We Already Have 'Death Panels.' If You Can't Pay the Bill, You're Sent Home to Die.
By Susie Madrak Monday Aug 10, 2009 10:00amFrom Southern Beale, a very important point:
Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.
You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.
In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.
And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.
If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.
Amen.
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"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Your insurance ran out so get the f*ck out."
and what about the people that are just kicked out of the hospital, bussed elsewhere and left to die on the street. That's compassionate conservatism for ya.
... and you should praise it, citizen!
not a healthcare system that helps people to get and remain healthy..Too much money in drugs and useless procedures that are proven ineffective but profitable for the corps, insurance co's, hmo's...But not the Dr's and nurses who are getting paid an average of 70c on the dollar! Except for the old retired AMA members who got theirs years ago...Do you know less than 20% of practicing physicians belong to AMA...?
Sarah's going to need to earn big bucks for when her COBRA runs out. Or does she get to stay on the Alaskan dole indefinitely?
My best friend from High School, Joel, died of kidney failure 6 years ago. I was out of touch with him and had no idea he was ill. I get back home and I hear he is about gone. We needed $7000 to keep him alive. I had $2000 in the bank. We started going door to door. he died the next morning.
He used to work in the hospital that turned him away.
..didn't at the very least make you sad and mad at the same time, jhunter's does a good job! No doubt there are thousands of other horror stories. What do we get for all this grief? Not much, not much at all but we do get the comedy stylings of Sarah Palin with the spotlight on the family. If she were my mother, I'd disown her!
I go by his moms house when I am back home. We just sit in the living room and drink iced tea. We talk a little. She starts getting misty and that's it.
Here's an idea: every time this happens, we get to "off" that person's Representative or Senator. Since this happens mostly in the poor, rural south, we could quickly have a new Congress who would easily pass single-payer.
Sound good?
but these people hate 'socialist care' as much as they hate caring in general. they would probably spit on you for offering help, then suffer and die proudly for their corporate masters in the name of jeebus.
Seeing as she is a public figure...I'm quite curious to see just what the Palins have received as far as coverage and or assistance for her handicapped child. More importantly, was she on some form of insurance provided to government employees, is she now buying private insurance, what exactly are the differentials in cost and coverage and did she ever consider not accepting her "socialized" healthcare when she was governor of Alaska.
Bottom line...Ms. Palin...do you actually believe in the things you say...or are you simply a hypocrite?
Hypocrite.
I doubt she understands the things she says well enough to know she's a hypocrite.
Just like she doesn't understand that the oil revenues being distributed to her Alaskan citizens is counter to everything she has said about the stimulus, single payer, etc...
read any of the bills going thru Congress and certainly not the intellect to understand what she might be reading , if she attempted the endeavor!
She is preaching to the rabid choir that she ginned up as Mccains second in the election! Those people are either ill-informed or intellectually vapid and venal!
She does not know the definition of hypocrite...nor could it be explained in simple enough terms for her to comprehend..Waste of time!
simple hypocrite...
I would bet money that Palin knows exactly what she said is a lie and that she said it to not only put fear into people about the health care plan; I'd bet money that she is just hoping (and praying?) that someone says something about her family so that she can once again go on and on about how evil liberals are.
or hypocrite for short.
things. OK. let mama pass away; she had a good life. But heed her living will: a simple procedure to dismember her and convey by ambulance the bits to your bedrooms, with a simple note, 'Never again, Assholes!'
obviously.
nothing they can use with a congressional page or an airport bathroom either.
But it's a Big Corporation screwing with your life, not the Gubment, which is Their Right, dammit.
Congressmen Stupak voted NO on HR3200. He lives at the C Street frat house.
His son commited suicide. You would think as a democrat, he would be more sympathetic to people than corporations.
like these people who are screaming about 'death panels' are the same people who have no trouble advocating killing off all those dark-skinned people (babies and older folk included) in the Middle East....You know the "kill 'em all and let God sort it out/don't let anyone choose abortion, that kills babies/they're a different religion so they're not worth anything/we mustn't let families have any choice (living wills) so we don't have anymore Terry Schiavos....."
did I miss anything?
don't forget that they encourage white xtian people to have lots and lots of babies so we can "win" the population race against those damned brown skinned people.
don't forget that they encourage white xtian people to have lots and lots of guns so we can "win" the civil war against those damned brown skinned people.
This was truly an astounding bit of sputum from Palin. Again, words fail.
Okay. Shut up.
Yes civil indeed.
has a lot of time on her hands. The mind wanders...
Way too much time on her hands.
Poor Sarah...I think she needs to bring her head into the shop.
The clutch to her brain doesn't seem to engage properly when she puts her mouth in gear.
They really should add to the number of un-insured those who have claims denied, (necessary) procedures not approved, etc.
The real number is likely about double what is reported.
Christ, just because you have insurance doesn't mean you are covered. They can deny any procedure they want for whatever bullshit reason they make up.
..by the health care industry and the government. The Government mandating health care without providing a public option (forget about single payer) is just giving the corporations more people to screw all the while adding to their profits. Its not going to be any better than it is right now.
will guarantee more bankruptcies by mandating the payment of uncovered procedures out-of-pocket. There is sure to be a payment clause equivalent to what is in the creditcard bill.
British comedian Russell Brand has talked about the time he was in an American treatment center for addictions and he was asked in a group therapy session to express anger. The staff felt he went too far in his expression of anger and tried to pack him off to a psychiatric facility. In the check-in lobby of the psychiatric hospital, surrounded by psych patients drugged into stupors, he frantically tried to phone people to get him out, as the staff were dismissing his protestations. Suddenly, Brand thought, "Wait - we're in a country notorious for its capitalist system. I know what to do!" He told him that he would not be able to pay and had no US insurance either, and they rushed him out the door quicker than he'd arrived.
Because it's a county and system that has no regard for the people, as with all business (as we all well know) it's just about money.
Oh woe is me and my living in a "socialist" country .........
drug him and keep the money coming until his insurance is exhausted, then dump him on the street.
[fucking amazing how the rehab people could commit him for doing something they asked him to do]
How these people are not in prison for these actions I have no idea (well, knowing what I know about my country I have some idea) - the insurance companies are just happy taking our money while we are healthy but they sure don't like paying any of it back when we get sick. But isn't that the whole point of Insurance?
And if the repugs truely cared about people being put to death by a bureaucratic panel then they would not support these criminal corporations the way they do. - I can't believe we have to even have this conversation, how dumb is this country? we need to wake up and wrestle the ownership from the hands of our keepers.
..look up "dumb" in the dictionary and there is a map of the USA.
So...if we're all snowflakes...is America blanketed in a blizzard of ignorance?
> How these people are not in prison for these actions
Because it's the american dream, i.e. screw everyone as long as you can make profit.
> So...if we're all snowflakes...is America blanketed in a blizzard of ignorance?
Ha, I like that one, will have to remember it ! Though this is the reading you want I guess :
http://www.amazon.com/Just-How-Stupid-Are-We/...
I'm in the middle of reading "The Family"...but this will probably be next up on my reading list.
Oblivious...you betcha!
Amen is right. Screw these lying sacks.
Gingrich defends what Palin said.
I see that Brian Kilmeade on Fox&Idiots made some claim this morning about the government discussing how you're going to end your life.
I also see that on his radio show today, Beck, in referring to Palin's statement, said “That’s quite a statement. I believe it to be true, but that’s quite a statement.”
These people will all rot in hell.
I like it. Fair and balanced.....an amazing feat of being redundant and a lie.
True and these death panels make their decisions based entirely on profit motive regardless of medical or other considerations.
Susie, I don't know if you can do this, but it sure would be nice if your story could be put up on Palin's Facebook page.
These people really are disgusting.
..should send our own stories to Ms. Palin. Let's see if she can answer all or any of us! I'll look for the link to her e-mail when I can. Hopefully someone will beat me to it.
"protester" at another Demcratic town hall...drops GUN!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/gabr...
WTF?
Nice security they have at these places...this is gonna get really ugly if something isn't done soon.
My brother lost his job and his health insurance.
He has been diagnosed with COPT.
He won't qualify for public aid for another year. He applied for SS disability a year ago and his lawyer told him it will be another two years. By then - without care - he could be dead.
This is government bureaucrats deciding to let my brother die.
*
That is both very sad and infuriating all in one!! I am so sorry for your brother. Government and health insurance greedy bastards should all be forced to endure the same things they inflict on everyone else.
Your brother should pack up and make a run for the border. Apply for citizenship in Canada. I will sponsor him.
I am serious. I can and will do any and everything possible if you would like my assistance. No joking at all. It pisses me off to no end, what government does to it's people while proclaiming how great they are.
We have our differences from time to time...but that's a real stand up thing!
Sorry to hear about your brother trittydi...that's awful. I don't know quite what to say...other than the obvious...our country is run by a bunch of heartless SOB's who value the almighty dollar over human life.
But I have done nothing but offer help. It is the human thing to do and I would do it for anyone. I might be considered an idiot from time to time, but it's usually only because my heart speaks before my brain thinks ;-)
I have that same problem from time to time.
To show that I am not just pulling your chain, I will give my permission to Crooks and Liars to give you my email address. I really do want to help.
Is Sarah pregnant again? She looks exactly like she did the day her water broke in Texas.
I heard she and Todd have split up because of Sarah's boyfriend and Todd's girlfriend.
You have to decide if you can keep your parent on life support. In the state my father died, I couldn't remove the plug - it was against the law. I wonder what would have happened and when, if I had told them they weren't getting paid because we didn't have the money? Would they have broken the law and removed the plug?
I'm imagining - damn right they would have... and then dummied up the records.
I really, truly wish people (?) like Palin would STFU. Seriously - they are such incredibly stupid greedy bastards.
None of this will matter if there is not at least a public option. If we do not have a public option you might as well bleed to death from a sliced finger because you will not be able to afford to get it fixed. And Obama and Durbin are talking a bill without a public option. This is insane. Obama promised single payer and backed down. We let him talk us into a public option and now they are floating a no public option possibility. This is fucked up. Are yoiu going to let them do this to you???
it's a done deal. Reform is only a word, much like socialist and liberal. Words mean nothing without actions and it appears neither Obama or the Dems have even an desire at all to bring any reform to healthcare, except to shout the word reform 24/7 in the media. This isn't reform, this is a g-damn cruel joke!
Sarah Palin's never ending continuously extending family is covered and that's all that matters.
George Bush hoped on a plane from TX to DC in order to sign a bill to keep Terry Schiavo's lifeless body from dying after many years as a vegitative husk and after her brain had atrophied to half it's normal size.
A few years before, as the Texas governor, he had no problem in signing a bill allowing hospitals to terminate the care of individuals deemed terminally ill or vegitative and without independent sources of money to maintain them, in order to save money for hospitals and insurance companies.
Hypocrisy, anyone?
And the doctor who diagnosed her as responsive and aware wanted a Nobel Prize.
sarah palin the former gov. of alaska wants privacy for her children but she often puts them in the limelight. i don't get it. ok she's a hypocrite.
http://texasadvancedirectivesblog.blogspot.co...
that you can't fix stupid, and you can't ensoul a husk.
I am ashamed of us as a nation. The world is laughing at us. We have malibu barbie, rushbo, bill o, beck, the list goes on and on... how pathetic. And rich people live, while poor people die. Civil(ized)!
it seems that we are ruled by a class of xtians that honestly believe that if you are poor and downtrodden it's god's freaking will. They aren't going to go against that. Now what I honestly wonder is how many of them really do believe that and how many are too lazy, selfish, and self-conscious to do the right thing?
Yup pretty much.
Glad you have the awareness of that though, most people I encounter from there are still trying to tell me (and the others in the real world) that the US is the most perfect altruistic place in the world. Along with how we all want to be like them, all the good (myth) things that the US does for the world, the saviours of freedom in the world, etc.
Lets just hope the other 300 million wake up and read a book eh.
Oh the irony. Check this out. Talk about going against your own interests.
GLADNEY THE UNINSURED ACTIVIST
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/ind...
"Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance"
I don't know how things are ever gonna move forward in America when the media(Gawd I get tired of blaming the damned media)refuses to call people like Palin on the deeply underhanded and fucking sleazy tenor of their attacks.I mean what in the name of CHRIST is going on down there people?What does Limbaugh or Beck or Palin have to finally say before the media says "enough"?This isn't "Democracy" or "healthy debate" or "Freedom of speech" anymore this is a sustained and many faceted effort,by media forces,the entire Republican Party and Corporate Big Wigs to bring this government DOWN.Democracy has got nothin' to do with it.
You talk as if the media actually has any real say over what they do, or produce.
You can blame the media, or the hoards of millions that consume it and want their world around them to be an extension of Jerry Springer, as long as they get their hummers & burgers .......... who cares right .......
As soon as the people care, don't consume the media (et al) then it might change.
It's much the same as saying the addict will get better when the dealer stops giving them heroin and lying to them ........... of course they never will.
Best thing to do is read a book or two.
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literac...
thanks for the tip Jerry.
If the rethugnicans want to talk about "death panels", why don't they talk about the one in Texas that killed Sun Hudson, a bunch of lawyers who overrode the wishes of the mother and her son's doctor? Why didn't that get their attention?
Was it because:
(a) Sun Hudson was black, which meant he wasn't covered by the "right to life" law signed by Governor George Bu**sh**.
(b) It was a rethugnican-run state.
(c) The rethugnicans were too busy trying to get into bed with Terry Schiavo.
The last is probably a literal statement, not just figurative, considering some of the sex scandal the rethugnicans have been up to. "She's not dead, she can still have babies!" was probably on the mind of at least one of the rethugnicans in Florida.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Hudson_case
the rethuglyKKKans have NO shame!
Man goes to the doctor.
Doctor gives him six months to live.
Couldn't pay the bill.
Doctor gives him another six months.
fat chance
A SUPPLIER CONTROLLED MARKET is NOT a FREE MARKET.
options/ competition creates a free market.
treatment for cancer. It is very expensive. Fortunately, we have Medicare and a good coinsurance from my husband's 40 years as a union employee. Even with that some treatment was denied by the co-insurer. Hopefully, all will turn out ok anyway. I asked someone in the billing department of the oncology department what happens when people without insurance have this disease. She said they are in bad shape, since there is a limited amount of charity care at most hospitals. So,friends, the death panel is in full swing. It's just got a different name....the uninsured.
I try to be civil, but this issue hits so close to home that I'm finding it very, very difficult.
How about this for a "death panel," Sarah:
A friend of mine, married, employed (but no beautiful employer insurance), and mother of a teenaged daughter, was suffering from a severe, debilitating disorder that had her bedridden. She is too poor to afford private insurance (though as a pre-existing condition, it probably wouldn't be covered anyway), and not quite poor enough to qualify for Medicare, so short of literally making her family poorer to qualify her only option was to wait until she was having difficulty breathing so could go to the ER where they can't turn her away.
$500,000+ of open-heart surgery later, they tossed her out of the hospital four days later because she couldn't afford to stay. It's obviously impossible for her to pay this bill, so I can only assume they will have to declare bankruptcy.
Of course, it wouldn't have cost $500,000 if she'd been able to go to the doctor and get a proper diagnosis and surgery a year or two earlier, but--hey--can't afford to pay for that, too bad!
Now, a follow-up surgery is going to be required if she's actually to, you know, go on living. Except she can't get that, because she can't pay for it. And it's not like you can use the "ER loophole" to schedule surgery.
There's your damn death panel.
Oh, and here's the irony: She's originally Japanese, a country that has universal healthcare. Her only real option for getting the surgery she needs to stay alive is going to be scrounging up the money for a plane ticket so she can go back to Japan where they don't have such a thing as a "pre-existing condition" or "death panel" because of universal health care, where the government will gladly pay for the procedure and it will cost about 80-90% less than the US to boot, because there the healthcare system isn't an insurance profiteering racket.
Even more ironically, I was in the same situation three years ago, and I'm born and raised a US citizen. Bedridden, unable to work, about to lose my insurance, slowly wasting away, and Blue Cross (now Anthem) refused to pay for expensive diagnostic tests or continued interim treatment to keep me alive. My options were A) Use my life savings to pay for the tests myself. Or B) Move to Japan where my wife is originally from where they would cover the tests and treatment.
Most people, of course, don't HAVE option B. Hell, many don't have A, either. All they're left with is option C: Die.
The healthcare system in this country is based on Death Panels, and you're fighting against the only way to get rid of them.
Fuck you, Sarah Palin.
notion of death squads is ludicrous, and everyone here knows it, we all should decide how we would like our lives to end. I've seen far too many people flogged in ICU and kept alive on ventilators and tube feedings to placate family members. These poor people spend day after day, some aware, some not, of what they are enduring. When you make your wishes known in writing you eliminate any guesswork.
..plain and simple.
IF I had the cash, I would smoke Palin's and all these people into the dark ages with facts.
Here's one fact: TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE DENIED HEALTH CARE NOW! THERE ARE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (INCLUDING DOWNSYNDROME CHILDREN) WHO DIE IN THIS COUNTRY FOR LACK OF MEDICAL CARE...NOW!
Palin wants to contiune the status quo. Now, who is "Death Panel" is it?
There's my freakin' commercial! Dems try to be civil. Stop it! They hit us in the Nuts..dammit. Kick them back in the nuts!
My statement above is 100% fact.
Well sure, thousands die, but think of that CEO who makes $4,000,000 a week. $102,000 an hour!
Isn't that more important than giving people needed healthcare?
Freakin'n GOP psycho's!
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