questions that have to be answered to save medicare.

any talk of restricting medicare will surely bring crys of "death panels" from right wingers but how can we allow situations like this, that could bankrupt medicare for all, to continue without taking cost benefit into account?
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Dendreon Corp. (DNDN)’s prostate cancer drug Provenge should be covered by the U.S. government for use in older men, regulators said.

The $93,000 treatment regimen is “reasonable and necessary” for men with advanced, castrate-resistant prostate tumors who have minimal or no symptoms of the disease, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said today.

Note this well - this drug does not cure prostate cancer.

Studies supporting Provenge approval showed the drug helped men with prostate cancer live a median of 4.1 months longer.

http://www.philstockworld.com/2011/03/31/the-poster-child-for-medical-hell/

 

i consider myself on the right. i dont have a problem with refusing to honor a claim to pay for something that does not cure anyone, but only gives them an extra 4 months of agony.

 

maybe you should forward you feelings to the leaders of the right wing.
have you forgotten how the republicans had a hissy fit about a provision in the health care bill that would pay doctors to consult with their elderly patients about end of life care options? the democrats were forced to remove that provision from the bill because people like sarah palin were screaming "death panels".

 

What we need is an immediate across the board cut to every working American's pay, to bring it into line with, even under, BRIC. But, not quite so much to doctors' pay, because we should increase their supply a bit, and that would bring their pay down.

Then, we could competitively sell our goods on the world market and get our export engine running again. I mean, if it has to be a race to the bottom we may as well just win it. After all this, we'll have the national income to pay for our social saftey net, like medicare.

Where the world's work is going:

http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourcing-own-jobs-oversea,14329/

 

the extreme example above that you made in your original post is just that - extreme.

try not to consider that as the "rule".

 

Ditto

If I were king for a day I'd completely shut down Medicare. The federal government had no business getting involved in the first place and we simply cannot afford it.

 

The $90 billion in annual medicare fraud could go a long way towards useless treatments.

If the government was running the entire health care industry, there would be $500 billion in annual fraud. Take that $500 billion and apply that to useless treatments.