Kennedy: Let's Ration Health Care (Looks like Mary Jo's Killer is killing Obamacare)

weekly standard ^ | 7/20/09 | William Kristol

[bestintxas]

Newsweek Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman explains that his magazine decided to ask Sen. Ted Kennedy to author a cover piece on health care, because "his absence during this historic debate had been so palpable, yet here was a way for this respected voice on health care to weigh in and be part of the national conversation at a critical moment."

Well, Sen. Kennedy has weighed in, and he may have helped doom Obamacare.

For Kennedy and his co-author, Bob Shrum, have let the rationing cat out of the bag. And that's a problem for President Obama and the Democrats. Make no mistake: Beyond all the other crippling problems with the Democrats' health care proposal--its cost at a time of massive deficits, the tax increases it requires at a time of recession, its preference for government over the private sector and for central planning over free competition--the deepest vulnerability of Obamacare is that it (intentionally) puts us on a course towards government rationing of health care.

Here's the key paragraph from Kennedy and Shrum:

We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days--at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients.

[taxtruth]

You can go 1st Ted.

[DennisR]

“We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days—at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don’t reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we’ll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients.”

What kind of idiotic, insane, out-of-touch pontification is this? These fools actually believe they can solve the problem? They invented it! We need to get rid of Medicare, Social Security, and every other “entitlement.” Personal choice in health care = freedom; government health care = tyranny.

Push back!

http://pushbackuntil.com

[twister881]

Teddy should go into hospice, have a plastic bag tied over his head, and suffocate to death, Mary Jo Kopechne style...that would be real “social justice.”

[Andy'smom]

You’re right, she died when the air in the car ran out, but she wasn’t cremated.

[bboop]

No kidding. We’re putting YOU on an ice floe.

[R0CK3T]

Kennedy and that brain surgeon Shrum have revealed 0bama as the scammer behind the curtain and now people can see the naked fraud that is this plan and the core of this presidency.

This is a Government death care plan, make no mistake.

First it will kill the economy.

Then it will kill ANY freedom of choice individuals once exercised for their health care, then it will kill the flow of the current resources to those who are unfairly obtaining it so that they can be redistributed in a more just and fair manner. Let spell this one out for you - this explicitly means that health care resources will be denied in specified areas so that they can then be freely provided to Illegal Aliens and people who vote for 0bama.

Lastly it will kill old people or those who some federal human bean counter says have been assessed to be somehow less deserving of the rationed resource in favor of some other more “important or deserving” group.

[nikos1121]

I’M A PHYSICIAN. I’ll tell you what will happen. BECAUSE IT’S STARTING TO HAPPEND NOW.

You will have third party reviewers who will come in after the fact and second guess the admission or readmission. They will use criteria that will result in the determination that the patient SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ADMITTED IN THE FIRST PLACE and any tests ordered were unnecessary.

The third party reviewer will take % cut from the so-called money that will be returned or saved.

I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT VERY QUICKLY DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS WILL STOP ORDERING TESTS OR ADMITTING PATIENTS FOR FEAR THAT THEY WILL BE SECOND GUESSED.

I’M WONDERING BTW, WITH OBAMACARE WHO PAYS THE DOCTOR’S MALPRACTICE INSURANCE.

[phoenix07]

I agree with you ....... shut his treatments off. It’s a terminal illness anyway so why prolong the inevitable?

[nikos1121]

QUESTION: Name one thing...(besides collectin taxes) just one thing the gov’t does on the domestic front efficiently and cost effectively.

I offer that TYPICALLY OVER TIME GOV’T RUN BEAURACRACIES FROM THE POST OFFICE TO EDUCATION TO THE TRAINS RESULTS IN INCREASED COSTS AND REDUCTION OF SERVICES.

I heard where the USPS will be stopping Saturday deliveries soon. A stamp is now well over 40 cents. 40 cents!!!!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

There was a story posted from a Cape Cod newspaper here last week that advanced the theory that there were three people in the car; that Ted and another girl were headed for a midnight swim and they didn't know Mary Jo was asleep in the back seat. Evidence of this was Mary Jo's purse was found at the cabin and another woman's belongings were found in the Oldsmobile.
Don't know if I buy this but I suspect it was "placed' by Kennedy fans who want to blot out the heartlessness he exemplified in ignoring Mary Jo as the car went under.

[torchthemummy]

Most of these readmissions are unnecessary...

Notice how "unnecessary" is not defined. The nice even $15 billion "savings" should be a tip off too.

[DumpsterDiver]

Here is the link to Sen. Ted's article:

The Cause of My Life
Inside the fight for universal health care.
www.newsweek.com/id/207406

Printer-friendly version
www.newsweek.com/id/207406/output/print

[fluffdaddy]

“I doubt that Kennedy had much input into this article. From what I have read he’s in such bad shape that writing an article is the last thing he could do.”

Of course Kennedy has never been in fit condition to write anything coherent. He couldn’t even write his own tests and term papers in prep school and college, hence his multiple expulsions from various schools. This article is just as much Kennedy’s work as anything else ever published with his name on it.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

A. When did Kennedy ever write his own speeches or books?
B. The arrival of Shrum in this means ObamaCare has jumped the shark.

[hoosier hick]

Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them.

The real message here is that your doctor and hospital are going to be paid to not re-admit you-- regardless of whether it is the right decision or not. The question is: how long do you wait to determine the payment of the reward? If you wait 90 days, then re-admissions will shift to 100 days (although you would get some "benefit" from the patients that die in the interim)...

hh

[The Great RJ]

Gee Teddy, if you had been treated that way you would be dead. How many hospital re-admissions have you had since your experimental brain surgery? Under Obamacare you first would not have had that brain surgery that has kept you alive...too costly especially with your terminal prognosis. You certainly would not have been re-admitted for those several other hospitalizations and would probably only have gotten “counseling” for hospice care or euthanasia. Of course as a member of Congress you wouldn’t be under the same plan as the rest of us. Hypocrite!

[skepsel]

In regards to MJ Kopechne, they should have done a Duke of Clarence on this lecherous old reprobate decades ago, perhaps with a barrel of scotch, rather than a butt of Malmsey wine.

(In Shakespeare’s Richard III, George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence is drowned in a vat of wine)

[palmer]

We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days--at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients.

Both sides barking up the wrong tree here. Part of the problem is the hospitals and medical profession itself which has nothing to offer but "tests and treatments". But the bigger problem is medicare which has for years eroded the quality of care by chronically underpaying for effective services (e.g. home health care) and expanding bureaucracy for doctors and patients to the point of insanity.

[CaptainAmiigaf]

I have to ask. If the decision making process is removed from the responsibility of the DOCTOR, and placed in the hands of a government facilitator, how could the DOCTOR be sued for the results of decision he DID NOT MAKE?
If a DOCTOR, on the stand, repeatedly states that he did NOT agree with the government decision maker, and the government decisions are what killed the patient, how would the DOCTOR be held responsible?
If I was a tort lawyer, I’d be terrified at the idea of having the government “health care” REMOVE my one and only target.

[Iron Munro]

Kennedy Kare - Doing Business Since 1969.