Palin says Obama's health care plan is 'evil'

[ZahZoo]

Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

Nor is there really a piece of legislation ready to even vote on...

Quite true... good point.

[davehagarfan]

Originally Posted by ULTRAMAN VH

Um, thats all fine and dandy, and I guess it comes down to perspective, but I can't put much stock in an ex ESPN anchor.

Would it help more if he was once an owner of the Texas Rangers?

[jhale667]

Originally Posted by davehagarfan

Would it help more if he was once an owner of the Texas Rangers?

Yeah, that was another goofy statement...by that logic we can't take EVH seriously because he's an ex-paperboy...

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Originally Posted by ULTRAMAN VH

Um, thats all fine and dandy, and I guess it comes down to perspective, but I can't put much stock in an ex ESPN anchor.

Whoa sorry, I thought you were talking about Sarah Palin for a second there...

[davehagarfan]

Originally Posted by jhale667

Yeah, that was another goofy statement...by that logic we can't take EVH seriously because he's an ex-paperboy...

That's the exact reason why I never took Ed seriously

[FORD]

Originally Posted by Va Beach VH Fan

Whoa sorry, I thought you were talking about Sarah Palin for a second there...

Nah, she failed the audition.



...gee, I wonder why?





But she named her kid (Bristol) after ESPN's hometown anyway.

[ZahZoo]

Originally Posted by jhale667

Yeah, that was another goofy statement...by that logic we can't take EVH seriously because he's an ex-paperboy...

Hey I resemble that remark... only job I was ever fired from too.

Threatened some dumb old lady I'd quit delivering her paper if she didn't quit parking her car on it and calling in that I missed her.

[jhale667]

Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's 'Deadly Doctor,' Strikes Back
By MICHAEL SCHERER / WASHINGTON

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the medical ethicist and oncologist who advises President Obama, does not own a television, and if you catch him in a typically energized moment, when his mind speeds even faster than his mouth, he is likely to blurt out something like, "I hate the Internet." So it took him several days in late July to discover he had been singled out by opponents of health-care reform as a "deadly doctor," who, according to an opinion column in the New York Post, wanted to limit medical care for "a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy."

"I couldn't believe this was happening to me," says Emanuel, who in addition to spending his career opposing euthanasia and working to increase the quality of care for dying patients is the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "It is incredible how much one's reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context."

It would only get worse. Within days, the Post article, with selective and misleading quotes from Emanuel's 200 or so published academic papers, went viral. Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, a fierce opponent of Obama's reform plans, read large portions of it on the House floor. "Watch out if you are disabled!" she warned. Days later, in an online posting, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin attacked Emanuel's "Orwellian thinking," which she suggested would lead to a "downright evil" system that would employ a "death panel" to decide who gets lifesaving health care. By Aug. 10, hysteria had begun to take over in places. Mike Sola, whose son has cerebral palsy, turned up at a Michigan town-hall meeting to shout out concerns about what he regarded as Obama and Emanuel's plans to deny treatment to their family. Later, in an interview on Fox News, Sola held up the Post article. "Every American needs to read this," he declared.

By this point, Emanuel, who has a sister who suffers from cerebral palsy, had arrived in northern Italy, where he planned to spend a week on vacation, hiking in the Dolomites. Instead, he found himself calling the White House, offering to book a plane home to defend his name. "As an academic, what do you have? You have the quality of your work and the integrity with which you do it," he said by phone from the Italian Alps. "If it requires canceling a week's long vacation, what's the big deal?"

The attacks on Emanuel are a reminder that there is a narrow slice of Americans who not only don't trust government, but also have come to regard it as a dark conspirator in their lives. This peculiar brand of distrust helps create the conditions for fast-moving fear-mongering, especially on complex and emotionally charged topics like the life and death of the elderly and infirm. Prairie fires of that kind are hard to douse when the Administration's own plan for health care remains vague, weeks away from being ready for a public rollout. The health-care bill that recently passed the House does not contain, as some have suggested, any provisions that would deny treatment to the elderly, infirm or disabled like Sola's son. One provision allows doctors to be reimbursed for voluntary discussions of so-called living wills with patients, but does not in any way threaten to deny treatment to dying patients against their will. The legislation anticipates saving hundreds of billions of dollars by reforming the health-care system itself, a process that would try to increase the efficiency of medical care by better connecting payments to health outcomes and discouraging doctors from unnecessary tests and procedures. The Obama Administration hopes that many of these reforms will be made in the coming years by independent panels of scientists, who will be appointed by the President and overseen by Congress.

This is where the criticism of Emanuel enters the picture, since he is just the sort of scientist who might be appointed to one of those panels. For decades, Emanuel has studied the ethics of medical care, especially in situations where a scarcity of resources requires hard decisions to be made. His work sometimes deals with the hardest possible decisions, like how to choose who gets a single kidney if there are three patients in need, or the reasons that doctors order tests with little medical value. Emanuel's reputation ranks him among the top members of his field. He is published often in the best journals; he has been given multiple awards for work to improve end-of-life care. At the White House, he has taken a free-floating role at the Office of Management and Budget, advising on a wide range of health issues.

But in a country where trust is in short supply, Emanuel has become a proxy for all the worst fears of government efforts to rein in costs by denying care. "The fundamental danger is that the American people are being asked to delegate all these life-influencing decisions," explains Betsy McCaughey, the conservative scholar who wrote the New York Post attack on Emanuel. "There is a lack of transparency here."

In her Post article, McCaughey paints the worst possible image of Emanuel, quoting him, for instance, endorsing age discrimination for health-care distribution, without mentioning that he was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources. She quotes him discussing the denial of care for people with dementia without revealing that Emanuel only mentioned dementia in a discussion of theoretical approaches, not an endorsement of a particular policy. She notes that he has criticized medical culture for trying to do everything for a patient, "regardless of the cost or effects on others," without making clear that he was not speaking of lifesaving care but of treatments with little demonstrated value. "No one who has read what I have done for 25 years would come to the conclusions that have been put out there," says Emanuel. "My quotes were just being taken out of context."

For Emanuel, the entire experience has been a painful education in the sometimes brutal ways of politics, something his brother has long endured and dolled out. "I guess I have a better appreciation for what Rahm had to go through for years and years," Emanuel says. But that appreciation does not solve the question raised by the controversy. There is universal understanding that the nation's fiscal course is doomed without major changes to health care, but whom will the American people trust to carry it out?

Emanuel, for his part, plans to continue his work, which is focused on finding the most equitable and ethical way for this reform to be carried out, even if he has opted against returning from the Italian Alps. "I am an Emanuel," he says. "We are pretty thick-skinned. I am not going to change my colors. I am not going to crawl under a rock."


Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's 'Deadly Doctor,' Strikes Back - Yahoo! News

[Big Train]

I actually sympathize with the good Dr.

His stuff has not been "taken out of context" so much as viewed "without context".

The context of the health care has not been fully sussed out, so all one can do is peck at the edges to piece something together.

[jhale667]

Much like she "won't apologize for America", she won't apologize for being a lying sack of shit, either.

First, she backpedaled. Now, she's decided to stick to the bullshit...

Palin doubles down on 'death panels'
by Andy Barr

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin defended her claim that the Democratic health care proposal would create “death panels” in a statement Wednesday night slamming President Barack Obama.

“Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system, these ‘unproductive’ members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care,” Palin wrote in a note on her Facebook page.

“The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled ‘Advance Care Planning Consultation.’ With all due respect, it’s misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients,” she continued.

“Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often ‘if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program.’"

The White House and Democratic lawmakers have blasted Palin in recent days for suggesting that her own son, Trig, would have had to face a bureaucratic panel to get access to health care under the provision in the House health care proposal because he was born with Down syndrome.

“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,” Palin wrote last week.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs identified Palin on Wednesday as one of the GOP leaders he says is spreading “wrong” information about the health care debate.

Additionally, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is using Palin’s “death panels” claim in a fundraising plea to supporters, calling the former governor’s statement “disgusting” and “outrageous.”

But Palin seemed undeterred in her latest statement, pointing to columns by The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and others to support her suggestion last week that the Democratic proposal is “Orwellian.”

“President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government-authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisers are clear enough,” Palin wrote. “It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.”



Palin doubles down on 'death panels' - Yahoo! News

[Big Train]

Well, there was something to it. Enough to cause concern among indepedents and non-conservatives. And no, apparently enough to get it dropped out.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Breaking: Finance Committee drops “death panel” provisions from Senate bill
Breaking: Finance Committee drops “death panel” provisions from Senate billposted at 3:23 pm on August 13, 2009 by Allahpundit

I’m surprised it took them this long. If it had been Palin and the right tossing rhetorical grenades, they might have gone to the mat to keep it in there, but as the ‘Cuda herself noted in her response to Obama last night, it ain’t just conservatives who are freaked out by these provisions.

Eugene Robinson and Charles Lane at WaPo also concluded that having “outside” input into end-of-life decisions when the government’s desperate to cut costs could lead to abuse; Mickey Kaus and Camille Paglia have hammered The One about it too. And Obama’s done himself no favors trying to explain what he has in mind, as Tom Maguire reminds us. From an interview in April:

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

“Independent” guidance to seniors about death with an eye to reducing the lion’s share of health-care spending. What could go wrong?
Tired of the political migraines it’s getting from this, the Finance Committee finally decides to, er, pull the plug:

“On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”…

“The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund healthcare subsidies for illegal immigrants,” Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to “advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care.

In theory it could be reintroduced in the conference committee after each chamber passes a bill, but given the outcry over this, why risk an explosion that might queer the whole deal at the 11th hour? This never should have been in the bill in the first place, frankly; the way to encourage living wills (or, say, organ donation) so that people don’t end up undergoing expensive treatments they don’t really want is through a general public education/advertising campaign, not individual meetings with ailing patients terrified that the care they need to stay alive isn’t “cost-effective” in their case. Exit question: This is a win for Palin, but is it also a win for Obama? Now he can reassure Americans that the most worrisome parts of the bill are stripped out.

[Big Train]

Well, there was something to it. Enough to cause concern among indepedents and non-conservatives. And no, apparently enough to get it dropped out.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Breaking: Finance Committee drops “death panel” provisions from Senate bill
Breaking: Finance Committee drops “death panel” provisions from Senate billposted at 3:23 pm on August 13, 2009 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly I’m surprised it took them this long. If it had been Palin and the right tossing rhetorical grenades, they might have gone to the mat to keep it in there, but as the ‘Cuda herself noted in her response to Obama last night, it ain’t just conservatives who are freaked out by these provisions. Eugene Robinson and Charles Lane at WaPo also concluded that having “outside” input into end-of-life decisions when the government’s desperate to cut costs could lead to abuse; Mickey Kaus and Camille Paglia have hammered The One about it too. And Obama’s done himself no favors trying to explain what he has in mind, as Tom Maguire reminds us. From an interview in April:
THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
DAVID LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.
“Independent” guidance to seniors about death with an eye to reducing the lion’s share of health-care spending. What could go wrong?
Tired of the political migraines it’s getting from this, the Finance Committee finally decides to, er, pull the plug:
“On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”…
“The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund healthcare subsidies for illegal immigrants,” Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to “advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care.
In theory it could be reintroduced in the conference committee after each chamber passes a bill, but given the outcry over this, why risk an explosion that might queer the whole deal at the 11th hour? This never should have been in the bill in the first place, frankly; the way to encourage living wills (or, say, organ donation) so that people don’t end up undergoing expensive treatments they don’t really want is through a general public education/advertising campaign, not individual meetings with ailing patients terrified that the care they need to stay alive isn’t “cost-effective” in their case. Exit question: This is a win for Palin, but is it also a win for Obama? Now he can reassure Americans that the most worrisome parts of the bill are stripped out.

[ULTRAMAN VH]

Why don't you post the whole rebuttal? OH, here let me do it for you.

[ULTRAMAN VH]

Concerning the "Death Panels"
Yesterday at 8:55pm
Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “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.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

[jhale667]

Pro-Life Republican Behind So-Called "Death Panels"

"Death panel" architect a pro-life Republican from Georgia?
johnny_isakson.JPGLast week former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a statement to her Facebook page in which she warned that President Obama's health care reform plan would result in a so-called "death panel" with the power to kill elderly people and those with disabilities:


"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."

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) also recently accused the Democrats' health care reform plan of putting seniors "to death."

But there is nothing resembling the alleged "death panel" in the health care reform plan. A spokesperson for Palin told ABC News that the former governor was referring to a section promoting advance care planning that appears on page 425 of the House Democrats' bill [pdf]. Advance care planning includes living wills and durable powers of attorney that allow individuals to make clear their wishes for end-of-life care, whatever they may be.

And as it turns out, the cause of advance planning has been championed especially strongly by a pro-life Republican -- U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

Isakson (photo above) is a member of Senate Health committee that played a key role in shaping the health care reform legislation. He successfully offered an amendment in committee that allows funds for a government-funded program that provides in-home services to people with disabilities to be used for advance care planning, according to the national Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Isakson has been promoting advance care planning for years. In 2007, for example, he co-sponsored two bills to encourage such planning -- the Medicare End-of-Life Care Planning Act and the Advance Planning and Compassionate Care Act.

In 2005, Isakson joined with state lawmakers to publicly sign a personal "Directive for Final Health Care" to encourage Georgians to discuss their personal wishes for end-of-life care. He cited the controversial case of Terry Schiavo -- a Florida woman who lived for several years in a persistent vegetative state before her husband had her disconnected from a feeding tube -- to illustrate the importance of advance planning.

"I believe it is every person's right and responsibility to make sure their loved ones are prepared to make decisions on their behalf by discussing and documenting their wishes," Isakson said at the time. "It is my sincere hope that all Georgians will join me in following the lead of the Georgia General Assembly's Resolution and make their final wishes known."

Isakson is a pro-life politician who opposes abortion as well as stem cell research entailing the destruction of human embryos.

So far Isakson has remained silent publicly on the "death panel" brouhaha. Facing South called his press office for comment today but no one was available.

Meanwhile, another prominent Georgia Republican has rushed to Palin's defense: Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich told ABC's "This Week" that people are being asked "to trust turning power over to the government when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards."

But at least one other Georgia politician has tried to distance himself from Palin, with Congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) telling Bill Maher that her "death panel" allegation was "a scare tactic."


ISS - "Death panel" architect a pro-life Republican from Georgia?

[jhale667]

How to Fight Healthcare Fearmongers and Demagogues

by Robert Reich

My friend, Keith, from New Orleans, just emailed to say he attended a local "town meeting" on health care and tried to get a word in favor but was almost hounded out of the room.

Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives -- indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens -- taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House's is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that's the problem: It's always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that's amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.

The White House has just announced a web page designed to rebut some of the insane charges that the right is instigating. That won't be enough. The President has to be more specific about what he's for and what he's against. Without these specifics, the right can conjure up every demon in its arsenal while the middle and left can only shrug their shoulders.

The President needs to be very specific about two things in particular: (1) Who will pay? and (2) Why the public option is so important -- and why it's not a Trojan Horse to a government takeover.

(1) Admit that taxes will have to be raised and that cost-savings won't be sufficient to achieve nearly universal care. But be absolutely clear that taxes will be raised only be raised on the very top. He needs to decide whether he favors a surcharge on the top 2 percent, or a cap on tax-free employee benefits (which would affect only the very top), or some combination, and then announce which he prefers and why.

(2) Say unequivocally that the public option is essential for controlling costs and getting private insurers to offer people better deals, not at all a step toward a government takeover of health care.

- Being the one public plan, it will have large economies of scale that will enable it to negotiate more favorable terms with pharmaceutical companies and other providers. (Here, he must clear up any confusion about any deal made with Big Pharma.) But this won't lead to a government takeover of health care. The whole point of cost containment is to provide the public with health care on more favorable terms. If the public plan negotiates better terms -- thereby demonstrating that drug companies and other providers can meet them -- private plans can seek similar deals.

- It will have low administrative costs -- Medicare's administrative costs per enrollee are a small fraction of typical private insurance costs -- but that's no problem, it's a strength. One goal of health-care reform is to lower administrative costs. Competition with a public option is the only way to push private plans to trim their bureaucracies and become more efficient.

- While it's true that the public won't have to show profits, plenty of private plans are already not-for-profit. And if nonprofit plans can offer high-quality health care more cheaply than for-profit plans, why should for-profit plans be coddled? The public plan would merely force profit-making private plans to take whatever steps were necessary to become more competitive. Once again, a plus.

- The public plan won't be subsidized by government. Subsidies go to families who need them in order to afford health care. They're free to choose the public plan, but that's only one option. They could take their subsidy and buy a private plan just as easily. The public plan may not dip into general revenues to cover its costs. It must pay for itself. And any government entity that oversees the health-insurance pool or acts as referee in setting ground rules for all plans will not favor the public plan.

Now's the time for specifics. It's impossible to fight fearmongering lies with nothing but positive principles.

Robert Reich: How to Fight Healthcare Fearmongers and Demagogues

[Big Train]

Either way it's now a non-issue...it's been scrapped.

[FORD]

Healthcare Decisions Day



WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. WHEREAS, in Alaska, Alaska Statute 13.52 provides the specifics of the advance directives law and offers a model form for patient use.

WHEREAS, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of people in Alaska have executed an advance directive. Moreover, it is estimated that less than 50 percent of severely or terminally ill patients have an advance directive.

WHEREAS, it is likely that a significant reason for these low percentages is that there is both a lack of knowledge and considerable confusion in the public about Advance Directives.

WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.

WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.

WHEREAS, as a result of April 16, 2008, being recognized as Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska, more citizens will have conversations about their healthcare decisions; more citizens will execute advance directives to make their wishes known; and fewer families and healthcare providers will have to struggle with making difficult healthcare decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Sarah Palin, Governor of the state of Alaska, do hereby proclaim April 16, 2008, as:

Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Dated: April 16, 2008

OH MY GOD, IT'S THE MOOSEALINI DEATH PANEL!!!!!!!!

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell

[standin]

I don't understand the big hoo ha over hospice care.

[FORD]

Originally Posted by standin

I don't understand the big hoo ha over hospice care.

It goes back to the whole Terri Schiavo thing. Right wingers are convinced that you must keep someone plugged into tubes and wires and keep them hooked up as a goddamn brain dead vegetable, or suffering needlessly in pain, because that's what "God" wants.

Well my bible says that God had to turn away from His own son as He was dying on the cross, even though that whole thing was supposedly part of His "Great Plan". So if God doesn't want to watch "necessary" suffering, how do they figure He would endorse the unnecessary kind?

[jhale667]

Amazing how Republicans were OK with getting government involved in end-of-life discussions in the Schiavo case, but now it's "death panels!" for the purposes of fear-mongering...hypocritical scumbags.
Congrats, Repukes...

[Seshmeister]

Originally Posted by FORD

It goes back to the whole Terri Schiavo thing. Right wingers are convinced that you must keep someone plugged into tubes and wires and keep them hooked up as a goddamn brain dead vegetable, or suffering needlessly in pain, because that's what "God" wants.

It's worse than that, they also want to elect them into high office.

[bueno bob]

Originally Posted by jhale667

amazing how republicans were ok with getting government involved in end-of-life discussions in the schiavo case, but now it's "death panels!" for the purposes of fear-mongering...hypocritical scumbags.
Congrats, repukes...

Please Please Please...

BECK & PALIN 2012

[Big Train]

Originally Posted by jhale667

Amazing how Republicans were OK with getting government involved in end-of-life discussions in the Schiavo case, but now it's "death panels!" for the purposes of fear-mongering...hypocritical scumbags.
Congrats, Repukes...

Exactly, like noted conservative Barack Obama...fearmongering indeed.

Terri Schiavo case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Palm Sunday Compromise
Main article: Palm Sunday Compromise

Governor Bush and Congressional Republicans anticipated Greer's adverse ruling well before it was delivered and worked on a daily basis to find an alternative means of overturning the legal process by utilizing the authority of the United States Congress. On March 20, 2005, the Senate, by unanimous consent, passed their version of a relief bill; since the vote was taken by voice vote, there was no official tally of those voting in favor and those opposed. Soon after Senate approval, the House of Representatives passed an identical version of the bill S.686, which came to be called the "Palm Sunday Compromise" and transferred jurisdiction of the Schiavo case to the federal courts. The bill passed the House on March 21 at 12:41 a.m. EST. President Bush flew to Washington D.C. from his vacation in Texas in order to sign the bill into law at 1:11 a.m. EST. As in the state courts, all of the Schindlers' federal petitions and appeals were denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari, effectively ending the Schindlers' legal options.

Qualified commentators at the time of the bill's passage suggested that it was a bill of attainder.[61] One senator who voted with the rest of the unanimous Senate but later came to regret that vote was future president Barack Obama. In the primary debate on April 26, 2007, in a presidential candidates debate, he characterized his vote for the bill as his biggest professional mistake and that the Senate deliberations "left the Senate with a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn't have."[62] At the February 26, 2008 debate, he admitted that his vote was a mistake and that "As a constitutional law professor, I knew better".[63][64][65]

[standin]

Has anyone one here actually been a part of a home, either by permanent staff, family or association that had a person in perpetual care in the family home, not some forgotten nursing home?

I have and I have had to face my own end of life choice.

I also, have had to choose between my home and affording my medicines.
I also was grossly misdiagnosed and treated for symptomatology not what was wrong, until the government stepped in and then I stepped up.

Course we can never know the outcome, if I had an unlimited supply of monies. Actually, I do I would have suffered more.

My first doctor into this odyssey had me on an Elvis regime. Dope for waking, dope for sleep, dope for appetite, dope for appetite suppression, the only thing I wasn't on, was dope to poo and pee.
But I was bleeding out my bunghole, in steps doctor 2, puts me on celebrex tells me Advil caused the internal bleeding. But did not address the pain I was in to be taking such high amounts of Advil. About a year or so later, my heart begins to fail. And all that was done was pump me full of more and more heart medications, until some body some where said "red-flag" it is not humanly possible to take all that beta-blocker. If they put her on more, she'll surely die. Then I responded, " I would rather quit medications than take a chance on exploratory surgery of my heart.'

But that was the climax of the odyssey, it started much younger at St. Jude's as a unexplained crippled child. Grant it, it wasn't until 1967 that the b12 factor even really began to be understood. But at one point insulin was an new understanding.

Next subject, what it was like to take dinners in a home that had a woman in perpetual care with full staff for 15+ years. What I garnered from the staff and how I viewed the doctor that was keeping his wife alive.
Mrs. Thompson, one vivid thing about her when I met her in her late 60's was her perfectly white unblemished skin.

[jhale667]

Originally Posted by Big Train

Exactly, like noted conservative Barack Obama...fearmongering indeed.

Terri Schiavo case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Palm Sunday Compromise
Main article: Palm Sunday Compromise

Governor Bush and Congressional Republicans anticipated Greer's adverse ruling well before it was delivered and worked on a daily basis to find an alternative means of overturning the legal process by utilizing the authority of the United States Congress. On March 20, 2005, the Senate, by unanimous consent, passed their version of a relief bill; since the vote was taken by voice vote, there was no official tally of those voting in favor and those opposed. Soon after Senate approval, the House of Representatives passed an identical version of the bill S.686, which came to be called the "Palm Sunday Compromise" and transferred jurisdiction of the Schiavo case to the federal courts. The bill passed the House on March 21 at 12:41 a.m. EST. President Bush flew to Washington D.C. from his vacation in Texas in order to sign the bill into law at 1:11 a.m. EST. As in the state courts, all of the Schindlers' federal petitions and appeals were denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari, effectively ending the Schindlers' legal options.

Qualified commentators at the time of the bill's passage suggested that it was a bill of attainder.[61] One senator who voted with the rest of the unanimous Senate but later came to regret that vote was future president Barack Obama. In the primary debate on April 26, 2007, in a presidential candidates debate, he characterized his vote for the bill as his biggest professional mistake and that the Senate deliberations "left the Senate with a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn't have."[62] At the February 26, 2008 debate, he admitted that his vote was a mistake and that "As a constitutional law professor, I knew better".[63][64][65]

Ah, but as your own post points out, he later came to regret that vote - have you heard ANYONE else involved reverse their stupid position on that issue?

[Big Train]

Originally Posted by jhale667

Ah, but as your own post points out, he later came to regret that vote - have you heard ANYONE else involved reverse their stupid position on that issue?

On that particular issue no. But none of them were running for President either explaining an unpopular decision in hindsight, so you tell me...

[Big Train]

Either way, Palin is winning. This debate she started got it dropped from the House Bill.

Win for the Cuda...

[jhale667]

Originally Posted by Big Train

Win for the Cuda...

Yeah, something that skank should be proud of. Sure.

[bueno bob]

I can't honestly believe anybody seriously honors the notion that the government is going to kill their grandparents.

We have become a country of fucking lunatics.

Correction:

Republicans have become fucking lunatics.

[Big Train]

Don't run with that card.

A lot of "Sensible" liberals and Democrats have their doubts about this stuff to. Eugene Robinson is not Rush Limbaugh.

I say Democrats who want to just give up everything to the magical supergovernment run by Obama as the magic pill to fix everything, unquestioned mind you, are fucking nuts.

[FORD]

Originally Posted by Big Train

I say Democrats who want to just give up everything to the magical supergovernment run by Obama as the magic pill to fix everything, unquestioned mind you, are fucking nuts.

The same with anyone who wants to give up everything to the magical corporatist marketplace, which is a PROVEN failure at many things, healthcare being one of the more obvious cases.

[Big Train]

Healthcare in this country is a proven failure to the 86% of us who have it?

Healthcare is EXPENSIVE is an accurate thing. Healthcare is a failure is not.

The "corporatist marketplace" works quite well thank you. Corporations and markets provide for 90% of the American workforce, with government and non-profits making up the rest.

Your beef with captialism is sometimes borderline illogical.

[Big Train]

Lounge gets mad cuz I call it like it see with Palin. I'm not making a judgement about her, just saying her tactic won. He thinks I'm a jackass for saying that.

[LoungeMachine]

BT

Why should one's healthcare be tied in with their job?

[LoungeMachine]

Originally Posted by Big Train

Lounge gets mad cuz I call it like it see with Palin. I'm not making a judgement about her, just saying her tactic won. He thinks I'm a jackass for saying that.

No, I think you're a jackass for giving her credit for ANYTHING other than being the Laughingstock of The RePuke Party.



She's a fucking bat-shit crazy loon with the brains of a weathergirl

[Big Train]

Lounge,

There is a middle position here that I think is getting lost in translation with all the town hall craziness.

I don't believe healthcare HAS to be tied to your job at all.

I believe healthcare should be affordable and attainable for everyone who has a job, big or small. I do believe in things like Medicare for the elderly and Cobra for the unemployed, all which exist and work fine now.

The key and only problem with healthcare is cost.

The difference here is that some people believe that government funded healthcare solves the cost and access problem.

Some feel competition between private companies is the best way to lower cost.

I personally feel government intervention and action beyond what they currently do does not help the situation. It will not increase the quality of care nor lessen the cost of care.

Do I have an easy solution? No I do not and don't claim to. The actual answers are not simple and can't be boiled down easily, especially not to a free market vs. evil corporatist debate. Their are thorny ethical and moral questions on all sides of this debate.

What I do know is a drag race to a solution that is ill concieved, poorly executed and poorly communicated is not the solution. Nor do I feel a "quick fix" is needed. A thoughtful, well executed strategy is.

[Big Train]

Originally Posted by LoungeMachine

No, I think you're a jackass for giving her credit for ANYTHING other than being the Laughingstock of The RePuke Party.



She's a fucking bat-shit crazy loon with the brains of a weathergirl

I give her credit because her "batshit" crazy angle worked, regardless of what anyone thinks of her. She was effective.

[FORD]

Originally Posted by Big Train

Healthcare in this country is a proven failure to the 86% of us who have it?

Healthcare is EXPENSIVE is an accurate thing. Healthcare is a failure is not.

The "corporatist marketplace" works quite well thank you. Corporations and markets provide for 90% of the American workforce, with government and non-profits making up the rest.

Your beef with captialism is sometimes borderline illogical.

Why is healthcare in the US ranked number 37, just above goddamn Slovenia? Where the fuck is Slovenia, for Christ's sake??

It's because this FOR PROFIT BULLSHIT prevents actual quality healthcare, that's why. And it's not fucking acceptable.

[Big Train]

OK, you are picking the quality angle. I'll play along.

If your beef is merely to improve quality, how do you think allowing the government to run it will increase that quality?

VA hospitals (although some have improved) are a very good example of how bad government care can get. I see government neglect of healthcare in the future, not shining beacons of healthcare. I assume you disagree.