Monday, September 13, 2010

Death Panels Revisited

Note Mr. Gates openly uses the term "Death Panel", before apologizing for it when talking about health care rationing and cost tradeoffs.   Of course, it's only a cost tradeoff if it's the same person's money we're talking about.  But we're talking about Other People's Money (OPM) here.  Because it's the government.




You see, "Society" is only making that tradeoff because of the meddling of the Government in health care (and education for that matter) but let's just focus on health care.

If the government isn't paying for it -- if an insurance company is, or if grandma's family is making the decision ... how much they can afford to pay to keep grandma alive for the next three months... the family makes that decision (perhaps when they buy the health care plan they decide to buy).

Under a single-payer government health care plan there is no cost to weigh for the consumer. Only for the Government. So the government decides if you're worth keeping around. Not you or your family. Not your friends.

Yes, it does depend on how much money you have what kind of health insurance you can afford, or how much health care you can buy, just as it affects how much of a house or a car or whatever you can buy.

That. Is. Life. It's a little harsh sometimes, for sure. But YOU make the decisions based on YOUR resources. Not, "well, policy says 'not worth the trouble'!"

All during the "debate", their side was talking about what was literally in the bill's wording (when you could get them to talk about details in the bill at all rather than The Grand Idea or how evil/stupid their opponents were) ... and our side was talking about what the effect of the bill would be.

We said "it'll mean this will happen" and they said "Fear monger! That's not IN THE BILL!" and hence it was, to their eyes, "proven false". But now even proponents are openly admitting that that is exactly what we're talking about. Government officials being in charge of what care you get based on whether it's "worth it". To whom? By whose standards?

Death Panels.

1 comment:

tim said...

I love how Gates goes right to the typical Liberal talking point of “teachers” versus, in this case, grandma’s last days. Oh the CHILDREN!!!

We here in NY spend the most for education yet we have one of the worst performance levels in the nation. Also, there’s something like four “administrators” for every teacher. Let’s get rid of some of them AND let grandma live. If we’re stuck with Obamacare that is.

How about the NYC subway workers who are ripping off us tax payers retiring for bogus “disability” reasons, or the backdoor deal our cops pull over on us for retirement pay (working extra hours the last two years of employment to pad their retirement pay which is based on their last two years of employment rather than some other reasonable calculation), and the thousands of other examples of our tax dollars being iripped off by our state governments powerful, greedy unions.