Posted on 08/10/2009 4:12:10 PM PDT by FrdmLvr
All the "best people" like Peter Singer, the bioethics professor from Princton who, a few short years ago, was advocating POST-NATAL ABORTIONS! praise Obama's Shovel-Ready Healthcare! Please read his article.
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
The costs of the current health care system are becoming increasingly clear, and public sentiment for a more systematic approach may be growing. We’d like to know what you think about the prospect of rationing.
If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There is no difference between Peter Singer and Dr. Mengele. No difference whatsoever.
Unfortunately you point out exactly why government-run programs squeeze out private insurance. If I run a company, and pay higher premiums for a higher level of care— why should I continue? Cancel the insurance and let the government cover them.
These discussions also gloss over the data-gathering and learning that goes on with treatment programs. “Healthcare reform” will greatly slow progress in treatment protocols and new drug development....
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False. Rationing is an alternative to *prices* as a means of allocating a scarce resource. Those who support *pricing* precisely reject *rationing*. If you want to pay for it, the sky's the limit. But pay for it honestly, because you want it and it is important enough for you, whether as a feature of a particular plan or paid out of pocket. This is precisely what private health care allows, while socialized medicine cannot accomplish it.
Rationing makes men mortal enemies, pricing makes men free agents in charge of their own priorities. Precisely that distinction, the socialist deathmongers refuse to contemplate. Singer can jump off a bridge any time he likes to ration his own health care. He cannot ration mine, or any other free man's, with his specious sophistry.
“Unfortunately you point out exactly why government-run programs squeeze out private insurance. If I run a company, and pay higher premiums for a higher level of care— why should I continue? Cancel the insurance and let the government cover them.”
Not always. In fact, Singer gives several examples of where private and public funded insurance co-exist peacefully. They only are at war when the state insists upon universal, ie, everyone gets the same level of care.
Currently, the democrat leadership is forcing a war between private and public plans in that they insist that the private plans be indentical to the public plans in order to qualify as a certified plan.
There is something in Singer’s idea that government can provide a limited level of health care to all and allow private insurance coverage of every thing else that could appeal to conservatives. After all, most conservatives believe that the root cause of most ills in the present system could be solved by having the recipient of the care pay for the insurance directly. This usually involves making individual health care tax deductible placing it on a level field with employee paid insurance.
Of course another plan that might appeal to conservatives is the opposite of Singers, ie, government provide only catastrophic care and the invidual pay directly for other health care.
The amazing thing is that allowing the markets to determine how health care is “rationed” is completely untenable to this idiot. Why should supply, demand, and price determine who gets the scarce resource of medicinal services?
That would be CRAZY, right? Advocating a “merit based” system formulated through the calculus of financial success.
Like any other good or service, people should have to work to earn it from others. Period.
Well they really want a two-tier system that the soviets had.
The small, powerful Inner Party members had the best healthcare they could possibly get, few expenses were spared.
The massive underclass, the proletariat, got table scraps. And were reminded to be thankful to the state for the wonderful care they ‘received’.
Of course, in practice, their ideal system will be two tired but they will not admit to anything but the illusion that all get the same care. At least Singer has the honesty to admit to the desireability of multiple tiers.
They don't know how much time a drug will buy you. It could be that it would arrest the cancer and you'd live 5-10 more years. In that case would it be worth it? My wife's cousin had a deadly form of cancer that they told her she won't recover from. They gave her chemo and 40 years later she's still around.
These people are sick, and there isn't a pill that will cure it.
As usual, they are not consistent. If health-care is a “right” how can it be rationed?!
BTW-I love how the Democrats will say they aren’t rationing health care and then turn around and say there’s nothing wrong with rationing it. Even their lies aren’t consistent. Then they tell us how compassionate they are.
I used to think that Peter Singer was just an amoral charlatan. Having read more of his work over the years, I’m convinced he’s actually evil.
Obama’s “Shovel-ready Health-care.” That’s a great line; I hope it catches on.
"The costs of the current health care system" today are about the same as they were in 1994--around 14-16% of the GDP. In other words, we are spending no more on healthcare now than we were fifteen years ago. I wonder why no one ever bothers to point this out.
Healthcare should be run by the same standard any other commodity should be; value for value.
Healthcare, the research used to find new cures and make new equipment, payment for people to learn how to be doctors all costs money and the idea that the people who provide that equipment, training and healthcare shouldn’t be paid for the value of their goods and services is idiotic.
One thing that needs to be understood clearly before any discussion on healthcare is that healthcare is not a right; it’s something that must be produced and provided by other people, people who become slaves the minute their services are declared a right. No person or persons has an automatic entitlement to any form of healthcare.
And I’m willing to bet some of the big reasons for healthcare’s great cost are inflation, the government forcing them to answer more demans than their supplies can cover, and making them open to lawsuit if their patient so much as breaks a nail.
>You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?<
What’s it to you, if the person pays for the care by having good insurance, or by paying out of pocket???
There will always be rationing, be it by wallet or by bureaucrat.
That’s why we have free markets, to ration goods through free choice rather than dictat.
We have to ration health care because Obama promised part of yours to somebody else in exchange for votes.
"Ration" is word known only to bureaucrats.
"Allocation" is something the market does. The market is always smarter than bureaucrats.
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