Posted on 01/21/2013 8:37:27 PM PST by Rabin
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso... on social security reforms, "the medical system should be changed so that the many terminal patients now using government money for expensive treatment, can quickly pass away. Such patients can keep living even if they wish to die...
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
Japan is just ahead of our curve.
Death panels come to Japan.
Read and weep....forced starvation/dehydration for the elderly, car accident victims, premature babies etc...in the thousands a year.
Some doctors who can remember their Hippocratic Oath are prescribing water for patients.
“Death panels come to Japan.”
Coming to neighborhoods all across America. Soon.
the Catholic church, IIRC, has a basic attitude that you don't have to break the bank to save one person, unless its your own money of course....
would we rather have tube feedings and suction for an incoherent 90 yro OR have vaccines for young children?.....if we only had finite dollars, what do you choose?.
日本 ピング (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
We should do this to death-row inmates - no food, no water. It would be years quicker than the appeals process.
Or just poison them and they can die quicker, eh?
And send the bill for the poison, the needle, the bed, and the doctor to the family.
If you want to spend a half million dollars of your own money (or your children's inheritance) during the last month of your life, then have at it. The government should have no rules to prevent this. But tradeoffs have to be made somewhere when it's a question of spending government money to keep people alive for short periods at extraordinary cost.
Either get rid of socialized medicine or accept its limitations.
In a recent interview, David Goldhill, author of Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father had something interesting to say about the distortions caused by socialized medicine:
Many people think that, you know, if they're seniors, that Medicare is paying for their health care. What's interesting about seniors and what almost no one understands about Medicare is in 1965, when seniors paid for almost all of their health care themselves, roughly 10 to 12 percent of their income was spent on health care. This year, when seniors pay almost none of their health care themselves - Medicare pays 95 percent of the bill - that little 5 percent they pay now accounts for 20 percent of their income.
So what you have is people who think they're being protected by having these big intermediaries between them and the price of health care, in fact, what those intermediaries are doing is so inflating prices, so inflating demand, building so much waste and complexity into the system that all of us are bearing this extraordinary cost. We just don't see it because it's so many different hands into our pocket. But there is no other place for the money to come from.
BOOKbump
“what do you choose?.”
Since we made the decision 55 years ago not to have childern knowing what they would have to live through in the demise of this country, I chose medical care!!!
Funny. My Filipino bud told me Aso’ means dog.
“Many people think that, you know, if they’re seniors, that Medicare is paying for their health care. What’s interesting about seniors and what almost no one understands about Medicare is in 1965, when seniors paid for almost all of their health care themselves, roughly 10 to 12 percent of their income was spent on health care. This year, when seniors pay almost none of their health care themselves - Medicare pays 95 percent of the bill - that little 5 percent they pay now accounts for 20 percent of their income.”
But the not often discussed issue is the escalation in the cost of healthcare. For me, and I am a senior, that is the issue. My mother took about 3 days to die in a local hospital. They did little more than keep her sedated to ease her passing. The bill $50,000! But since it was Medicare the hospital “forgave” 80% of the bill leaving about $10,000 of which Medicare paid 90%. I just read about an all expense paid 200 day cruise that costs less than $50k. You talk about the Banksters. I submit that the “healthcare administrators” put these guys to shame. We also should never have decoupled the patient from his healthcare bills.
Another factor that has changed dramatically is simply the capability of modern medicine to keep people alive in adverse circumstances. Going back 50 years I would guess that people died much sooner once they had failing health simply because there was nothing that could be done—unlimited budget or not. Now there is a lot that can be done, but naturally, at a cost.
The Parasite Class is the problem. Spending on parasites is driving this country bankrupt. I would rather spend money on keeping a WWII vet alive for another month than spend it on welfare, government schools, ubion thugs, bridges to nowhere, bailouts and any other progressive nonsense. Yes, a choice has to be made.
Exactly right. They are printing money furiously longer than we have to keep interest rates very low. They have bigger national debt/capita and if interest rates go up to historical norm, both countries go bankrupt in a hurry with the much higher cost of servicing the national debts. Japan is already beyond point of no return. They simply can not stop printing money. After Obastard (one with the phony BC) finishes his 2nd term, we will be in the same situation as Japan.
My Medicare pays only 80% after I pay the deductible first. I have to buy a supplemental policy to get additional coverage.
If someone is dependent on government to pay for their medical care, then they should be aware that money is NOT infinite. I’m surprised rationing isn’t even more common. Choices have to be made, especially in single payer systems (we aren’t there, yet, but the federal government is paying for a large percentage of Americans).
People really have no right to demand that other people cover whatever costs might be necessary to extend life for as long as possible. If someone wants no expenses spared, then they need to pay for it themselves or request the (voluntary) charity of others.
You’re absolutely right. We have a socialized medical system, and we know socialism ultimately destroys itself, we have a socialized education system, and we know socialism destroys itself, etc. The government proposes to fix the very market distortions it created with more market distortions! Unfortunately, I really doubt anyone is going to do anything substantial to change the system until after the collapse. As the wealth redistributors love to say, “We’re a wealthy country!” Right? LOL!
first you deny treatment to “incoherent 90 year olds” to justify rationing
then when your costs continue to rise and your dollars remain “finite’, how about denying treatment to incoherent 80 year olds? well, then, how about 70 yr olds with stage 4 cancer that can be managed but not cured? Is that last 5-10 years of life “too expensive”??
What about a 40 year depressive who wants to die? Is it worth expensive treatment to keep them alive against their will?
Now, what about vaccines for a Tay Sachs child or neurobastoma child with a life expectancy of 2 years? For a Down’s child? For a child with a 3rd recurrence of leukemia? Is that the best return for your finite dollars?
What about a 22 week fetus? Is it worth a million dollars to do a C-section and try to save them with a 10% chance of normal survival?
Government takeover and then rationing of medical care for private citizens is not a line in the sand - it is a steep and slippery slope. If I had to choose between the Catholic church and the obama administration to make decisions about medical care and the value of my life, I choose the church
opinion.
socialized medicine... it’s free, dontcha know... it’s got to bet better then actually paying for stuff
You're getting perilously close to the third rail here (I've tread on it many times).
This conservative website contains many, many posters who believe that the government should spend unlimited quantities of taxed and borrowed money to keep every American nonagerian on unlimited high tech life support.
Anything less is routinely equated with opening up the cans of Zyklon B.
I choose a strong capitalistic system that allows people to pay for whatever care they want and a government that is out of the medical industry completely!!
“I cannot sleep well when I think of (myself receiving expensive treatments) by using government money,...”
So, deep down inside even a socialist knows he is stealing from others in order to live. When people are spending their own money, they are free to spend it as they please or give it away as they see fit.
But many people have been seduced into supporting a morally corrupt and morally corrupting system where they all attempt to live at the expense of others, which in the end destroys far more wealth than it spreads around.
Socialism is evil and those who live by it shall die by it.
If you want heroic end-of-life measures, be sure to get rich during your life.
Just as food, shelter and jobs are not rights, neither is health care. Access to these things is a right but the things themselves must not be guaranteed by the state.
Providing these things provides short term benefits, especially for lying politicians, but eventually destroys the host.
You make a credible case for the worth of pursuing all these expensive medical care scenarios, but fail to make it clear whether or not you believe taxpayers should be forced, under penalty of imprisonment, to pay for them.
I choose the church opinion.
That's as may be, but I don't see the Catholic (or any other) church stepping up to replace the government's role in paying the doctors, nurses, and hospitals. The Catholic hospitals take every Medicare and Medicaid dollar they can. And having "the king's shilling" they are not well positioned to object to the king's decrees.
Everyone is “terminal”, as none are getting out of here alive.
Gov’t will soon decide all expensive treatment will be withheld.
To my knowledge, not a one of them has ever said "I've gotten more than my money's worth, from here on out I will pay my own way".
So if we stopped government funding for those “so called heroic procedures” you’d be OK with that??
Then there is the grandaughter. She is unwilling to face the reality that grammie is dying. She will not permit, in fact will throw a hissy fit, insisting that everything possible be done. She has absolutely no understanding of what is happening. She insists things will improve if the medical staff just does it’s job and makes grammie better.
All stops are pulled out, every test known to man is administered. Dialysis replaces failed kidneys, etctc.....
90 days later grammie is dead. The cost of remedying the hissy fit is astronomical. The process achieved nothing beyond making the granddaughter feel better about herself. The exercise in self esteem building cost tens of thousands of dollars and achieved nothing.
The cost is closer to hundreds of thousands!!
I screw with ya sometimes, but you were amazingly prescient and very forward-thinking here.
Funny thing , I've known several that did exactly that.
BTTT
Dear Lord, guide and strengthen us in Your will.
Tatt
Either you are pro-life or you are not. Being pro-life means accepting the financial aspects of keeping people alive and not murdering them or killing them from non-assistance. Terri Shivo down in Florida was basically killed by the government and you both seem to be on the government side because of money. A very scary slippery slope you are on and one that all of us will be on soon. This is what happens when morals are lost.
There were a lot of people who were totally in favor of sustaining Terri Schiavo, but had no inclination to step up to the plate when it came to paying for the lifetime nursing care she would require. I guess they believed the nursing home had a magic dwarf that could spin straw into gold, or something.
Are you ready to increase taxes to the extent needed to provide not only basic nutrition, but also no-holds-barred high tech care for every person on life support in America?
If you are, I commend you on your lack of hypocrisy.
If we really want to save some cash let’s profile DNA and abort any baby that has the potential for expensive diseases.
Why should the tax payer be punished by medically burdensome people?
The issue was that her “husband” who had consistently resisted ANY potential rehab therapy for her, would NOT divorce her and give her back to her family
even though he had started another family
one belief was that had she recovered her communication ability he may have been implicated in the injuries that caused her brain damage
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