Well, the man is making sense on this point. An enormous % of US medical expenditure is on patients who are dead within 3 months.
Usually if you're that sick, a joint replacement is off the radar.
There's a lot of good things that the current system does for the elderly and I just can't wait till the bluehairs that voted for Obama realize they are paying more and getting less.
“Well, the man is making sense on this point. An enormous % of US medical expenditure is on patients who are dead within 3 months.”
Do you want some government paper pusher figuring out how much longer you’ll have. If I happened to be incredibly wealthy, and wanted to keep doing procedures until the day I died, I should have that right. Teddy Kennedy does...but the rest of us shouldn’t?
I can’t imagine any health insurance company paying for a hip replacement for someone who is terminally ill - even if they have a couple of years left.
The man isn't making sense and if you think so, you should perhaps join another political party or just migrate to DU. Rationing always gets out of hand. That is why nationalized health insurance is to be avoided at all costs. We don't send our elderly and infirm out on the ice floes in America and if you believe we should then F*** you and the horse you rode in on.
You assume the cut off will be the last three months of life.
How about the last fifteen or twenty years of life and limb.
“Well, the man is making sense on this point”
Don’t get too excited. Translating Obamachevese, right wingers die.
Understand, Obama thinks this money is his to take. Just because American’s Spend money in the last 3 months of life, it is their’s to spend.
Why you may ask? Because a lot of this is coming out of cash / savings, The government is only paying a portion of this.
Also, when congress restricted private insurance from charging different rates based on age and setting up term plans like you have for life insurance, this responsibility shifted to the government. a.k.a. ponzi scheme a.k.a. social security/Medicaid/care/.... (age discrimination)
It isn’t right to deny the care now.
Maybe a mute point though, I think US is going to be insolvent unless they cancel all government goodies for 20 years.
Do you have statistics on that? In my experience, the last 3 months usually involve palliative care, hospice and the like, which isn’t all that expensive.
My father in law had kidney, bone and skin cancer (yes, all at the same time). By all accounts, he could be considered “terminal”. The cancer actually destroyed the ball joint in his hip. They replaced it, and he’s still alive 4 years later. As a result, he is able to take care of my mother in law, who just had surgery for a massive brain tumor.
I thank God that he was free to make that decision so he could be here to help her through this time.
Sometimes, you can’t put a monetary price on quality of life.
Right. What good are they anyway...for that matter, what good are you?
But...having dealt with several family deaths as care provider, financial POA, and Fiduciary there were a lot of unnecessary expenses.
Some, indeed much of what was done with my Mom by the doctors was ethically wrong. They would not explain to her or me from 1991-1993 exactly what amyolotrophic lateral sclerosis entailed. When I finally got to a library computer and input the information, it was already too late. Within 6 months she would be bedridden and then dead within weeks. The day she couldn't walk, wasn't a day she needed an ambulance to the hospital and a weeks stay. Some here would claim I would deny her care or even call me cruel. But if the doctors and hospital has been fully honest with us her last few months of life could have been happy.
My Aunt was diagnosed with brain cancer that has metastasized from her stage 4 lungs. All the chemo really did was make her miserable. She lived another 4 months from diagnosis. She got the very best palliative care I could find.
But I still have that nagging feeling that the doctors lied to her about her chances of recovery. They, in my eyes, pushed treatments they knew would not work. They violated their oaths in order to make money with chemo.
There are two sides to this argument. The first side has to be honest doctors. And yes, under government run health care there will have to choices made, there will be cut off points at which palliative care is initiated. In my experience palliative care was avoided and the end of life was unnecessarily brutal and ugly for people who had the damn free market health insurance. Perhaps the doctors will more forthcoming with their prognosis, more honest with what the path will be like, and instead of being out for the almighty ‘cancer’ dollars look to make those patients last few months as comfortable as possible.
To those who read this post and are shocked, appalled or disgusted...you can KMA. No matter what any of you say the health care system in this country is broken. You don't like the sound of that, but until you've seen what I've seen and walked in my shoes you have no words for me. I've seen the greed of the current system hurt patients, rip apart families, and get paid big bucks for doing it.
Will what 0bama is proposing be worse? Sure it will be. And that is why I think we need to suck it up and have an honest conversation about the monopoly that is health care and health insurance.