Health Care vs. the Value of Human Life
Under the Democrats’ proposed health care reform legislation, we know that the government will have to determine some sort of rationing system in order to control costs. We are aware that part of the rationing will be absorbed in the discrimination that the bill inflicts upon the elderly; we know that it cuts $500 billion from Medicare. What has remained puzzling is how exactly this rationing will be determined for the rest of us. Similarly elusive is how the new Health Benefits Advisory Committee will decide whether or not you get certain medical treatments, regardless of the opinion of your doctor. After all, how do you put a dollar value on a human life?
If you think there is no answer to that question, you are way behind the progressives. In fact, most countries with socialized medicine, including Britain, are already using a mathematical formula that expresses the numerical value of one year of a human life in a measurement called the QALY, or “quality-adjusted life year.” In terms of determining medical care, the mathematical formula of the QALY is based on both how much a treatment may lengthen your lifespan and the quality of the life you will be living.
Basically, if you are in optimal health, the QALY of one year of your life is 1.0. But if you have any underlying conditions, like asthma or muscular dystrophy, your QALY is much lower. Under the QALY system, the blind are worth less than those with sight, as those who can walk are worth more than those in wheelchairs. Sound like discrimination against persons with disabilities? It gets worse.
In a paper entitled “Cost-Effectiveness and Disability Discrimination,” the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School, Dan Brock, argues “prioritizing health care resources by their relative cost-effectiveness can result in lower priority for the treatment of disabled persons than otherwise similar non-disabled persons.” He says that type of system not only “implies that disabled persons’ lives are of lesser value than those of non-disabled persons,” but it also “conflicts with equality of opportunity; it conflicts with fairness, which requires ignoring (some/most) differential impacts of treatment; it wrongly gives lower priority to disabled persons for equally effective treatment; it conflicts with giving all persons an equal chance to reach their full potential; and, it is in conflict with giving priority to the worse off.”
TO: Sarah Durand, et al.
RE: It’s Worse Then….
….THAT.
If they are not going to ‘cure’ the child. What ARE they going to do in order to ‘alleviate’ the child’s and parent’s ‘suffering’?
Can you say, “euthenasia“?
I knew you could….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Kill the children! It's for their own 'good'. -- selfish people]
Government-controlled “health care” is just is an item on a checklist. The list is far from completely checked off…and persons who’d prefer that we not inquire too insistently into their motivations will move quite swiftly from that item to the next on their list.
It gets to be more like a horror movie complete with mad scientists everyday.
Somewhere along the line, Orwells “1984″ was confused as a textbook instead of a work of fiction.
We surely have a double plus good speaker at the helm.
Stephan Hawking must be let to die!! After all, he’s in a wheelchair and can’t talk.
Even more scary and/or worse is that half; maybe more of our nation think that, if it is coming from Obama this kind of morbidity is fine and dandy with them.
Hence, next January’s State of the Union speech should include:
The State of Our Union is crumbling..
The Resistance has been neutralized..
Our Goals: Revenge and Jihad have succeeded..
Bureaucratic rigidity, incompetence, unresponsiveness and graft – they don’t need formulas, they will thin the population just as efficiently as Mao even before the start to use the formula.
How long before conservatives and Republicans are given a low score and not allowed to receive medical treatment…except for “mental illness” of course?
If the libs say it’s good for you, it’s really bad for you. If they say it’s bad for you, it’s really good.
OK, good, now Democrats want to kill garndma and da widdle baby girl. Thanks for clearing that up. As for “Years of research in treating children with autism . . . becoming null and void” you might want to take that up with Michael Savage.
And where are repubs outcries? The silence is deafening. I have resigned myself that this horror will be forced upon us. I will not buy the insurance and I will be civilly disobedient in every way possible . I am so beyond words in response to the vileness of our so called representatives and how much they loathe and hate us. I wish they would just do whatever they are going to impose on us and get it over with so that we can then fight for our basic human rights.
#4 rrbs
You do understand that Stephen Hawking lives in England right? England, where they’ve had full-scale socialized medicine for his entire life? Somehow the British government hasn’t let him die yet.
Excellent article! After 100 years, the Progressives will finally get what they always wanted: the power to control the make-up of the population. They have always been closet eugenecists. (Read the history of the American Progressive Movement–it is shocking.) Remember, during the presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton was asked how she would describe herself and who her heroes are? She answered that she is a modern Progressive and her hero is Margaret Sanger. Everyone associates Margaret Sanger with abortion, but that is incorrect. Sanger was actually anti-abortion. She was a eugenecist who wanted to control human mating to breed out what she considered to be undesirable characteristics, such as ethnic minorities and hereditary disabilities. Sterilization and euthanasia were her tools. Clinton allowed us a little peek into the Progressive mindset when she made these comments. As a liberal elite, she probably figured that we’re all too stupid to make the connection between Margaret Sanger and eugenics. Please consider this: We have 80 members of the House of Representatives who belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. That’s 80 members who subscribe to the Progressive beliefs of eugenics. And, there are probably more liberals who are not part of this caucus who have similar beliefs. Being Godless, these people believe that they have the right to manipulate us and make us into what they want. This should scare the bejeebers out of everyone. And remember, these elites will be exempt from all the draconian measures they wish to impose on us. This health care legislation must fail. If it passes in any form, we’re sunk. You can kiss your freedom good-bye.
Anyone who signs onto a government takeover of health care is signing onto an illimitable evil, and should be held to account for it. He’s advocating that the State decide who may, and by inescapable implication who may not, receive specified treatments, from specified providers, at specified times and at specified costs.
In effect, he’s advocating giving the State the power of life and death over persons who are not condemned criminals. Ironic, since the Left is overwhelmingly against the death penalty — except in the case of unborn children, of course.
He who doesn’t realize that hasn’t thought about it nearly enough. He who does realize it, and approves of it even so, is a monster, no matter who he is or what party he belongs to.
I thought we’d seen the worst the Culture of Death could show us. It appears I was wrong.
For anyone interested in learning more about Obama’s healthcare plans and the current reform initiatives, I work for the health videos website icyou.com, and we have hundreds of videos solely dedicated to these topics. Check out these links for videos about healthcare politics, policy and reform:
http://www.icyou.com/topics/politics-policy/healthcare-reform
http://www.icyou.com/topics/politics-policy/healthcare-politics
http://www.icyou.com/topics/politics-policy/healthcare-policy
check back for more information because we update daily!
Thanks,
Laura
Paul:
Ask not what the NHS does for Steven Hawkings, the Albert Einstein of the modern world, but ask what they do for an anonymous physics teacher with ALS in Birmingham or Liverpool. The answer is they let him die.
How ironic that a Jew would design a medical system that would gain the approval of Henrich Himmler.
#15 tdiinva
I would like to see some proof of that. I’m not a big fan of anecdotal evidence but my grandmother lives in England too. She’s 91 years old, has leukemia, shingles and a replacement hip. She’s mostly blind and at least 90% deaf. She is currently in the hospital and the British government doesn’t seem to want to let her die either despite what must be a truly awful score on any quality of life formula. The fact is that the British government isn’t in the habit of letting it’s citizens die, you can tell that by the fact they have an average life expectancy of 79.01 years compared to our 78.11.
In any case, my point is still correct. Using Stephen Hawking as an element of your argument against socialized medicine is idiotic.
Atena insurance company- 600,000
UniCare insurance company- 180,000
Secure Horizons insurance company- 122,000
and several others are canceling Medicare Advantage for seniors.
Almost 1
million below poverty seniors with no private fee for services health care.
That rumbling sound you hear is poor old Ted rolling over in his grave.
And the Senate bill hasn’t even passed yet!
The democrat party has always told the world they will protect Medicare.
2010 democrats are committing political suicide,
and I love it.
Stephen Hawking is alive because of millions of dollars spent by numerous funds, organizations and sponsors. Anyone who believes Hawking’s medical care is limited to what the NHS provides for him (and all other people in England with similar diseases) is an idiot.
Stephen Hawking does no more good for humanity than does any other wheelchair bound person or person suffering from ALS. It’s not a good idea to base the argument upon the detriment to society of killing off Stephen Hawking as it concedes that utility to society is a justifiable measure of the value of a human life.
Besides, Hawking is a TRUE BELIEVER in Global Warming. Therefore, as a “scientist”, he’s a hack.
WE need for Fox or some other more open but not perfect newes team to do a complete profile on MArgaret Sanger, Paul ERlich and today Ezekiel Immanuel and his Brother Rahm. The Immanuel parents can be proud that they taught their children well to be elitist who gets to pick a choose who lives and who dies. The kind of eugenics proposed here were last practiced under the left leaning progressive at thetime NAZI party. WE thought we defeated them, we were wrong. They started by redefining the NAZI’s are a party from the right, then continued to worn their way into the US. We conservatives bear much of the blame for this, we too often are johnny one notes at the ballot box. The balot box is important in many ways. The first is to understand that control must be kept, the Progressives understand that, we do not yet but hopefully the loss of control through the last tantrum will educate a generation. Next, the ballot box must be used for continual improvemnet, new candidates must always be sought and no one should be assured of their seat.
One thing that is not measeured here is what will be done about folks with AIDS. WE have made tremendous progress in treating that self inflicted (most of the time) disease but at great cost. WE have just begun to see what might happen with Breast exams. For years the public officals drummed it into folks heads that Mammograms are imprtant, now that the elites may have to pay for it, it is not so important. Truat me there will be out of public clinics for all of these elites, just lookat Canada, Britain and everywhere else. I wonder what Michael moores score would be? I mean a perpetual obese person certainly deserves little treatment if that is the regime we are adopting.
Let us now work on separating the word liberal from progressive, let us make liberal stand for waht it has always really meant, distrust of government and the exaltation of indvidual right, individual freedom and extreemely limited use of the police power of the state.
Life expectency differences between the United States and the rest of the developed world are a function of lifestyle and statistical manipulation.
In the United States if the baby is delivered it is a birth not so in the UK or other countries. If the baby doesn’t survive the the first 48 hours then it doesn’t count as a live birth. The US does a magnificent job of saving premis to the detriment of our infant and child mortality statistics and our life expectency. Of course we murder more, smoke more, drink more and get high more then people do in the UK and this is reflected in our life expectency as well.
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/08/20/turns-out-us-healthcare-system-is-actually-like-really-good/
chuck I thought you were on vacation. nice to see you back.
there is nothing good that will come out of this pathetic administration …nothing but misery.
Ann Coulter had said it well with ” ….SPEAK LOUDLY AND CARRY A SMALL VICTIM”
What I don’t get is that we currently don’t have rationing so why on earth would we want a system that does???
Why is socialized medicine so important as a matter of principle to these people that they would degrade the best system in the world to have it in the face of strong opposition, the proven failure of what they want to do as well as cost increases as determined by their own budget people?
Lunacy.
A more appropriate title would be “Government Run Health Care vs. the Value of Your Life”.
We constantly hear refrains from the Democrats that Obamacare will cut the deficit, save money, and other absurd claims about cost reductions but the question about why government even cares about the cost of health care is never asked. Government doesn’t after all care how much I pay for my laptop, my appliances, my car, my food, my clothes, my iPod, et al so why do they care about health care? Because they inserted themselves into the market when they launched Medicare and Medicaid and later increased their presence with SCHIP and have been distorting the markets ever since. If the government truly cared about reducing costs then they would work toward getting government completely out of the market. For those that believe that only government can reduce costs I have to ask then why don’t you support government takeover of everything? The poor can be supported easily via vouchers in the form of a prepaid HSA account from which they would enter the market to buy their own health care policies. Medicare can also move down this path and toward eventual elimination as the American people are once again allowed to keep their own money and buy health insurance for themselves. There is simply no need whatsoever for government involvement outside their Constitutional prerogative as a regulator of commerce which is actually a small role as rulemaker.
For those that think there is no way out should this thing pass I suggest you visit the 10th Amendment Center (http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/) and start reading up on the 10th Amendment and ‘nullification’. We must all work hard to elect conservatives to state government and simply tell the federal government “no more”. No more unconstitutional ursurpations of state powers. No more unfunded mandates. No more lefty, coastal elites telling a mostly conservative country what it can and cannot do. No more bribing or extorting states with the tax dollars of the states’ own citizens. No more!
Sarah’s best paragraph, in her article, is the following:
“Leave it to American progressives to take the QALY one step further by defining quality of life as how useful you are to society — that is, how likely you are to increase the government’s tax revenue, hence the emphasis on those between ages 15 and 40. Health care gets a lot cheaper by rationing care to all non-taxpayers.”
After healthcare passes … and I have no doubt that it will … everyone needs to be quite careful and make sure that they are “useful”. Otherwise, the death panels will decide your fate.
23. jv:
What I don’t get is that we currently don’t have rationing so why on earth would we want a system that does???
Why is socialized medicine so important as a matter of principle to these people that they would degrade the best system in the world to have it in the face of strong opposition, the proven failure of what they want to do as well as cost increases as determined by their own budget people?
Lunacy.
it is like religion (the other great human defect) rational thought has nothing to do with it.
…and a lot of these people want to cut down to size those who are successful in the independent way. ….they hate successful people ..they will never put the effort into being self successful so they wish to do damage to those who are.
pretty ugly isn’t it.
Ten or twenty trillion for war…. or 500 billion for health care. Which one is better value for money? …..can you spell “No Brainer”?
In fact, most countries with socialized medicine, including Britain, are already using a mathematical formula that expresses the numerical value of one year of a human life in a measurement called the QALY, or “quality-adjusted life year.” In terms of determining medical care, the mathematical formula of the QALY is based on both how much a treatment may lengthen your lifespan and the quality of the life you will be living.
I hesitate to accuse you of deliberately misrepresenting this concept, but the only other alternative is that you have reading comprehension problems. Here is what Britain’s National Institute of Health actually says:
To ensure our judgements are fair, we use a standard and internationally recognised method to compare different drugs and measure their clinical effectiveness: the quality-adjusted life years measurement (the ‘QALY’).
Although one treatment might help someone live longer, it might also have serious side effects. (For example, it might make them feel sick, put them at risk of other illnesses or leave them permanently disabled.) Another treatment might not help someone to live as long, but it may improve their quality of life while they are alive (for example, by reducing their pain or disability).
The QALY method helps us measure these factors so that we can compare different treatments for the same and different conditions. A QALY gives an idea of how many extra months or years of life of a reasonable quality a person might gain as a result of treatment (particularly important when considering treatments for chronic conditions).
A number of factors are considered when measuring someone’s quality of life, in terms of their health. They include, for example, the level of pain the person is in, their mobility and their general mood. The quality of life rating can range from negative values below 0 (worst possible health) to 1 (the best possible health). (See the box below for an example of how this works in practice.)
In fact, as is obvious from anyone with an understanding of the English language, the QUALY does not measure the value of human life, it measures the capacity of a drug to increase or decrease the quality of life of an individual. If this sounds strange to you, then please refrain from comparing aspirin to tylenol at the drugstore, as you obviously lack some very fundamental judgement skills.
21. tdiinva:
‘In the United States if the baby is delivered it is a birth not so in the UK or other countries. If the baby doesn’t survive the the first 48 hours then it doesn’t count as a live birth.’
I am a midwife in the U.K and that is a load of crap. The lies and the mis-information about the N.H.S is truly shocking .
Every live birth is registered,if they die soon after they have a birth and death certificate.
This is a very important and moving article. I take issue with one idea, however. The author cites conflicts regarding “fairness.” However, this argument sounds more like one liberals often make than the foundation we, as conservatives, stand on. That aside, I thought the rest of the piece was brilliant and important for every person, your or old, with or without children to read. The author shows how this reform will literally reshape our very lives and the lives of those we love – and not in a good way. Thank you for writing this article.
28. Poor citizen, you’re numbers are backwards. The war costs half a trillion and health care costs untold trillions.
To: Irving T.:
Irv, you just don’t even see those curve balls at knee level, do you?
Please see the necessary consequence of a guesstimate of the relative efficacy of a given drug in a specified application as the determinant of a “To treat or not to treat” decision. And be sure that cost will become a factor, perhaps the basic factor, to be considered.
Five hundred billion dollars will be taken away from those who have paid, every payday, for that insurance, some since 1965!
Those deductions are mandatory. The money is taken by force and fear. Thats robbery!And now very few of the promised benefits will be delivered. Thats fraud and theft.
The message is:” Listen up. you trash! We are going to kill off the relatively unproductive and anyone who opposes us, by rationing health care as we see fit. Want to die for lack of treatment? Easy. Just oppose us and watch it happen. Got it?
We’re already murdering 1,500.000 innocent, unborn children each year, with your eager or tacit approval. We’re already killing your sons in meaningless battles all over the world, sending them at vicious enemies; but severely restricting their use of force. And you miserable, stupid, cowardly worthless reprobates don’t even care enough to keep informed; let alone require us to repent.
We pretend a religiosity but don’t really believe in the christian God, who rewards the good and punishes the evil- on an eternal basis.We have many perversions of that truth to offer you and you are too stupid, ignorant, lazy and malicious to take the trouble to mark and refute our deceptions.
You deserve what we will give you; enslavement and extinction. ”
“You are not children of God, created to know, love and serve Him in this life, and be happy with Him forever in the next.”
“You are merely nuclear accidents. Accidental collocations of subatomic particles; without meaning or value. And, ergo, disposable, dispensable, superfluous.”
The counter to that verbal garbage is our Lord Jesus Christ, see Mt.25.31-46, where He points out that as we treat others; so we treat Him. As we choose not to love/help others, we choose not to love/help Him. And again, the necessary consequences are eternal.
Work on that blind spot, Irv. With the help of the spectacles of love you will be able to see satan’s curve ball coming.
Numbers don’t mean anything to Poor Citizen. He tries a moral argument about the cost of war because he wants someone else to pay for his doctor visits and that is about it. He has no concern about who has to pay, as long as it isn’t him. Poor Citizen, to this point, has never figured out that the government wants him to be Poor in order to keep him wanting the scraps they hand him. Poor Citizen wants his government to steal from you and me and give some of the loot to him. He knows he would do jail time for doing exactly what he hopes the government will do to us. He has no moral values. He is a collectivist. Never the less, he will try to argue the moral high ground in order to get what he wants. The net result for Poor Citizen will not be what he expects. What say you, Poor Citizen?
18. Hyphenated American:
“Stephen Hawking is alive because of millions of dollars spent by numerous funds, organizations and sponsors. Anyone who believes Hawking’s medical care is limited to what the NHS provides for him (and all other people in England with similar diseases) is an idiot.”
Who you gonna believe on Stephen Hawking? You have two choices. Choice #1 – That idiot Stephen Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA leading theoretical physicist, world-renowned scientific innovator for more than 40 years. Choice #2 – the anonymous basement dweller named Hyphenated American? (Hey Hyphe, dinner’s ready. Spaghettios!)
Boy, that’s a tough one . . . . Oh, why does it have to be so hard? . . . Hawking or Hyphenated?. . . OK, I’m just gonna roll the dice and choose #1, the genius Stephen Hawing. (Sorry, Hyphe, maybe you can try again when the subject matter hits a little closer to your area of expertise . . . cross your fingers for “carnuba wax” to come up in the queue.)
The war costs half a trillion and health care costs untold trillions.
False. The current costs of both Iraq and Afghan wars are over a trillion to a trillion and a half dollars. However, since all of the cost was paid for on credit, and because there is much more to the cost of the war than simply the amount appropriated each year, it will certainly cost closer to three or four trillion and even more:
Coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, a Nobel laureate now estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing America more than $3 trillion.
That estimate from Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also serves as the title of his new book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” which hits store shelves Friday.
The book, co-authored with Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, builds on previous research that was published in January 2006. The two argued then and now that the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is wildly underestimated.
When other factors are added — such as interest on debt, future borrowing for war expenses, the cost of a continued military presence in Iraq and lifetime health-care and counseling for veterans — they think that the wars’ costs range from $5 trillion to $7 trillion….In an interview, Stiglitz said that too much of the public debate had been over the wars’ operational costs while the real budget strains would show up only years from now.
“The peak expenditures are way out,” he said, noting that the peak expenditures for World War II vets came in 1993.
The pair estimated that future medical, disability and Social Security costs for veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan range from a best-case $422 billion to what they call a more probable long-term expense of $717 billion.
Now and Then,
It does not follow that either Hawking or Hyphenated should be believed because he or she is more of an authority on the subject. Arguments from the basis of authority strike me as being the easy way out for the verbal combatant. They give no credence either to an affirmation or to a denial of the validity of an argument.
These “progressive” ideas are all alike in that they lack a basis in human reality. It is like your teenage kids who are so sure they know better how to run the household or the disgruntled mid-level employees who are sure they know better how to run the company. If they were ever to be given the reigns, reality would quickly intrude to expose the naivety of their notions. Unfortunately liberal politicians today have grabbed control by buying votes with their utopian promises. And when politics and governments get involved, the correction cycle on stupid ideas can be decades long, creating a lot of misery and robbing a lot of people of their chance at wealth and happiness.
In this article you can see the dangerous house of cards being built with all of these rules and machinations that are supposed to improve on our current system of health services. But the probability of making things much worse does not enter into their calculus. They know that whatever they try will set them up quite nicely with a lot of power and control over the rest of us. I am sure they are sitting there quoting Karl (Spackler not Marx): “So we’ve got that going for us – which is nice”.
“…we know that it cuts $500 billion from Medicare….”
Scare tactics not withstanding, it’s heartening to see rightists so concerned with Medicare, seeing as they fought its enactment tooth and nail.
the disgruntled mid-level employees who are sure they know better how to run the company.
You mean kinda like Obama, with “the company” being the USA?
The nice thing is, he’s already whittling down to “true believer” support levels.
Hopefully, he is as narcissistic as everyone says and the growing roar of criticism will cause him to kill himself. Good riddance to bad trash. That’d really be “historic”.
Now and then – you are so funny.
So, would Hawking survived if he were not a world renown physicist? Probably not…
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2009/08/28/stephen-hawkings-health-care-and-the-nhs/
Hawking biographers Michael White and John Gribben, in the second edition of their 2003 book, “Stephen Hawking, A Life In Science,” found that back when Hawking was less well-known, NHS wasn’t nearly as good to him.
In the mid-1960s, Hawking’s father became disillusioned with the care Hawking was getting from NHS and took over his son’s treatment himself, doing his own research and prescribing vitamins.
On his own Web site, Hawking recalls that private help was also critical. “I caught pneumonia in 1985,” he says. “I had to have a tracheotomy operation. After this, I had to have 24-hour nursing care. This was made possible by grants from several foundations.”
White and Gribben describe what that meant: “The best the National Health Service could offer was seven hours’ nursing help a week . . . They would have to pay for private nursing. It was obvious they would have to find financial support from somewhere.
“Jane (his wife) wrote letter after letter to charitable organizations around the world and called upon the help of family friends in approaching institutions that might be interested in assisting them.
“Help arrived from an American foundation aware of Hawking’s work and international reputation, which agreed to pay £50,000 a year toward the costs of nursing. Shortly afterward several other charitable organizations on both sides of the Atlantic followed suit with smaller donations.
It is like your teenage kids who are so sure they know better how to run the household
Given the character of your post, I’d give your kids the benefit of the doubt.
37. Jim Baker:
Hawking is not merely an anonymous authority. He is the person to whom the experience happened. If you were to ask the me and Hyphen how the healthcare system has served my children, I can understand why you shouldn’t believe Hyphen. But you should believe me. If you refuse to believe either, there is no reason to believe anybody on anything.
Jim Baker:
Arguments from the basis of authority strike me as being the easy way out for the verbal combatant.
Don’t forget how Hawking was drawn into the argument. A conservative commentator used him as an example of the failure of the British health care system. He really had no choice but to set the record straight; given the fact that he hadn’t been involved in the politics of American health care previous to that moment, and hasn’t been since, one can be reasonably assured that his only goal was to set the record straight ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE. Note that experience was being hijacked to push a version of the health care system in Britain radically different from Hawking’s experience.
As for Hyphenated. Why would anyone believe an anonymous commenter about anything? Finally, time after time when American punditry use personal stories in Britain to demonstrate the failure of the system there, they are often shown to be quite blatantly mischaracterized. If there is any party that has no credibility here, it is opponents to health care reform using the British model’s supposed “failure” as their number one prop.
Biblio @ 39:
Lying again, Biblio?
According to The Official Social Security Administration website (Medicare is part of Social Security, in case you didn’t know), in the Senate there were 13 Republicans voting Yea and 17 voting Nay, in the House, it was 70 Yeas to 68 Nays… in other words, pretty darned close to an even split.
That’s hardly fighting against it “tooth and nail,” ya know.
Next time, check your facts before posting.
That’s rather a disingenuous response Wanderer. Getting rid of so-called “entitlemen” programs was the centerpiece of Republican dogma for decades. That is until they actually were in the position to do anything about it. Heaven help the Republican legislative body that screws over the elderly; that would be about 3/4 of the Republican base gone right there. They want Republicans to GET RID OF EVERYONE ELSE’S handout, not theirs.
Nice try, Irving, but the vote count belies your spin.
See, that’s why I provide facts and links so that people can verify the facts for themselves. It makes it really hard for anyone to argue the contrary.
Better go back to OFA and ask them for a new talking point.
TO: Samson
RE: [OT] Still ‘Here’
Just been very busy on a project. When in this mode, the world could—and probably WILL—go to Hell. And I wouldn’t notice until the battery in my laptop went out.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. -- George Bernard Shaw]
I’m sure that there has never been a private insurance company which has denied a legitimate claim. Ever. Especially considering 10-30% of claims are rejected, depending on the company.
““services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.”
So I guess if you’re a disabled veteran, permanently injured as a result of serving your country, some buraeaucrat who never served anything or anyone but himself has decided you’re no longer worth taking care of.
I admit I haven’t read all the comments but I have read the article. I have a grandchild who is autistic and it makes me sick to think about how obamacare will affect him. But I had another thought: How will it affect those who are addicted to something? And I don’t mean chocolate! If we think about the non-productive members of society, I am sorry to suspect that many will not care if they don’t get treatment for their addiction. But what about alcoholics? Many who are binge drinkers function pretty well during the work week and then go bonkers on weekends. Some do okay during the work day and then drink themselves to sleep or unconsciousness when they get home. What will happen to these people? They will have alcohol-related health issues but will deny their drinking problems to their doctors. They will be no better off under obamacare and perhaps worse off. I can see no redeeming features in obamacare. It is going to end up costing even the poor more in the long run. They think they will finally get all the health care they need at no cost. WRONG! They will find that in the long run they will pay some way, some how.
Great article. Just so you know, Mark Levin read this on his show last night. Very impressive! Glad people are getting the word out on issues like this.
Too bad my congressbeing won’t be subject to QALY. He’s a shuffling advertisement for death panels.
41. Hyphenated American:
Did you blindly accept this comment?
21. tdiinva:
‘In the United States if the baby is delivered it is a birth not so in the UK or other countries. If the baby doesn’t survive the the first 48 hours then it doesn’t count as a live birth.’
If i,as someone who works in the N.H.S did not correct it,would it go unchallanged and therefore appear true.
In the U.K nobody cares what health system you have. Leave us out of it.
To call it ‘evil’ is appalling. Does it make me an evil-doer?
If anyone is interested in how it was formed,why,whats covered,choice,funding,what NICE is all about(that keep getting called death squads).Then i would be happy to inform you all.
I won’t hold my breath.
No wonder the Dems refuse to have this insurance. This is truly, my opinion, like what was done in Nazi Germany. Talk with people from Candada and other countries. 6 months to get a MRI. People are rated by age, disabilities, etc. (their worth). NOW WE HAVE NAZI CARE. IF YOU’RE NUMBER IS LOW (OLDER PEOPLE OR HAVE A DISABILITY)YOU WILL NOT BE TAKEN CARE OF…IS THIS INHUMANE OR WHAT???
AGAIN…DEMS YOU MUST HAVE SAME CARE WE HAVE…YOU ARE NOT ROYALTY.
Two words…Stephen Hawking. ‘Nuff said.
TO: All
RE: James
If we go with government healthcare, I have to wonder what James will say when his child, or the child of a close friend, is put to ‘sleep’ because they have some debilitating disorder.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.]
#43 and #44,
Are you saying that a media darling and a world renowned physicist says that he received excellent medical care in the British system, that all of us Americans will also receive great medical care? Did it occur to either of you nitwits that Stephen Hawking received the medical care he got because the media would have made an expose of anything less. I can extrapolate that, in our country, high profile people can be expected to receive excellent health care if Stephen Hawking is an example. But, Stephen Hawking, from his very limited perspective, can not be any more of an authority on the quality of the whole British health care system in than is Mr. Hyphenated. It does not follow that, because Hawking thinks he got great medical care, that the British health care system is good, and it doesn’t matter a whit what caused Hawking to provide us with his testimonial. You are both aware, I’m sure, that our high profile Congressmen and their families are not going to participate in the program that they are planning for you and me.
58. Jim Baker:
‘Are you saying that a media darling and a world renowned physicist says that he received excellent medical care in the British system, that all of us Americans will also receive great medical care?’
Nobody cares what medical care you have.Just stop mis-representing the N.H.S.
Stephen Hawkings is NOW a celebrity, but he wasn’t when he was first diagnosed with his condition back in the late 60s. His celebrity dates to the early 90s, by which time he was already in his wheelchair, and the NHS had already spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on his treatment.
It’s like 1984 except for that this is not Orwell’s fictional reality.
Here we have free choice and can prevent these things from happening if we stand up for what we believe in. (Cliche I know, but necessary when there are so many imminent dangers to civilized society.)
#59,
Did the British health care system take excellent care of Stephen in 1969? Did you know about it? If so, how did you know about it? I am not saying the British health care system is bad, I continue to say that, because Stephen Hawking says he has gotten great health care from that system, there is no more reason to believe that system is good or bad. Stephen Hawking is one person and the British health care system has presumably taken care of many millions. His opinion is no more valid on the subject of whether the British health care system is good or bad than any other single payer into that system. I could care less how the British system works for the British. My only concern is the debacle that the US congress is attempting to foist upon US citizens who actually pay taxes. Arguments given by the voice of an authority are never valid simply because of who the authority might be.
61. Jim Baker:
‘Did the British health care system take excellent care of Stephen in 1969? Did you know about it? If so, how did you know about it’
Because i work in it!
‘Because Stephen Hawking says he has gotten great health care from that system, there is no more reason to believe that system is good or bad. ‘
But if someone says it’s bad then that is accepted.That it is evil,has death squads,that we eat our young.
Ad’s have been run with complete lies in the U.S, they are accepted without question.
So ,if someone says something good it is irrelevant and does not mean it is good system,but bad things reflect a bad system.
Stephan Hawkings was responding to the hilarious comment,
‘People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.’
We obviously did not kill him at birth,or view someone with handicaps as worthless. That comment did not go down very well here.You must see why?
‘ could care less how the British system works for the British’
Maybe you should do,if you are going to condemn it.Nobody here is calling for the N.H.S to be implanted in the U.S.
You lot dragged us in to it.
At least some Americans might of given us the curtsey of finding out about it before judgeing us a failure and making myself and collegues evil-doers.
This comment was made earlier that‘In the United States if the baby is delivered it is a birth not so in the UK or other countries. If the baby doesn’t survive the the first 48 hours then it doesn’t count as a live birth.’
I am a midwife and that is insulting and a complete lie .We do not just blindly support the N.H.S, i am well versed in it’s problems.
‘My only concern is the debacle that the US congress is attempting to foist upon US citizens who actually pay taxes.’
We are not really interested in your domestic policy. If you believe that the N.H.S is going to be foisted on you.Then at least find out about it.
There is a unity lost between Governing Parties that is needed to help the people feel secure. The moral building block for Health Care.
To see the true Health Care Tax forum you must stop thinking in 3-D,This multi tax forum is against a $100 Trillion Dollar system.. …
To force pay into another system of failures within Health Care Insurance Groups.
This economy will not balance with this concept of a tax forum against the Health Care System. The issue of how to force pay into this system of Health Care may have worked but I am still troubled over the progressive tax forum within this Bill. It covers so many items and Countries that it only forces the system to adjust itself. In some areas, increases against the people and the troubled economy, and in other areas, less effects will be felt.
But this is my big problem, Government Officials seek help and they are to proud to ask us, “the true working force of Government.” It is understandable they have failed the People and within the United States Of America all we ask is to see us as who we are and not try to bring us into this world of the intellectual. I guess our Prime Directive is that of Star Trek, so it must be understood that for millions of people we are just as happy as can be making $13.00 per hour and we have no interest in this world of politics, and how to be a Enstine. Government Officials must understand that there is a level of people within different parts of this Country, that seek to be only that they find to make them happy.
As for this economy well, it is said that the U.S.A. Arms Division has created enough arsenal to destroy every last creature in the world 2 times over,built with tax dollars. This would be funny if not for the irony of it. And now as time has passed Government Officials keep failing. Before 9/11 all the way to today.
As it is in a world of a system, when employees continue to fail, one or two things happen, one; you get fired, two; if you see into a person a good, then it is political correct to implement a penalty or roll back in pay. But this implement of penalty is more favored in the course of action in the Federal Employment World. So how to fix the economy and unite it with the Health Care issue. It would be in the Countries best interest to implement a 10% per cent penalty against every State, County and Government Official within this Matrix of failures. Hey what is that old saying, what is good for the Goose is good for the Gander. I am serous about this, it is past due to show that our Government Officials they have failed, their system failure reaches into this world of warnings that they brush aside as if the information is not worthy noting. From Pearl Harbor to 9/11/2001 to 3/07/2010 of our tax system and Health Care Reform. This 10% per cent penalty should go into the Health Care Forum.
The big problem that Government Officials have is that they have no street credit. President Obama still has some but if he does not take his family and step away from these dueling Parties, that fight over this Health Care Dollar, and stand with Us he will lose all credit from the streets to the county.
President Obama, I would say to you, you have one last chance to regain the hopes and dreams of the American People. To reach out in a concept that states, if there is 250 million people in trouble because of these failures, I would give all my money to them and then I would say to all that I gave money to, “I have no money left, would you all please give me $1.00 back and then I would have $250. million dollars to start all over again.”
As for this $100,trillion dollar in site………….
Results 1 – 10 of about 685,000 for net worth of medicine development industry
Just to show how deep this Health Care Tax split petition reaches. The term split petition is used because of the Tax factor plan that is not seen because of the intent not to show a capital Taxing of close to a $100 trillion dollar package, a yearly system income, not profit…..
Some have stated that I clam to have spiritual in site or something of the sort. I assure you this is not true, so when I state that I asked God to help, it is my way of saying hey Bobby show me how to work on theses Chevy engines. But I do thank you for the consideration. Consider me a cross of Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hill Billies with my 10th. Grade education and Vin Diesel from the move Pitch Black.
So drop on by and see page 100 at our site and follow the blue pill link
Health Care within a moral value, is to ,
{ GIVE LIFE TO HOPE WHERE THERE IS NONE }
Henry Massingale
FASC Concepts in and for Pay It Forward
http://www.fascmovement.mysite.com on google. yahoo, and Aol.com
please take the time and visit all my new friends on the net and if you wish to post with FASC Concepts you will be most welcomed. So join us and share your ideas as one in one voice.