Posted on 07/20/2009 9:23:05 AM PDT by jerod
OK... so I don't. Simmer down. It just seems awfully quick to me. I'm still betting that there was more than merely alcohol involved.
Bet all you want. Deny all you want. Fact is alcholism kills -— number one cause of liver disease is alcohol abuse.
Two words: Mickey Mantle.
Duh? What’s your problem?
Steve Jobs managed to get a liver even after there were reports that his pancreatic cancer had metastasized throughout his body; is that fair? I hope Jobs lives a long time but there is a large void between who gets scarce organs.
“This has nothing to do with socialized medicine - the same thing would have happened here. Transplant organs are in very short supply, and transplant patients are prioritized in any system, socialized or not. Transplant clinics (and insurance companies) here in the U.S. generally will not perform (or pay for) liver transplants without a period of sobriety of 6 months to a year (and many locations/insurers will not perform/cover any liver transplant that results from alcohol abuse”
David Crosby?
My father spent some time in Korea in 1970 and 1971; he told of meeting an Army helicopter pilot who was shot down (in VN) the first time on his eighteenth birthday (that sounds a bit young; it may have been his nineteenth birthday) and four or five times later on.
When asked what he was drinking, he would answer "Six rum-and-cokes", the asker would buy six rum-and-cokes, and he would down them faster than I could drink six glasses of water.
Word got back to the US a little later on that he was grounded for cirrhosis of the liver by the time he was 21.
“I knew a nephrologist who left medical practice in the UK who used to tell his colleagues in the US that socialized medicine will mean rationing of kidney dialysis. In the UK the number of dialysis machines was strictly limited and doctors had to make decisions as to who would get treatment and who would die of kidney failure.”
75% of all ESRD patients using dialysis are on Medicare and another 10% are on Medicaid Primary. That means dialysis is pretty much handled by socialized INSURANCE already and has been since the mid-late 60s. No rationing has even been discussed in the 40 years it has been done this way.
It has been discussed in multiple BMJ articles but it has yet to be implemented in the UK though there is likely talk of covert rationing on those that are considered terminal with other diseases such as stage IV cancers. This is also being done is rural parts of the US already where centers to population ratios are really bad.
Maybe the idea is to not go to socialized MEDICINE (aka single payer PLUS all healtcare workers and facilities are employeese and owned by the state). That is how it is done in the UK and that is not what has been proposed in the US.
We have socialized medicine in the VA hospitals, no one is talking about making that type of system universal.
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