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Club For Growth Ad: Under Socialized Medicine, Your Life Is Worth $22,750
The Club For Growth has announced a new $1.2 million ad campaign, warning against a government-run health care system where people's lives are given a dollar value:
The ad says that in England, government bureaucrats decided that six months of life are worth $22,750. "Under their socialized system, if a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck," the announcer says. "That's wrong for America. Life-and-death medical decisions should be made by patients and doctors, not politicians and bureaucrats."
The ad will target Democratic Senators and Representatives in Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas and North Dakota.
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Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Of course, we can trust our noble media to inform its viewers that nobody is proposing a British-style system anyway.
August 4, 2009 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why mess up a good story with facts?
August 4, 2009 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey this is the same group that is run by Toomey who plans on running for Specter senate seat right?
How many times does Obama have to go on TV to tell americans that he is not pushing a bill for Universal coverage, like they have in England or Canada? Also, if the GOP has time to look at England's health-care model then they have time to work on American Health-care instead of simply telling the American people that Obama's plan is bunk. I would also like it if the CBO did a review of the GOP proposal versus the one that came out of the HELP committee. You know which is more deficit neutral going forward and so on.
August 4, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Under our current system, I figure my life is worth about 55 cents, my lifetime maximum.
August 4, 2009 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mmmm...and I wonder how much your life is worth to a private for-profit insurance company. Probably not the paper my death certificate would be printed on.
August 4, 2009 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wonder no more. It appears that the British government's estimate is pretty much in line with the insurance companies'. The Brits say it's $22,750 for 6 months of life. The international standard that insurance companies use is $50,000 for a year of human life. Stanford economists pegged it at $129,000. See TIME: The Value of a Human Life: $129,000
So, it's okay when it's a for-profit entity that makes the decisions about whether or not you get life-saving medical treatment, but it's diabolical for the government to calculate the costs? Oh.
August 4, 2009 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it has scary music and lots of scary words on black backgrounds.
August 4, 2009 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, nailed that. Next, I'm going to predict that my car will get wet next time it rains.
August 4, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
el oh el
August 5, 2009 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
What health decisions, in this day and age, are made strictly "between a patient and their doctor", unless one can afford to pay for everything and not even use an insurance company? Maybe whether or not to get a flu shot. That might be about it. Anything that has any cost regularly needs to go through the insurance company. And that's today, and by all regards this has been getting worse every year, with people paying significantly more and getting less.
Even when I talk to my doctor and he recommends some sort of treatment (and given a PPO, I don't necessarily HAVE to get pre-approval), he recommends we go to the insurance company first because if they say no due to some byzantine regulation (that may have changed 3 times in the past few months, or may simply be denied for no reason), I have to eat the entire cost of something that I thought was covered.
Ergo, the decisions are already made by bureaucrats. And no reform proposed by the right (when it is proposed at all) seems to change that basic fact. We're being asked, in essence, to choose between a bureaucrat that cares about cost (government), or a bureaucrat that cares about cost AND profits (insurance companies).
The talking point of "Don't let government choose for you, this should be only between you and your doctor" sounds great. But, y'know, "Drill, baby, drill!" sounds great too. And unfortunately, they work on a good percentage of the populace, because they "feel" right, despite little substance or reality behind them, and will continue to do so as long as the people listening have no interest in thinking the issue through.
August 5, 2009 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's very interesting. In the Club for Growth's push for tort reform, they have tried to make a life's value worth much less than that. A little inconsistent now, it seems.
August 5, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink