Posted on 06/17/2003 5:13:30 PM PDT by Uncle Bill
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:49:12 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Ted Kennedy has spent his career attempting to nationalize the American health care system. So maybe Republicans should take a hint when the Democrat from Massachusetts says he is delighted with the emerging GOP plans to "reform" Medicare.
As for taxpayers, they should be petrified. What began as a worthy attempt by President Bush to reform the broken retiree health system is fast becoming in Congress little more than a giant new entitlement. Republicans are compromising with themselves so fast that we're beginning to wonder what the point of having a GOP majority really is.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
People should be focused on getting as much out of life, not merely in living as long as possible. In an effort to cheat the Reaper for a few months or years, people give up everything that made life worth living in the first place. Too much of modern medical technology has become like unicorn's blood; it extends life, for awhile, but at great cost. Unfortunately, people have been brainwashed into believing that it is wrong to greet the Reaper even when the time has come for his arrival. [nb: Doctor assisted suicide wouldn't be the issue it is today if people weren't so often kept alive beyond their time.]
I'm totally against a Medicare Prescription scheme. I was home one day last wk. and saw C-Span's coverage of a hearing on the subject. It appeared to me thet Scully, the CBO et al had not many answers re cost to Medicare beneficiaries or what it would do to elderly Medicare recipients who have drug coverage through employer retirement sponsored plans.
This slop is always spun as something for the "old people", like hey, would you like to have your grandma eating dog food so that she can have her heart medicine? What a crock!
Well, what about all those who are covered under Medicare at age 30 or 40 because they're disabled. I often wonder just how much of the SS/Medicare program is covering those 62 and 65 and how much of the budget covers all the rest.
I'd like to see a pie chart of expenditure allocations ie elderly vs all others.
Somewhere, our society has lost sight of an important and fundamental truth: human beings are not designed to be immortal. People cling so strongly to continued biological existence that they forget that people are supposed to wear out and die.
Although Medicare has all sorts of problems that stem from its being a form of socialized medicine, a much bigger problem is that it promotes the notion that people should be kept biologicially alive for as long as possible, regardless of whether this is good for anyone's quality of life.
What's particularly ironic about Medicare as a socialistic program is that violates a basic principle of most such programs. Under the normal socialistic model, when the government takes money from one person and gives it to someone else, the money provides more improvement to the second person's quality of life than it would have provided to the first's. Medicare spending, however, is often the opposite: much of the spending provides little or no improvement to the quality of life of its recipients, and yet could have provided much to the people from whom it was taken.
Unfortunately, I don't know how society can return to a healthy attitude toward death. Such a return, however, is the only way I can see excaping major disaster.
Old people, like everyone else, are all going to die. When did we, as a society go from trying to have people get as much as possible out of life, to trying to maximize the duration without regard for quality?
July 1, 1965.
No, it's an issue because people have displaced moral authority onto doctors, and they want the symbolic approval.
Anyone can still kill themselves-or their relatives can do it. Doctors (most of us) don't know any more about killing that people's brothers-in-law do, maybe less.
Why then the demand that a doctor do the deed?
This is now a given, as there is no will to confront the realities.
Question is, how to ride out the upheaval?
There is such poor reimbursement and so many non-paying that those with insurance will stagger and fall under the burden. The upper-incomes will shortly find insurance at first unaffordable--then unavailable. Who cares about one more Medicare benefit, really? I find it hard to get excited when ERs are groaning under the burden of treating a flood of illegals.
But the die was cast with OBRA when the free ER care was written into law with no means to pay for it.
They say the law is a teacher, and what this teaches is that emergency medical services are unlimited in supply and without cost, and that you have a right to them.
The United States is a democratic republic-who can doubt that this travesty of a law was passed because it reflects the deeply held beliefs of the people?
In any event, the die is cast-it is taking some time for people to figure out if they game the system that everything is free, because the people are more honest than their masters. But slowly, they are getting the drift that if you use the ER in just the correct way and don't pay any health care bills that you happen to get, it's all free.
And, let's face it-that's what they want and what they believe-that it should be free.
So, the collapse of our no-longer great health care institutions is assured. Whether that comes in the form of nationalization or outright collapse is uncertain, but the clock is running very fast now.
But here's the new twist, and why I went searching for that thread started last November about upper-incomes going w/o health insurance. The private insurance companies are now just not paying. You stay healthy most of your life, pay huge premiums, get a plain-vanilla surgery treated in conventional fashion--and get socked with a staggering bill (because so much other than your own individual care is part of that bill). The insurance company delays an delays, and refuses to pay .
IOW, those who have paid for insurance and think they are insured may well not be.
The insured are the next to fall.
Why should seniors vote Republican? Having gotten their “carrot” from the Republicans, they’ll likely vote Democrat and get their ice cream.
It is good that you noticed; many are realizing this: Bush is serving Clinton’s third term, having kept many of Clinton’s appointees. It is obvious that both Democrats and Republicans believe in Big Government.
I am all in favor of scraping Medicare and other "entitlement programs" to create some sort of catastrophic health insurance program.
The point is to not create a new program on top of th others, but to create a new program. period.
Because just what is the point of our goverenment. We pay taxes that go to programs and countries that I wish did not exist. We pay celebreties to not raise mohair sheep...I mean come on.
Perhaps the Catastrophic Health Insurance Program could be a public/private venture. Lots of details to be debated.
when health insurance premiums are higher than house and car payments, something is wrong. In our csae we can't even get health insurance, too old and one time smoker.
A note to mryddin, my friend was refused emergency treatment in Yuma, after a 150 mile trip to Tucson, she is alive today.
Socialized Medicine Does Not Work - Rush Limbaugh
"In every nation with socialized medicine, health care is on par with your average Department of Motor Vehicles here in the United States."
Vote Bush, vote socialism
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