- Joined
- Sep 29, 2007
- Messages
- 29,262
- Reaction score
- 10,126
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
No need to get defensive. I was just asking.
Is that a question or a statement? I cannot tell, because it doesnt stem directly from anything I said.
Maybe you could show a little honesty and ask a question that doesn't suppose someting about my position.
Because he has no intention of living with a diminished quality of life. Watching several people waste away and die in pain did quite a number on him and he doesn't want it for himself. He's made it pretty clear he won't stay around for long once things start to decline.
Non sequitur, red herring.
You're pulling that out of your ass. People are hospitalized when it's medically necessary and discharged when it's no longer medically necessary. If you're going to claim the same doctors in hospitals discriminate on the basis of funding source, you've got a big claim to support.
I assure you it does not. Read the link.
Medical costs are driven up in large part -because- of the insulation of the consumer from the true cost of the goods/services he receives.I'm sorry, but we don't need to give congress power beyond that provided to them by the consitution to mandate the sale of a product until we look at every other option. Forcing a product on to somebody because it seems like a magical cure-all....isn't. On my MRI, the insurance paid the hospital $80. The billed price of the MRI was $700. I paid nothing. So where'd the other $620 go? On the backs of other patients? Onto the government? Out of the hospital's pockets? The system is inherently flawed. Universal coverage or mandated insurance don't fix the flaws. It's like putting a bandaid over a severed limb. You think even with insurance that my dad could cover his portion of a bypass surgery? That'd be several thousand dollars, if not several tens of thousands of dollars.
No. It doesn't. There's no judgement whatsoever on the value of the person in question in the post you responded to, and thus, non sequitur.You may want to look up those words, and reapply logic. When denying someone treatment which can save their life because they do not have money or insurance coverage, it naturally follows that the value of their life is equal to the monetary value of the treatment needed to keep them alive.
I am wrong on neither.Also, one cannot separate the question posed in the OP from an ethical discussion. So-you're wrong on both accounts.
So much for the honesty.No need to get defensive. I was just asking.
So much for the honesty.
:shrug:
No. It doesn't. There's no judgement whatsoever on the value of the person in question in the post you responded to, and thus, non sequitur.
However....It DOES naturally follow that by forcing others to prvovide medical treatment to somoene who cannot pay, that the life of that someone -is- more valuable than the labor that produced the wealth that is then taken to provide for that same someone.
So... According to you...the life of person who cannot pay > the right of someone else to retain the fruits of their labor.
Please - support that position.
I am wrong on neither.
You are trying to discuss a position of a judgement of value of a person in respose to a post that you did not otherwise address in an effort to avoid the substance of said post - which you have still not addressed. Thus, red herring.
From the post you responded to? Yes. Absolutely. No way to argue otherwise.Wait- you tell me that my position is a non sequitur...
-You- brought up the idea of judging the value of on person over another. I merely applied what you said to the 'must provide treatment' argument, which does exactly that. Thus, it was NOT a non sequitur from YOUR response.but then turn around apply the exact opposite, and claim that it isn't a logical fallacy?
Thiis has been addressed; to pretend otherwise is to continue in your usual dishonesty.Why won't you answer the question?
people have treatable diseases that once treated do not diminish quality of life. people get cancer and are cured with no diminished quality of life. good god, he's only 47.
No one should - no one CAN - be forced to buy good or services of any kind as a basic requirement of citizenship.So why should he be forced to buy insurance he doesn't have any intention of using?
And right now he's in perfect health. But you don't know my dad. He's convinced Chemo is a waste (and at 5% success rates, who could blame him?). His grandmother and grandfather died from dementia. His father had a host of health issues (and a dining room table quite literally FULL of medications he had to take). His brother fought cancer for 4 years and was pretty much skeletal when he passed.
If it can't be cured with antibiotics or 1-time surgery my dad isn't going to do it. So why should he be forced to buy insurance he doesn't have any intention of using?
Because the vast majority of non-insured holdouts change their mind at the moment of truth and get treated. We all pay in the form of higher premiums.
Sure, there might me a couple ideological holdouts who actually do pick dying of treatable disease instead because they feel passionately about not having insurance. Most won't. So if we are going to insist on sticking to our "private"system, then everyone is going to have to be covered.
I would say, yet again, that mandating insurance for everybody doesn't solve anything. Prices are still high, people will still not be covered, the system will still be abused by idiots who go to the ER because their kid sneezed three times in 24 hours. Instead of avoiding the real issues, we want to allow congress to violate the limits of their authority because.....why, exactly?
Certainly seems a much better idea to expand Medicare to cover everyone. This is just one more example of an essential service with inelastic demand not being best served by for-profit companies.
Mandating private insurance is one of the most inefficient ways to address the problem, but people think offering health services equals communism. So if you want to keep your "free market" for every non-communist under age 65, you'll have to buy in.
Single payer doesn't address the problem either. All it does is set artificial pricing levels, which will lead to rationed care and limited access to the more expensive (but often best) diagnostic tools and treatmeant options.
Single payer doesn't address the problem either. All it does is set artificial pricing levels, which will lead to rationed care and limited access to the more expensive (but often best) diagnostic tools and treatmeant options.
When you write policy based on the mental image of your child dying, it's not going to be a cost-effective policy.
Wanna know why? Because watching children die makes people extremely emotional and not always rational.
In other words, the left's appeals to pity do not strengthen their arguments, they weaken them.
which would be fine IF, repeat IF, ALL the members of society pitched in. problem is, the ones getting the most benefit are the ones who pitch in the least.
I would say, yet again, that mandating insurance for everybody doesn't solve anything. Prices are still high, people will still not be covered, the system will still be abused by idiots who go to the ER because their kid sneezed three times in 24 hours. Instead of avoiding the real issues, we want to allow congress to violate the limits of their authority because.....why, exactly?
So instead, just get universal health care. Simple.
Right. Because making money is obviously a higher goal than saving children.
Notorious Right Wing Propaganda Machine, THE NEW YORK TIMES:
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1. . . . .
The rule was issued by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a longtime advocate for better end-of-life care.
“Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,” Dr. Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques, including advance directives and involvement of patients and families in decision-making, have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading to both lower cost and more humane care.”
More on Berwick:
Obama has doubled down on his unpopular Obamacare. The President ducked Senate confirmation and instead used a recess appointment to make Dr. Donald Berwick administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Berwick will be responsible for implementing portions of Obamacare. CMS has an annual budget of some $800 billion and is responsible for the heathcare of 100 million Americans.
Conservatives are angry that the President used his extraordinary power to avoid a public hearing, which would have generated testimony from Dr. Berwick and may have exposed him as being too extreme to run CMS.
Berwick’s public statements often raise eyebrows. Regarding end-of-life care, he told the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2002 that “most people who have serious pain do not need advanced methods, they just need the morphine and counseling that have been available for centuries.” This troubling statement doesn’t give much confidence to seniors that, as a bureaucrat, Berwick will care about costly end-of-life treatment when rationing Obamacare’s “benefits.”
The doctor also professed his love for Britain’s Socialist healthcare system and favors a single-payer government-run system for Americans. He wrote in 1996 that “I admit to my own devotion to a single-payer mechanism as the only sensible approach to healthcare finance that I can think of.” President Obama avoided a public hearing for Dr. Berwick when he used the special appointment power used by President Bush and objected to by Senate Democrats at the time.
Background on QALY ("quality-adjusted-life-year") that Berwick is instrumental in popularizing in health policy circles:
If you are under the impression that it is impossible to calculate the value of a human life, you are obviously not a progressive policy expert or health care bureaucrat. This calculation, so elusive for philosophers and sages throughout the millennia, is child's play for such people. They have, in fact, already devised a formula for pricing out your life. It is called the "quality-adjusted-life-year" (QALY), and it assigns a numerical value to a year of life. A year of perfect health, for example, is given a value of 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you are confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half that of your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low. All that remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your life has a price tag.
And, lest you imagine that QALY is mere academic concept unlikely to be applied in the real world, it is already being used in countries burdened with socialized medicine. In Great Britain, for example, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) uses "cost per QALY" to determine if patients should receive expensive treatment or drugs. It was with this formula that NICE calculated the precise amount six months of an average Brit's life is worth. As the Wall Street Journal reports, "NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months." In other words, patients whose country has guaranteed them "free" health care are in some cases refused treatment because the incremental cost per additional QALY is too high.
Death Panel type decisions have already started:
According to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, the FDA’s decision is not based on the best outcome for patients but instead on the expense of Avastin, produced by Genentech, which can run as high as $90,000 per year for a single patient.
“The FDA claims its decision had nothing to do with Avastin's cost and was based solely on the drug's medical effectiveness,” Pipes said. “This isn't believable. Every year about 40,000 American women die from breast cancer. Avastin is the last hope for many not to meet that fate. While the drug is costly, it often provides immense benefits to patients.”
Avastin works by cutting off blood flow to tumors, and it has been used by thousands of women to treat late-stage breast cancer. Pipes points out clinical studies have shown improved survival rates for women who use the drug.
“By restricting blood flow to tumors, the medicine can decelerate cancer growth. In one clinical trial, 52 percent of women saw their tumors stop expanding or spreading. Some have gained years of extended life.
“Most major cancer groups think that's enough. Susan G. Komen and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance urged the FDA to maintain approval of the drug, arguing that treatment choices should be left to patients and doctors—not a government agency,” Pipes added.
As I noted above, I have no problem with the concept of rationing medical care, my problem is with the centralizing of that decision making authority. This is where I part company with conservatives who oppose ObamaCare - they pretend that we can continue to have a system characterized by no rationing. They're delusional if they actually believe that. My position is to put the rationing decision into the hands of the patient and/or immediate family.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?