On August 7, 2009, Sarah Palin used her first Facebook note to launch an attack on the Affordable HealthCare Act (ACA) by claiming that it would empower Obama's "bureaucrats" to act as death panels, sitting in judgment over who is "worthy" of health care. She wrote:
[G]overnment health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
This week, the Death Panel has finally raised its deadly head, not in HHS or the Obama Administration, but in the Republican-led US House of Representatives. Majority Leader Boehner has scheduled a vote on a bill -- The Repeal of Obamacare Act. In contrast to Ms. Palin's wild and subjective delusions that Obamacare would lead to the establishment of death panels, the leaders of the House plan to be a Death Panel by voting for a bill that will, by all objective standards, kill people.
In 2002, the well respected, non-profit, independent Institute of Medicine found in their report, "Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late," that adults without health insurance had a 25 percent greater chance of dying than those who had private health insurance. The committee found that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to: receive too little medical care, and receive it too late; and be sicker, and die sooner than Americans with health insurance.
Just this year, Families USA's report, "Dying for Coverage," found that if the House's proposed bill were to become law, they will be handing out real death sentences. According to Families USA's study:
Can any of the elected officials who would vote to deny 30 million people coverage imagine voting to increase the possibility of their own death or that of their family members? Or are they simply meting out death sentences for others fully aware of the protections afforded them from their own "government run" healthcare that Congress has voted for itself?
President Obama's recent trip through Ohio recounted one of too many heartbreaking stories of death and pain for those who are uninsured. Kelly Hines died from colon cancer because she didn't have employer-provided coverage and couldn't afford insurance on her own.
"Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, she was told her income was too high for Medicaid," her sister Stephanie Miller said.
At times for the uninsured that work, even the simplest of illnesses means a delay of necessary treatment and, sadly, death.
In 2009, Paul Hannum died of a ruptured appendix, while in 2011 Kyle Willis died from an infection for an untreated tooth infection. Without insurance, Paul, expecting a daughter in two months, chose to not add an ER bill to his growing family's expenses, while Kyle, with no insurance, had to choose between pain medicine and antibiotics for his ailment.
Both statistical and anecdotal evidence show that health insurance can mean life or death for thousands of Americans, yet there are many in Congress, led by Reps. Boehner and Cantor, who are ready to let their own political ideologies prevent thousands in need from receiving the care they need to live. How many more stories of despair and death, or more studies and reports, must be recounted before we understand that health insurance may just be the difference between life and death?
It's time Republicans stop playing politics with people's lives and move on.
Follow Andy Stern on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AndyStern_DC
Kaiser Permanente refuses to transfer patients’ Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Directive from paper medical records to electronic health records without end of life counseling by Dr. Death.
Patients’ freedom to control their fate is DEAD ON ARRIVAL—HMOs DO NOT RESUSITATE!
Documented investigation on Kaiser Permanente’s rigged end of life counseling, “Birth of a Real Life Death Panel,” is posted on www.hmohardball.com at http://www.hmohardball.com/Death%20Panel%20Birth%20&%20Attachments%201st%20in%20Series%202-14-2011.pdf
Robert Finney, Ph.D.
Semper fi
Semper fi
O of course. That's absolutely the model we are using - the same death panel model that Canada, western Europe and the entire rest of the first world uses. And in all the years that national health has been in effect in western Europe and Canada and the rest of the first world, why millions of people have been killed by the Death Panels. Why, free, decent health care is the single biggest threat to freedom EVER! O yea, we have to be free to be able to tell the Death Panels to kiss off so we can join the rest of the murderous countries where health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich only.
[/snark]
2nd.. whenever there are funding issues, there ARE going to be panels of people necessary to decide how to disperse the limited funds. Those on the fringe of society will not get preferential treatment. National HC has no real way of addressing the rising costs except to increase payments by citizens.. that can only be an option for so long.. a free market system takes care of these issues.. increased technology and advances by a free market, also increases prosperity of society as a whole.. and that's who the added expenses are paid for... increased prosperity. There is no hope for that in a socialistic system.
By the way, I don't see any place in either document which says the rich have a right to socialized airports and sports arenas for THEIR use more than ours.
Second, you obviously have no idea of how national health care works. Funny how not one of these death panels has ever come to light in all of the western countries who have national health coverage. You know why? They don't exist. They're just a scare tactic used by the right. I hate to tell you this, but when it comes to health care, the rest of the western world has proven time and again that socialism works.
When adjusters second guess doctors or in fact dictate to doctors bad things happen, Remember HMOs?
However, the GOP have now replaced those adjusters and have become the Death Panel itself.
It is Darwin running society. You have to "pay" to "play."
And if we wanted to get REAL serious about health care, we'd start off by taxing (big time) all those sugary drinks, sports drinks, juice boxes. Anything/everything except orange juice, grapefruit juice, seltzer and anything with zero calories.
"So what does this tell us about what universal heath insurance might mean? It tells us that, if history is any guide, the government will expand access to health care, not curtail it. Federal involvement has never led to death panels. It has only ended them."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101776.html
The House republican health policies are developed by the Republican Committee for Population Reduction.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html
If Britain’s socialist healthcare system is a benchmark for what we can expect from Obamacare, hundreds of thousands of elderly patients face being euthanized through “assisted death” techniques designed to cut costs.
The idea that “death panels” would be introduced through Obamacare as a means of rationing healthcare was discussed during an Aspen Institute conference in 2010 when Bill Gates argued that money should not be spent on treating the elderly.
During a question and answer session, Gates implied that elderly patients undergoing expensive health care treatments should be killed and the money spent elsewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03MZG9vK0W8
I imagine that those who died decided that the risk of dying was preferable to incurring an expensive medical bill.
I thoroughly agree that we need affordable medical care, but disagree that a two thousand page law with extraneous "goodies" affecting such things as corporate compensation and home sales is the way to go about it.
-A patient who is screened as being pre-diabetic, or a person wheeled into an emergency room in an undiagnosed diabetic coma?
A person with high blood pressure getting medication, or a person who walks into an emergency room with slurred speech, and numbness in one half of their body?
A person screened with high cholesterol at 30, or a person at 45 with "crushing chest pains"?
Also, since an emergency room is not required to get the person healthy again, but only "stabilize" them, then release them if they cannot pay, which of those people do you expect to live another year? The ones with easily treatable symptoms, or the ones with massive damage done to their bodies because those easily treatable symptoms were never diagnosed?
Your statement shows the complete lack of understanding of medical care in general, and the value over the long term of PREVENTIVE care versus EMERGENCY care.
I have a relative that refused to go to the ER (no insurance) and refused to take my advice, until she had such crushing chest pain she dialed 911. It was a heart attack and a stent was placed.
You seem to draw a lot from one simple comment as I do understand your position, but you apparently are unaware of access to emergency care for non-emergency conditions and that, many of those who have coverage and have received non-emergency treatments for extended periods can end up in an emergency room.
A family member who has been gaming the welfare system for decades uses emergency rooms for colds and other routine medical problems is an example of why many of our emergency rooms are backed up with people waiting hours for service, even those with medical insurance.
Also, even people with medical insurance who feel well typically do not go to doctors until they get one of those episodes that you describe.
We MUST address the underlying problems with health care in the US and putting the country $2T further in debt is NOT going to help any of us in the long run and further taxing and more government regulations is only an answer for those shallow and ignorant people among us.