The Affordable HealthCare Decision

[keakap]

Wow, somebody has been drinking too much Hawaiian Punch

Indeed. I can't seem to restrain myself.
When someone says "oh, let it go", and I realize that most of the country does NOT want this horrendous bill. MOST of the country does NOT want this bill.
Why are we even discussin it, and why does it even exist. When Most of the Country- most of the citizens, most of the taxpayers, most of the People do Not want it, why is it still there?

Isn't that a fair question?

[JPG]

Indeed. I can't seem to restrain myself.
When someone says "oh, let it go", and I realize that most of the country does NOT want this horrendous bill. MOST of the country does NOT want this bill.
Why are we even discussin it, and why does it even exist. When Most of the Country- most of the citizens, most of the taxpayers, most of the People do Not want it, why is it still there?

Isn't that a fair question?

Ahhh! But you 'overlook' the 'purpose' of govmnt is to protect the unwashed masses from themselves.

Holy Molie indeed!:mad:

[skou]

"...he has never, repeat NEVER been caught lying."

Sorry, railing against drug users, while being an illegal drug user, is (in my book) lying!

On a different subject, which Kailua? Kailua/Kona. or the one near Waimanalo?
(I used to live in Waimanalo.)

steve

[skou]

Keakap, do NOT get me wrong. I agree with what you're saying, it's just that I got burned by Rush. (If the truth be known, I'm slightly to the right of Rush Limbaugh III!)

His daddy got to fly a Mustang in WWII. My dad slung an M1 Garand. (Yes, I'm a bit jealous, too.)

steve

[charlese]

Indeed. I can't seem to restrain myself.
When someone says "oh, let it go", and I realize that most of the country does NOT want this horrendous bill. MOST of the country does NOT want this bill.
Why are we even discussin it, and why does it even exist. When Most of the Country- most of the citizens, most of the taxpayers, most of the People do Not want it, why is it still there?

Isn't that a fair question?

I cannot forget back in the day - my wife almost begged Mike Mansfield (Senator from Montana) to not pass this new plan called Medicare. She pointed out the cost will cause medical prices rise - and there will most likely be quite a bit of fraud, causing out money to be wasted. His written answer just made us shake our heads (a lot like today's government efforts)

He said Dear Mrs ----, Your arguments make sense and are certainly possibilities, but we cannot withhold help to the elderly and poor people of the nation.

Some things never change -

How about in California- The majority of voters voted to not allow gay marriages. In this case the courts changed the vote of the people.

Things that pass through the Government are always unfair to some of the nation. When living in Montana, I couldn't help but notice it seemed that the Nation thought Montana was more valuable to the Union than all States except maybe Wyoming. Why?...... Because Montana always received more money from the feds that it submitted in taxes.

Strange, but true!

[skou]

I cannot forget back in the day - my wife almost begged Mike Mansfield (Senator from Montana) to not pass this new plan called Medicare. She pointed out the cost will cause medical prices rise - and there will most likely be quite a bit of fraud, causing out money to be wasted. His written answer just made us shake our heads (a lot like today's government efforts)

He said Dear Mrs ----, Your arguments make sense and are certainly possibilities, but we cannot withhold help to the elderly and poor people of the nation.

Some things never change -

How about in California- The majority of voters voted to not allow gay marriages. In this case the courts changed the vote of the people.

Things that pass through the Government are always unfair to some of the nation. When living in Montana, I couldn't help but notice it seemed that the Nation thought Montana was more valuable to the Union than all States except maybe Wyoming. Why?...... Because Montana always received more money from the feds that it submitted in taxes.

Strange, but true!

Chuck, I've been hearing for YEARS, it's time to put some bleach in the gene pool.

What about the congressional pool?

If there is EVER a group of "people" that need some STRONG bleach, it is both houses (and both parties) of congress.

steve

[frank81]

Or, to quote Obama himself, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

That gets into a difficult debate. I sided with the painkiller side of the equation when I was little and my grandmother passed away from cancer...they kept doing pointless surgeries to remove organs and use machines to keep her alive another week until she said enough was enough. If you couldn't tell, she had really good insurance.

People need to decide what the scope of group health care should be, and stay within the boundaries. Is it to live forever or live better? Or to milk terminally ill revenue streams? Anything outside of that scope should be a personal decision, paid for individually (out of pocket or supplemental insurance) and not by the group.

[heathicus]

That gets into a difficult debate. I sided with the painkiller side of the equation when I was little and my grandmother passed away from cancer...they kept doing pointless surgeries to remove organs and use machines to keep her alive another week until she said enough was enough. If you couldn't tell, she had really good insurance.

Then, it happened the way it should have happened. SHE decided when enough was enough. Not some health board who decided her remaining time left wasn't worth the effort so denied her treatment.

If a 100 year old woman wants to have a pacemaker, or a terminal cancer patient wants an operation to give them another week of life, AND they are able to pay for such procedures (either out of pocket or with the insurance plan of their choosing), then the service should be provided.

Medical decisions are made by the person paying the bill.

Move to a socialized (or single-payer) healthcare system, where the government pays for healthcare and the government also gets to decide what kind of healthcare you get. Now, it's no longer the elderly woman deciding if she wants a pacemaker to get a few more years of life, or a terminal cancer patient deciding if they want a few more weeks. It's some bureaucrat number cruncher looking at how much it's going to cost and they get to make the decision. "Sorry, but that pacemaker costs too much for just 5 to 10 more years of life, max. Here, take a pain pill and enjoy the month or two you have left."

Granted, with a single-payer system, a lot of people get care they might not have otherwise been able to afford. And that's a noble objective. But that comes at the cost of other people's time, life, or at least quality of life. Is it OK to provide for one person by taking from another? Are you willing to trade 5 to 10 years of your life so the government can afford healthcare for others? (That's not a rhetorical question thinking I know the answer. It's a question to make you think about what government healthcare means. Personally, I could envision various situations that would change my answer.)

[BuckeyeDennis]

That gets into a difficult debate. I sided with the painkiller side of the equation when I was little and my grandmother passed away from cancer...they kept doing pointless surgeries to remove organs and use machines to keep her alive another week until she said enough was enough. If you couldn't tell, she had really good insurance.

People need to decide what the scope of group health care should be, and stay within the boundaries. Is it to live forever or live better? Or to milk terminally ill revenue streams? Anything outside of that scope should be a personal decision, paid for individually (out of pocket or supplemental insurance) and not by the group.

While in nursing grad school some years back, my wife did a research paper on a similar issue. In the process I learned a bit about something called the "Oregon plan".

Under the Oregon plan, if memory serves, an estimated benefit would be imputed for every medical procedure (in terms of expected years added to patient life, or some such). This is not as mind-boggling a task as it might seem, because medical procedures already have codes for insurance-reimbursement purposes. Then, the estimated benefit would be divided by the cost of the procedure, to arrive at a cost/benefit ratio.

For purposes of allocating public funding, medical procedures would then be prioritized based on the cost/benefit ratio. Low-cost, high-benefit items (such as preventitive care for children) would be at the top of the priority list. High-cost, low-benefit procedures (such as a heart transplant for a 90-yr old with terminal cancer) would be at the bottom.

Then, in principal, allocation of public funding becomes simple. First, you figure out how much public money you have to spend. Then, you start at the top of the priority list, and fund everything going downward until the budget is consumed. Period. No public funding for procedures that don't make the cut.

It's hard to imagine a more reasonable way to allocate public funding. But nevertheless, it turned out to be politically impossible to enact the legislation. Perhaps because this process would inevitably wind up assigning a dollar value to human life. Something I've been told told that both highway engineers and military planners do, but don't talk about in public.

The root problem, IMHO, remains that our political system gives budgeting responsibility to people who are not accountable primarily to the group of taxpayers from whom the funding is extracted. It's generally "someone else's" money -- the root cause of "pork". In my opinion, this was a fundamental error by the framers of the Constitution.

[heathicus]

The root problem, IMHO, remains that our political system gives budgeting responsibility to people who are not accountable primarily to the group of taxpayers from whom the funding is extracted. It's generally "someone else's" money -- the root cause of "pork". In my opinion, this was a fundamental error by the framers of the Constitution.

The framers of the Constitution aren't to blame. They had no intention for there ever to be anything like the 16th Amendment.