Oh, please don’t use my statement as evidence to support your claims; I have enough problems. My point was just that this particular case (which was set in motion before the current efforts to establish some kind of proto-UHC in America) could happen a decade from now, or a decade earlier, or really at any time where health services and funding follow rules and rely on humans to interpret those rules.
So, let’s ignore individual cases and discuss the 45000 (a number that I’ll take your word on, for the moment). How would we go about comparing Americans who died of inadequate medical care in, say, 1950 (sufficiently pre-liberalism, I trust, but feel free to suggest another benchmark) versus those who die in 2010?
I like statistical analysis. I look forward to a serious discussion on it. I won’t be calling any particular ideology “evil”, though, I’d just be studying the numbers.
And now for Euphonius Polemic’s question wherein he a certain other posters think I’m stumped. He has however changed the tone and content of that question since I warned him the answer would be simple and he wouldn’t like it, making it more specific and multi-facted. But no matter, I’ll nail 'em both.
Question (or challenge, if you will) no. 1:
Certainly I can address it. It’s dog-simple and ought to be obvious to anyone not blinded by liberal ideology.
It isn’t that Republicans “support” and “want” to keep the current system, it’s that they want to keep it from getting worse (worse being even more government involvement) and to the degree that government involvement already exists, they are stuck with it. This doesn’t mean the current system is one that Republicans wanted to in the first place, nor does it mean the current system is one that Republicans think is the best one to have.
But conservatives and Republicans deal in the world of reality where one has to take things the way they are. And the way they are in this regard is that there is considerable government encroachment into health care already, and that there is little that can be done about it at this point. So the idea is to resist even greater government involvement now which, when compared to the system we have now, would be even worse.
So as you can see, it’s innacurate at best to allege that Republicans “want” the system we have now. It’s just the lesser of two evils.
Now, on two question number 1.2.3a:
Notice how this new question is considerably different than it was in the way it was originally posed? Still, no matter, the answers are readily at hand. To wit:
a.) It DOESN’T MATTER that Diana Smith’s situation occrred before Obama’s plan had taken place. What happend with her is simply the way government operates. It has always been that way and it always will. The government is under no obligation to earn a profit, it is hidebound and cumbersome and can only rarely be arsed to reverse its positions, even in the rare case that procedures exist in the first place that would allow it to do so, and it couldn’t care less if it allegedly serves are unhappy with it’s decisions. The Diana Smith case illustrates each of these perfectly, and it ain’t gonna change in any way but for the worse by getting government involved to an even greater degree.
b.) It confirms that Palin was right about death panels because the government, though it’s decision-making cubicle-bound functionary, decreed that she be left to die rather than allowing her to undo the snafu in benefits that had resulted in the loss of her coverage. Most of us, when asked what should ideally be done in a situation like this, would view the solution as simple - she should be allowed to cancel her son’s benefits and have her Medicaid coverage reinstated. But no, the government is so hidebound and constrained by its one-size-fits-all regulations that such a simple solution is essentially impossible. And so the result is was exactly what it was: “We’re sorry, Ms. Smith, but nothing can be done. Have a nice death.” Which is exactly the kind of thing people have in mind in regard to “death panels”. No one really believes that some group of people is going to be sitting on a dias with the hapless victim of a fatal disease sitting before them in a stiff wooden chair like a parolee before the board, issuing dictates on the spot that they shall live or die. No, the image brought to mind by Palin’s use of the term death panels is that some faceless government functionary is, by virtue of obscure and inflexible government regulations and policies, going to deny them life-saving coverage and there will be nothing that can be done about it - as was the case with Diana Smith before the media got involved.
And now, I have another busy day ahead and will be in and out for the remainder of the day. Maybe I’ll have time to respond further and maybe I won’t. It should never be presumed however that this crowd has scared me off. Ta.
The government didn’t tell her she couldn’t have her surgery–the hospital did. I assume the hospital was not a government entity…
I mean, when you can walk in and pay for your own operation, and the hospital says you can’t due to liability just because you’re not on Medicaid, is that the government’s problem, or the hospital’s?
Ooh, now there’s a metric for you. Let’s not compare our healthcare-failure mortality rate to the corresponding rate in other developed nations at the present time, because that might be, you know, potentially awkward if we end up looking worse than those commies in France and Australia and such.
Instead, let’s compare our healthcare-failure mortality rate to the quality of health care in all societies in the world over the entire course of history!!! That will make our numbers look really good!
Fuck yeah!! USA #1 (in a carefully cherry-picked field of competitors)!!! USA #1 (in a carefully cherry-picked field of competitors)!!!
And, if you want to look at it from another perspective, approximate 2.5 milliion people die in America every year. So, if 45,000 people due die from lack of healthcare (in other words, they’d be treated and alive otherwise, which may be a big assumption, I haven’t seen the study), that’s 1.8% of deaths caused by inadequate healthcare. Nearly 1 in 50 is not an insignificant number to me.
Typical. And typical also of why I revel in the disapproval of the dishonest and hypocritical posters to be found in this thread. I clearly admitted in post 97 that my presumption that Diana Smith had been tricked was in error, and I’ve alluded to that at least a couple of times since. And yet here we have Euphonious Polemic, some 261 posts later, still claiming I believe she was tricked.
Can you say “I’m a lying and would-be deceptive asshole”, Euphonious Schmuck?
Oh, please! She obviously explained all that to the government when she sought to cancel her son’s disability benefits and have her Medicaid reinstated, only to be told it was “too late”.
But thanks for providing a textbook example of the way I described above where lefties will rationalize any government action that results or may result in the death of the supplicant.
let’s look at how the conservative view solves this problem.
We can eliminate the issue of a government screwup kicking them off Medicaid by reducing government involvement, and thus Medicaid, which would mean she could pay for the operation how? Oh, through cutting the taxes she doesn’t pay. That doesn’t work.
We could raise the income level for Medicaid cutoff so she would both qualify for the much needed extra money and still be covered. Not hardly.
We could contract everything out to private contractors, who would never make the kind of mistakes the dumb government guys do. Heck of a job, Haliburton - just don’t touch those shower knobs, or you might light up like a Christmas tree.
Perhaps if we stop relying on government people will rush to donate to charity to make up the difference, just like they cover those without insurance now. Whoops.
So how does this get better under conservative plans? I actually know. She’ll die, which doesn’t matter because she doesn’t have enough money to qualify as a true citizen, and then she can’t complain, so everything will be just fine.
Over in GD we’ve been trying to figure out where lekatt’s counsiousness actually resides. Imagine my surprise to learn that it resides in Starving Artist.
Hmm…I must have inadvertently hit the zero button a couple of extra times when entering the population in the calculator.
Now, having said that, so what? Are you proud of yourself for your flawless calculator-fu? Do you think those two extra zeros obviate my argument? Do you think that a death rate of 0.015% of the population is that much worse for purposes of this discussion? Or are you just so desperate and small-minded that you think you can substantively ridicule me by pointing to a minor calculator error?
How uncharacteristically high-minded of you. Too bad you weren’t that high-minded when you attempted to dishonestly assert that my argument rests on a belief that I recanted over 260 posts ago and several times since.
Oopsie! Guess what? I just checked and I was right after all. Lemme 'splain: 300,000,000 consists of a 3 followed by eight zeroes, right? So, if you divide 45,000 by 300,000,000 just like they taught us to do back in the days when kids in school still had to learn stuff, we get a result of 0.00015%. Yes, no?
Funny how no one else here on the smartest message board on the internet picked up on the fact that I was right and you were wrong about this simple calculation. (Wanna bet some did and just didn’t want to admit it?)
