Posted on 08/11/2009 5:29:04 AM PDT by Billg64
On O'Rielly Factor 8/10/09 a story was put forward about a lady that had cervical cancer and was denied the cancer drugs by the state (they have universal healthcare) and she was told tehy would pay for the drugs that would terminate her life.
if anyone has the links for reference on this story (other than O'Rielly), it would be a great story to plaster all over the net and local news organizations. In the end the "evil" drug companies donated teh drugs to her for what was the rest of her existence.
Who knows how much time the quest for life saving drugs took off of her life. It came down to budgeting. Very sad and coming soon to a life near yours.
obama care is starting early.
I believe Levin touched on this case in Liberty and Tyranny. I am slowly digesting his book so I haven’t gotten to that yet if it’s in there.
Well why is it my duty to pay for her drugs, be it suicide or treatment?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
I posted this story on several forums over the weekend. I’ll try to find the link.
Here is an article from KVAL talking about the incident.
In England, the socialized healthcare rationing agency, National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness (NICE) forbids pap smears for women under age 25 because they are too expensive, Pap smears are the primary method for detecting cervical cancer.
http://pursuingholiness.com/2008/06/nhs-refuses-pap-smears-young-women-now-dying-of-cervical-cancer/
His producer(s) could hand him a card saying Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still alive and he'd read it on air.
View the Barbara Wagner Video Here
The powerful story of Barbara Wagner demonstrates why this discussion is of utmost importance. When Barbara’s lung cancer reappeared during the spring of 2008 her oncologist recommended aggressive treatment with Tarceva, a new chemotherapy. However, Oregon’s state run health plan denied the potentially life altering drug because they did not feel it was "cost-effective." Instead, the State plan offered to pay for either hospice care or physician-assisted suicide.
In stunned disbelief you may ask, "How can this be? This happens in Europe. I’ve heard stories of Britain’s National Health Service delaying intervention until the patient dies or reports of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands. But in America?"
The answer is simple. Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."
In 1994 Barbara’s state established the Oregon Health Plan to give its working poor access to basic healthcare while limiting costs by "prioritizing care." In 1997 Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide to offer "death with dignity" to patients who chose to die without further medical treatment. In the end, the State secured the power to ration healthcare in order to control its financial risk, even if that meant replacing a patient’s chance to live with the choice of how to die.
When queried about withholding Barbara’s treatment, Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesman for Oregon’s Division of Medical Assistance Programs, explained the policy this way, "We can't cover everything for everyone. Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."
Dr. Som Saha, chairman of the commission that sets policy for the Oregon Health Plan, echoed Shaffer, "If we invest thousands and thousands of dollars in one person's days to weeks, we are taking away those dollars from someone [else]."
Twice Barbara appealed the ruling. Twice Oregon denied her treatment.
Government compassion sounds so noble when first introduced. In fact, this well-intentioned motive fueled the creation of the State-sponsored health plan that now denied Barbara’s treatment. As "we the people" become more and more reliant on the government, inch by precious inch, liberty slips away. Citizens become powerless in dependency. Seduced by sweet words of compassion, the welfare of the State silently usurps the wellbeing of the individual citizen. Secure in the belief that government will care for them, many Americans slumber in complacency until one day, "we the people" awake to find liberty lost.
I am sure I recall BOR saying she smoked.
You are correct (as I recall) that she was offered the drug to kill her ($50), while the drug that might save her cost ($40,000).
Bottom line it was economics.
BTW, the state did not give her the drug to help fight the cancer, she was given the drug by a Pharmaceutical Company.
Here you go: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=334799904390510 (also) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1
Nor that BOR has cemented himself as an Obama kiss-A@@, I’m surprised he would even cover a story like this.
“they have universal healthcare”
Not even close! The Oregon Health Plan covers only a small number of those in need. This should serve as a warning against the Federal plan. This only shows that even those who are covered, really aren’t.
The one word that really burns my behind to no end is "fair" or "fairness". "Fair" or "fairness" implies that at least two parties are in some sort of relationship and that each party is expected to act equitably to the other. In political terms, high income are expected to forfeit a larger share of their income and receive no benefit discernible additional benefit. I suggest that fairness would dictate that each taxpayer would receive one vote for each dollar paid in income taxes.
Government run health care is idiotic. It’s proponents don’t seem to have any arguments in its favor.
Let’s start at the most basic philosophic question about rationing: do we believe that some people should have better access to health care than others, based on the personal resources available to them?
1) My sense is that majority of posters here believe that they should have the right to purchase all the health care they can afford.
The logical consequence of that is a system in which some people will receive more and better health care than others - that is, a system which rations healthcare on the basis of personal resources (which by the way include intelligence, access to information, family support system and a lot of other factors in addition to financial circumstances).
In such a system a primary role of government is to ensure that the insurance companies at a minimum play by their own rules: that when you buy insurance it is possible for a typical purchaser to understand what they are buying and that the insurance company provides the services for which the purchaser is paying. (As a practical matter pure market forces can’t provide this function because the disparity of power between the insurer and insured is too great. If the insurance company cancels a policy for an invalid reason they may have have a lawsuit, but you may have a funeral).
2) But it is also my sense that many posters here are extremely disturbed - as for example in this case - by the fact of such rationing when it actually happens.
If you wish to prevent such rationing from occurring (or control how rationing is performed) there has to be public provision of health care to people who lack the resources to buy it (this could be anything from a single-payer system to a system of subsidized individual purchase of private insurance).
In this situation a primary role of government is to reflect the choices of voters in constructing rules to control how rationing is performed, irrespective of whether those rules are administered by the government or by private insurers.
Now, there is no reason why you can’t combine the two objectives and attempt to balance these concerns - in fact our current system does this, however it does it in a way that makes it difficult to really understand both the rules and the costs.
For example one possible solution to the rationing of end-of-life care would be to require the purchase of private insurance covering curative medical care up to some reasonable point (say, a life expectancy of six months) and palliative care beyond that point, and allow individuals to purchase additional private insurance to provide for treatments likely to provide short additional extensions of life at high cost.
(If you don’t want to require people to buy insurance, that’s fine - just understand that unless you want to deny care, taxpayers are going to pick up the tab, either directly in the form of increased taxes, or the form of increased health care premiums due to “cost shifting”).
There many such possible solutions, my point is that whatever solution we adopt should make such “rationing decisions” explicit and transparent in contrast to the current system, where there are as many different sets of rationing rules as there are insurers and it’s very, very difficult to determine what the rules are, or determine in advance exactly how they will be applied.
But this requires that voters and their representatives squarely face the reality of rationing, which is something that appears majority of voters are trying very hard not to do.
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