Here is what some of President Obama's top advisors are saying about medical care under the federal government:
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a health-policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget says
- (Healthcare) savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously. (What is the Hippocratic oath? Do no harm!! This is in a country where it is legal to kill an unborn child up to and including the point where his or her head is out of the mother's body! And we take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously?!?! )
- Communitarianism should guide decisions as to who gets care. Medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled.
- Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. Even if the 25 year old receives priority over 65 year olds, everyone who is 65 right now was previously 25. (So, its ok to tell 65 year olds that they can't get that operation?!)
- recommends we slow medical innovation to control health spending. (So, America is supposed to turn its back on continuing medical innovation?! Our quality of life is going to go down under this bill! Our life expectancy is going to go down!! In a few short generations, we will not be living as long or as healthily as our parents did, if this bill passes.)
I'm glad to hear of Dr. Emanuel's opposition to assisted suicide. I hope that his strong feelings on that are shared with the administration.
ReplyDeleteOur increased life expectancy does have increased costs associated with it. What I think is sad is that by rationing who gets health care by age and disability (as well as cost) we will most probably decrease the life expectancy of future generations.
Scary story! Thank you so much for sharing it!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anne!
ReplyDeleteIt seems that increased life expectancy ought to go hand in hand with increased productivity. Surely there is a way to balance the increased life span with increased productivity to cover increased costs?
ReplyDeleteI think health care costs are increased for many reasons, not the least of which is that instead of buying insurance to hedge against catastrophic illness and expense we buy insurance to pay for every little doctor's appointment grandma used to pay for out of pocket (back when the doctor came to her house) and have therefore inserted a 500 pound middle man into the picture.
ReplyDeleteSo reduce costs by cutting out some of that middle man's weight. Or pay for increased costs by making different choices as a society. In a country where you can get Taco Bell's "fourth meal" all night long almost anywhere in the country, we don't need to be telling people that by the time they are up for an amputation they have come to the table too late for help. As long as we spend millions of dollars each year drinking soda we need to stop telling old people they should die a couple years sooner because funds are limited.
I am strongly conservative but have a kid with a chronic illness. It is very costly. After the health care bill looked like it was a sure thing, anyway, I had a second where I thought at least it might make things easier for us. It won't. And it makes my kid's life infinitely more insecure, I'm afraid. Thanks for this post.
"As long as we spend millions of dollars each year drinking soda we need to stop telling old people they should die a couple years sooner because funds are limited." You know, that's an excellent point! Younger people will be able to continue to abuse their bodies and get everything paid for while the elderly and disabled will be refused care. Excellent point.
ReplyDeleteAnd those young people abuse their bodies because they figure it won't catch up to them until they are "old", and it won't matter because once you are old you're hardly living anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm an old lady of forty, and I'm starting to see this interesting trend. Instead of, as Saponaria notes, looking to see if we can be productive (for our economy) into our seventies, I'm seeing companies increasingly start discarding people when they hit their fifties or even their forties. If we don't value the work of anyone over thirty but people live to ninety, we're going to run into trouble.