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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2009 20:53:08 GMT -5
So how long before one of these nuts starts shooting at one of these town hall meetings?
This country is in sad, sad shape. We can't even have a civil discussion about health care reform thanks to Fox and Rush.
"Death panels." Good gawd, but people are stupid.
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Post by lonewolf on Aug 11, 2009 21:41:33 GMT -5
So how long before one of these nuts starts shooting at one of these town hall meetings? This country is in sad, sad shape. We can't even have a civil discussion about health care reform thanks to Fox and Rush. "Death panels." Good gawd, but people are stupid. Come on...just like the reporters at Fox...I promise you that the term "Death Panels" is in the 1,000 page plan that I haven't read. |
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Post by shockjock on Aug 11, 2009 21:54:36 GMT -5
C&P by Mr. Death Squad for your pleasure!
If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).
The article in which Dr. Emanuel puts forth his approach is "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," published on January 31, 2009. A full copy is embedded below. Read it, particularly the section beginning at page 6 of the embed (page 428 in the original) at which Dr. Emanuel sets forth the principles of "The Complete Lives System."
While Emanuel does not use the term "death panel," Palin put that term in quotation marks to signify the concept of medical decisions based on the perceived societal worth of an individual, not literally a "death panel." And in so doing, Palin was true to Dr. Emanuel's concept of a system which
considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives. A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable....
When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.
Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel's proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment (probably not basic care, but likely expensive advanced care) to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel's implication not Palin's.
The next question is, whether Dr. Emanuel's proposal bears any connection to current Democratic proposals. There is no single Democratic proposal at this point, only a series of proposals and concepts. To that extent, Palin's comments properly are viewed as a warning shot not to move to Dr. Emanuel's concept of health care rationing based on societal worth, rather than a critique of a specific bill ready for vote.
Certainly, no Democrat is proposing a "death panel," or withholding care to the young or infirm. To say such a thing would be political suicide.
But one interesting concept which is central to the concepts being discussed is the creation of a panel of "experts" to make the politically unpopular decisions on allocating health care resources. In a letter to the Senate, Barack Obama expressed support for such a commission:
I am committed to working with the Congress to fully offset the cost of health care reform by reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending by another $200 to $300 billion over the next 10 years, and by enacting appropriate proposals to generate additional revenues. These savings will come not only by adopting new technologies and addressing the vastly different costs of care, but from going after the key drivers of skyrocketing health care costs, including unmanaged chronic diseases, duplicated tests, and unnecessary hospital readmissions.
To identify and achieve additional savings, I am also open to your ideas about giving special consideration to the recommendations of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a commission created by a Republican Congress. Under this approach, MedPAC's recommendations on cost reductions would be adopted unless opposed by a joint resolution of the Congress. This is similar to a process that has been used effectively by a commission charged with closing military bases, and could be a valuable tool to help achieve health care reform in a fiscally responsible way.
Will such a commission decide to curtail allocation of resources to those who are not deemed capable of "complete lives" based on prognosis and age, as proposed by Dr. Emanuel? There is no way to tell at this point since we do not have a final Democratic proposal, or know who would be appointed to such a commission.
To exclude the issue of allocating resources away from the elderly and infirm from the debate over "cost cutting," however, ignores the ethical elephant in the room. Let's have the debate, and understand specifically how resources would be reallocated, before any vote on a health care restructuring bill.
And before we create a commission to make such decisions for us, let's consider whether we should outsource these ethical issues or deal with them as part of the political process.
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Post by shockjock on Aug 11, 2009 22:09:18 GMT -5
Fox is #1 for good reasons BABY!!!
Looks like the American People like a balanced news better than the Obot controlled cable!
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Post by lonewolf on Aug 11, 2009 23:07:57 GMT -5
Fox is #1 for good reasons BABY!!!Looks like the American People like a balanced news better than the Obot controlled cable! If you think Fox news is balanced...then you also must think MSNBC is balanced. Mr. Cut-n-Paste...I also recommend reviewing several different news sources (and the ones that just quote each other don't count)..then make informed decisions and not regurgitated buzz lines. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2009 23:42:29 GMT -5
It's #1 because a lot of loonies like to have their looniness validated. Loony, I know, but there it is.
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Post by shockjock on Aug 12, 2009 0:07:48 GMT -5
Fox is #1 for good reasons BABY!!!Looks like the American People like a balanced news better than the Obot controlled cable! If you think Fox news is balanced...then you also must think MSNBC is balanced. MSNBC has totally sold out to GE/ Obama etc....It's the Obot love-fest network. The world is not flat...see the light!Now go for It! "So, if General Electric did in fact sell components to Iran, or people in Iran, that resulted in roadside bombs that may have killed our soldiers, how do you think this will impact GE and their oh so cozy relationship with the Obama administration? " |
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Post by Barefoot In Kailua on Aug 12, 2009 0:20:36 GMT -5
Fox is #1 for good reasons BABY!!!Looks like the American People like a balanced news better than the Obot controlled cable! If you think Fox news is balanced...then you also must think MSNBC is balanced. Mr. Cut-n-Paste...I also recommend reviewing several different news sources (and the ones that just quote each other don't count)..then make informed decisions and not regurgitated buzz lines. shockjock and sheep like him will not review different news sources unless Limbaugh tells them to. |
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Post by shockjock on Aug 12, 2009 0:44:56 GMT -5
If you think Fox news is balanced...then you also must think MSNBC is balanced. Mr. Cut-n-Paste...I also recommend reviewing several different news sources (and the ones that just quote each other don't count)..then make informed decisions and not regurgitated buzz lines. shockjock and sheep like him will not review different news sources unless Limbaugh tells them to. Oh... that old Mr.Obama set you up ,he did .....right..come on now he told you to say that! Dam, that Kool-Aid...just so effective on Obots! It was Kool the way used old Limbaugh too...u Go-Obot! |
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Post by chipNdink on Aug 12, 2009 0:45:59 GMT -5
... But one interesting concept which is central to the concepts being discussed is the creation of a panel of "experts" to make the politically unpopular decisions on allocating health care resources. ... Well that's certainly better than the current system, where such decisions are made by the bean counters working at insurance companies, who have no medical expertise at all. Nothing like paying for insurance up the wazoo until one really gets sick, then having the insurance canceled on account of you being too sick. |
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Post by bunnywailer on Aug 12, 2009 3:08:58 GMT -5
So how long before one of these nuts starts shooting at one of these town hall meetings? This country is in sad, sad shape. We can't even have a civil discussion about health care reform thanks to Fox and Rush. "Death panels." Good gawd, but people are stupid. Yeah, those religious nutjobs who were protesting all the funerals of Iraq veterans killed in action, and the crazy lady who camped outside GWB's house in Texas, were so much more civil in trying to get their agendas across. Just like all you shrieking sheilas here on VT during the last administration were so civil in voicing your dissent. Yeah, right. |
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Post by mikegarrison on Aug 12, 2009 8:47:04 GMT -5
Good gawd, but people are stupid. It's a complex problem, and people have always preferred it when someone else tells them there is a simple answer. We shall always have demagogues among us, because people behave like people. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2009 10:49:31 GMT -5
Right, Bob. I was always defending the nutjobs protesting at funerals. Sometimes I don't think you even read my posts. It's almost as if you have no respect for me at all. Go figure.
From NPR:
The story has spread so fast even President Obama got asked about it at one of his town hall meetings. But no, the health care overhaul bill now working its way through Congress would not require seniors to learn how to die prematurely.
It's not, however, because people aren't saying it. The most notable spokeswoman for the cause is Elizabeth McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York. McCaughey's last brush with major public prominence came during the debate over then-President Bill Clinton's health plan, when she wrote a highly controversial critique of the proposal published in The New Republic arguing the bill would have bound everyone inside the new system.
This time McCaughey has been making the talk radio rounds arguing that the latest version of a health overhaul has the government sponsoring suicide education.
"One of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on Page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care," McCaughey said on former Sen. Fred Thompson's radio show July 16.
That claim won her a "pants on fire" rating for its lack of truth from the nonpartisan Politifact.com Web site run by the St. Petersburg Times. But it has nonetheless spread like wildfire, being repeated not just on blogs and radio shows but by Republican members of Congress as well. Said a joint statement from House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), "this provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."
The claims have been highly upsetting to groups like the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, which strongly support what the bill really does — pay health care providers to talk to Medicare patients about creating so-called advance directives, or ways to express their health care desires in writing before they become incapacitated.
In fact, says Kathy Brandt, vice president of professional leadership, consumer and caregiver services, advance directives need not be about cutting off care at all. "If you want everything to be possibly done; all medical treatment to be done for you until your last breath, that's what advance directives can do for you," Brandt says. "I think most people who are healthy adults, not facing a terminal or life-limiting conditions, would want treatment, and nothing that's in any of the health care reform bills that I've heard or seen does anything that would prohibit that."
So why have the demonstrably false claims about death gotten so much life? Harvard public opinion expert Robert Blendon says it's because seniors are very sensitive about their health care. "Seniors worry more about their health care than any other group in American life," Blendon says. "They feel more vulnerable."
Blendon says it's no accident that opponents of the health overhaul chose to single out a provision aimed at seniors to make their case, because if seniors think they have something to lose from the current health care overhaul, "[they] are really going to be very active opponents of this, because that's not what they signed up for," he says.
And seniors, unlike many younger people, are very likely paying more attention to the health care debate.
"The seniors are really going to read and listen to everything and be concerned if they think as a result of the bill their current circumstances are going to deteriorate," Blendon says.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2009 11:22:07 GMT -5
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Post by asuvolley on Aug 12, 2009 11:26:52 GMT -5
All I know is that I think Barack "The Rock" Obama would do better in the WWE.
Entertaining, yes.
Says ridiculous things in front of large crowds, yes.
Likes all kinds of attention, yes.
Smokes cigs and drinks beer, yes.
Athletic, yes.
Likes to trash talk, yes.
He's a perfect fit.
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