In the past couple of days, I’ve heard mentions on the radio and have seen mentions on a few rightwing sites that the real goal of “ObamaCare” is to force people into hospice so that they will die.
Why is hospice becoming this new bogeyman, or has it always been and I just haven’t heard it?
I’ve benefited enormously from some of the programs at the local hospice, so I’m baffled by this particular attack. What’s supposed to be bad about hospice? What’s bringing this all up?
Which of course is the REAL purpose of ObamaCare – to kill all the old people and tax all the rich and spread all their wealth to lazy illegal aliens!
ETA: In other words, the hospice scare-mongering is designed to whip people into a fearful frenzy so that nothing is done to reform the health care system, leaving the insurance companies comfortably ensconced in their current profitable position. Track the donations going to politicians of both parties – 'tis quite illuminating.
Well, it’s pretty clearly to tax all the rich and spread their wealth to people who haven’t earned it.
And while the purpose of ObamaDemCongressCare isn’t specifically to kill old people (or younger ones unfortunate enough to need care the government decides it can’t or won’t pay for), that will certainly be the result.
So the money will be given right back to the rich?
Yes, just like in every other country with government health care. A profit motivated corporation would never withhold care from people in the hopes that they’d die before any money needed to be spent on them. Nations like Canada are well known for their government led slaughter of the elderly. :rolleyes:
It is self-evident that hospice is not an American citizen. As such, hospice should never be allowed to become president of the United States of America.
Wasn’t it one of our very own CanaDopers who was lamenting the fact that his mother had to wait nine months for cancer treatment? (Sorry, no cite. I tried, but…well, you know the board’s search limitations.)
Isn’t it a fact that independent for-pay health care facilities are opening up in Canada to care for the patients that the government can’t seem to get around to helping?
And isn’t it a fact that many Canadians cross the border every day to get health care here because all they have to do to receive it it, you know, pay for it?
And wasn’t it our own Maastricht who described how in The Netherlands patients who are deemed too old or who need care that is too expensive are given pills to make them confortable and be allowed to die?
You people want a program that gives you a dime now and withholds thousands later when your life (or that of a loved one) depends on it.
Funny how conservatives claim that the large federal budget will put “a chain of slavery around our children”
Yet, when it comes to healthcare, they are more concerned with adding a few months to a terminally ill patient’s life than expanding healthcare to cover all Americans, leading to more lives saved overall.
Healthcare is already rationed, and it will always be. In fact, it has to be.
AHIP is really ramping up the rhetoric by throwing out the usual “arguments”–finding a few cases of people being denied the care they want in countries with UHC. Of course, what they won’t discuss is that study after international study has found that UHC results in a lower mortality and morbidity rate.
Part of the question is just how care will be rationed. After our experience with Waxman-Markey, I find it hard to believe that politically powerful special interest groups will not push for a disproportionate slice of the pie - when the government allocates something this zero-sum game always pops up.
As opposed to quite possibly not being able to afford treatment at all in America ? Or being crushed into bankruptcy ?
And ? It’s only in the right wing paranoid fantasies that there is some sort of crusade against private care; there’s no reason you can’t have government and private care in the same country.
And because those particular Canadians CAN.
Or do you mean ALLOWED to die ?
And you and those like you want to kill and impoverish people in the name of the Holy Free Market.
No, we’re talking about saving lives whose remaining years the government has decided isn’t worth the expense. We are talking about hip replacements being denied because the patient is deemed to old for the expense. We are talking about antibiotics instead of tonsilectomies because the govenment decides that what would be cheapest. And we are talking about health care in virtually every aspect in which the deciding factor for government largess is what is the cheapest.
But at least it’s governed by legal contract and the laws of supply and demand, which will always trump central planning by an uncaring and unaccountable government entity.
How do you know the cases are “few”?
Perhaps because the data may well be flawed? Perhaps because the data doesn’t mirror the unique set of circumstances presented by the U.S. and its government? Perhaps because studies can be fashioned to show whatever the people conducting the studies want them to show?
Why do Democrats and liberals always want to drag everything down to its lowest workable level? Why not work to come up with adequate plans to lift up those who don’t have health care coverage and find productive ways to provide it, rather than drag everyone else down and force them into an inadequate UHC plan that provides the least care for the most people.
I think I’d prefer to live in a society where I at least had the opportunity to obtain coverage, either through a job offering adequate health insurance, earning enough with a second job or whatever to pay for my own and my familie’s coverage, or through charitable means to get the care I need rather than have one and only one source of access to health care, and that one source being an uncaring government bueaurocracy continually plagued by inadequate resources and long waiting lists.
Yes, there is. If you take away the income from those who have their own coverage there isn’t enough left to finance government care, and if people with adequate coverage are going to be taxed heavily enough to provide government health care anyway, they won’t be able to afford their own in addition to it.
That’s right. As opposed to those who could but can’t because they’re forced to wait on government care that may very well be too little and too late.
But hey, at least no one gets more than someone else, eh? That’s the main thing with people like you, isn’t it?
That’s exactly what I mean. They won’t be saved even though the means exists to do so, and they are therefore “allowed” to die. I though of accenting that word myself but didn’t want to appear to be attributing meaning to Maastricht’s post that she didn’t include herself.
Yep. And if it weren’t for people like you interfering with it, I’d be free to find fresh new ways to kill and impoverish people, which, being conservative and all, is my number one priority in life. :rolleyes:
No, you’re talking about that. Without any cites, and with (apparently) willful ignorance of the fact that all of that happens already because a private corporations do it. That’s prolly okay with you, tho, because it’s not the government with their hand on the trigger. It’s just a private company (who may very well have, thru lobbying, bought enough government influence to make what they do “legal”.)
And if a government plan took over, it would also be a legal contract, subject to petition to redress grievances, as is our right under the US Constitution.
So… studies can’t be trusted. Huh. That must be why you never have any cites to back up your bullshit.
Are we all citizens of this country, equal in the eyes of the law, or are some people better than others, deserving more preference?
Lemme tell ya something: you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us, and we all deserve to know that this country values each and every one of us for the contributions we’ve made, or will make, to it’s (and our) future.
Well, if the government is so determined to cut costs, then healthcare would not present the cost problem conservatives claim it does. OTOH, if people are unhappy with the government plan, they can still purchase private plans.
Hah. Healthcare is not a free market, and consumers lack the knowledge (and often the ability) to decide on the best course of care for themselves. UHC is also governed by a contract, so much for that. And “uncaring and unaccountable”? Gee, I think the first thought that springs to mind at the mention of that phrase is health insurance companies.
Because the statistics say otherwise.
What is the “unique set of circumstances”, other than more extensive control of the government by the wealthy and corporations?
Sure, hypothetically. But that’s how science works: someone publishes a study, others criticize it, and, over time, a consensus emerges.
False premise. I am lucky to have great health insurance. But I would still prefer to have UHC, and not only because it’s more fair and better for the economy. Personally, I’m just tired of having to call up my insurance company every time a doctor wants to run a diagnostic test or prescribe a course of treatment. It’s ridiculous.
Hospice care costs more then paying for traditional medical treatment (cite). Also I’d suspect that most people choosing whether or not to go into hospice are already on Medicare/Medicaid. So I’d say the claim cited by the OP makes little or no sense.
Plus old people are a pretty large voting block, and people who plan to be old someday are an even larger one. Even if the Dems secretly plan to put them all on icebergs to die in order to save money, I suspect that plan would become politically unfeasible in pretty short order.
No, this country has not yet slid into communism. This country is a collection of individuals, some of whom are more productive than others and some of whom have earned more than others.
As it is right now, the others are whinging for the government to take things away from those who’ve earned it and use it to benefit them…and then they have the gall to call selfish those who only want to keep what they’ve earned without taking from someone else and use it to care for themselves and their own.
That doesn’t surprise me. The hospice care I’ve witnessed has been very intensive and as free-form as possible–allowing patients as much freedom as they can. I’ve been extremely impressed with the hospice workers and facilities I’ve encountered.
My parents, staunch conservatives, donated a hefty enough chunk to the local hospice to have a room named after them. I wonder if they knew what evil plot they were forwarding?
A lot of people regard the Social Security system to be unfeasable, and woe betide any politician who tries to do away with it. Too many people are too heavily invested in it for too long, and the same would be the case with UHC.
Yeah, good luck suing the government for delayed or inadequate health care.
You have got to be kidding me! You don’t like having to call your insurance company to okay a test and you think government health care will make that easier? Have you ever tried to accomplish anything through a major government agency? Just trying to find out what you’re entitled to and how to get it can be a maze from which it seems there is no escape, and then you’re left with whatever they say you get, which can vary depending on who you talk to and which most likely won’t be nearly enough.
The only thing government largess is better than is nothing, and far too many people in this country have lots better than nothing and it’s ridiculous to try to force everyone (and make no mistake, that’s how it would soon end up) into a system whose only saving grace is that it’s better than nothing.
