Why we need 'death panels'

The simple facts are that government has intervened via social engineering and it has always been a mistake. It is impossible to place a value on the life of a person regardless of age. I am sure there are times when the effort to extend the few remaining years with a quality of life that is acceptable fails to achieve the goal but, how is the remaining time that person has left valued and who is it valued by.

I can fully understand that knee replacement for a person that has terminal cancer is not a good choice but I cannot see not allowing a person to choose whether or not they receive chemo to extend their lives by even a few months.

We as a generation that have expended great amounts of time and money into research and development for medical advances that are designed to not only extend our lives but to extend the quality of our lives and now you want to limit those that have paid the fare to a panel that will decide if you are worthy.

On a personal note, my prognosis was death within five years, then it was death within a few weeks and yet I am alive today. The decisions about what to do were made by my doctor and me and had I waited for a panel to decide my fate I would surely be dead. I am a ten year survivor of a fatal disease but I fear that at some point there will be a panel that will decide that my daily treatment is too expensive based on what ever criteria they decide. Please let me decide when my life is no longer worth living, not some panel.

Yes, so much for the accuracy of medicine. I was told that I would be using a cane to get around by the time I was 40 because of my injuries. Two decades and still no cane.

No one has an unlimited entitlement to other people's money.

Progressive politics notwithstanding. Originally Posted by ExNYer

Oh really, then lets just end welfare all together

@2Dogs: But the thing is we actually do put a price on people's lives all the time. It's common practice for corporations to do risk analysis on how many lives their products will cost and how much it will cost to litigate against them. If profits > estimated cost, then they'll continue on with the product regardless of the number of people hurt.

Likewise there are already "death panels" today. They're just at your health insurance company. If your health insurance company declines to cover a potentially life saving potential treatment for you, you're pretty much fucked. So this idea of a panel judging the value of your life is already with us except it's based on how much profit the insurance company will make.

and I must point out that insurance companies are private and you can always walk away. The government insists (strongly) that you remain with them and you really have no choice to walk away for something better....unless you are the president or VP or the CEO of some companies. So if you know about your insurance company's "death panel" then you choose to find another company.

JD, you can walk away from Medicare by buying private insurance.

The point is to hold down Medicare costs or we need to start paying more into the system . Those are your thre choices.

It confirms that it does not. If you read the article it promotes that we should have "End of life discussions" Originally Posted by WTF

Someone is trying to be "politically" and/or "socially" correct ... I have been privy to "End of Life Discussion" ... all my adult life (beginning about 16 in fact)! Only on a handful of occasions were those so-called "End of Life Discussion" about the "end" of my "life" ... so ...

... frankly "my dear" ..... I think that the concept of an "End of Life Discussion" is old news. What is "new" is the presence of a bureaucrat from some union congested federal agency standing in on the "End of Life Discussion" with veto power.

I'm not going to cast any dispersions, but I have been acquainted with some "families" and "family members" who might inject a decision making session on the "End of Life Discussion" surrounding the life-expectancy of the "suit" from the Feds who is trespassing on their "discussion" of the loved one whose "life" is being threatened with a "veto"!

The "shoe is on the other foot soon enough."

The point is to hold down Medicare costs or we need to start paying more into the system. Originally Posted by WTF

I hope "we" are separating "Medicare" from "Medicaid" in this discussion.

Medicare taxes just went up, and I've been paying them for as long as they have existed, and I am still doing so. Medicaid is sopped up by folks who for the most part have contributed little, if anything, into the tax pit. When fat-asses became a disease things got out of control.

Walk away? What about the fine for not having health insurance?

Walk away? What about the fine for not having health insurance? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

What about the folks that use ER for free?

Walk away? What about the fine for not having health insurance? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Is the fine still $700?

I hope "we" are separating "Medicare" from "Medicaid" in this discussion.

Medicare taxes just went up, and I've been paying them for as long as they have existed, and I am still doing so. . Originally Posted by LexusLover

They went back up to their old rate. It was temporary.

Should we raise the rates higher to pay for this end of life care? Are you for that? You can't have low taxes and all this end of life care without blowing up the deficit. That is the problem. Choose what you want. But doing nothing is the cause of this huge deficit.

Should we raise the rates higher to pay for this end of life care? Are you for that? Originally Posted by WTF

Again, are we talking about Medicare? As opposed to Medicaid?

Check out the footnotes ...

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/taxRates.html

Would that be a "line item" on my tax return?

and I must point out that insurance companies are private and you can always walk away. The government insists (strongly) that you remain with them and you really have no choice to walk away for something better....unless you are the president or VP or the CEO of some companies. So if you know about your insurance company's "death panel" then you choose to find another company. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

There is no health insurance company that doesn't make decisions on whether to pay or not on patients who are needing any treatments, much less expensive ones. That's just the way their business model works - to try and pay out as little as possible since everything else is profit.

If you walk away, you're still stuck with a huge bill for treatment so I don't see how you're better off.

Finally, as has been stated in many other threads, the fine for not having health insurance is a scaling one but will always be less than the actual cost of health insurance (and if you are poor enough, will be waived).

At some point in their lives, everyone is going to require health care, whether they can pay for it or not. The ACA is attempting to help keep costs down by preventing (or at least penalizing) those who selfishly choose not to get any health insurance from driving up the cost for everyone else.

But back to my original point - if you have any health insurance, you're going to have to deal with someone making a determination if your treatment will be covered. That's how things are currently.

I'm not saying it was perfect (far from it) but you did have the freedom to walk away even if it could be painful. Not so under Obamacare. Consider this (this is so important) when did it become the job of government to worry about healthcare. The government that can't get anything done right. It gets done but usually not the first time. Don't bring up the military, completely different mind set and the government is not grafted to the military hiearchy. Only the president can order the military to do something. Anyone else in government had no rank or authority to do anything.