White House appears ready to drop 'public option'

[JohnnyD]

I wish they would take the whole bill, throw it in the fire and start over with a different approach.

If they want to decrease the cost of health care, I think they are approaching it from the wrong side of the equation. Assess the high cost patients the government pays for, exclude the drug addicts, alcoholics, morbidly obese and other 'self-inflicted sick' from care and watch the costs plummet.

"You're an out of work heroin addict who is suffering from hepatitis and HIV due to using dirty needles? NEXT!!"

"You've lived the last 5 years on a 'diet' of fast food and desserts and now can't leave bed and need your foot amputated due to diabetes? NEXT!!"

This country needs to stop helping those who refuse to help themselves.

After we cull those people out, assess why the costs are so incredibly high. Fix the treatment side of the equation. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests in order to cover their rears. Visits to specialists would be less if their malpractice insurance cost less. Limit the amount doctors can be sued for and costs should decrease.

Multiple small bites will yield significantly better results than one substantial overhaul. Then, the smaller aspects that don't work can be culled out or adjusted.

The current approach to reform makes me sick. (Lame pun intended)

[buckman]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

I wish they would take the whole bill, throw it in the fire and start over with a different approach.

If they want to decrease the cost of health care, I think they are approaching it from the wrong side of the equation. Assess the high cost patients the government pays for, exclude the drug addicts, alcoholics, morbidly obese and other 'self-inflicted sick' from care and watch the costs plummet.

"You're an out of work heroin addict who is suffering from hepatitis and HIV due to using dirty needles? NEXT!!"

"You've lived the last 5 years on a 'diet' of fast food and desserts and now can't leave bed and need your foot amputated due to diabetes? NEXT!!"

This country needs to stop helping those who refuse to help themselves.


The current approach to reform makes me sick. (Lame pun intended)

JD,
This sounds a little harsh to even me. Sounds almost like a "Death Panel". Are you advocating for the provision that you are arguing was never in the bill?

[Joe]

77% of Medicare costs are for recipients in their last year of life. It's the old bastids living forever that are running up the bill.

[Cool Beans]

I have been reading the section and no it does not actually say "death panel" but could easily be interpreted that way, especially when backed up by statements by Obama, like when the lady asked about her 100 yr old mother who needed a pace maker, originally they (doctors) did not think it was worth the cost/risk, and she had another specialist come in and they got it approved. She asked Obama if her grandmother would be able to get that type of treatment if she would have been under Obama care. He replied, sometimes when costs are not justified by the quality of life, they would, "have to take a pain pill" instead. Or the state of Oregon, telling the lady with cancer the states health care plan would not cover chemo, but would cover the state's legalized doctor assisted suicide. There are plenty of actual statements and cases all over the news to make one easily interpret that section as possibly giving them the control of a "death panel"....

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by Cool Beans

I have been reading the section and no it does not actually say "death panel" but could easily be interpreted that way

I thought you were going to supply us with the section that states a panel will choose if my grandfather with cancer will be able to get treatment or not?

[scottw]

it's already happening JD, from Oregon to New Zealand

Agency to rule on new cures
By TRACY WATKINS - The Dominion Post Last updated 05:00

A powerful agency will decide which treatments to provide at public hospitals under a major revamp of the health system.

The Government yesterday made public a long-awaited report on the health system after details of a Ministerial Review Group's recommendations were leaked to The Dominion Post last week.

The report recommends gutting the Health Ministry by shifting many of its functions to a new National Health Board. It also recommends extending the powers of the national drug-buying agency, Pharmac, to decide which medical equipment should be bought and significantly boosting the powers of the existing National Health Committee to decide what new diagnostic procedures and treatment should be provided by the public health system.

The report was written against the backdrop of warnings that New Zealand's ability to pay for world-class health treatment is increasingly under threat.

It recommends putting the National Health Committee in charge of determining what new treatments should be eligible for public funding "and the conditions under which they should be applied".

"As part of its reprioritisation process, the National Health Committee should also be asked to identify and assess a number of existing interventions annually that ... appear to be low priority."

The group appears to be using a Pharmac-like model for the plan. Pharmac determines what drugs should be subsidised on the basis of cost and effectiveness, but it has courted controversy for refusing to fund some drugs. The most recent example was the breast cancer drug Herceptin, which the Government eventually agreed to fund.

Labour MP Ruth Dyson said the recommendations "dangerously point to a rationing of frontline health services". "Mothers, the elderly and others not in paid employment should be extremely worried by any suggestion of rationing healthcare to those in paid work."

Green MP Kevin Hague said the idea that healthcare should be rationed on the basis of an ability "to contribute to economic growth" was "obnoxious in the extreme".

But the Ministerial Review Group, which was headed by former Treasury secretary Murray Horn, said it was only proposing "service prioritisation at the margin", acknowledging that experience in New Zealand and overseas showed that any attempt to identify which core services should be publicly funded was "unlikely to succeed in the current environment".

Ad Feedback Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell said the proposals were radical and destabilising. "It has the feel of a Stalinist monolith about it."It was "bananas" to suggest that "creating more bureaucracy reduces bureaucracy".


FINGER ON THE PULSE:

New Zealand on average spends less per person on health than other developed countries.

Spending on health has been growing much faster in New Zealand than overseas up 30 per cent since 1995, compared with an OECD average of 18 per cent.


GPs are working fewer hours, not more, since the Government put a cap on GP fees.

Medical error is estimated to harm 44,000 people a year at a cost of $570 million.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by scottw

it's already happening JD, from Oregon to New Zealand

I have no idea what is already happening as I only read the bold text.

[Cool Beans]

Originally Posted by Joe

77% of Medicare costs are for recipients in their last year of life. It's the old bastids living forever that are running up the bill.

EXACTLY!!! We don't spend money treating young healthy people, we spend it all on the unhealthy and elderly, so if you are going to cut costs, the only place it can come from is by limiting the types of treatment and care by those people. You don't actually need a death panel if the state a policy where at certain ages, certain care will or will not be provided.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by buckman

JD,
This sounds a little harsh to even me. Sounds almost like a "Death Panel". Are you advocating for the provision that you are arguing was never in the bill?

The whole "Death Panel" fabrications made up by the Right is centered around end-of-life care.

My opinion is that I don't want my tax dollars going to help people that refuse to help themselves. If you're an alcoholic without health care and your liver is failing and you refuse treatment for your alcoholism, then I very honestly don't want tax dollars going towards saving that person. Same goes for the heroin addict that needs thousands of dollars in HIV meds every month.

They did it to themselves, now they should deal with the consequences.

My very blunt opinion. The public should not be paying to extend the lives of people that are a waste of oxygen and choose to never contribute to society.

[buckman]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

The whole "Death Panel" fabrications made up by the Right is centered around end-of-life care.

My opinion is that I don't want my tax dollars going to help people that refuse to help themselves. If you're an alcoholic without health care and your liver is failing and you refuse treatment for your alcoholism, then I very honestly don't want tax dollars going towards saving that person. Same goes for the heroin addict that needs thousands of dollars in HIV meds every month.

They did it to themselves, now they should deal with the consequences.

My very blunt opinion. The public should not be paying to extend the lives of people that are a waste of oxygen and choose to never contribute to society.

I don't like to see my tax dollars wasted either JD. That's why I don't like Obama. But I sure don't want people thrown aside just because they are fighting a very tough battle with addiction. Hell, we give Pat Kennedy endless second chances. Some of what you speak I agree with. Lets just start with no FREE health care for "undocumented" alians and go from there.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by buckman

I don't like to see my tax dollars wasted either JD. That's why I don't like Obama. But I sure don't want people thrown aside just because they are fighting a very tough battle with addiction.

I'm not talking about people fight addiction. That's why I said "if they refuse treatment for their addiction". I feel the same way about someone that's 400lbs - don't want to change your diet? No health care for you.

People that refuse to contribute to society should not be allowed to benefit from society. Even you have said before, people should not be getting handouts - and that carries over to health care.

I feel as though people should be allowed to make their own decisions in life. The government shouldn't tell me what I can or cannot do in my own home if it has no effect on others in society. If you want to pump drugs through your veins, it's fine by me. But don't expect me to pay the bill when you have no job, HIV (or some other disease) and are dying of pneumonia.

But I'm just a crazy liberal.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

But I'm just a crazy liberal.

You're a good man, JohnnyD and certainly no "liberal." I would feel confident if you were steering the ship of state. I would probably wince, often, when you chastised your allies for lack of precision and correctness, or for "interpretations" of text, while being soft on those you oppose. Perhaps, you might win over some enemies, more often than not, you'ld be rolled. It is amazing how the views of "right wing radio" and "conservative" politicians agree with yours and how you constantly excoriate them while their "liberal" counterparts get little of your attention. Is it a love/hate relation? It is honorable to correct your own, for their own good as well as the good of society, but their is also realistic politics. The dunderheads of talk radio are responsible for the bulk of reaction against the "healthcare" bill you hate. Their reaction to it is based on the same animus. Much as you despise "right wing talk radio," it is more effective than your heartfelt statement on this thread. In the end, the "liberals" ("progressives") may disregard the "rile" and pass the bill, as is, but a more UNITED stand against it, might stop it.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by detbuch

You're a good man, JohnnyD and certainly no "liberal." I would feel confident if you were steering the ship of state. I would probably wince, often, when you chastised your allies for lack of precision and correctness, or for "interpretations" of text, while being soft on those you oppose. Perhaps, you might win over some enemies, more often than not, you'ld be rolled. It is amazing how the views of "right wing radio" and "conservative" politicians agree with yours and how you constantly excoriate them while their "liberal" counterparts get little of your attention. Is it a love/hate relation? It is honorable to correct your own, for their own good as well as the good of society, but their is also realistic politics. The dunderheads of talk radio are responsible for the bulk of reaction against the "healthcare" bill you hate. Their reaction to it is based on the same animus. Much as you despise "right wing talk radio," it is more effective than your heartfelt statement on this thread. In the end, the "liberals" ("progressives") may disregard the "rile" and pass the bill, as is, but a more UNITED stand against it, might stop it.

Haha... Nice one detbuch.

"Those at the fore front feel the most heat." Right-wing radio and conservative news stations get the criticisms from be because they are the loudest and most obnoxious. While I share *some* political ideologies with them, I do not share the level of irrationality and what I perceive as complaining because "he's on the other team."

I find that the extreme Conservative views are the ones more often reported by stations like Fox and conservative radio, and those views I do not agree with - most of these people leave a nasty, bitter taste in my mouth. While CNN is the ying to the Fox yang, there isn't really a similar counterpoint on the radio.

The reason I joke and say "I'm just a crazy liberal" is because if you disagree with a conservative's opinion then you "must be a liberal". Political discussion in this country doesn't allow a Moderate's point of view because, in the words of George W., "you're either with us, or your against us."