The Death Panels - Realities of Obamacare

you raise a lot of hard questions

Health Care Costs in the Last Week of Life: Associations with End of Life Conversations

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862687/

"U.S. health care expenditures exceeded $2 trillion in 2006 and are expected to rise rapidly over the next decade.1 A disproportionate share is spent at the end of life (EOL): 30% of Medicare expenditures are attributable to the 5% of beneficiaries who die each year;2 about one third of the expenditures in the last year of life is spent in the last month.3 Previous studies have found that most of these costs result from life-sustaining care (e.g. ventilator use and resuscitation), with acute care during the final 30 days of life accounting for 78% of costs incurred during the final year of life."

How Much Do We Spend on End-of-Life Care?

http://www.thirteen.org/bid/sb-howmuch.html

"Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, spends nearly 30 percent of its budget on beneficiaries in their final year of life. Slightly more than half of Medicare dollars are spent on patients who die within two months."

does spending MASSIVE amounts of money

that we do not have

make sense in these situations ???

would I want to bankrupt my family

by futile spending in my last few days ???

SOMEONE has to pay

is society willing to see serious increases in taxes to pay for

care that will fail ???

Those high costs are due to liability issues caused by to many greedy lawyers and outlandish awards by juries.

Who said the rich will live and all others will die is correct. Wait a year or two and good doctors will be concierge doctors. You will have to pay 2K a year just to see a doctor. But you will see a doctor in time.

Hospitals will go that way too. If you can't pay 5-10 K to be a concierge patient to get your operation you will wait a year or two and may die waiting.

It is the middle class that elected Obama that will be most effected by Obamacare. They elected him and they will have family die because of their vote. People get what they deserve.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/28/health/life-support-ethics/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

And so a part of Obama care not well publicized but in the plan nudges closer to reality as we near January 1, 2014 -- The Death Panel

Long ago I posted online of Terri Schiavo and talked to her relatives. It was a widely publicized case

Both these situations are distinct from brain death -- according to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, an individual is dead when he or she "has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem."

"It seems like there seems to continue to be confusion about what it means to die using neurologic criteria," said Cynda Hylton Rushton, professor of clinical ethics at Johns Hopkins University.

Rushton suggests, in fact, that this phrase "die using neurological criteria" be used instead of "brain death," to emphasize what it means.

http://www.catholicapologetics.info/morality/medicalethics/brain.htm

The real issue here behind the scenes is not the morals or correctness of cessation of life support. It is the harvesting of organs and extension of costly medical care expensive to individuals who show little promise of recovery and when the value of human life is less than the value of the cost to prolong it.

Now this becomes a reality as the implementation of the hammer of Obamacare nears New Year'ss.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_24803245/mercury-news-editorial-no-one-recovers-from-being

Having worked in the medical profession for 30 years, I have seen up close and personal, a brain dead person.  Under my care as a medclinician, in ICU, was a young man who had truly gone into a body that was disfigured and a wrenching situation for the relatives who came everyday to talk to and be with this person. Mercifully, at that time, the person died after two months on life support.

However, the realities of the cost of human life versus termination of that life are the very hint of what is to come.

So the question for readers and posters is --  hidden in this law are there provisions that people with less than five years life expectancy--  be given medical treatment and where will the dividing line fall?

It was predicted that the baby boomers who be some of the first to age and find themselves in a world of declining health care with shades of Soylent Green.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/182951.php

It isn't the implementation of euthanasia that is the real issue. It is the continuing reduction of medical care for those determined not worth attempting to save and the panels that will make this determination.  For some, who may not this, it becomes up closer and personal.

The reality --

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/10/the-truth-behind-obamacares-death-panels

Do we near the final line of the much quoted  the A.A.  line"and the wisdom to know the difference"? Perhaps. we have.

Will the youth of America rally support the old who to many seem to have lost their ability to contribute and be part of life, versus their right to die in peace and dignity ?  This is the topic for debate. Have we reached points of no return in American health care as we near New Year's?

Begging the question?

What of those hit by Flu during a possible Pandemic and the triage under a health care system with extreme triaging and stalling of medical treatment? It's not like I have not been here before.  I have.

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/09/09/the-depressing-math-of-swine-f/

Four years ago as the Flu swept through the world.

Medclinician

death panels!! what a load of garbage.

I agree Cobber, this is rhetoric BS.  

Taxman,I believe everything that you say here. Because I have seen it done for years and it costs many millions or billions of dollars each year. I have even worked with Dr.s who were so good that they knew approximately when their patients were going to die. They Dr.s would schedule the patients high dollars procedures,in the order that they were going to die and they were usually correct and the procedures were unnecessary and just plain stealing, in my opinion,. This made me sick when I first saw it and then I started seeing it everywhere. I do not know how to teach Drs. ethical behavior and you stop what I consider to be criminal behavior in many cases. But just because the Drs. and the HOSPITALS need to be taught ethical behavior ,and yes the HOSPITALS are 100% for this kind of behavior because if the hospitals equipment and rooms are being used,the hospitals are making far more money than the Dr.s. are. But  with all of this,that does not mean that the Government is going to do a better job. When the government steps and starts making the decisions,there will be people dieing,that should not be dieing yet,because the government agents will make sure that the patient dies when they are suppose to. Johnray1

I am sorry I do not want someone else to determine if I get health care no matter how old I am. What happens when a child has leukemia for a 4th time and the Death Panel determine it is not worth chemo for them again!

This is a death panel and the USA is now a Communistic country! It is all ok until it is your family member this Death Panel decides will die due to lack of care!

If you want to get rid of Obamacare and Death Panels you had better vote for any and all Republicans in the next two elections.

Taxman speaketh the truth. 

Several observations here -- clearly if a person is within a month of death, it is not wise to perform heroic non-productive measures to save a life that is a huge expenditure of funds better used to care for thousands of other patients. However, if a person may have five years, and with our ever changing healthcare system, live  for another 20, if health care is provided, a Death Panel could refuse to approve the health care and effectively murder them.

The philosophy that 75 years old is enough for a social security system that may be moved to 70 would only  give retirees 5 years more to live.

Some of us are in that group; I, being one of them. How many out there are as 65 or older as well?   We are still mentally clear and all too aware of a changing attitude in the U.S. concerning the the poor, elderly, and homeless. 

It is projected that by 2020, 50 million Americans will  be over 65.  That would be one in six people in the United States.  Do we set up a health care that system that would systematically eliminate them? Do they have a voice? Do they need a voice? Are they being represented by those they put in office. Do they have a choice. Yes, they do. In 2014, if they live that long, remove those responsible for this horrific health care plan.  They can stop electing a congress who is deaf to those who put them in office with  the poorest health care plan in history and passing bills to eliminate their pensions and quality health care. Health care may be affordable, but it can certainly be worthless. A plan that cannot be implemented by the current insurance and existing medical system is a myth is not a plan.

http://www.agingstats.gov/Main_Site/Data/2012_Documents/Population.aspx

The chilly ring to the phrase "feeders" as applied to the disabled and elderly seems to be addressed in the current legislation. One can argue that many old people have  made huge contributions in every field and some of the best literature and not a few inventions were created by those with lifetimes of experience and a perspective not known to those who are young or even middle aged.

Throughout thousands of years, civilization has respected and revered its elderly as the keepers of wisdom as opposed to simply intellect.  The advisers of kings were not classically those under 30.

We see what can happen as the young assume positions as the leaders of nations. North Korea is a glaring example of a 30 year old inebriated person with either current or future control to launch an attack with a nuclear bomb on South Korea and start a world war. One who is currently poised to do so and unstable enough to launch when even operating a car, is very  dangerous.

A nation which abandons those who have served in the military and  fought to protect it, have given their lives in some instances or have paid great amounts of money for security in their golden years, is not the nation which has for centuries protected its citizens and their rights. Even current soldiers, will find themselves as they grow old or end their military carriers, short changed.  The price of Liberty is considered secondary to political agendas and the creation of administrative power which violates the basic Constitutional rights and foundations of the United States can  only lead to the loss of what we hold so dear -- Freedom.

Medclinician

jacksdad wrote: When the insurance companies had a complete stranglehold on healthcare pre-ACA, did we not see people sent home to die when their plan didn't cover the treatment or medications they needed, children included? And weren't they also legally allowed to deny coverage, increase premiums or drop people altogether if they had the audacity to get sick enough to impact their profit margin? We've had death panels for years but they used to be called insurance company accountants back in the day, and I'm not sure why anyone would get teary eyed and sentimental about the way they were allowed to protect the interests of shareholders over patients. The US healthcare system had higher administrative costs compared to other countries because it had one thing many of them didn't have - buildings full of people who's only purpose in life was to find reasons to limit or deny care in order to keep heathcare profitable.

A voice of Sanity in a Sea Of BS

Exactly right jacksdad, I experienced this with a good friend who got cut off at the knees while in the hospital because of a box they checked at one doctor but missed at another (Completely unrelated) but enough to give the Corp the right to Deny. By the time he appealed and got it overturned (Months) it was to late.

Now That's a Death Panel

The rest of whats getting posted in here out of Political Intolerance or just outright ignorance is SHAMEFUL.

The misinformation is so thick on the ground that you can't help stepping in it - it's little wonder that people are so fearful of the ACA. Check this one out,

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/05/cornelius-kelly-fox-obamacare-baby/

The "personal responsibility" insurance mandate was the conservative portion of the plan. To in effect force poor and middle class people to buy insurance instead of burdening the system with unrecoverable medical expenses.