ML/NJ
I watched it and I AGREE with the part where the former GAO head, David Walker, said healthcare is the only part of the US economy that can bankrupt it. What bothered me about the piece, other than its pandering, was the fact that death panels and pulling the plug on old people was presented as the only answer to stopping our skyrocketing healthcare costs. Statistics actually show passing Obamacare will make costs go UP because more terminally ill people (mostly drug abusers and the destitute) will be eligible for the “public option.” The McCain/John Mackey plan of allowing competition across state lines for healthcare and rewarding good healthcare consumers with lower coverage rates wasn’t even mentioned. In reality, allowing companies to compete for the best, most healthy and physically fit customers is the ONLY thing that can save our healthcare system.
I think I’d rather have a real death panel.
I though that the part about the 93 year old getting the defib was an apparent planted statement to defend a specific charge against Obama.
Remember back, I think it was during the campaign, when this woman stood up in some kind of a town hall and told this story about her mother who had gone on and gotten a pacemaker at 95, and then had gone on to have 10 more good, active years?
That seemed to me to be the point of the 93 year old defib patient...right after that spot, Dr. Death starts advocating for what I can only describe as “zero tolerance” when it comes to such operations on people of a certain, yet undefined, age. He specifically said that he wished they could just give the blanket statement that they didnt do “this proceedure” for someone of that age, without taking quality of life, or level of activity into question. I couldn’t help thinking about zero tolerance policies in schools, wherein if there is a fight, the principal doesn’t want to have to deal with who started it, or why, but rather just suspends both kids because fighting is “bad”.
This to me represents a step beyond a death panel; its more of a mandatory age limit. Logans run here we come. I have to believe that its because with the massive push for cradle to grave government dependance, they’ve run the numbers and figured out that one way to keep costs down is to move up the finish line as much as they can. The glory days of social security were back when very few people lived to collect more than a few years worth of checks. Is it so far fetched to believe that rather than admit the failure of the plan, they would rather just take us back to the good old days when there weren’t that many old people around?