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bmc wrote:NYTimes
Schott’s Vocab - A miscellany of modern words and phrases
August 10, 2009, 11:22 am
Death Panel
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
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look on wikipedia under terrorism and the first words are
"Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion"
Sarah Palin is trying to scare Americans into coercion. That makes her a....
spartacus wrote:Sarah Palin is trying to scare Americans into coercion. That makes her a....
Gee, by your lofty standards we could call your parents terrorists for threatening to spank you as a child. How about your teachers who may have threatened detention in order to coerce you into doing your homework? Or the judges and police who threaten to throw you in jail if you break the law?
Sarah Palin is not trying to coerce Americans into doing anything- that would be Obama. Palin is part of the oppostion. I'm impressed though, that you went straight for the smear without even contributing to the discussion in any way or having a point to make. Nice work.
Anyone unfamiliar with Kenneth Gladney should do a quick google search before calling normal citizens nazis or thugs for daring to oppose Obamacare.
spartacus wrote:Sarah Palin is trying to scare Americans into coercion. That makes her a....
Gee, by your lofty standards we could call your parents terrorists for threatening to spank you as a child. How about your teachers who may have threatened detention in order to coerce you into doing your homework? Or the judges and police who threaten to throw you in jail if you break the law?
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As a fairly long time resident of Switzerland, I have to say I much prefer this system to Canada. Yes, it's expensive. But so is Canada. The quality of health delivery is superior.
From a process perspective, every time I go to a doctor, clinic or hospital, a bill shows up in the mail box. I pay it and submit for reimbursement. I get roughly 80-90% of it back.
When you see the cost of health services, you really think twice about running to emergency with a sore neck or a sore throat.
And we don't have Palin Death Panels over here. Sarah Palin and Britney Spears get far too much air time.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It was the blooper heard round the world. In an editorial denouncing Democratic health reform plans, Investor’s Business Daily tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance,” because the National Health Service would consider his life “essentially worthless.”
Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, was not amused.
Besides being vile and stupid, however, the editorial was beside the point. Investor’s Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.
Let’s talk about health care around the advanced world.
Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. There are, however, wide variations in the specifics, with three main approaches taken.
In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care while spending only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.
The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills. That’s how Canada and, in a more complex fashion, France do it. It’s also a system familiar to most Americans, since even those of us not yet on Medicare have parents and relatives who are.
Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about such systems, most of them false. French health care is excellent. Canadians with chronic conditions are more satisfied with their system than their U.S. counterparts. And Medicare is highly popular, as evidenced by the tendency of town-hall protesters to demand that the government keep its hands off the program.
Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.
In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.
So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.
If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That’s why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort.
But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work.
So we can do this. At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.
Excellent article, but this says it all right here:
bmc wrote:At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.
The question for me is, what is the motivation behind the right wing lies? Whether or not there is universal health care does not effect them personally except to maybe improve the lives of some of their less advantaged members, so why the extreme rhetoric?
Answer...it's a means of politically damaging the Democrats. That's it. They hate the democrats so much they shamelessly invoke Hitler and Naziism to create fear, and are willing to sacrifice millions who can't get medical care and millions more who will be bankrupted by the medical industry.
The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.
Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.
Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon's decision to remove a child's tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what's right for the patient.
Pretty powerful stuff, yes? Yet, according to LexisNexis, not one major newspaper in America reported this admonishment of the President by the ACS.
Not one!
The American College of Surgeons is a rightwing think-tank...aren’t they Rockie? Their claim that
“Obama got his facts completely wrong” shows that they’re racist too!
Disguising .
Hey Jake, it might surprise you to know that the American College of Surgeons is comprised of doctor's. You'll also be shocked to know they are the medical industry that is currently the most expensive in the world and only serves those fortunate enough to afford it. If you actually believe they only make between $740 and $1140 for a leg amputation I have some land on Mars you might be interested in.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.
Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.
The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."
Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country's economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.
There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group's ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama's White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod's personal financial disclosure report.
A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.
"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"
Oh please. It's not even in the same league that, say, the Iraq war was in enriching Haliburton, Blackwater and various other Republican firms connected to Cheney among others. You'll have to come up with something much more sinister than that Jake.
Why do you object to people getting health care? Is social responsibility so scary to you that you'll deny health care to people who can't afford it on their own?
One of the reasons health care costs so much in the US. What would Canada do if faced with this sort of thing?
Paying The Price For Illegal Care
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Health Care: Democrats are right that uncompensated emergency care for the uninsured is driving up costs. What they don't say is it's illegal immigrants who are bankrupting ERs, and the federal government is encouraging them.
Last decade, the Clinton administration added teeth to a little-known Health and Human Services Department regulation mandating that hospitals provide emergency treatment even to illegals.
Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, hospitals can't even ask for a patient's immigration status or ability to pay prior to delivering treatment. They also can't keep such uninsured patients waiting, even if their problem isn't an emergency. Nor can they discharge them until they're fully stabilized and have safe transportation.
More, hospitals must post EMTALA signs in Spanish and English. The law isn't limited to ERs. Hospitals must accept illegals at any facility on campus — including outpatient clinics and doctor's offices — located within 250 yards of the main buildings.
Hospitals end up treating uninsured illegals for the sniffles and other nonurgent care, and pass that exorbitant cost on to the insured, the Government Accountability Office has found. Resulting overcrowding leads to delays in "care for patients with true emergency needs."
This unfunded federal mandate has placed a heavy and unfair financial burden on more than 1,500 hospitals across the country, according to HHS data, costing billions in unpaid bills by some estimates.
Many eat losses and eventually go out of business like they're doing in droves in California, which has seen 85 hospital closures in the last decade. An additional 55 facilities have shut down ERs. The state ranks last in the country in access to emergency care and last in ERs per capita, making it woefully unprepared to respond to a major earthquake or terror attack.
Border hospitals are the hardest-hit. By law, they have to treat even illegals injured while crossing the border. Each year, hundreds of them pour into the ER at El Centro Regional Medical Center near San Diego with fractures sustained while climbing the fence or eluding border patrols in high-speed car chases. Others suffer from multiple organ failures from dehydration.
Many abuse the system with encouragement from groups like Maldef and La Raza, which have spread the word about EMTALA. In Texas, hospitals are flooded with walk-in mothers in labor showing up in the ER to have their anchor babies.
Some 80% of the births at Houston's Ben Taub General Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital are to illegal immigrants. In Fort Worth, it's about 70%.
At a recent town hall meeting, President Obama shot down tort reform because, as he argued, Texas has tort reform and one of its cities — McAllen — still has "the highest health care costs in the country."
McAllen also is one of the most heavily trafficked border areas in the country, a little fact Obama failed to mention. The border patrol nabs 75,000 illegals there a year. They're the ones caught; others flood McAllen hospitals.
Overutilization of ER services by illegals is crippling the area's major hospital system, including McAllen Medical Center and Edinburg Regional Medical Center. The South Texas Health System eats $140 million a year in free care, and 60%-70% of those unpaid costs are in the ER.
Some 40% of the babies born at McAllen Medical last year were to illegals. That's nearly 2,400 babies who were given instant citizenship. And their mothers instantly qualified for U.S. welfare. Many of them, McAllen Medical CEO Joe Riley says, were "mothers about to give birth that walk up to the hospital still wet from swimming across the river and in actual labor."
Actually, Miami boasts the highest medical costs in the country. McAllen is No. 2. Like McAllen, Miami hospitals are overrun by illegal Hispanic immigrants.
Thanks to EMTALA, one hospital near Miami was forced to eat $1.5 million in unreimbursed care for an illegal alien from Guatemala. After three years of treatment, Martin Memorial Medical Center paid $30,000 to charter a jet to take Luis Jimenez to a medical facility in his home country. His family in turn sued the hospital.
Any health care overhaul should start with rewriting EMTALA. No one wants to refuse emergency care to indigent Mexicans who truly need it. But when you consider that they wire an average of $300 a month in remittances back to Mexico, that money could go a long way toward purchasing medical insurance.
At a minimum, the government could impose a fee on remittances to Mexico, and use the revenues to offset costs that border hospitals incur for the care of illegal immigrants.
My daughter worked at Queen of the Valley hospital in California in the maternity ward. About half of the women having babies were illegals. The hospital is/was supposed to be paid by the Feds but never was. Many hospitals in California are bankrupt now and part of the reason is illegals.
As far as "death panels" go, in Canada we already divide patients into 3 groups. There is the under 45, 45 to 65 and people over over 65 years old. Worker Comp, police firefighters ect. get priority over all.
Government run industries reward failure more than success. Huge backlogs in treatment due to sniffles, scrapes and nose bleeds are rewarded with more funding. We pay retarded prices for IV bags, hospital appliances and outragous salaries for slugs who sit on hospital boards. Everything that is used in the medical industry is priced right out of sight. Antibiotics for vetrinary use come from the same factories and the same standards yet cost 10 times as much.
Rockie wrote:Can someone please explain how guns are relevant to a discussion about public health care?
I highly doubt it has a THING to do with health care, I would surmise that it's aimed at the threat of gun control in the U.S. What better place to show concern than at an event the President is attending? Same thing happens with our PM.
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Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not,knows no release from the little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.
- Amelia Earhart
There is no threat of gun control in the United States and none on the horizon, so that's just not plausible. What is plausible is that it's intimidation through the threat of violence by a bunch of nut cases looking for an excuse and a means of overthrowing a government. Those morons are not the least concerned about health care reform and aren't bright enough to understand it if they did.
I'm curious, I wonder how many of the gun tot'in patriots showing up at those meetings are black?
Well, Rockie, the threat is there, trust me. If there WERE none, the State of Montana wouldn't have enacted The Montana Firearms Freedom Act to COUNTERACT federal proposals. Do you know what exactly is transpiring in the US right now, in regards to firearms and ammunition? Do you see it every day, and does it affect you? Keep in mind, Montana's legislation was passed by goverment, not a bunch of NRA fanatics..
ANYWAYS - I don't think turning this into a race thing is plausible, either.... considering.
Back to the health care topic - it's definitely controversial.
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Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not,knows no release from the little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.
- Amelia Earhart
No doubt, the president is in zero danger from a man open carrying in such a manner. He probably would have been dead, had he so much as reached for his clips.
The media are … below stupid.
Now … can anyone explain the difference, to Rockie, of a man open carrying at a demonstration (with a sniper most likely aiming at his head) and a Black Panther patrolling a polling location?
Where did I say the guy with the gun was a threat? I said it was intimidation and stupidity, which are the only two reasons any dipshit would go to something like that openly armed. It will take someone infinitely smarter but no less fanatical to actually be a threat to Obama.
Also no one's answered how many of those dipshits are black, whereas I'll bet at least two of them are called Bubba.
Rockie wrote:Where did I say the guy with the gun was a threat? I said it was intimidation and stupidity, which are the only two reasons any dipshit would go to something like that openly armed. It will take someone infinitely smarter but no less fanatical to actually be a threat to Obama.
Also no one's answered how many of those dipshits are black, whereas I'll bet at least two of them are called Bubba.
What do you think intimidation is, Rockie? Last I checked, it was threatening behaviour to achieve a goal. And why do you have this inability to think that someone may simply wish to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms as a reminder to people of what they're entitled to?
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no sig because apparently quoting people in context is offensive to them.
grimey wrote:And why do you have this inability to think that someone may simply wish to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms as a reminder to people of what they're entitled to
If it was a meeting about gun control I might agree with you, but it was about health care. Why do you have this inability to see that the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other? Are you suggesting they're so stupid they think a public health care meeting is about guns? Are you that stupid? Do you for instance go to a school board meeting with your mortgage in your hand to remind everyone you have the right to own property?
Get with the program. It was intimidation and sheer stupidity.
By the way, the guy in the video was black. Go figure. Did you bother watching the rest of the video? The moron kept trying to turn it into a gun debate, as if anybody was challenging Americans right to carry guns.
grimey wrote:And why do you have this inability to think that someone may simply wish to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms as a reminder to people of what they're entitled to
If it was a meeting about gun control I might agree with you, but it was about health care. Why do you have this inability to see that the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other? Are you suggesting they're so stupid they think a public health care meeting is about guns? Are you that stupid? Do you for instance go to a school board meeting with your mortgage in your hand to remind everyone you have the right to own property?
No. Do the democrats have a history of exploiting eminent domain to seize property? No. They do have a history of implementing stricter gun control every chance they get. You analogy sucks.
Get with the program. It was intimidation and sheer stupidity.
No, dumbass, it wasn't. For it to be intimidation, the president would have had to have felt he was under threat. He wasn't gesturing around with it, he had it slung over his shoulder.
By the way, the guy in the video was black. Go figure. Did you bother watching the rest of the video? The moron kept trying to turn it into a gun debate, as if anybody was challenging Americans right to carry guns.
Hey stupid...we're talking about health care!
No, they're talking about freedom from government interference.
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no sig because apparently quoting people in context is offensive to them.
grimey wrote:No, they're talking about freedom from government interference.
You feel the government is interfering by trying to ensure every American gets health care? Are they interfering by defending you with a military? Are they interfering by insuring your bank deposits? Are they interfering by building electrical and water grids? Are they interfering by enacting safety regulations for airlines? Are they interfering by building roads? Are they interfering with labour laws that help you keep your job? What is it with you?
This...is...NOT...about...gun...control.
Can you imagine an actual debate about gun control where the (law abiding) pro-gun people obviously show up armed to the teeth as is their current right? And because they feel threatened the pro-gun control people also show up equally armed for their own protection as is their right and as distasteful as they might find it. Can you see a potential problem here?
Duh...I don't know. Let me see, a bunch of hotheaded, heavily armed people angry at each other. What could go wrong?
You people scare me even without a gun on your hip.
