OT: Straight From The Horses Mouth

[Jazzman]

So you think death panels are coming. They have been around for a while. You think treatment is a cure. It turns out it’s bad for you. You think the health care debate is important. Watch this video and you will understand just how important. Warning: It is depressing.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283573727/

[CA renter]

Just watched half of it and will get the other half in the next day or two. Excellent video. You can see why this is such a difficult discussion. I really feel for people on all sides of this issue.

[Jazzman]

Apologies, I should have mentioned this is a full length documentary (also available on Netflix under the title Money and Medicine). What I like about it is that the medical profession has at last come out and added their vital input to this whole debate. Then you know it’s not politically skewed. It really is an eye-opener, not just from the point of view of waste and costs, but also from the perspective of life changing/threatening invasive, non-essential treatment. You don’t really get a sense of how much the debate rages within the medical profession, but one assumes it must since the problem is still there. Anyone getting long in the tooth needs to prepare not just for death itself, but also for the understandably difficult choices you may be faced with that lead up to it. Will or should health directives become mandatory?

Folks, if you have an opinion, any opinion on health care, then you NEED to watch this. It could save your life.

[CDMA ENG]

Of course there are “Death Panels”!

It does not matter that it is under the “Social” medicine or Private.

There will always be a group of doctors that must make a decision about medical resources.

Transplant decision being the first one to come to mind.

One kidney two patients. Who gets its? The 62 year old former alcholic or the 16 year old boy with malform kidneys.

Choice is pretty easy.

Also I was talking to my “mate” yesterday. His “mum” is still in the UK and told me he is not excited about socialized medicine having experienced it for himself.

He said that it is fine when you are young and healthy but when you get older that the care system there is “less than aggressive” to treat older patients. There is a aloof attitude towards the treatment of the eldery especially when it cost the state more money.

“They are old and going to die anyway” was his commentary about doctors attitudes.

I am not anti nationalized healtcare. However I have never heard anyone yet tell me how it is going to actually work that makes sense to me.

CE

PS I havent watched the video…

[no_such_reality]

[quote=CDMA ENG]Of course there are “Death Panels”!

It does not matter that it is under the “Social” medicine or Private.

There will always be a group of doctors that must make a decision about medical resources.

Transplant decision being the first one to come to mind.

One kidney two patients. Who gets its? The 62 year old former alcholic or the 16 year old boy with malform kidneys.

Choice is pretty easy.

Also I was talking to my “mate” yesterday. His “mum” is still in the UK and told me he is not excited about socialized medicine having experienced it for himself.

He said that it is fine when you are young and healthy but when you get older that the care system there is “less than aggressive” to treat older patients. There is a aloof attitude towards the treatment of the eldery especially when it cost the state more money.

“They are old and going to die anyway” was his commentary about doctors attitudes.

I am not anti nationalized healtcare. However I have never heard anyone yet tell me how it is going to actually work that makes sense to me.

CE

PS I havent watched the video…[/quote]

By doing exactly what I’ve highlighted and stop spending $25,000+ a year per 80+ year old in a futile effort to add 3 months more to a bed ridden end of life drama to the 1% over 80 that are going to die.

5% of the population is responsible for 49% of our health expenditures. A large block of that spending is money that is essentially doing nothing more that added a minor extension to life. IMHO, it’s poorly spent.

[njtosd]

Don’t know whether it’s still true, but at least as recently as the late 80s, people who needed dialysis in the Netherlands only received state provided services until they turned 50. After that, you either had to prove you had dependents or pay for it yourself or die. The mother of a friend of mine counseled these people – nice touch to help people feel better about their impending death. So today you’re saying that we shouldn’t worry about 80 year olds. How old is going to be too old next year?

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=no_such_reality][quote=CDMA ENG]Of course there are “Death Panels”!

It does not matter that it is under the “Social” medicine or Private.

There will always be a group of doctors that must make a decision about medical resources.

Transplant decision being the first one to come to mind.

One kidney two patients. Who gets its? The 62 year old former alcholic or the 16 year old boy with malform kidneys.

Choice is pretty easy.

Also I was talking to my “mate” yesterday. His “mum” is still in the UK and told me he is not excited about socialized medicine having experienced it for himself.

He said that it is fine when you are young and healthy but when you get older that the care system there is “less than aggressive” to treat older patients. There is a aloof attitude towards the treatment of the eldery especially when it cost the state more money.

“They are old and going to die anyway” was his commentary about doctors attitudes.

I am not anti nationalized healtcare. However I have never heard anyone yet tell me how it is going to actually work that makes sense to me.

CE

PS I havent watched the video…[/quote]

By doing exactly what I’ve highlighted and stop spending $25,000+ a year per 80+ year old in a futile effort to add 3 months more to a bed ridden end of life drama to the 1% over 80 that are going to die.

5% of the population is responsible for 49% of our health expenditures. A large block of that spending is money that is essentially doing nothing more that added a minor extension to life. IMHO, it’s poorly spent.[/quote]

That is not what he was talking about… He was talking about regularr health care. Prentative medicine. Things that add years to your life span. Not the extradionary means to preserve life three months or so…

BTW I agree with you that it is the extradionary means that is the single worst contributors to health cost.

CE

[Jazzman]

Here we go again. The documentary is NOT about socialized vs private. That is not the debate. The core issues are about how care is administered and how it encourages out of control spending, often to the detriment of patient health, and sometimes with fatal consequences. There is a direct relationship between increasing costs and decreasing quality care. Doctors and hospitals obviously understand this better than we do. Whether you have an aunt in the Netherlands, or an ailing mum in the UK, if you haven’t watched the documentary you may be missing the point here.

[no_such_reality]

How care is administered and how care is paid for go hand in hand.

The primary problem with the USA model is very simple, people are isolated from the cost of their health care. It’s treated like an all you can eat buffet and the doctors are paid for procedures and not results.

Add the pernicious penalties for perceived failure in the form of lawsuits and there’s no reason for the doctors to prescribe every possible test.

[spdrun]

Imagine if we cut 50% of the funding to the military and its associated parasites and spent the public money saved on providing health care to all Americans… Plenty of wasted public money in the violence industry. I’d rather my tax money be spent prolonging lives (even those of > 80 year olds) than murdering brown people abroad and abusing people in this country in the name of some “war on drugs.”

This being said, my grandmother was hit by a truck crossing the street in London at age 76 or so. She received very good care from the UK medical system and ended up living another 21 healthy years. “Socialized medicine lets old people die” is horseshit — if anything, private insurance has more motive to let more expensive patients go than a public service does.

[all]

[quote=spdrun]Imagine if we cut 50% of the funding to the military and its associated parasites and spent the public money saved on providing health care to all Americans… Plenty of wasted public money in the violence industry. I’d rather my tax money be spent prolonging lives (even those of > 80 year olds) than murdering brown people abroad and abusing people in this country in the name of some “war on drugs.”
[/quote]

But spending money on public health instead of military would not produce radar, GPS, Internet, space program… and the cuts would likely come from research, not pork.

[spdrun]

So what?

Perhaps different spending priorities would have produced unprecedented advances in biotech, artificial organs, etc, and delayed the Internet by 20 years. Would society be worse for it?

In short – who gives a flying spaghetti fuck? Besides, there was plenty of good civilian research in the late 1800s and interwar period of the 1900s without the massive/parasitic military-industrial complex to fund it. Other mechanisms of funding existed.

[dumbrenter]

[quote=Jazzman]Here we go again. The documentary is NOT about socialized vs private. That is not the debate. The core issues are about how care is administered and how it encourages out of control spending, often to the detriment of patient health, and sometimes with fatal consequences. There is a direct relationship between increasing costs and decreasing quality care. Doctors and hospitals obviously understand this better than we do. Whether you have an aunt in the Netherlands, or an ailing mum in the UK, if you haven’t watched the documentary you may be missing the point here.[/quote]

To copy from Mark Twain, those posters who are expressing opinions here are not going to confine themselves to the narrow constraint of the link you posted.

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=spdrun]Imagine if we cut 50% of the funding to the military and its associated parasites and spent the public money saved on providing health care to all Americans… Plenty of wasted public money in the violence industry. I’d rather my tax money be spent prolonging lives (even those of > 80 year olds) than murdering brown people abroad and abusing people in this country in the name of some “war on drugs.”

This being said, my grandmother was hit by a truck crossing the street in London at age 76 or so. She received very good care from the UK medical system and ended up living another 21 healthy years. “Socialized medicine lets old people die” is horseshit — if anything, private insurance has more motive to let more expensive patients go than a public service does.[/quote]

Fuck you and your horseshit. Everything is very black and white to you.

Every other post from you is some nasty little opinion… Every heard of a debate?

My friend who is british doesn’t believe the same as you and I would say he is far more qualified to give an antedotal then someone who has never been treated by the system.

He is equally entitled to his opinion.

Of course in the case of your grandmother getting hit by the truck they are going to do something… The goverment is not just going to let her die in the streets or even on the operating table.

For him it was about the attention to the elderly in day to day circumstances. The lack of preventative care that could prolong life.

In his case the doctors are not making anymore money whether they care about you or not. Whether they go the extra mile to treat you.

That is not the case here in america. The insurance companies my try to deny the claim but the doctor is out to “upsell” his services. That leads to somewhat better medical care though the doctors intentions are not altruistic. Haven’t you noticed your dentist doing this?

CE

CE

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=dumbrenter][quote=Jazzman]Here we go again. The documentary is NOT about socialized vs private. That is not the debate. The core issues are about how care is administered and how it encourages out of control spending, often to the detriment of patient health, and sometimes with fatal consequences. There is a direct relationship between increasing costs and decreasing quality care. Doctors and hospitals obviously understand this better than we do. Whether you have an aunt in the Netherlands, or an ailing mum in the UK, if you haven’t watched the documentary you may be missing the point here.[/quote]

To copy from Mark Twain, those posters who are expressing opinions here are not going to confine themselves to the narrow constraint of the link you posted.[/quote]

Good point Dumb… but I did address the Death Panel issue which is the first line of the post.

Just haven’t gotten around to watching a 1 long video… even if it is PBS.

CE

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