Posted on 09/11/2009 6:40:23 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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Will seniors ever acquiesce to what Sarah Palin referred to as “death panels”? As our Cato colleague Will Wilkinson points out, that pejorative term is an inappropriate description of a necessary mechanism.
Medicare’s funding is drying up. According to Medicare’s trustees, the Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) trust fund will be exhausted by 2017. And Medicare Parts B and D (supplementary medical insurance and the Medicare prescription-drug plans) are growing at breakneck speeds and imposing a heavy drain on federal general revenues — which provide more than three-quarters of their funding. A key part of the solution is to rationalize the U.S. health-care system to reduce cost growth. But that would mean tighter funding constraints on Medicare.
Before Medicare was introduced, medicial decisions during seniors’ last few months were made in the context of family finances. Perceiving the financial burden on their offspring, many parents and grandparents chose to forgo expensive life-extending procedures and treatments. Public funding has changed that calculus; the costs are no longer a burden on “my children and grandchildren,” but on more nebulous and distant “taxpayers and younger generations.” But we cannot expect the government to avoid making difficult decisions.
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Imposing tighter Medicare spending rules will involve establishing funding criteria on a wide variety of treatments and procedures. In each case, the decision must account for the cost and the potential for delivering real health benefits. Is a $30,000 procedure that purchases a 20 percent chance of extending by three months the lifespan of a diabetic 80-year-old worthwhile? Perhaps not. If the same procedure increases survival by two years on average for an otherwise healthy 60-year-old, does it justify public funding? Most Americans would say yes. Even Ted Kennedy’s ideal of “a uniform health-care system for all” cannot escape these sorts of discriminatory choices.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Just give me everything I paid into SS/Medicare since 1972 with no interest and I’ll call it even. I still have time to double it on my own before retiring.
Interesting. The piece might have been called “In Defense of Death Panels.” We are so screwed. Entitlements are killing us.
The inherent problem with government provided anything. It gives government control. This is why giving government more control over more people’s health care is a terrible idea.
Problem here is that Medicare is a forced ‘entitlement’ and there was a promise of complete services to all those that have paid in.
This is a real problem, but I in no way believe there should be a government rationing program. I say set an age cut off..say 35 years old people and younger, and say that their service will include a cap above the age of 70. Services will not be cut off, but a co-pay of sorts will be required above a certain dollar amount. If you spend $250,000 (adjusted for inflation), above that you must pay 10% or 15%, or something of the sort. That makes people put some of their own money or family money in above a certain level of spending. It would force families to make the right overall decisions and not just dump tax payer money into it because it is just a freebie.
This presupposes those same people also don't have private insurance for which they have co-pay provisions or are left with residual expenses not covered by Medicare. It also presupposes cost cutting measures through the private sector can't help defray the cost of healthcare. It also ignores the fact that fewer physicians are willing to participate in the Medicare program because it doesn't cover their costs, therefore putting those additional expenses on the backs of the elderly.
Life is sacred. The medical community in our country takes the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. Who are we to say anyone doesn't deserve to live? Instead of railing about the "expense" our elderly place on us (and I'm one of them), perhaps we should address those costs in private sector mindset.
There need not be death panels. If the cost is put into the hands of people, they will always make the right decision.
Outside of that everything else stayed the same.
Implementation of Hillarycare would have meant that even the rich could not save themselves from cancer.
Obamacare is dramatically improved over the brutality that'd been forced on us by Hillarycare ~ but it seeks to regularize the "end of life" thing ~ so, yeah, you can go get your cancer treatments but you will need to hear the salespitch from the ghouls.
Eventually the ghouls get in charge of things and your heirs and assigns are the only ones who need to hear the salespitch ~ and then they pull the plug ~ just like in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and some other "advanced" industrial nations.
BTW, announcement on the news yesterday that they may have breast cancer down to a single treatment given one time.
So that's not on the table anymore! But there are plenty of other cancers you can develop so no one is going to be deprived.
It hasn't.
It's inherent in the plan for government control of health care. Bureaucrats WILL be deciding that some classes of people do not warrant further care, other than pain pills. The young and sick, the old and sick, and others. It's undeniable.
Some elderly are simply crotchety ~ nasty even ~ which is a good reason to not allow anyone over 55 to be a judge.
Health care reform is a discussion which requires a cool head and a willingness to make some tough decisions in order to create a fair, efficient and effective marketplace. This article helps frame up some of the basic issues.
The article addresses one of the fundamental and inescapable realities of healthcare economics. This type of discussion, scary, emotion-laden and unnerving as it is, should be front and center in the current policy debate. The issue is not that their are “death panels” but that (a) the current adminsitration denies that there are death panels, (b) there are no viable mechanisms for opting out of a death panel process that will staffed with goverment or insurance company bureaucrats and (c) the death panels will be used to ex post facto silently void existing insurance contracts.
Just as life insurance companies exclude suicide, a true health insurance policy should be based on the actuarial risks and should exclude treatments for illnesses that are due to an individual’s discretionary behavior. The single payer system completely distorts the realities of what should be considered as part of a health insurance contract. Indeed all single payer systems are not insurance programs in any meaningful way.
If you or I had a health insurance company we certainly would charge a 40 year old smoker significantly more than a 40 year old non-smoker and we might exclude coverage for certain types of smoking related diseases. We would charge someone who drinks more than someone who does not. It may not seem fair, but not to do so implicitly transfers the cost of the known high risk onto the low risk individual. The market would incent the creation of the “Never smoked, alcohol free Insurance company”. We could offer much lower premiums - assuming we could find enough customers.
Under circumstances the government may mandate that we cannot consider certain risk factors say those outside an individuals control such as a genetic predisposition to coronary disease or cancer but too many limitations and you soon do not have an insurance contract.
Historically government programs(as is true for any private or public monopoly or monopsony) are dramatically less efficient, more arbitrary, more fraud-riven and less innovative. Their purposes are quickly corrupted and they become mechanisms for exploiting those who are coerced into paying for a corrupt process. For example, unemployment insurance, disability insurance and workers compensation all have high rates of fraud with government managed programs having the highest rates of fraud.
There is plenty of room for health care reform. Alas there is even more room for introducing a more inefficient, more corrupt and less effective process.
Bears repeating: private pay or private charity. Then nobody has to submit to government decision-making.
Health Canada will treat a skiier's broken leg, but won't pay for a scuba diver's hyperbaric treatment for decompression sickness.
Well, I'd change your lots of conservatives to just lots of Americans; but otherwise I agree.
In fact, the childish wishes of too many Americans for the government to save them form the hard facts about life and money is what got us into this mess. Of course, it is mostly the government's fault for selling the lie so massively and for so long.
But the American people also are to blame. When a con man tries to sell you something, you have to face the truth, no matter how gut-wrenching it is.
As a limited good, faced with an unlimited demand, health care is going to be rationed. The question is by whom.
Most Americans would rather let someone else make that decision than face it on their own.
That's a lack of national character, brought on by many years of government nanny statism.
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