The_Dunedan

...Guess who said it?

Here's a hint; it wasn't Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, OR Rush Limbaugh.

It was Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labour under Bill Clinton, when describing the effects of Gov't-run healthcare to an audience for whom "we're going to let you die" was an applause line.

From today's Wall Street Journal;

'We're Going to Let You Die' - WSJ.com

Video:
Please note that this speech, delivered to a predominantly left-collectivist audience in Berkeley CA, elicited applause when Mr. Reich, quite bluntly and cavalierly, admitted that as of 2007 part of the acknowledged consequences of a Gov't-run healthcare plan was, I repeat, "if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive, so we're going to let you die. [applause] "

Turns out some of the "death panel" fears aren't just coming from the Right...and they may be, if not well-founded, at very least not conjured out of this air, because under what Mr. Reich describes above, somebody is going to have to decide when someone's "too old" and the treatments "too expensive," and that that person should be denied medical care and allowed to die. I've been attempting to make this point for some time now on this board and others: When you go on television and tell people you're going to kill them, kidnap their children, and eradicate their culture, they get a little worried. When you then call them crackpots, insane, liars, dupes, "astroturf" or whatever else the insult-du-jour is among the Left for those who disagree with them, you do not change their minds. All you do is cement in those minds the apparently reasonable fear that you are, in fact, going to do those things, and that you expect them then to thank you for it. This is not conducive to the "civility" the collectivist Left in this country alleges to desire; people are ill-inclined to be civil when you brag about killing them off and rendering them social untermenschen on television, and even less so when they discover that while you were promising to save them to their faces, you were planning to kill them behind their backs.

Derwood

does Medicare do this?

roachboy

well, hospitals do this every day. the device is called a morphine drip. it sends people out on a cloud. the decisions to do this are generally taken by families. i haven't had the mixed fortune to make any such decisions myself, but i've been party to them and know many families who have had to make it, including my own.

i think people are afraid of death. they don't want to confront it, they don't want to think about it, they don't want to be reminded that it is a reality. so they prefer to avoid it and to console themselves with thoughts of some technological apparatus that will enable them to avoid it. everyone is of course the exception. everyone thinks there is a way out for them. in that, everyone's particular dream is the same as everyone else's.

and i do not know how one goes about weighing one thing against another in making such a decision, that of ending the life of another, particular someone you love. pain against continuing? the threshold past which there is no hope, only a waiting? the wishes of the individual involved?

it seems this whole "debate" is really about a collective fear of dying. given that alot of conservative politics center on a paranoid fear of the state which is in many cases maybe reasonable and in many cases not so much, it makes sense to see this matter framed as yet another instance in which the Bad Persecuting State wants to Off the Free Individual. that seems little more than a way of moving elements around in order to generate a new Angst amongst a conservative demographic, which is little more than a device being used by political organizations and television networks with an interest in maintaining a coherent conservative demographic that they can sell products to, including themselves.

but it has little to do with the complications concerning the decision to end the life of another.
it seems to trivialize the matter.
maybe that is in itself therapeutic.
it's not for me to speculate about that, really.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

SecretMethod70

I'm not sure what's so controversial about this. It doesn't matter whether health care is private or public, it will involve making tough decisions about who is worth caring for in the end of their life and who isn't. It always has: private insurance does this every single day. It doesn't matter whether it's private or public, a certain degree of rationing is necessary. What Reich is referring to is not letting someone die who could otherwise be healed, he's talking about not spending $100,000 to keep someone alive for 3 extra months in a hospital bed when all it is doing is prolonging their inevitable and fast-approaching death. A public option would, and should, avoid such things... but note, it is an option. If you are someone who cares to have those 3 extra months sitting barely lucid in a hospital bed, then get private insurance that will pay those costs for you.... if you can find it.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

The_Dunedan

So, let me see if I've got this straight. We've moved from;

"Of course we won't let you die or ration your care, that's just evil! How could you even make such an accusation?! You're just a corporate shill spreading Sarah Palin's right-wing BushWorld lies!"

to

"Of course we'll let you die, these tough rationing decisions need making after all, and private ensurers already do it anyway! You're just blowing this out of proportion because you're afraid of death!"

Do you begin to see why Mr. Obama and his Congress have something of a credibility problem?

SecretMethod70

Last I checked, I was not a spokesman for the Obama administration, nor did I ever say that no rationing will be needed whatsoever. If you know something I don't, then I'd really like to start picking up my government check.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

dippin

Yeah, keep government out of mah medicare... oh, wait.

Fact is, private insurance makes the same decisions every day, only they use a much bigger share of their resources on overhead.

SecretMethod70

I should also point out that Mr. Reich's very point is that we do not live in a culture that values that kind of honesty from its leaders. We want politicians to tell us what we want to hear, not the truth. When politicians do try and tell the complete truth, such as in Mr. Reich's example, people get outraged and don't vote for them, instead voting for the person who promises big purple fluffies. Not that I can blame the person who promises those fluffies, because everyone and their uncle knows that being completely honest is death in politics.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

dippin

No one has ever said that rationing decisions did not need to be made. From the start everyone who is not brain dead has known this obvious fact. The Palin et al lies are that there would be a death panel, a group of people deciding arbitrarily who gets care.

From the start the idea of a public option was that it would have clearly stated standards of what it would cover and what it wouldn't. And from the start people would be allowed to buy supplemental insurance if they wanted a higher level of care. The goal from the start was never to eliminate rationing, as that would involve having unlimited resources, but to have health care with lower overhead and less of an incentive to delay or deny treatment.

The_Jazz

I've said this before here but I'll say it again: anyone screaming about "death panels" and the like is completely ignorant of how health insurance companies conduct business as well as completely ignorant of the news stories that pop up about every six months about someone nearing death because a health insuror won't approve a possibly life-saving procedure.

Dunedan - a public option would ration healthcare no more or less than private companies. If you don't understand that, then you don't really understand how health insurance works in the first place.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
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roachboy

one of the greater mysteries of conservative libertarian thinking can be derived from the line raymond queneau used to dismiss the surrealist automatic writing practice:

they substitute submission to rules they don't know about for submission to rules they know about.

clearly in this case it's better if no-one actually says what's happening anyway.
so long as no-one say it, we're ok
but let someone say it, and...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ASU2003

The way I see it is this:

Republicans want insurance companies to have private insurance companies limit how much care you get based on your net worth and the plan you have. You only have a certain annual limit on how much the insurance company will pay.

The new fiscal conservative/Libertarians wouldn't want to pay for keeping other people alive. If you have the money, you can pay for the best care available. They just like scaring the public away from socialized health care, either because they think people should be responsible for themselves, or they have a vested economic interest in the current system.

The democrats/socialists would have to raise taxes or print more money to provide life extending care. Or they would have to limit benefits that a public plan could provide. They could institute policies to help keep people healthy, but there are some who don't want the government to 'control' what companies put in food, in the air, or what people do in their lives.

The moral religious right would want to help the sick and dying, but there are some people who won't get better and just get kept alive by machines.


While this is a big expense in the health care industry, I think they need to focus on reform for 18-64 year olds.

boink

yawn

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when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.