We Will Not Go Quietly Into The Night!

[pspr]

Quote from TraderZones:

Bringing up child, grandma, etc. etc. has nothing to do with it. 50 million people are uninsured and med care is prohibitively expensive in part, because WE don't have to shoulder the costs in those situations where there is little hope or benefit to expensive routines.

About those 50 (46) million uninsured

http://bearcreekledger.com/2009/06/16/about-those-46-million-uninsured/

Obama and Dhimmicrats want the US to move to government healthcare because of this supposed 46 million uninsured people in the United States. Notice they don’t say Americans. That’s because at least 9.7 million of the 46 million are non-citizens. The Census people don’t specify whether those are legal or illegal residents, but since we know there are at LEAST 10 million illegal aliens in this country, that number isn’t too big of a stretch.

If it isn’t bad enough that Obama and his Democrat cohorts want this country to dive down the cauldron to socialism for illegal aliens the rest of the 36.3 million are questionable too. The point to make with this is that these illegal aliens and legal immigrants still have healthcare (that we all are paying for), it’s just that they don’t have medical insurance. The use of emergency services at hospitals is immense and is costing taxpayers dearly every year. In fact this alone is bankrupting emergency rooms around the country.

Then we have those could pay for insurance but opt not to and hey, that’s their choice. Approximately 18 million uninsured are healthy and between the ages of 18 and 34. That leaves 18.3 million uninsured. Included in these uninsured are those over the age of 34 and earning in excess of $75,000 per year.

So, for less than 18.3 million residents or maybe Americans Obama and the Dhimmicrats want the US to move to government healthcare/insurance. It’s healthcare though, not insurance.

This is all about dependence on government. When there is dependence on government then government controls, not the people. Are you all really willing to give up your freedom and liberty for this shaman?

 

[Mvic]

Quote from Blue_Ice:

Health care Legal system needs a huge flush. Lawyers and insurance companies are just too onerous and that makes healthcare costs go way high.

PREVENTION is non existent in this society when ignorant people confuse the "freedom of choice" with "individual irresponsability".

Physical education should be obligatory in high school, people with BMI higher than 30% shouldn't be allowed to graduate (obviously there will be exceptions for special medical/physical conditions, but the rule will educate most kids).
BMI cannot be changed over a 2 week "starve myself" diet, it needs a long term approach that encourages long term healthy life habits of regular excercise and measured/balanced diet.

High sugar sodas should be banned from vending machines/cafeterias at schools. (if a kid/teenager wants it then he brings it from home but schools do not support the unhealthy soda consumption habit).

Fried food tax: You can still continue killing yourself with the supersized fries at McDonald's everyday but you'll pay an extra tax that will go straight to cover heart disease issues.

No harm to anyone, all the options are still there for those who want them. With the BMI proposal even parents may get involved in the process and do something positive for their own health at the same time.

Result: You won't find as many 10-12 year old @ 300 pounds and in 20-30 years the cases associated with heart disease, diabetes,etc will diminish drastically and so would the healthcare expense associated with them.
Most of resources will be focused to diseases for which we do not know how to prevent.

Now, if you think that intoxicating yourself everyday with big macs, supersized fries and 2 liters of soda coupled with a daily schedule of 10 hours of video games/TV is your "right" and everyone else has to suck it up and "pay" through medicare for your high blood pressure medication beggining in your 35th birthday do not bother to reply to this post...

Great points and this is definitely a component of the solution.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from Mvic:

Point well taken, however in many cases someone who is out of it mentally would not be eligible for something like a heart transplant and many of these folks are DNR, still it is a valid point as they certainly receive other high cost care from drugs to ED and ICU visits. Usually it is the family that is making decisions for them by that point. But before I would have the government trample in to that family's decsion making process I would rather they stamp on the neck of a lawyer like John Edwards who made tens of millions in malpractice awards, or the neck of the guys making multi million dollar annual salaries in HMOs. I would 1st like to enact tort reform that didn't cost the taxpayer a dime so that all sorts of expensive tests were not done each day for 1 in a million diseases just because of the need for a physician to practice defensive medicine before I stuck governments arbitrary nose in to the situation.

This is the beginning of a slippery slope folks, you might think, oh its just the crinklies that will bear the brunt, but if history teaches us anything it is that when you give the government an inch they take a mile. Before long it will be you that is in the cross hairs of some low level bureaucratic with a chip on his shoulder and an actuarial heart.

i dont know how familiar you are with how the medicare /nursing home system works. i am just having delt with it. until it becomes a pull the plug situation the family is not allowed to make many decisions on how the system cares for the patient. you cant tell the doctor not to do procedures even if time is short for the family member. it is out of your hands. the patient can sign an advance directive,very few do, but even then that only says you cant take extraordinary measures to keep the patient alive.

 

[IanMacQuaide]

One of the guarantees in the Constitution is "liberty".
Anything, I repeat, ANYTHING that stands in the way of one seeking medical care is an abrogation of that liberty.
Our Constitutional liberties are not a privilege, they're assured us as our birthright by our Creator.
The Constitution of The United States of America just happens to word it all very nicely.

 

[Susannah]

Quote from Misthos:

I've seen stats that show up to 50% of all medical costs are incurred during the last 6 months of ones life. Most of course, are elderly.

This stat seems to me to be useless. Of course, if you died from it, that was the greatest medical issue you ever faced, and probably the most medical cost you ever incurred. It's like saying "why do I always find what I lose in the last place I look?"

 

[Misthos]

Quote from IanMacQuaide:

One of the guarantees in the Constitution is "liberty".
Anything, I repeat, ANYTHING that stands in the way of one seeking medical care is an abrogation of that liberty.
Our Constitutional liberties are not a privilege, they're assured us as our birthright by our Creator.
The Constitution of The United States of America just happens to word it all very nicely.

With all due respect:

Obviously, you're not a lawyer. Healthcare is not in the bill of rights, or anywhere else in the Constitution - it is a service that people pay for. That's it.

 

[Misthos]

Quote from Mvic:

I disagree, if we were able to reduce health care costs by even 15% and keep the current pay ins the system would have another 50-60 years before it went insolvent vs the current 10. If we were to reduce costs by 30% we are talking about hundreds of years.

I hope you're right.

My fear is that this depression will last quite some time, unemployment will continue, and payroll taxes will drop inversely to the amount of people entering medicare/social security. Inflation too - will be a menace.

 

[ByLoSellHi]

The U.S. population is an inverted pyramid, with a lot of older people at the top, and fewer young people in the middle and at the bottom.

The thinnest ranks are the 20 to 38 year old "meaty section" that we will depend on for the next 25 years to provide the taxes to fund public healthcare and other public expenditures.

Sorry, but if anyone here thinks everyone in the country is entitled to unlimited health care expenditures to try and keep them alive, no matter how old and/or sick they are, you have no idea regarding a basic economic premise: Health care is the one industry where the introduction of new technology raises, and not lowers costs.

With the approach you endorse, and a constantly morphing health care industry introducing new technologies, there is no limit to how high the cost of health care can rise. It could ultimately easily consume more than our annual GDP, let alone the revenues raised and allocated as a proportion of that GDP, especially in an era where the ranks of the elderly and chronically (and terminally) ill keeps increasing, while the revenue producers who aren't sick either remains stagnant or declines.

Anyone who doesn't think hard choices need to be made and rationing - yep, there is that 'media-made-ugly' word - isn't inevitable, flunks economics 101.

Newsflash: Rationing is already a fact of life in American Medicine. Go talk to your friendly health insurance executives.

Go look up the definition of 'Capitation,' and you'll even see that your own, beloved family doctor is in on the (necessary) smoke and mirrors ruse with the insurance company.

And to Pabst - I don't know if you were lumping me into another of your dramatic and gross over-generalizations: I am and always have been against the whole act and concept of abortion, although I try not to demonize those who disagree with me (so long as they've made a good faith effort to defend their position on some rational basis, with special emphasis on the moral issue, where I think they ultimately fail, nevertheless).

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from vhehn:

we do need to ask these questions as treatments become more expensive and technology advances. does a 90 year old person with alzheimers get a heart transplant paid for by tax payers through medicare?

If it were up to me I'd say NO!

Quote from pspr:

Maybe you want the government interjecting themselves into that decision. I do not.

Me neither. At least not our bloated, incompetent, inefficient federal beuracracy.

Quote from ByLoSellHi:


And I will walk the walk. If I'm on my death bed when I'm old, with cancer or some shit, and the insurance company is spending 8 thousand per day to keep me alive, whether it's coming from the tax payers or my private insurance, and I'm old and sick, keep me comfortable and let me fade peacefully, and preserve health care resources for where they can do the most good.

I will too.

Quote from Mvic:


...How about we at least cut the lawyers and the insurance companies out of the healthcare pie before we start rationing services to seniors (who by the way right now are the people in the greatest generation who, from my perspective at least, deserve everything that they can get in terms of modern healthcare)...

I agree, up to a point. We are all going to die sometime though.
AND our nation is essentially broke.

Quote from pspr:

...The illegals have the ER's jammed up as it is. The average Wait is about 4 hours to be treated in an ER...

Personally I don't think illegals should even be allowed into an ER.

Quote from wjk:

Let's begin with congress and how they spend... Let's get rid of some of their benefits until they learn how to be frugal with OUR money...

+10

Quote from pspr:


This is all about dependence on government. When there is dependence on government then government controls, not the people...

Obama's "plan" certainly is.

 

[Illum]

Quote from TraderZones:

sorry, but when people demand expensive care when they theyselves do not have to pay fir it, then I hvea no sympathy for you

I now my mother has been in a coma for 10 years and doctors give her no hope - I demand that the state/hospital/insert-other-entity-besides patient continue to keep her alive

Sorry, I don't agree. Medical care should be for reasonable expenses. I also do not favor the "gee, I know she is 4.5 months premature and only has a 1% of surviving, spend the million to keep her alive anyway!!!"

Or the drugs that costs $10,000s a year and are only marginally better than older cheap drugs

We are severely afflicted with damn the cost, I don't have to pay for it mentality.

Bringing up child, grandma, etc. etc. has nothing to do with it. 50 million people are uninsured and med care is prohibitively expensive in part, because WE don't have to shoulder the costs in those situations where there is little hope or benefit to expensive routines.

My cousin was in a coma. The doctor told his mother he was gone and not coming back, and she should donate his organs. His brain scans were all showing nothing. There was no hope. She said she would not give up. The doctor tried talking to me, to see if I could change her mind. I looked at him like he was crazy. He woke up a couple weeks later. Piece o shit Doctor. I have since taken my name off the donor list on my driver's license.

Edit - Changed my mind for the baby boomers. They should have the plug pulled. Why wait for a plug, they should just be shot now. They have outsourced every middle class job in the nation. They even found a way to outsource jobs they could not send overseas. All for their stock options. Their parents told them to stop being a hippies and grow up. They never did, and they screwed the nation. I hope they get no end of life care. I hope they die now. The sooner they leave the board room and Washington, the better for the rest of us. I could care less about their ethics and end of life ideas. They are worthless.