of (again optimized) efficacy. For instance, look at Steve Jobs - he had to go outside the country to seek treatment (that was not approved in the US since it is experimental ...another word for expensive since it works). Furthermore, when he came back the process he used to get a liver transplant (which is generally frowned upon for a person afflicted with pancreatic ailment) necessitated him going to another state (I believe from California to Georgia). Already, the alternative for many is to get out of the country ...if they have the money they can get good care, and if they do not it’s either tough beans or risking at a ‘lower cost’ nation (like India, Mexico or South Africa, where some hospitals can be totally 100% world class, but if you make the wrong hospital selection you can end up in a place that will either saddle you with antibiotic-resistant bugs-from-hell, or have some ‘doctor’ do what may very well be vivisection on you). Obviously government doing it makes it worse by wholesome magnitudes, but the point I was trying to make is that ‘death panels’ have been with us for a long time. Also, some of them, particularly the insurance ones, are manned by daemons from the veritable pits of gehenna! Some of the decisions they can make are simply inhuman (although, using cold logic, I can see why they make them. Again, efficacy and optimized cost. The only problem is that it would suck to be a family member being told a loved one cannot get a certain medication that has already posted great results, but that it is ‘experimental.’ Look at Steve Jobs ...even if he, God forbid, passed away today, he has already beaten a lot of records for his type of cancer. Those ‘experimental’ treatments he had in Europe really made a difference, and the only reason he is alive today is because he has the money to make it so. Cap his insurance at 100,000 and he would have passed away a couple years ago).
Hmmmm,
No one has mentioned Charlie Sheen, yet.
He needs something.
I get what you are saying and I agree with you. My only point is that if the government is the one making the decision, then you really have no choices or options. Federal and state governments already meddle in these decisions, as you described. The question is not do these panels exist, but rather should the government (state or federal) be the ones making these kinds of decisions, when government decisions are inherently political.
Casey needed a liver transplant. On June 12, 1993, doctors discovered that his defective liver has weakened his heart to the point where he would need both a liver and heart transplant, and need it quickly.
By Casey's good fortune, within HOURS of this determination a young murder victim was found in PA who was a tissue match for the good Democrat governor, and the transplant was performed.
After hearing of this incident, I removed the "organ donor" flag from my driver's license at next renewal.
Sure, but elderly Dem pols will be at the top of the list, of course.
And fortunately people seldom do. Wouldn't he need like a 6-pack of kidneys?
After hearing of this incident, I removed the "organ donor" flag from my driver's license at next renewal.
Great good fortune for Casey. Just a strange coincidence, I'm sure. (smirk)
I'm busy using up my all of organs. There won't be anything left to donate.
Should have read:
I'm busy using up my all of my organs. There won't be anything left to donate.
Everyone needs an editor.
These people are proposing a change in policy, which is a harbinger of those Death Panels which supposedly will not exist.
We have them now. It’s just normally not the govt thugs who decide, yet.
Shouldn’t this be expanded to fetuses being considered as more valuable than mothers? No more of the supposed necessary late-term abortions are needed then! Abort the old moms instead! /sarc
This is not a 'death panel', it's a failure to purchase a good enough insurance policy. The insurance company isn't saying you can't have it, but that they won't pay for it. And they don't pay for it because they can't afford it because you can't afford to pay the necessary risk premium today to cover possible expensive treatments invented tomorrow.
I got the 'we won't pay' answer from my insurance company, and my doc wasn't willing to fight it. So I pay for the 'experimental' protocol myself.
A problem with some 'single-payer' systems is that they don't allow you to pay for other options, or punish you if you do.
A subtler form of death panels are those that say that some new drug isn't allowed because it's too pricey. The drug might not even get to the experimental stage.
Single-payer government insurance also picks your pocket pretty well, so you can't afford any other option. They kill current $10,000 'gold-plated' policies (except for unions), and replace it with a $10,000 death panel policy.
The problem with talking about scarcity in medical services is that it is usually a temporary thing. When folks like Steve Jobs bid up the price, other suppliers enter the market and drive the price down. But if what Steve Jobs goes overseas to get is outlawed here, the rest of us never get the benefit of the rich folks being the willing guinea pigs.
I’d bet this is in light of ObamaCare.
However, the whole system stinks.
As Walt Williams and/or Tom Sowell said, and I think Stossel, there is no reason organs shouldn’t be allowed to be freely traded instead of treated like some sacred cow. Allow people to sell and buy them and there would likely be more than the “scarce” there are now.
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