Posted on 08/12/2009 9:27:48 AM PDT by NotSoModerate
“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”
Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.
“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”
(Excerpt) Read more at macedoniaonline.eu ...
Ahh...so that’s why they wanted to take over GM. All those unused auto plants will make fine mass producing crematoriums. Obama will make Auschwitz look like Disney Land.
I look at this as what would I want my family to do if there were no insurance or gov’t payments. If I was terminal, or getting real close to the end of my years, I would not spend my own money on certain things. I would rather leave what I have to my family and face the end with dignity, and not spending money like crazy to wring an extra year or so out of life.
The questions are, IMHO, how much quality time do I have left, how much do I have spend, and what is it I am going to get for my money.
parsy, who is officially a senior citizen now at least according to AARP.
For example, a neighbor was injured in a domestic violence situation, had her rotator cuff damaged. She was told she was too old to have an operation to fix it. Now I can understand not having a blank check to fix every little thing and even some big things depending on the circumstances. But here's the thing:
Obamacare will drive out the private option. Remember Hillarycare, where it would be illegal for a doctor to perform the operation for private money? Well, look for that concept in the bill. Yep. So even Obama's example is flawed because he is taking away the option for you to pay for it on your own.
>> “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”
> This can’t be true.
Sure it can. Think about the definitions.
“Chronically ill” = sick all the time, long-term sickness. As opposed to “Acutely ill” = suddenly ill, accidentally ill.
The chronically ill will require constant medical treatment for a very long time, by definition. Acute patients are the ones who break their legs or have car accidents &tc. Far more likely to be a catch-and-release in the medical system.
“Those toward the end of their lives” = the elderly. After a full life, their bodies start to wear out requiring joint replacements, organ replacements &tc. They’re also likely to become chronic patients. By definition, those who are toward the end of their lives are most likely to spend the last part of their lives either in hospice or in hospital.
Is 80% a fair figure for all that? Yes, of course it is. Obama is complaining about a perfectly normal set of circumstances. This breakdown is not going to change no matter how he rations healthcare. 80% of your healthcare budget will be spent treating chronic and elderly patients. It is a fact of life, just like gravity.
When it’s MY grandmother, it’s none of YOUR business, Mr. Obama.
Not your money. Not your concern.
Pay attention, now, and read my lips... BUTT. OUT.
You know what’s kind of funny about this?
When my Dad was terminal, his doctor said that he should be brought into the emergency room any time he was in too much pain and they would start chemo again and see what they could do.
My dad said no and died happily at home.
Sometimes people choose what he is proposing all by themselves.
Happy Birthday Parsy!
He needs to go to Camp David and hide, is is an idiot the only one with brains is TOUS.
This can’t be true.
Tricky, tricky numbers. Mixing the chronically ill and those at the end of their lives. If you are 40 and are on blood pressure medication you are chronically ill. You might have a good 40 or 50 years left, but Obama is mixing that with someone on death's door. I have friends who have been on asthma medication since they were children. That's potentially a good 80 years of chronically (but very treatably) ill. Tricky.
I saw a few days ago that Medicare was approximately 45% of the total national health care bill, private insurance about 40% and self pay about 15%. Although some of the private insurance and self payers will be for end stage terminal cases (accidents, early onset diseases, union insurance that supercedes Medicare in old age), most of the end stage spending will likely be Medicare thus only a part of Medicare's 45%.
Yes... there are a lot of people who would be *at* the end of their lives were it not for life-saving treatments. Preemies with under-developed lungs, accident victims, kids with cancer...
If those in the third world can't expect care why should everyone else? Besides, the Obamas need unlimited funding for important vacations. Priorities.
“The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”
He is misquoting a statement concerning the expenses of the MediCare program. The statement should be that approximately 80% of the cost of all medical care received by an individual is spent in the last 6 months of their life.
Thank you! What is it now, 11 years a freeper. Two more and I become a freeper teenager!
parsy, who is still out looking for the Grail
My mother had both knees replaced after a round with breast cancer. She went from not being able to stand up to walking ten miles a day. Ten years later she died of cancer. If she had not been able to walk those last ten years, her quality of life would have been drastically lower and that alone would have made lose her will to live. Thank God she had free enterprise medicine.
Obama’s Nazi medicine would have written her off and I would not have had her those last few years.
And furthermore, who decides what "terminal" is? Aren't we ALL terminal? And how long is that interval?
Donna Shalala threatened to prosecute some Medicare patients who were attempting to pay for procedures themselves because the system was delaying/denying.
Sometimes refusing the hip replacement could be a purely medical decision. Some who are very ill are quite likely to not survive the hip replacement surgery. The choice between a couple more weeks in bed or dying on the operating table is medically pretty easy.
Others are not quite as sick, but will likely (also not guaranteed, everything is a probability game) survive the surgery but never be able to walk again anyway because they are too weak to do the necessary rehab. Having a nice shiny new metal hip and a surgery scar isn't going to help them much.
Where Obamacare kicks in is when the patient has a few months (likely, life expectancy predictions are like weather predictions) left to live, but can spend that getting around on a new hip or lying in bed with the broken on. This is where Dr. Zeke in Washington decides that the patient is a worthless eater and shouldn't have any treatment other than pain relief.
The more I read of your president the more he creeps me out.
I can figure out the Bleeding Heart Liberal who feels everyone's pain (well, except mine on April 15th). Obama seems to be a cold-fish psychotic only able to imitate human emotions. I just can't quite figure out what makes him tick other than a lust for power.
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Obama's rationale of "terminally ill" in its utmost conclusion really means that hip replacements are useless no matter what the age: we all will end up on his clunker heap sooner or later.
Has he ever helped a relative to better their life?
Hey, after they unpacked their new HD TV, Barry asked to have the box it came in shipped to his Kenyan brother - so now George Hussein Onyango Obama has an addition to his hut! Not only that, he helped George secure a loan to enable him to pay for the C.O.D. shipping!
And we all know how 0bama handles "difficult moral issues"; he defends late-stage abortions as well as death by neglect for those infants who survive them.
Taking care of an elderly friend forced my husband and I to make a decision to not provide physical therapy so that she could walk on her own again. She was 98, she was not strong enough to walk and continued to injure herself trying....while it was difficult to make that decision, it was OUR decision with her trust...the government had nothing to do with that choice and should NEVER have anything to do with that choice.
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