I’m an old people. Offer me the longer-lasting dose of Soma and I’ll take it in a heart beat.
If we, the American people, ever get the well educated, well intentioned, well meaning, informed citizen death panels that we deserve, Sarah Palin will not last a day. She and Rand Rover might even go out hand in hand, without having any idea of where they are headed.
Yes, there’s absolutely zero truth to it. The UK NHS, for example, doesn’t “kill” or refuse care to infants born with Down’s Syndrome; in fact, usually the mother terminates the pregnancy anyway. The NHS does screen for the disease- just as private insurers do here, but it doesn’t do anything with the information; that’s the parents’ job.
Elected representatives rarely read any bill; that’s what aides are for. They’ll read proclamations and things like that, since they’re usually only one page, but there’s really no point in having them read anything more than selected text from federal bills.
They’re not subject matter experts, except (usually) in law, so the value of having Senator X read a given bill is roughly equal to you or I doing it. Instead, aides review whichever bits fall within their subject areas- say, crime and the penal system- and provide the congressman with a short analysis.
Older people do sometimes get turned down for (or, rather, not offered) treatments that are offered to younger people. It’s not because those people are no longer useful, but because they either have additional health problems or simply age-related frailities (like a weaker heart and immune system) that mean such treatment wouldn’t benefit them - it could even kill them. Invasive surgery requiring a general anaesthetic is one good example of that.
Same for babies/children with Down’s Syndrome; if the heart problems that sometimes come with that syndrome mean they won’t survive or benefit from more invasive techinques, then they’re not offered those techniques. Otherwise, they’re treated the same way as other patients.
Just to be precise here: ordinary scans can sometimes show up signs of Down’s Syndrome*, and then the parent/s are offered the opportunity to have further testing (usually amniocentesis). That further testing is not obligatory - neither are the scans. Women in high risk groups are offered amniocentesis too, but, again, it’s not obligatory. The risks of an amnio are always explained.
Basically, the government doesn’t exactly screen for the disease, rather it offers the parents the opportunity to have such screening under the NHS.
I know you know that, but it pays to be really precise sometimes. Otherwise someone could say ‘UK govt screening out all babies with Down’s Syndrome!!! How can they justify that???’
*Though they don’t pretend to prove that a foetus has Down’s Syndrome, just that they have some signs of that, and sometimes/often the foetus does not have Down’s at all.
I will repeat for, I think, the third time, three things she says that are not at all true and are thus lies.
Nobody would be completely denied health insurance. Even in the sense that there is rationing, they decide a particular TREATMENT is not feasible, not that a PERSON is not worth it.
There is no reason to believe that people will be judged on their “level of productivity.” The rationing is based on the likelihood that a treatment would succeed and prolong life, and that’s it. There’s no discrimination based on income or ability.
There is nothing remotely resembling a “death panel,” and nothing that could fairly be called that by a non-liar.
These are such patent falsehood and can not be interpreted or read in any way to be kind of true or almost true or mere exaggerations instead of lies. And to demonstrate otherwise, you must not treat only one of these three things, but treat all three. Show not only that the health plan might refuse treatment in some cases, which is a different statement all together, but show that they would ever completely deny treatment to an individual or that these decisions would be based on that person’s level of productivity. Show that these are panels that are principally decideding whether people will live or die. Otherwise you are saying her statement is true if only she said something completely different from what she actually said.
Friend of mine’s wife needed a kidney transplant. she was refused because she was over 65 years of age. She went for dialysis twice a week for almost 15 years. She had many setbacks and was hospitalized several times. They spent about 3 million bucks after denying her.
Where did this occur?
Who is “they”?
Have you seen documentation that demonstrates that the actual reason for denial was age and not an age-related condition?
What you mean is, “some rationing is now and has always been going on.” The proposal is to shift the rationing priority away from “parents with the most money” to some other, possibly more rational, possibly less rational, priority.
Remember folks, we are currently – and will be under Palin’s plan – denying coverage to non-Downs, healthy babies based on the random lotto that is their parents’ success or failure at economic luck, graft, corruption, inheritance, good-old-boy network, good looks, or even in some cases hard work.
