Commentary By Ron Beasley
Much is being made of Dr Ezekial Emanuel's "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," published on January 31, 2009. Some seem to think this is the source of Sarah Palin's Death Panels rant:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
And of course the always entertaining Gingrich comes to her defense.
Well guess what Sarah, your parents would already be the victims of a "death panel" if it were not for Medicare and your Down Syndrome baby will be as soon as your group health insurance runs out. As I pointed out here the private insurance companies already have "Death Panels". And here is an example of their work. It is 35 pages of reasons to deny coverage and on page 19 we have this:
Click on it for a larger image. Down Syndrome is an automatic denial of coverage. Looks like a "Death Panel" to me.
You know, Ron, it is amazing to me what misconceptions Americans have of their private health insurance versus a government direct-pay program (which is what single-payer/public plan proponents should be calling it, "direct-pay"). I guess all those ads for Viagra are really paying off!
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I had to laugh when O'Reilly and his ilk got all outraged that Viagra was, not only part of the new Medicare Prescription Drug bill, but being served to prison inmates! Can you imagine? Oh, the perversity! Gawd, they're stupid beyond belief. Unable to see the big picture, they wind up being the bane of the very corporate interests they so often kowtow for -- blindly or not.
could you please provide a tag for identification of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, or similar wingnut stories so that we are warned about wingnuttery ahead?
ReplyDeleteI suggest Hoot-Smalley.
America's Dumbest Quitter� is not qualified to be taken seriously by any thinking person and this deather nonsense proves it.
I agree boilerman. How about high wingnuttery
ReplyDeleteSarah Plain is right on the money..
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear, any insurance company should deny coverage for Down Syndrome because all medical bills incurred are already covered 100% under Medicaid/Medicare. My sister-in-law is Down Syndrome and over the past 2 years has had multiple targetted and full body MRIs, a back operation (spinal fusion), a second operation to clean out a MRSA infection at the original back operation incision site, 2 months of high level antibiotics to get rid of the MRSA, a month in hospital rehabilitation, a year of nursing home rehab after that, outside rehab for another year (which continues), plus another operation for removal of gall bladder. Medicaid has covered all of this plus all medications while the Feds continue to pay out a $1000/month as survivor benefit on her mother's social security.
ReplyDeleteObviously, government is the only entity that coveres Down Syndrome kids and adults. Just sayin'.
Of course we all know insurance companies reserve the right to deny coverage of pre-existing conditions when they sell insurance coverage. The concept about which Ms Palin expresses concern is the denial of treatment under a single-payor, government-run plan to ration costs and resources of that plan.
ReplyDelete"Keep the government out of my Medicare!"
ReplyDeleteClassic.
Harvey,
You say this -- as do all the talking point opponents -- as though this does not happen now.
It happens now, and in the most egregious of ways. People have died, are dying and will continue to die because of a bureaucratized and fully formalized system of health care denial. They have charts and tables for service denial.
We can think of the health insurance industry as an elaborate, reverse Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) on the American public, who are at once convinced of the "private" insurance industry's necessity, even as various select members are routed into endless paperwork streams, constant delay and routine denial of service. And just how is the government going to make any worse the 25% administrative overhead routinely charged by the insurance industry?
Serena,
I find this an interesting statement:
any insurance company should deny coverage for Down Syndrome because all medical bills incurred are already covered 100% under Medicaid/Medicare
Since there is nothing inherently un-insurable about a Down Syndrome child, you are basically conceding that private insurance is inadequate, under-performing, and cannot or will not present adequate health care solutions in the market place; that it must have a government-backed plan along side that will take care of those the insurance companies will not.
So, tell me, exactly, why we need insurance companies?
very good read, looking forward to the responses.
ReplyDelete