I've decided to fully condone a new system with "death panels". If you know you might be left for dead then you might start working for supplemental insurance coverage. This has potential to lower current dependency -- now go bake me some bread and clean my toilet you old geezers. Death Panels FTW!
(I feel a little dirty saying that. sorry grandma)
Originally Posted by billyshelby
I was just trying to have fun, OB. My old mantra that the more we seek to be consistent and rational, the more we lock ourselves into self-destructive positions. We need some loopholes to take care of us when logic fails.
Not that logic is bad, or that facts are bad, or anything all that mechanical. My thesis is that the universe is far more than we can comprehend, and virtually any of our ideals, like our theory of gravity, will generally fail. Gravity is known to fail as a thesis on very large distances that are still within our power of observation today. We will probably need whole new technologies and instruments to "divine" the principle that governs gravity in its ultimate "truth". Though I am myself fond of the little bit of doggerel that gravity is pretty well established and we are pretty certain to fall when we step off a cliff. . . . no matter if we imagine otherwise. . . .
We have a planetary problem with governance theories that are too new to have proven track records, and we are endangering our security, prosperity, and human rights by giving unlimited power to knowitalls who just simply don't know.
your virtually religious devotion to "social forces" you're in love with is a huge set of blinders, man. Maybe I have my own "blinders", but at least I'm conscious of the probabilities I am wrong. . . .
Last edited by babe; 11-14-2012 at 01:14 PM.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to franklin again.
you're a bad boy, frankie. How dare you not join the mesmerized throng chanting the praises of Lord Obama.
Death Panels? You've got to be kidding. They are not "Death Panels" but enlightened progressives, responsible citizens of the new world order, fulfilling the needs of evolutionary trends towards true altruism, true caring for mankind and our mother earth, a whole new plateau of social utopian interdependency. Folks literally "called by God Himself". . . . well, by the current staff of our elite thinkers. . . . to divine which of us are truly worthwhile human beings deserving medical care.
Chairiman Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin. . . . if they still even existed anywhere in Hell. . . . would be pleased. That was precisely their principle in ridding the Earth of humans who were just not useful enough.
However, I am in no position to claim we can't do a little better, sometimes, when we do have folks with some expertise weighing in on our decisions, or even that there are not some better ideas, no matter how many worse ones, in a huge bag of loose notions like what Obamacare really is. We'll be working on improving this bag for years to come, for better or worse. Hyperbole aside, I don't think "market forces" are any more reliable as ideals than utopian fantasies. . . . oops. .. . that's incredible hyperbole in itself. . . .
all I want is the right to find my own experts and make the best decisions I can. . . . . it's my body and my life. . . . and nobody else's damned business.
Last edited by babe; 11-14-2012 at 01:22 PM.
I really get tired of being told by people that they don't expect me to agree with positions, when I have repeatedly stated my agreement with that position.
Also, I don't want to poke any holes. I'd be quite satisfied if, for example, you had said that you would be OK with a JW doctor refusing to order a blood transfusion for you, even when you needed it. That would be a sign that you had really considered some of the worst implications of the position you are proposing (that doctors should be allowed to let their religious beliefs override their professional ethics), and felt that a genuinely important principle was at play. Instead, you seem to want it both ways, allowing religious freedom for positions you find unoffensive or even desirable, but not for positions you find unintelligible or reprehensible. This is a perfectly human desire, but it makes for bad policy decisions.
Isn't the reason this tangent came up a part of the ACA?
Did you condone the old system and its "death panels"?
Well said. I've been wrong plenty, believe me.
Did you mean corporate excutives, great capatalistic heros who protect the shareholders with their mighty blade?
Sorry to make you uncomfortable. I was just directed to this link.
http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/fi...eradar2011.pdf
Two things: First, I think that One Brow's ectopic pregnancy is a great example of how legislating abortion is stupid. I am against abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or the the health of the mother. The problem is, how do you legislate that? When is rape, rape? No means no, what if she says no 3 seconds before? 1 second before? Same with the health of the mother. What does that mean? Does that include mental health? Physical health? Both? When is it mentally healthy to have a baby?
You can't legislate abortion. It is too complicated. There are too many grey areas. Abortion should be left up to the states to decide, which allows people to decide (for example, if you want an abortion, you know where you can get one and if you don't, you know where to go where that won't happen).
Two, one of the major obstacles in healthcare is the rising costs. Why not let "insurance" be insurance? Why not turn back the clock to the good ol' days and only allow insurance companies to cover major work? Why not say, the "best" insurance you can obtain is a $5,000 deductible, everything else you pay out of pocket (I picked $5,000 because $5,000 won't bankrupt anyone). Costs would drop overnight. When the doctor walks in and says he wants to run 10 tests on you, you will stop him, ask him what the one or two most relevant tests are, and say let's start with those two. Right there, costs just dropped 80-90% (simplified, I know, but the point stands).
Also, get rid of "emergency" rooms. Instead of emergency rooms, have a triage center in hospitals. Then, you can have a nurse/PA do the triage, and either send people home at the beginning or send them off to ortho/surgery/doctor consult. That right there immediately cuts down costs.
Third, put a cap on malpractice. Currently OB/GYN's pay over $100,000 a year in malpractice costs. Let's say you cap mapractice at $1,000,000. So, OB/GYN gets out of school, puts $100,000 in an account every year for 10 years. That means over the course of his career, his costs dropped by 2/3rds, if not by 100%.
There are two examples of very, very easy ways to cut costs...but the only problem is Dr's pay would drop, insurance companies profits would drop, and certain politicians would have one less thing to "give" away.
This is the problem with politics. Nobody wants to work together to fix anything, everyone just wants to be right.
p.s. I don't even know if States should legislate abortion (rereading my post, I can see where I contradict myself). IF it must be legislated, it should be up to the states. Different regions think differently, have different cultures, different problems/solutions. This should be left up to the region/culture, if at all.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to One Brow again.
you're on a roll, OB. Just above are three consecutive posts with excellent and well-stated rejoinders. I love this kind of "fun".
You couldn't be more right here, kid. We're all paying for it now anyway (as both general ideologies agree we should as a society)... I'm trying to find the silver lining since the bill is here to stay regardless of minority outrage. There's not much I have more disdain for than providing opportunity to game for a free lunch. This thing has a good chance of providing limits to intervention (as a fallout), if you know what I mean.
well, like OB said, we already have corporate execs in insurance and other medical professions weighing in, for the sake of "shareholder value", skating around all the government mandates/regulations, creating a maze that is a potent inhibitor of our choices in medical care. . . .
for example, a cancer patient might be told by a very good doctor that a certain procedure is best for screening/tracking the course of a disease/treatment, and the doc puts in a request for approval from the insurer. . . . and is rejected on some bureaucrat's say-so, sheerly for considerations of economy.
The procedure I speak of in the case I'm referring to, would have shown the situation last April, and other procedures along the way didn't achieve that knowledge until mid-August, and would have reversed the decision on treatment beginning in April. That could have, and might have in fact, cost her her life. And in my opinion, would have actually saved a lot of money, too. . . . for those damned shareholders waiting for their dividend checks.
Stupidity is an endemic human fact, and isn't going away anytime soon. Institutionalizing it seems to be going the wrong way, in my not very humble opinion. Procedures that are cutting edge always get the knife on the Insurance Company and Government cutting room operations.
On the positive side, we lucked out in getting into a research program that is going to provide us with very excellent follow-up substantially on the research budget account.
And I share your disdain for the "gamers" who decide to politically support proposals that maybe sound good. . . . too good. . . . and which might very likely lead to general reductions in actual service/care we can access.
Denny's jumping on the bandwagon.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...gislation.html
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Most the arguments against a government administered program are the same as those used against the status quo. It's inevitable when we pool resources together for the good of all. A good republican conservative can "do the right thing" his entire life, get laid off for a few months and lose insurance, develop a condition, and never get the treatment he's paid a lifetime to receive. That's pretty messed up.
I'm more worried about the implications toward innovation when the last provider of bumper crop sized returns monopolizes buying power as the Europeans already have. Where will the incentive for innovation come from? I'm not anti-academia by any stretch but don't see them as a meaningful or reasonable replacement to our currently fantastic private sector.
Since you're a fan of tariffs, I'd like to suggest one in reverse of sorts--we should have a law requiring every other nation to pay the market price we set for drugs & require importers to sell foreign drugs at the best price given to Euro nations.
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