It Can't Be Said Better - XIX

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the obvious point....

None of this seems to get counted when people talk about wait times, but believe it or not, the 16 hours you spent on the phone trying to organize your health care is 16 hours that you don't get back. Moreover, the experience has made me even more unreceptive to warnings about the bureaucratization of health care; I've dealt with so many bureaucrats from so many different organizations that giving all of their jobs to one single government bureaucrat tasked with determining how useful my life is would seem like sweet relief...

Farley is young, not so far out of college, been through a couple of job changes and recently become a proud parent. Sort of like the average successful American. Read the details of Everyman's life with for-profit health insurance here.

Death Panels

OK, as I have said before, I Am Not A Lawyer, I just read stuff they do.

So, apparently according to Betsy McCoughey (pronounced McCoy, May God Rest DeForrest Kelly's Tortured Soul) the reason to fear the 'end of life' consultation provisions of H R 3200 (Link is to the actual text of the bill in PDF format, it will require a bit of bandwidth to load....) is because Medicare reimbursement for doctors is tied to performance criteria and how many "Advanced Care Planning Consultations" a doctor has with their patients and how many actual "advanced directives" are produced, and of couse, are followed in the event they become operative will be part of the criteria. So of course, since their payment rates are involved, doctors are incentivized to make every patient have an end of life consultation and since the end of life consultation must include (yep, they said what it must include) discussion of "artificially administered nutrition and hydration" which is of course so horrible, we'll all immediately sign off on not receiving any of that and agree to die gracefully, thereby saving everybody a lot of money, it's MANDATORY, not VOLUNTARY. Uhmm, that's her argument, I don't get it so I bet I didn't state it right.

But thanks be to Google is your friend, here's what it actually says on Pp 431-432:

24 (A) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of re-
25 porting data on quality measures for covered
431 •HR 3200 IH

1 professional services furnished during 2011 and
2 any subsequent year, to the extent that meas-
3 ures are available, the Secretary shall include
4 quality measures on end of life care and ad-
5 vanced care planning that have been adopted or
6 endorsed by a consensus-based organization, if
7 appropriate. Such measures shall measure both
8 the creation of and adherence to orders for life
9 sustaining treatment.
432 •HR 3200 IH

Yes, End of Life orders defined in the bill include orders for using 'Life Sustaining Treatment" as well as withdrawal of same. You decide and the doctor gets to follow your orders. He just has to go through a prescribed list of things to talk about with you

1 ‘‘(F)(i) Subject to clause (ii), an explanation of
2 orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar
3 orders, which shall include—

a whole bunch of things listed on pages 426 through 428. You can go read it, Google (and my link) is your friend.

If you want (and can afford the copays and deductibles without bankrupting your family) you can demand that heroic measures be taken until a physician is willing to say you are dead, dead, dead, beyond any hope of resuscitation of any kind with any medical technology available in any hospital they can move you to without you being made dead, dead, dead, beyond any hope of resuscitation. And the doctor's performance criteria (on which 5 percent IIRC of his reimbursement hinges) is "Did the directive get followed?"

Ok, so they're reaching to say government doctors will decide when to pull the plug on Grandma. Now you know it, too.

Ask yourself. "Why do they make this s.... (stuff) up?" Do you suppose it's maybe because they haven't got any other arguments? Any other arguments at all? This one reeks of desperation.

Of course, it worked in 1994....

On September 30, 1993, the last day of Hillary Clinton's congressional committee testimony, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by McCaughey, who said she had read and reread the 239-page draft health care reform plan and concluded that the plan differed markedly from the Clinton White House's public statements and that the plan would in her opinion have "devastating consequences."

Yes, just this sort of devastating consequences. Only it's a little harder to carry the lie when any of us can just download the bill and read it ourselves. Yep, Google is your friend. Unless it's not.;o)

Food for thought

First and foremost, the purpose of the public option in health care reform is to keep the insurance companies honest. Really, nothing else. Does anybody, anybody at all, actually think the insurance companies are honest?

Face/Palm

I'm beginning to wonder if truth has anything at all to do with her worldview:

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.

Sarah Palin on her Facebook page 08/07/09

Such a system would, indeed, be evil. But nothing in ANY of the proposals under discussion actually resembles this, or even could be stretched into anything that could possibly morph into something like this. And no one making these arguments can point to anything in any proposal that actually would come to this. So why isn't she demanding proof of such allegations when people suggest them to her? Shouldn't she be pointing this out for what it really is, a baseless lie? Can she really believe it? How stupid is she? Worse, how stupid are the people who are listening to her?

Face/Palm

Cash for Clunkers

So, I'd like to get $4500 to trade in one of my old cars on a new model, but there's a problem:

The trade-in has to get less than 18 MPG. In my lifetime as a driver, I've never bought a vehicle that got less than 20 MPG. And wouldn't.

Nice to know that common sense is worth nothing.... :o(

Still mystified today

Quoting myself....

I just don't get why people don't seem to get some things that are blindingly obvious to me. For example, it seems blindingly obvious to me that there are some things that profit incentives are just not suitable for supplying.

If making a profit is the only suitable incentive, where services are not profitable, they will not be provided. The classic example is rural electrical services. While it is wildly profitable to provide electrical services (or rail services or phone services) where populations are dense making provisioning relatively inexpensive, it is unprofitable to provide the same service where populations are not dense which makes provisioning relatively expensive. The only solution is to provide incentives and mandates from governmental entities which spread the higher cost of provisioning for rural areas to the lower cost urban areas. Historically, this is what happened with railroads, then electricity, then telephones. The public mandated these actions because it was recognized that it would benefit the entire country for everyone to have these basic services.

So why isn't it just as obvious to anybody with brain cells that since the profitable way to provide health insurance is to only provide it to those who aren't sick, a private health insurance company out to make a profit will make every effort to exclude anyone who is actually sick or might get sick, in other words, anybody who might actually NEED it.

IF you accept that everybody should have health insurance because they might need it and SINCE it can be mathematically proven that insuring the entire population is the least cost per person way to provide insurance THEN it follows that the profit incentive cannot accomplish the goal. Therefore, government intervention of a time-honored type (equalize profit opportunity for provisioning low profit or actual loss making service areas using tax dollars or other government policy, remember, we did the exact same thing for railroads, electricity and telephone services) is required.

But when you design your program, keep in mind the goal is to PROVIDE INSURANCE FOR EVERYONE, not guarantee profits for the insurance industry, 'cause you can bet the insurance industry will be in there pitching for anything that lets them make a bigger profit. The voter's best choice is for the program that comes closest to providing universal coverage as that will spread the cost widest and result in the lowest cost per capita. So why do voters keep buying the nonsense that private health insurance is better? Logically and empirically that's just false.

Ask yourself this question. Why have so many large entities such as municipalities, school districts, large corporations and even states chosen to self-insure various risks? Because all insurance is just a bookie's bet that your insurance premiums will exceed your insurance claims and THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS. If you are big enough, better to be the house yourself and save the difference.

May 8, 2008

Thank you, stillidealistic at Talking Points Memo

Wake Up Liberal Christians!
June 6, 2009, 3:12PM

Being a Christian around here can, at times, be a pretty humbling experience. For the most part I feel like most of you regulars accept me as being a little different than the majority of Christians you know. I have good relationships with many here who are atheists or agnostics. Religion (or lack thereof) doesn't get in the way of our friendship or political discussions. I appreciate very much those who have taken the time to get to know me, and who accept me for the flawed, but "anxious to learn and improve" person that I am.

I'm not terribly preachy, never in anyone's face about their lack of belief, and have been known to make an off-color joke now and then. When I hear the words, "If only more Christians were like you..." I feel like I'm living a life that Christ would approve of. He doesn't expect me to be perfect. He certainly doesn't want me to feel like I am better than anyone else. And He absolutely doesn't want me to claim to be a follower of His, then turn around and live a greedy, self-centered, hypocritical life that would make anyone think, "Jeez, if that's what Christians are like, forget it."

There are others who suspend any attempt to be "politically correct" and are either outright hostile towards Christians, or are extremely condescending/rude. I find it interesting coming from people who are supposed to be more tolerant than the "righties" they detest. Rarely is this behavior directed at me, personally, but it does happen from time to time. Mostly I don't take it personally. Every once in awhile I get my feelings hurt, but, that's my problem...thickens the skin a little...builds character. Anyway, my point is, hypocrisy abounds on both parts of the equation. I often wonder as I'm evaluating myself, and my thoughts and behavior, do those who lump all Christians together ever think about what THEY are doing and saying? Are they aware that by shoving us all together into the same box, they are engaging in discriminatory behavior?

Not all Christians are the same. There was some discussion here recently (my apologies to whoever's post it was...I didn't bookmark it and can't find it) about liberal Christians. I think many didn't even think there WAS such a thing. The Christian movement has been hijacked by the vocal right-wing extremists to the point that when you say "Christian" many, if not most, think of Hannity and Rush and Sarah and their ilk, and don't even realize that they are only part of the story.

Whose fault is that? I would say it was the fault of liberal Christians. We have not stood up and demanded to be counted. We have not stood up and said "Enough already!" We have allowed our religion to be co-opted by the fringe. We have not held our religious "leader's" feet to the fire by DEMANDING that they practice the teachings of Jesus. We have stood by pretty much silently, thus giving tacit approval to their misrepresenting the truth lying, their hypocrisy in attempting to block universal health care while claiming to be their brother's keepers, their rabid insistence that abortion is murder, yet apparently having no problem with those who murder abortion providers or bomb their facilities, or condone torture or kill thousands of innocents, in addition to our own children, in a war that we did not HAVE to wage...

When did the Ten Commandments become the Ten Suggestions, or worse yet, multiple choice...pick which ones you want to follow?

In a recent comment I said that if I were searching for a religion to follow now, I don't know that Christianity would get a second look from me. The face of Christianity today is one of hate. Of dishonesty. Of greed. Of hypocrisy. Of exclusion. This is NOT the religion that I signed onto. I despise that we have let this happen.

As far as I'm concerned, you know a Christian by his/her actions.

But, there is a divide in the Christian Church concerning the matter of being saved. Some say once saved, always saved, others say you can lose your salvation by the way you live your life. We are never going to know for sure until we meet our maker face to face.

Perhaps those who believe once saved, always saved, think that just because they have asked Jesus into their hearts, they can now do whatever they want...they have their ticket to Heaven, so whatever they do now, they are covered.

But I contend that you can, indeed, lose your salvation through your actions, and these right-wing whackos that go around spreading lies, tearing people down, murdering abortion providers, denying people the most basic of human rights (i.e. health care) and generally behave in a manner that I am SURE makes our Lord cringe had better start doing some serious soul searching. And if they are smart, they'll err in favor of believing they CAN lose their salvation, because it may help them to think twice before acting the way they act. We are told by our Lord that we are to do NOTHING that will cause another to stumble in their faith. If we, as a group, behave in ways that bring disdain on our Lord, are we not causing them to stumble? Do we not have an OBLIGATION to behave in a way that brings glory, not ridicule to our Lord?
I love my Lord with all my heart, and the poor behavior of my fellow Christians is NEVER going to change that. But those of us who believe that the vocal minority of whacko Christians are ruining Christianity, have an obligation to change what is happening. So "WAKE UP LIBERAL CHRISTIANS!" To do any less is to agree with what they are doing. And then we have to be willing to accept responsibility for what they have done.