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Steele Hearts Death Panel Talking Points
RNC Chairman Michael Steele
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RNC Chairman Michael Steel now seems to be fully embracing the death panel talk, with a new column in the Washington Post promoting a Republican proposal called a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights," which will prevent the government from killing grandma:
Third, we need to outlaw any effort to ration health care based on age. Obama has promoted a program of "comparative effectiveness research" that he claims will be used only to study competing medical treatments. But this program could actually lead to government boards rationing treatments based on age. For example, if there are going to be only so many heart surgeries in a given year, the Democrats figure government will get more bang for its buck if more young and middle-aged people get them.
Fourth, we need to prevent government from dictating the terms of end-of-life care. Many of the most significant costs of care come in the last six months of a patient's life, and every American household must consider how to treat their loved ones. Obama's government-run health "reform" would pay for seniors' meetings with a doctor to discuss end-of-life care. While nonthreatening at first, something that is quite normal for a family to do becomes troublesome when the government gets involved. Seniors know that government programs that seem benign at first can become anything but. The government should simply butt out of conversations about end-of-life care and leave them to seniors, their families and their doctors.
Late Update: For more on the GOP's Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights, click here for the RNC's official release.
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shooter242
August 24, 2009 10:09 AM
Actually this is not a bad summary of why people are upset, cost benefit analysis is always going to short change the elderly.
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AnswerFrog
August 24, 2009 10:18 AM in reply to shooter242
Welcome, Republican.
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AnswerFrog
August 24, 2009 10:24 AM in reply to shooter242
GOP hypocrisy knows no bounds.
They opposed medicare, want to reign in entitlements, yet a sensible proposal to get rationalize medical costs based on evidence gets demagogued as "
death panels".
I guess this means the GOP wants the country to go off a cliff in a few years when Medicare goes bankrupt? Or they will enjoy the huge tax hikes to pay for the out of control costs?
Holy shit, these idiots are shooting themselves in the foot, and now agitating to keep bloated inefficient entitlements and huge future tax increases. I thought I saw it all.....
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fkaZk0sm0
August 24, 2009 10:33 AM in reply to shooter242
and you still haven't learned the difference between comparative effectiveness and cost effectiveness.
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Stroszek
August 24, 2009 11:01 AM in reply to fkaZk0sm0
You can't expect shooty to learn things. The man's got an entire internet to troll.
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mans_best_friend
August 24, 2009 11:28 AM in reply to shooter242
We really need to get a better class of trolls.
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Minne sconsin
August 24, 2009 1:11 PM in reply to shooter242
We definitely do need a better class of troll here. He's trying to inflame, but he's right:
Of course it is. And it's happening right now.
If you're 80 years old and need a kidney or a heart, you're not gonna get on the list. If you've got Down's Syndrome and you need a heart, you might not get it. (Yes, Sarah - that hospital "death panel" might let Trig die, under the current system.) If you destroyed your liver with alcohol, it's gonna be really tough for you to get one.
Health care rationing is done right now - on the basis of economics - who has insurance who can profit from the care. We should acknowledge this and have the discussion. Shooter, like the clock that's right twice a day, said something true while trying to be an ass.
Oh - Shooter? Don't let it go to your head. You're still a pretty lame troll.
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AJM
August 24, 2009 10:18 AM
Get the government to butt out? All Steele is talking about is having the government refuse to pay for consultations if the patient asks for them.
The only people involved in these end of life consultations are the patients, the family if the patient wants them and the doctors.
End of life consultations are about the government doing cost benefit analysis, they are about the patient making his decisions on the basis of informed consent about his options.
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shooter242
August 24, 2009 10:24 AM in reply to AJM
Which is necessary when hope has been extinguished by denial of a potentially life-saving procedure. Counseling isn't what upsets people, it's death sentences.
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shannom
August 24, 2009 10:34 AM in reply to shooter242
As opposed to the current situation, where those treatments are denied by the insurance company...
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Stroszek
August 24, 2009 10:59 AM in reply to shooter242
Actually, it's being crazy and ignorant that upsets these people.
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fkaZk0sm0
August 24, 2009 10:31 AM
asshat, the only role the government would ever have in the conversation is in paying for it if a patient wants to have the conversation with their doctor.
suggesting that the government 'butt out' only means that you think people covered by medicare should have to pay out of pocket if they want to have that conversation with their doctor.
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hsr0601
August 24, 2009 11:47 AM
Theme : The public health is a fundamental human right.
1. When the public health is also one of commodity like a house, we come to a tragic conclusion : As to for-profit business, the more ill patients get, the more profits they make.
2. Under the free market theory and the premise that the public health is also one of commodity like a house, if the demand decreases on a large scale, accordingly the price tends to reflect it, as in the case of house price, and it never happens for the price to spiral up. One step forward, in case the price is spiraling up, to be sure, the remaining clients should withdraw the contract or choose the other options. Sadly, no way-out other than the prohibitive ER is allowed in America. Therefore, the victims today and tomorrow deserve an overdue protection from non-profit Government.
3. When some part of our body is ailing seriously, we are going to lose competitiveness, equally, when some part of a nation is ailing servery, it is going to loose competitiveness, too.
4. Unlike the original financial concern over recovery from Catrina catastrophe, the recovery work is going smooth with no big problem, to my knowledge. The last thing to want would be for this health Catrina to be left untreated. And there is enough room for savings from the unsustainable wastes.
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