APP - 'Death panel' is not in the bill... it already exists

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Here it is...we are all a bunch of suckers!


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Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill. The Associated Press recently ran a ‘Fact Check' article rebutting Palin's claim.


AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading.


The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. Jim Rutenburg and Jackie Calmes assert the following:


There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.


The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.


What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.


H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.


Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."


McCaughey goes on to explain:

Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free." Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.


Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on elderly care as follows:


Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.


On average 25-year-olds require very few medical services. If they are to get the lion's share of the treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his Council increasing power to push such recommendations.


Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.


How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.


Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."


Maybe we should ask the Associated Press and New York Times if they still think we shouldn't be concerned about a federal "death panel."


Article located here
 
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I fail to see how this is a death panel, but...

Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make.

Let me rewrite this paragraph.

Dachle's stated purpose (which says nothing about President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to take health care decisions out of the hands of government and insurance industry bureaucrats and put them in the hands of actual doctors who make decisions on how treatment actually effects quality of life.

Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill.

Thanks for that assumption, random guy who writes a blog who's opinion I certainly trust.

How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.

The abstract to this paper states, "A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people." Which I agree with.

"Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

This is sometimes true, which is all Obama was saying.
 
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I fail to see how this is a death panel, but...


Let me rewrite this paragraph.

Dachle's stated purpose (which says nothing about President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to take health care decisions out of the hands of government and insurance industry bureaucrats and put them in the hands of actual doctors who make decisions on how treatment actually effects quality of life.

Obama chose Dachle for his health tsar. That makes Dachle's opinions ideas and policy on Health care very Much Obama's. This nefarious council will be some group who do not "know" the people they will be evaluating. It is a ridiculous claim to think that this panel can ever make a good credible decision about people they don't even know. Their only purpose is to save money whcih equals rationing care! The formulas used to make those determinations will be sterile rationales that have nothing to do with the individual!

Thanks for that assumption, random guy who writes a blog who's opinion I certainly trust.



The abstract to this paper states, "A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people." Which I agree with.



This is sometimes true, which is all Obama was saying.

What Obama was saying is that a group of people who do not know the patient will determine if surgery is the best option for someone in pain, or if the patient is only going to get pain killers! Again, this is a decision that should be ONLY between the patient and his doctor...period! Of course we have to ask again about how these nefarious decisions will be made. It is becoming clear by listening to those who are close to the president what the formula for these decisions to ration care will be..."if you are old go to the back of line...but hey, here's a pill to hold ya over".
 
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What Obama was saying is that a group of people who do not know the patient will determine if surgery is the best option for someone in pain, or if the patient is only going to get pain killers! Again, this is a decision that should be ONLY between the patient and his doctor...period! Of course we have to ask again about how these nefarious decisions will be made. It is becoming clear by listening to those who are close to the president what the formula for these decisions to ration care will be..."if you are old go to the back of line...but hey, here's a pill to hold ya over".

"if you are poor go home and die...but hey, at least America still has private insurance"
 
"if you are poor go home and die...but hey, at least America still has private insurance"

If you are poor you are one of several million American's who already receive free health care. If you do not, it is likely because you have not signed up for it, or you are not sick. If you do get sick you are likely one of several million American's who are treated in emergency rooms or health clinics every day.

If you are only recently poor it is because we have democrats ruining our economy and you'll likely stay poor the longer they are in power.

VOTE GOP!
 
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So your solution to health care for those who can't afford it is to just wait until you get really sick and go to the emergency room?
 
I know it's hard to follow every thread, but I am poor and don't qualify for medicaid.

Then I suggest you take advantage of other recsources. Free clinics that offer sliding fee scales, emergency rooms, charity programs through hospitals.

For more actual and factual data on statistics regarding the under or uninsured.


Take for instance the claim that 47 million Americans have no health insurance. Dr. Devon Herrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis annually updates a detailed analysis of U.S. Census figures that are used to make this claim. According to his research, 85 per cent of U.S. residents in 2007 were privately insured or enrolled in a government health program. Of the uninsured, 18 million had household incomes above $50,000 and could afford health insurance; and 14 million qualified for government programs but had not enrolled.

Herrick concludes that 32 million people, or 70 per cent of the uninsured, could easily obtain coverage but have chosen to forgo insurance. That means 95 per cent of U.S. residents either have health coverage or access to it.
 
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"a group of people who do not know the patient will determine if surgery is the best option for someone in pain, or if the patient is only going to get pain killers! Again, this is a decision that should be ONLY between the patient and his doctor...period! "

Welcome to insurance companies.

Seriously...do you live in America? Do you live on earth?
 
What an amazing dodge. First you claim that this bill is going to create a death panel, then when it's pointed out that you're an idiot, you go and throw out a red herring and pretend some other entirely different program has simialirities to the death panel.

Of course, all the comparative effectiveness panel does is research. It tries to find out which treatments are effective and which aren't. Then it gives this information to doctors. It has no power to make any of its research mandatory. But it will save hundreds of thousands of lives over the years.

This panel should be called the life panel. It's definitely one of the best parts of the stimulus bill.
 
What Obama was saying is that a group of people who do not know the patient will determine if surgery is the best option for someone in pain, or if the patient is only going to get pain killers! Again, this is a decision that should be ONLY between the patient and his doctor...period!

They do not "determine" anything. They have no power at all to mandate the treatments they find effective. They simply do research, and give this to the doctor, and the doctor, with the patient, makes the decision. I assure you, the doctor wants to know if what he's doing is best for the patient, rather than taking the blind shots they do now. Find me a single doctor who opposes being provided with better information on whether his treatments work, and we'll get somewhere.

As it is, you just prove that conservatives are evil scum.
 
They do not "determine" anything. They have no power at all to mandate the treatments they find effective. They simply do research, and give this to the doctor, and the doctor, with the patient, makes the decision. I assure you, the doctor wants to know if what he's doing is best for the patient, rather than taking the blind shots they do now. Find me a single doctor who opposes being provided with better information on whether his treatments work, and we'll get somewhere.

As it is, you just prove that conservatives are evil scum.

That you cannot add is your problem, not mine. If the circumstances were truly between the patient and his doctor only, no outside influence over that care would even be neccesary.

You have proven that libs are not evil, only stupid.
 
If the circumstances were truly between the patient and his doctor only, no outside influence over that care would even be neccesary.

Outside influence like decent information on the effectiveness of treatments?

Surely we should stop doing all medical research now. How dare the people who found out that antibiotics are an effective treatment get in the way of the doctors and patients decision to use leeches? How dare the people who found out that chemo was an effective treatment get in the way of the doctors and patients decision to pray to god and take pain pills?
 
"a group of people who do not know the patient will determine if surgery is the best option for someone in pain, or if the patient is only going to get pain killers! Again, this is a decision that should be ONLY between the patient and his doctor...period! "

Welcome to insurance companies.

Seriously...do you live in America? Do you live on earth?

Yeah, I get it. I know that HMO's are a taste of the disaster we'll be forced to eat with a government run plan...so let government regulate. Start by making a federal regulation that mandates portability and opens up competition nationally.

As it stands right now, I have no problem with government intervening in regulatory responsibilities which can be a legitimate role of government. Blue Shield Blue Cross is probably the best coverage available. This said, if you have BSBC of Georgia, your care is not as good as it is if you have BSBC of CA. This is where government can play a role...regulating it, but don't abuse the American public with another poorly managed, bankrupting, deficit indulging program!
 
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