Colonel Hogan
Madness
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2005
- Posts
- 18,372
Unfortunately, there is a method to the reformers madness that largely goes unnoticed.
When reform opponents distorted the end of life counseling by physicians as "death panels" the proponents of reform had the perfect vehicle by which to deny increased danger to the elderly under national healthcare.
But the real danger can be found in this quotation from the link in the OP:
"The debate has underscored how fraught the discussion is on end-of-life care in a country where an optimistic ethos places great faith in technology and often precludes frank contemplations of mortality. That tendency has a price tag: A quarter of Medicare costs -- totaling $100 billion a year -- are incurred in the final year of patients' lives, and 40 percent of that in the last month."
Well, if that's where so much of the cost of health care lies, and one of the major aspects of a national health care system is to control costs, what do we DO about that? End of life planning with physicians is one possibility, but what if the elderly do not choose to exercise their 'right to die' in sufficient numbers to significantly reduce those costs.
And what if the result of that is to create a crisis in the delivery of health care services? One of President Obama's primary health care advisers is Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel.
Dr. Emmanuel had some very specific ideas about the "Principles of Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" in the following medical journal article that he co-authored.
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/emanuel_lancet.pdf
He has since attempted to clarify his opinions within the article as being restricted to the gravest scenarios that would mandate such health care rationing. It is not something he supposedly believes would be necessary or advisable under normal circumstances.
But what abnormal circumstances would justify the sort of rationing models discussed in the article? Particularly the "complete lives system" advocated by Dr. Emmanuel. The article does not speculate. That was not its purpose. Its purpose was simply to discuss the pros and cons of different rationing systems.
The anxiety over "death panels" was misplaced. However, anxiety over how a prominent government health care adviser approaches the issue of rationing should it become necessary and the lack of any specifics regarding the circumstances under which it might become necessary is most assuredly well-founded.
At this stage in the game, it's what is NOT in the bills as proposed which should make you nervous. It's the philosophy of this administration and how that might affect the inevitable evolution of a national health care system in the years to come.
