the wife who votes for the Dhimmicrats in homage to her union supporting father...when I mentioned ‘Death Panels’ said something to the effect ‘and you dont think insurance companies dont have death panels?’
interesting point...because for decades I have had to fight insurance companies on one thing or another...I do not think that insurance companies have death panels....but they sure dont make things easy to get necessary medical attention.
While insurance companies can’t and won’t pay out the wazoo on every conceivable health issue, it’s not the mere existence of an entity that decides to not provide a health care service or treatment, but where the decision is to be made. Like everything else the leftists do, they want it in the governments hands - authoritarian, top-down, 5-year-planish socialistic and masterminded. On the other hand, capitalism/individual-liberty/property-rights relies on trillions of micro-decisions made in a distributed fashion, where the best knowledge exists and where it involves at least to some degree the individual. That is why these are “Death Panels” in the hand of big government; while it is business-but-involving-patients-and-their-needs when not in the hands of big government.
But there is a critical difference which your wife needs to be made aware of:
An insurance company “death panel” is only at worst a refusal to pay for needed medical services—you still have the option of pursuing critical medical care at your own cost.
An Obamacare death panel is a complete refusal of the provision of critical medical services—at any price—so the option of pursuing the saving of your own life is cut off BY YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT!
An insurance company is a private entity that is just as responsive to negotiation, regulation, and lawsuit as you are. If it wrongfully denies a claim, you have a number of useful methods to get it to cough up: appeals, state Insurance Commissioner, and if all else fails a lawsuit.
Most states have severe penalties for insurers that wrongfully deny claims. It can amount to a quarter of the denied benefits, plus your attorney fees. And insurance commissioners have the power to deny a company permission to write in your state, if the violation is egregious enough.
Often it is only necessary to breathe the words "insurance commissioner" or "bad faith penalties" to get a response.
In contrast, you can't sue the federal government except in very limited circumstances, and I will bet you dollars to donuts that some sort of immunity from suit for the Death Panels and the gummint is hidden somewhere in that two thousand pages of ObamaCare.
But there are plenty of people (mostly liberals/radicals but also just lazy) who would rather use the government to force payment for everything, than exercise personal responsibility to read their insurance policies, negotiate a better deal, or pay for something themselves.
The problem of course is that the "payment for everything" is a completely illusory government promise which the government cannot possibly keep. Hence the death panels.
Insurance companies don't do that and we wouldn't give them that sort of power either.
In fact, why give ANYONE that kind of power over you and your family??? Especially the government?