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Kathleen Reardon

Kathleen Reardon

Posted: August 10, 2009 08:06 PM

The "Death Panel" Already Exists!


When insurance companies deny coverage to critically ill patients because of what they deem "pre-existing conditions," they sentence those people to misery and often death. And that has nothing to do with proposed health care reform. This travesty exists now.

When acutely and chronically ill people are unable to purchase medicine because of exorbitant prices, pharmaceutical death panels have spoken. And again, this has nothing to do with universal health care proposals.

When an infant is stillborn because of inadequate or nonexistent prenatal care, a cancer patient forgoes or is denied treatment because of costs, a family is forced to decide whose medical needs will be met -- whose postponed, don't tell me somewhere a death panel isn't at work.

Sarah Palin is supposedly worried that people are going to die if health care reform occurs. They're dying now! Right under our noses!

Instead of what could be, let's talk about what is. Instead of fiction, let's discuss reality. And instead of President Obama responding to wild attacks from fabricators as if deserving of reasoned responses, let's hear him describe the death panels we have now and how much worse it is going to get if only the lucky and the wealthy have health care.

Dr. Reardon also blogs at bardscove.

 
 
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01:44 AM on 08/30/2009
I believe my five adopted children with down syndrome have a better chance with President Obama's death panels.....than they ever will have with a high paid insurance beuracrat!

At least the government ones are afraid of killing old people and the disabled and getting re-elected.... the ones working in the insurance companies now.....find ways to cancel my childs ability to get services!
10:45 PM on 08/24/2009
As an end of life care physician, let me urge everyone to use the right terminology. We already have palliative care teams. What is wrong with reviewing those who have chronic life limiting conditions and offering them palliative care instead of aggressive care? Often people opt for extending their days of living instead of their quality of days remaining due to ignorance about a "death panel," or hospice team. Yes, we save the system money by not ordering more tests and unneccessary treatments. We also improve quality of life with out prolonging life. Death panels already exisit in healthcare and I am proud to be a part of a palliative care team that focuses on qualtiy and not quantity of life. Do you really want to spend millions of dollars prolonging the life of someone with advanced metastatic terminal malignant cancer in the intensive care unit? Is that an effective use of healthcare dollars?

If the healthcare system has one dollar left to spend, would you spend it ordering an MRI on a terminal cancer patient? Or on a new born baby? Currently, most of healthcare dollars are being wasted in the last days of life. Are we effectively using our current medicaid/medicare health dollars? Has anyone looked at the hospice palliative care movement in america and how much money we are already saving the healthcare system?

Is that so wrong? Death panels do exist and they are a necessary part of healthcare.
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mjc
Avoid printing any..
03:20 PM on 08/13/2009
What you write makes perfect sense but the people against any sort of universal health care system in this country will do and say any stupid comment they can find to undermine the attempts to bring health care to ALL Americans. Frankly, I do not think it(reform) is going to happen. There will probably be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and restrictions on who can get it and when as well as additional taxes to pay for cutting some of the programs.
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06:11 AM on 08/13/2009
There may be Death Panels now, but they're Free Market Death Panels.
02:18 PM on 08/13/2009
I feel so much better knowing that I am suffering and slowly dying (slowly, for now, nut could be quick any minute) In a Free Market.

WOOT for Free Market Death panels!!!!
01:12 AM on 08/15/2009
If the Free Market is so great how come Banks and Auto companies came begging for Federal government aid? What Privatization of energy utilities did to California should debunk for ever the idiotic claim that private companies do a better job than government. By the way, where were these people who so against government spending when Bush was squandering our tax dollars invading and occupying Iraq and sending thousands of young people to die in a senseless war? I am just so sick of hypocrites.
01:08 AM on 08/13/2009
I know the Republicans are lying like lizards and are a species of verbal criminal all unto themselves. But I get the sense that a lot of seriously unrealistic hope has built up here.

Those who cannot get insurance may get some relief, but it will still be insurance at an actuarial premium which may reflect the high cost of their care.

Those who want better care are barking up the wrong tree. Those who have no insurance may get better care as they develop health needs, but nothing here will improve health care.

The cost will still have to ration resources, and profiteering will still seem more likely to seek efficiencies than government service bureaucracy will. The hope that the profit will come at the expense of labor, administrative waste and obsolete procedures....instead of patient care...is not being addressed except by the public option.
04:38 PM on 08/12/2009
If you are on medicare,medicaid orVA insurance their are already provisions for appeal just like in other insurance programs but unlike the major insurance companies you can not be excluded for preexsisting conditions and believe you me the insurance companies do.If you have insurance thru work they get you by raising prieums and deductables so high that small to medium companies have to keep changing insurance companies.I tried to get supplemental insurance and they would not even talk to me once They read my application because of my health.Every year for the past 6 or 7 years the ratesa and deductablesa have gone uo with no end in site
03:17 PM on 08/12/2009
Isn't that the truth! I took my insured son to an ER recently for a knee injury. My son was seen after a reasonable wait but that was not true for many without insurance. A woman told me her sister, who was suffering from stomach cancer and bleeding had waited for more than 36 hours. Other people chimed in with similar experiences. Although this hospital was required to treat the uninsured they weren't in any hurry to do so. It sickens me to think about the quality of care they probably received.
02:22 PM on 08/13/2009
This is my experience too. Also people need to understand that all they are required to do if you are uninsured is make you stable. They do not have to diagnose or treat anything that is not killing you RIGHT NOW.
I have a client that went to 2 different ERs with a ruptured ovary. because it wasn't killing her RIGHT THEN, she was sent home. BTW, she lost her job and home and had to move her family in with her sister in law.
10:50 PM on 08/24/2009
If the woman has stomach cancer, why is she in the ER wasting our healthcare dollars on such a terminal condition? She should be enrolled in a hospice program to provide her comfort in her last days of life. She should have received education about ending her suffering and enrolling in a palliative or hospice program. We need to mandate end of life care education and advocacy for hospice care to prevent unneccessary suffering on the part of a terminal patient and to decrease healthcare cost providing care to such terminal conditions. This is a case where she should have proper supportive care for her stomach cancer at home and not be in any costly ER to begin with.
03:12 PM on 08/12/2009
Yay Doctor Reardon.

It is a tough thing for an Administration to reconcile principle with entrenched interests.

Hopefully principle will win.

.
11:28 AM on 08/12/2009
These wealthy people (that make over 250-thousand) in our society today seriously don't want to help pay into this health reform, they just don't care for the 50 million middle class people.
My guess is that they're waiting to hear what's in it for them, then maybe they'll cool down.
12:57 PM on 08/12/2009
Only the pharmaceuticals and insurers are truly invested in fighting the reforms that might contain the system they themselves created to exploit.

The rest of the ruckus is reactionaries spoiling for a fight with liberals. Health care is currently the proximate engagement, and the more violent it gets the more they will rally about their fear and loathing.
10:28 AM on 08/12/2009
Now let's not get sick over this...if I carried a sign it would say: "Keep cool, stay healthy".

This new health reform is mainly geared for the middle class workers that NOW need government assistance for those that can't afford health insurances thru their company. Existing ills will not be turned down as they are presently.
As Obama stated...But if you already have insurance with your company you can keep it, the only difference will be is that it your premiums will not go up each year, and that's a good thing.

These wealthy people (that make over 250-thousand) in our society today seriously don't want to help pay into this health reform, they just don't care for the 50 million middle class people.
My guess is that they're waiting to hear what's in it for them, then maybe they'll cool down.
10:22 AM on 08/12/2009
Now let's not get sick over this...if I carried a sign it would say: "Keep cool, stay healthy".

The following listed that already are government programs that has nothing to do with Obama's 'health reform'...:
Health costs NOTHING for those on Welfare-therefore it's a done deal matter for them, they have 'Medicaid'; a government program, which many abortions have been paid for in the past...nothing to do with abortions as they rant and rally about it.
Medicare; as we know, is government program for seniors, and that's a done deal as well, and lastly; disability insurance for those disabled (any age) another done deal government program that has nothing to do with the new health care reform.

This new health reform is mainly geared for the middle class workers that NOW need government assistance for those that can't afford health insurances thru their company. Existing ills will not be turned down as they are presently.
But if you already have insurance with your company you can keep it, the only difference will be is that it your premiums will not go up each year, and that's a good thing.

These wealthy people (that make over 250-thousand) in our society today seriously don't want to help pay into this health reform, they just don't care for the 50 million middle class people.
My guess is that they're waiting to hear what's in it for them, then maybe they'll cool down.
06:23 AM on 08/12/2009
If you can assure me that patients would be able to avail themselves to any and all means of recourse against the U S government as they have against insurance companies (including going to another insurer), or would have the freedom to raise money privately to get treatment in the U S outside the system, I'll buy your argument.
09:21 AM on 08/12/2009
As an employee of a large company, I have no real choice who my insurer is -- not unless I want to forfeit group rates and see my monthly costs skyrocket.
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kittyarmy
01:49 PM on 08/12/2009
I second that.
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Snowball
12:15 PM on 08/12/2009
Just try suing an insurace company, good luck with that if you can afford it while your paying you hospital bills.
03:01 AM on 08/12/2009
Murder is one thing, desiring to die is quite another. At 77 my mother told me she wished that she had died in a nearly fatal accident. All her friends had already died. She finally died at 92 with Alzheimers. A woman in her rest home, in her 50s, told me that she had wanted to die for 20years and that 80% of the patients there wanted to die. Two years ago I shared a room in a rest home with 97 year old Willy who wanted desperately to die. He kept yelling 'Hit me in the head with a baseball bat.' At 77 I'm definitely not ready to go, but I don't have the fear of death I had when I was a child or a young adult. I suggest reading the 'Euthanasia' chapter in Book 4 of the popular free ebook series "And Gulliver Returns" (http://andgulliverreturns.info) for an understanding of the various 'moralities' involved in the question.
12:09 AM on 08/25/2009
Those with advanced chronic disease should be allowed the option of euthanasia, but sadly many states do not support euthanasia and it is still illegal. Short of euthanasia, people should be offered hospice and palliative care. Advance directive discussions should be mandatory. Death panels should be part of every medical center, but what is in a name? They should change the name of death panels to palliative care panel. Oh, wait, that is the current name.
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01:31 AM on 08/12/2009
The death panel does exist. It's called INSURANCE COMPANIES!
The real reform solution that saves money/lives and is not wasteful tax spending
would be HR-676.
http://www.pnhp.org/
10:22 PM on 08/11/2009
I wrote to my Congressmen and Senators, taking the Death Panel to the next step - That is the number of people who will die or lose their children to disease or trauma while all of the intellectual self gratification and political posturing goes in the attempt to "bring Obama down". They tasted blood in 1993; but 2009 is an entirely different landscape. Many of those who smuggly sat back and said "I like what I have," are now jobless and without health care insurance... Different on the other side.
12:06 AM on 08/25/2009
But, of those numbers of deaths, how many were hospice appropriate? Or were of no suprise to their providers because they had advanced disease? I would bet that most where predictable deaths, but just not referred to hospice care early or at all. Those people needed death panels, they needed education on hospice and palliative care options. That would have saved the system billions of dollars. We should not be trying to prolong life, but rather provide those who are living with quality of life. Once they begin suffering from their chronic illness, they should receive mandatory supportive care (or Hospice and pallitive care) education. Our healthcare dollars should be spend effectively on preventative care and not on prolonging suffering care.