who is the first to scream "death panel"if any discussion on this topic is suggested? an attempt to pay doctors to have these discussions with their patients brought screams of death panel from the right. who is the real problem?
Over the last 30 years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which assesses the costs of health reform and other legislation as it moves through Congress and is widely respected for its competence and integrity, has underestimated the amount of savings and overestimated the costs that major changes in the health care system would bring. CBO underestimated savings from reforms Congress made in the way Medicare paid hospitals by $11 billion. Savings from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which changed the way skilled nursing facilities and home health services were reimbursed under Medicare, turned out to be 50 percent greater in 1998 and 113 percent greater in 1999 than the budget office forecast. And, CBO predicted that drug prices would rise following the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which added prescription drug benefits to Medicare, estimating that spending on the drug benefit would be $206 billion. Actual spending was nearly 40 percent less than that, Gabel found. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Con...stimated-Savings-and-Overestimated-Costs.aspx
who is the first to scream "death panel"if any discussion on this topic is suggested? an attempt to pay doctors to thave these discussions with their patients brought screams of death panel from the right. who is the real problem? not a Palin fan nor a religious conservative- so I agree with you, in fact death panels have been around forever, they are called families. A family will pull the plug when it becomes too financially painful to keep gramps alive, and if gramps is moral he will go willingly.
cherry picking anecdotes and using a reform from a fiscal conservative congress is a really bad way to support an argument. In the macro view, all, and I mean almost all, big government spending programs have ended up costing more than thought. Just ask yourself why is SSI in hock much sooner than thought? Remeber the $27T surplus projected in 2000? that was CBO. Has CBO correctly forecasted any major budget impacting event for the last 40 years? The tech boom and bust, the 2008 implosion, the 90-91 recession, the 87 crash? Any idiot can extrapolate a long term moving average but nobody can predict the economic future. To make policy on this is insane.
i can tell you having gone through it 3 times its not that easy. its often not black and white. the costs snowball as the condition progresses. by the time it becomes clear that this time the elderly person will not make it you already racked up big bills. i do agree with you that something has to be done because its nuts to spend 300k to keep a person alive 6 months longer.
but they should be your big bills, you guys made the decisions an it was his life. If someone else pays, I guarantee the bills are bigger.
My father is 81, he was blue collar and hard working. He has had a good life. None of you owes him an extension on his life. Another example where religion hurts us dearly. Crack babies, almost all premature and almost all profoundly retarded and sick. They cost millions and will never produce anything for society. If we let nature take it's course, they die rather peacefully before they get too far. Palin conservatives however say they are god's special children and must be kept alive at all costs- it's the law.
So you prefer to saddle your fellow tax payer with the bill for your deceased and let someone like me say when to pull the plug on your dear ole gamps? I'm sure that will work out just fine for you maybe not so good for the gamps of a communist. Just remember somebody like myself will be making the decisions and just as you argue the govt owned professional knows best for you and your care. Good luck with that
its not your decision. you as a relative have no right or say in the decision to unplug a parent unless he has an advance directive, and even then it wont kick in until the prognosis is bleak ,if that parent is still competent. euthanasia is still illegal almost everywhere.