Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars?If Rush Limbaugh told that joke, just think how up in arms the media would be. They'd accuse him of committing an anti-feminist thought crime.
Now, we enter a new paradigm: 'rats shifting their courtships, deciding its no longer to their vote-buying advantage to court the elderly. With the future of social security in doubt, and health care spending unsustainable, the money is better spent on buying younger folks votes. So, while this occurs, the inverse will lead: not only not court the elderly vote, but diminish it as well.
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another.Health care is scarce because the government is already massively involved in it and it will become more scarce -- dramatically more scarce -- as the government becomes more massively involved in it.
Is telecommunications scarce?
Just think if the US Government was the "single payer" for all telecommunications services? Just think how scarce they would be?
You want call-waiting on your phone? You're willing to deprive someone else of dial-tone just so you can have call-waiting?
And just think of how selfish texting would be.
No. The fact is, if the government ran telecommunications we'd all still be connecting through switch-board operators.
Whatever production the government is involved in, that product becomes scarce.
All these years the left has been telling us health care is a RIGHT, and now Singer is telling us health care needs to be rationed for our good.
How whack is that?
Would Obama ration trasplants? you bet.
President Obama has said plainly that America’s health care system is broken.And you take him at his WORD?
Based on his BACKGROUND in the field?
Based on his EXPERIENCE?
Premature babies will be ones of the first to be impacted by this administration, the elderly, who were for the past
50 years scared by the Democrats, that the Republicans would be taking away their health care, will be next.
first if Peter Singer is on your side. YOU are the nutcase.
If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs...Aha! I was wondering when we would get to the evil pharmaceutical companies.
Let's see...
How many new drugs are developed in England, Canada, France or any of the other socialist-medicine countries?
I thought so: ZERO.
Well, President Zero wants us to join those countries in producing ZERO new drugs in the future and Maximum Cheerleader and DeathMerchant Singer is leading the charge!
Hip hip hooray! Death is on the way!
I will ration my own health care, not someone else's and I don't want someone else rationing mine.
It seems strange that the health insurance companies can make a profit by providing whatever the patient needs to stay alive, but OBAMA and the government he leads can NOT provide what the patient needs Which tells us that the government should stay out of the health care business.
Obama lied when he told us that we can choose our own doctor and our own health insurance company. What he DIDN’T tell us is that in his DeathCare bill we must choose which doctor and health insurance company the government controls. In other words, we have no choice but to accept government controlled health care.
But the British media leapt on the theme of penny-pinching bureaucrats sentencing sick people to death.And we're going to make sure that no media in America makes THAT mistake, right?
President Zero already has 95% of the media in his pocket and the other 5% is going to be heavily REGULATED.
If you oppose health care rationing you're a HATER, right Singer?
If you oppose health care rationing you're involved in HATE SPEECH, right Singer?
If you oppose health care rationing you're guilty of a HATE CRIME, right Singer?
Cheers!
In Britain, everyone has health insurance.
In Britain, everyone waits in line for health care.
In Britain, the people are finally waking up to how horrible their health care is.
In Britain, after years of public silence on the subject, people are finally starting to say: THIS SUCKS!
There is a role for insurance that is simply insurance against risks that the insured is not willing to pay for himself.
The Fair Tax folks are missing the opportunity to have a public discussion that we sorely need: at what level of need does a citizen deserve help from the rest of us and at what level should it be the duty of a citizen to pay their own bills? This includes food, clothing, shelter and yes, medical costs.
We have allowed government to define a level of health care that raises costs. I don't mind paying for lifesaving care for the indigent, but paying for sex change operations for prisoners? We have stretched and expanded what is considered medically necessary to include treatments for the indigent that almost insult the taxpayer.
We have also allowed government to force insurance companies to cover conditions such as mental health that only raise costs for the rest of us. One way to cut insurance costs is to allow companies to sell stripped down plans across state lines. Another way to lower costs is to require hospitals to give their best price to patients who will pay for their bill in full in cash.
The author doesn’t get it.
My health insurance premiums cover MY health insurance which is a contractual agreement between myself and my insurance company.
The competitive for profit insurance model ensures that group risk rates are accurately spread out among all members and that the necessary premiums will take into account the “outlier diagnoses/treatments.” This model is best for all as the person who gets really sick and needs special long term care pays a lower premium relative to the care they receive while the remaining healthy members pay a minimally higher premium. Everyone that pays premiums gets coverage. This works because the very sick person’s use has already been factored into the premiums everyone pays.
Add to this the competition element between insurers, and this has two interesting effects. First, it encourages more accurate risk health assessments across the represented groups. Second, the competition results in lower premiums for the individual as those risk models are further refined. Competition also allows the insureds to choose which insurer best fits their needs while the providers also can choose which insurer pays them the highest UCR and whether or not to accept members of that plan.
A forced single payer health care system is not a health care plan at all. It’s simply additional taxation without representation and yet another example that the Left is only pro-choice when it comes to abortion.
I wish Ted Kennedy would take that advice and save the taxpayers a lot of money by not having to extending his worthless life for an extra few months. Ted, do your country a favor - take the assisted suicide option. Nazi Pelosi is pushing 70 years old and her days are numbered. Maybe you can push for a group discount!
Governments implicitly place a dollar value on a human life when they decide how much is to be spent on health care programs and how much on other public goods that are not directed toward saving lives.Which is another reason to get the government out of all such decisions... or as many such decisions as we possibly can.
"Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?"
Why is Ted Kennedy getting any treatment right now??