A friend linked this on Facebook and it’s such a good article, I relinked it on FB and am posting it here as well.
This article is neither left/right, nor public/private, tort reform, health care rights, etc. It looks at a fundamental issue in the rising cost and declining quality of health care in the US — and it has nothing to do with politics. It’s business. From the New Yorker:
I consider myself a moderate, insofar as I believe issues should be examined on a case by case basis and, more specifically, that strict adherence to a “party line” is willfully ignorant at best. If it seems like I am anti-Republican and/or pro-Democrat these days, it’s largely because most so-called Republicans are acting like jackasses these days, made worse by the fact that it follows 8+ years of jackassery by their party leadership.
So, here are the latest ways they are pissing me off.
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’ - this is just crazy. Brian M. and I occasionally spar on political issues – to his credit, he is one of the most rational people I debate with when it comes to political matters – and rebutted this by calling the referenced legislation “purposely vague” regarding mandated hospice care and deferral of life-extending medical care. I read pages 425 to 430 of HR 3200 and found nothing of the sort. Read it for yourself. It sounds to me like they are mandating that physicians make sure patients know about the benefits of living wills and medical directives, and of the availability of hospice care, and nothing at all about the physician actually making a decision on whether to stop life-extending treatments. On page 430, there are four specific situations that may require a judgment call, and none of them explicitly deal with “killing granny.”
Bear in mind, also, that this document is 1017 pages long, and the right-wingers have managed to pick 9 lines (lines 9 to 17 on page 430) on which to hinge their anti-healthcare scare-tactics. As far as I can tell, these 9 lines, the only ones that could possibly be “vague”, have yielded these quotes from the right:
“guiding you in how to die”
“an ORDER from the Government to end your life”
promoting “death care”
in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny”
“tell them how to end their life sooner”
teach the elderly how to “decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short”
“may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia”
Here’s this interview of Rick Scott by CNN’s Rick Sanchez. Oh my lord, you can’t make this up. This is pure comedy gold, or would be if it weren’t true. By the way, Rick Scott is leader of CPR – Conservatives for Patients’ Rights – basically the guy responsible for “regular people” showing up at healthcare town halls and protesting, etc.
Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 in the midst of the biggest health care fraud scandal in U.S. history, a scandal that ultimately led to a payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs.
Scott defended his former company, saying other health care companies had paid fines too. Sanchez cut in: “You are the guy that is sitting here telling us we can’t allow the government to do this because it won’t work and they might take over or do some things that are wrong. How much more wrong can you be than what you just said? Not only has your company screwed up and you just admitted it … You are saying, look at all the other companies, they did the same thing.”
Shameless. And let’s not forget the people that Obama joked about: “I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.”
Or people who are anti-socialist programs, but were happy to take a $4500 government handout when they needed a new car. You know who you are
Politics As Usual
This video is one for the ages in political posturing, or anti-posturing as the case may be. Let’s watch Rep. Anthony Weiner kick the Republicans in the nuts.
Gee, did the Republicans vote for the proposed end of Medicare? Didn’t think so. Is it because they’d be voted out of office if they had to tell their constituents they took away their Medicare? Yeah… big talk, until it’s time to put up or shut up.
Suck it, Republicans.
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’
