Pat Buchanan: Sarah and the death panels

I know he's a racist, but Pat Buchanan is also one of the smartest thinkers on the Conservative side. Here he makes an interesting argument that with an ageing population it will not be financially feasible to provide every treatment to every patient every time. There will have to be choices - somewhere along the line - about how resources can best be used. This is a debate that also exists in countries with universal healthcare - including countries like England with single payer. What's interesting to me is that Buchanan is not arguing that rationing can be avoided, or that the market would solve everything if the government would only leave things alone (like most of the right-wing talking heads). Pat seems to be admitting that rationing is inevitable under any system that covers everyone (probably he thinks it's not even worth trying to cover everyone). A thought-provoking piece. Not sure how much we can trust the statistics but the trends he is talking about are widely recognised.

Sarah and the death panels

Buchanan: How do you cut health care costs without rationing care?

COMMENTARY By Patrick Buchanan, Political analyst
MSNBC - Aug. 21, 2009

(...)

If Congress enacts universal health care coverage, we are undeniably headed for a medical system of rationed care that must inevitably deny care to some terminally ill and elderly, which will shorten their lives, perhaps by years.

Consider: Democrats call Medicare the model of government-run universal health care. But Medicare is a system whereby 140 million working Americans pay 2.9 percent of all wages and salaries into a fund to pay for health care for 42 million mostly older Americans. And Medicare is already going bust.

If Obamacare is passed, the cost of health care for today's 47 million uninsured will also land on those 140 million. And if Obama puts 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens on a "path to citizenship," as he promises, they, too, will have their health care provided by taxpayers.

Here is the crusher. The Census Bureau projects that, by 2050, the U.S. population will explode to 435 million. (...) 21 percent of the U.S. population in 2050, some 91 million Americans, will be over 65, and 7.6 percent, or 33 million Americans, will be over 80 — and consuming health care in ever-increasing measures.

Now if a primary purpose of Obamacare is to "bend the curve" of soaring health care costs, and half of those costs are incurred in the last six months of life, and the number of seniors will grow by scores of millions, how do you cut costs without rationing care? And how do you ration care without denying millions of elderly and aged the prescriptions, procedures and operations they need to stay alive? (...)

Between 2012 and 2030, 74 million baby boomers will retire, cease to be the major contributors to Medicare and become the major drain on Medicare. How long will an overtaxed labor force in a de-Christianized America be willing to pay the bill to keep all those aging boomers alive?

Rationed care is coming, and the death panels will not be far behind.

Read the full article here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32506991

Or did he just throw that catchword in there for effect?

Such as those made by transplant teams in hospitals all the time. Only those candidates who are most likely to benefit are given scarce organs.

But I disagree that we would ever need or want 'death panels'. In fact the whole purpose of planning ahead, as supported in the health care plan, is to avoid having strangers impose these decisions.

I think Buchanan is trying to find a way to make his honey, Sarah Palin, look a bit better.

What an empty-headed, unrealistic argument to make. Especially coming from what you call "one of the smartest thinkers on the Conservative side".

Today's Death Panels are comprised of people working for Aetna and United HealthCare. They increase their profits by denying claims and taking away people's coverage. They call you in for a meeting to tell you that your hospitalized Grandma's insurance runs out in 30 days and you will have to decide what to do with her after that.

Why these insurance corporation Death Panels are perfectly OK to Pat and the Townhall Criers is beyond me, unless they are being paid directly by the insurance corporations, or are spectacularly ignorant of the current situation.

Conservatives ignorant? I can't imagine.

:eyes:

That would be my guess. But Pat? Not so ignorant, like so many RW assholes, he has an agenda.

trying to drag his anti-abortion screed, and hostility to secularism, into everything, and whip up fears about health care.

What about the 'death panels' in the 36 countries that are ahead of the USA in life expectancy - and all have some form of universal health care?

Cost-cutting RW governments can be a genuine problem (e.g. Thatcher), but not to the extent of the American insurance companies.

By the way, contrary to this idea of some sort of dictatorship by 'socialized medicine;: virtually all countries with universal public health care DO have a 'private option': people can go private to accelerate treatment for a non-urgent condition, to ensure that they have the doctor of their choice at the right time, to ensure that they have a room of their own in hospital, etc. But the majority do not 'go private' - and are assured of receiving the treatment they need, without losing their home or going bankrupt.


'if Obama puts 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens on a "path to citizenship," as he promises, they, too, will have their health care provided by taxpayers.'

And will presumably pay taxes too! And help to provide the health care, as many immigrants do here.

Buchanan misses a couple of obvious points. First, as somebody already pointed out the current system rations care by denying coverage. Second, one possible benefits of covering everybody in a system that isn't designed to deny them coverage is you can start emphasizing covered preventive care message so that people will be less likely to get sick (or at least we hope it would work that way). Another point is if all people are covered some potentially major illnesses will be caught early and possibly treated for less than if they had gone untreated until the became a full blown problem. With people not using emergency rooms as their primary care that should bring down costs as well. When he talks about taxpayers footing the bill they do now its just that the money goes to insurance companies that the people have no influence over at least with a pubic option you could pressure your representatives to change the system if it isn't working right (good luck trying to make the insurance companies change without the government being involved).

:crazy:

with the excepted figure of a doubling of insurance rates in 11 years, in 2053 health insurance will cost 16 times what it cost now. Todays $12,000 policy will cost $192,000 a year. This is if we keep the current system. So, health care will be rationed, by cost, to only the top CEOs in America.

46-47 million people are uninsured. That's the Republican Death Panel. No coverage-die. These people don't have a choice or get to make their own decision.

BTW,as a Social Worker, I talk with people all the time about Advanced Care Planning and what their end of life wishes will be. A lot of people want to make their own decisions and have living wills. Even those who choose not to have living wills don't want to be on life supports and rot away. Life supports provide an opportunity for decisions to be made re: life and death and quality of life. A lot of people who are in accidents survive due to life supports. People who are brain dead do not benefit from longterm life support, as with Terri Shavio whose brain turned out to be half the size of a normal brain on autopsy.

In spite of taking the provision for Dr's to be paid out of the health care bill, people will still get education re: Advanced Care Planning from medical personnel, Dr's, nurses, social workers etc. It's part of the Medicare Conditions of Coverage.

Charles Grassley voted for this provision in the Medicare D legislature. (I read this on the internet.) As far as I know it's still there. So he's a real pandering piece of s**t.

We as taxpayers pay a lot more money for uninsured ER visits than we will to cover people on insurance. A diabetic who gets a small ulcer doesn't go to the Dr. because he doesn't have insurance of the money to pay for the visit. He ends up in the ER with gangrene and needs a hospital admission to amputate his leg. He will cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax money depending on complications. The Dr. visit would have been 60-80 dollars and cost of meds. The system we have now is inefficient with time, money and lives. Insurance companies ration health care now depending on the profit margin. The government couldn't be worse.

There are people who say "I don't want my tax dollars to go to pay for someone else's health care." Well I don't want my tax dollars to pay for a multitude of things, War being one of them. We don't get to chose. That is the Social Contract we have.

One last thing, We the people, need to pay more attention to the ethical part of religion and less attention to the me, me part of religion, what ever your religion is. This would cure a lot of ills and save money on wars.

Are we going to be seeing World Nut Daily ravings here too?

to steer the discussion in ways that are favorable to RW beliefs. But they can't hide. Their position on the issues betrays their presence.

It is those wonderful so-called Christians that could give a shit if people have health care. Pat Buchanan is a fascist. Reading the article only reinforces this.

And remember when the country wasn't de-Christianized and it engaged in genocide against native Americans. Remember the Christian Nation that upheld slavery, and, after slavery, segregation, lynching and all sorts of violence against any and every kind of minority.

so we can see how many Unrecommends a thread gets.

Buchanan is an idiot, and his arguments are idiotic.

If he's a "christian," he's one in the mold of those Jeff Sharlet describes in "The Family": interested only in power, not compassion.

STFU, Buchanan. If not now, then yesterday.


TG

If by interesting you mean a vile, disgusting argument from a sick fuck.

:eyes:

He's 71. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite his face!

Pat seems to believe that as America gets "de-Christianized", its labor force will become less inclined to pay for Medicare for all seniors.

One of the big holes in that argument is that the townhall crazies who are yelling loudest against the idea of universal healthcare are the same nuts who claim to have a hotline to The Lord.

Just for example - I heard that some anti-Obamacare protestors were singing their own version of the old John Lennon song: "All We Are Saying -- Is Pay Your Own Bills".

If some of these hardcore individualists claiming to be Christians knew what Jesus is reported (in the Bible) to have said, they would denounce him as a socialist!