[Brilliant]

You can expect this and worse from socialized medicine. Why play this game only with smokers? We can make all kinds of moral judgments about who should be able to get surgery.

[Radix]

Let them get behind the illegal aliens for the "free" health care.

[Calpernia]

ping

[explodingspleen]

One word: AIDS.

[libertarian27]

Running out the door right now

Ping for Later

This game will not end with Smokers, you are so right Brilliant.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Why not just kill everyone over 70? < /S >

[johnny7]

How about queers... the retarded... gypsies?

[Billthedrill]

Why play this game only with smokers?

Why indeed? In Joe Haldeman's Forever War the government simply stopped providing medical services when someone hit the age of 70. "That's enough life for you."

It has been said before but it bears repeating - when medicine is practiced for money the practitioner has a motive to treat. When medicine is treated as a fixed quantity and rationed out the practitioner has a motive not to treat. Which system really serves the patient's best interest?

[traditional1]

I have no problem with it. However, if we get to the socialized medical care (beyond the already-present medicare and medicaid that smokers are paying for), AND, if smokers are denied care, then a mega-lawsuit will be coming by smokers for paying for services UNAVAILABLE to them, and violation of "equal protection" of the Constitution.

If we can give medical care for AIDS, to faggots who CHOOSE THEIR lifestyle, then smokers being denied care are clearly being discriminated against.

Personally, I don't mind the burden that mothers of child-bearing age are placing on medical insurance premiums, thereby I am paying for their leaning on the system, too, but if we are going to single out smokers as NON-COVERED, then we are having an unfairness issue.

[Diverdogz]

I'm suprised smokers even want to have surgery since they obviously don't give a rip about their health.

[proudofthesouth]

Just wait. Socialized medicine will also include the old and elderly in this.

[Dolphy]

Why play this game only with smokers?

The game is already played. I have seen emergency room specialists ration out their time based on the age of patient. We are heading for the time where only the rich will be able to exclude themselves from some manual or fee schedule that determines who has the "right" to certain care or procedures.

[Charlespg]

You can expect this and worse from socialized medicine. Why play this game only with smokers? We can make all kinds of moral judgments about who should be able to get surgery.

DING DING DING DING we have a winner
lets see what happens when somebody says we shouldn't treat aids patients because ....

[CremeSaver]

If they are going to do this, than they had better outlaw tobacco first.

[BigCinBigD]

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

This kind of issue goes to heart of conservatism and freedom.

When government controls the provisioning of services like health care and education, then one finds the moral worldview of the political party most closely involved in controlling these services (i.e., usually the Rats) influencing the way government provides these services, from imposing conditions on access to medical services to perverting the educational curriculum to support that party's standing in the minds of students.

[Zack Nguyen]

Frankly, this is the sort of thing that happens when you make a good public. When everyone has to pay taxes for socialized medicine whether they like it or not, everyone gets a say on your health care.

[fat city]

In a secular society whose gods are Health and Longevity, doctors arethe high holy priests who determine cannon and doctorine (sorry, couldn't resist).

[trumandogz]

Banning surgical procedures for smokers is blatant discrimination against the poor, uneducated and persons with addictive personalities all of which tend to be smokers.

[Publius6961]

We can make all kinds of moral judgments about who should be able to get surgery.

Exactly!
But it would be a waste of time.

I would rather simply make the similarly insane assertion that doctors who make mistakes and the patient dies as a result, they should be executed.
Before they kill again.

[HangnJudge]

There is a legitimate argument here

There is a significant statistical position
on coronary bypass grafts
that the 1 year and further mortality rates
may not be different for smokers who get
surgery and those who do not

Why induce the suffering, trauma, and perioperative morbidity
of a thoracotomy on those who have chosen to continue to smoke
if their aggregate mortality risks
are not modified by the procedure?

If one is bound by oath to "Not Harm"
and one believes they are inducing suffering without benefit
I can see and understand their position

http://jama.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/290/1/86
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10987614&dopt=Abstract