A Look At Sarah Palin

[Waddlie]

I never realised private healthcare companies could magic organs out of thin air. That is indeed amazing, it's no wonder you yanks don't care for the NHS with it's lack of organ-creating technologies...

Waddlie wrote

I never realised private healthcare companies could magic organs out of thin air. That is indeed amazing, it's no wonder you yanks don't care for the NHS with it's lack of organ-creating technologies...

Who said they could, Waddles? We are looking at arithmetic problems not organ availability problems.

[Kate]

[nkb]

Lily wrote

We call a spade a spade, baby.

You call a spade a sharp, heavy, murder weapon that a mass murderer might use, baby. you do anything but call it a spade, if it suits your purpose.

Lily wrote

If there are 4 people needing transplants and only 3 organs available, a decision will have to be made on some basis. Nobody has to know squat about organ transplants. One only needs to be able to add and subtract.

And these decisions are being made right now. There will always be less organs than there are people in need of them, and the decision is made by medically competent people.
Once again, you are showing complete ignorance on the process of organ transplant.

Lily wrote

Try this. If there are only 3 beds available and 5 people who are equally in need of one, on what basis will patients be selected?

Try this, how would you decide? What do you propose as the decision process in this completely made up scenario?

Lily wrote

You need to smarten up real fast. I shouldn't have to tell you who Bammy's advisors are. They are in the news every day-- of course, you have to actually read those who know and will tell you the truth. Not the NYT, MSNBC et al.

I'm asking you for specific names, for fuck's sake. I am not going to go out and read up on every person who has ever advised the president on medical matters.
So, who did you have in mind?

[Kamikaze189]

It's a good thing that private insurers don't ration. No, they don't ration at all.

Oh, wait.

No, they don't ration. The cover what they say they will cover in the plan that you buy. They don't cover everything. If you need other kinds of coverage, you buy it. So what is the problem?

[nkb]

Of course they ration. Would you like anecdotal evidence (you are so fond of it)?

If the new health care bill results in insurance that doesn't cover something you want, you can buy it. What's the problem?

They do not ration. Look the word up in a dictionary. Honestly, how hard is that?

Single payer, which is what this plan intends to bring about, will put private insurance companies out of business. So just exactly where will I buy insurance for all the things the government plan won't allow me to have?

I know you think you know it all but you don't. For crying out loud ,when even Obama News Network gets it, why don't you get it?

[nkb]

Lily wrote

They do not ration. Look the word up in a dictionary. Honestly, how hard is that?

The insurance companies have the final say on whether a procedure or drug will be covered. When they decide that they don't want to pay for it, they deny the coverage.
You don't think that the policies spell out every single possible medical procedure or drug that is or isn't covered, do you?

Have you had surgery recently? I have. My wife has. Every time, we had to submit paperwork to the insurance company to get permission for it. And that includes two childbirths, for fuck's sake. In our cases, they were all routine, so there were no issues, but don't tell me the insurance companies don't deny (aka ration) medical care.

Lily wrote

Single payer, which is what this plan intends to bring about...

If you read only your conservative sources, it becomes clear why you would believe that. The same way they are trying to institute death panels. What a caricature you are!

Lily wrote

...will put private insurance companies out of business. So just exactly where will I buy insurance for all the things the government plan won't allow me to have?

I'm not going to debunk this again. You have been shown enough times that your assertion is pulled straight out of your ass (or Palin's).

Lily wrote

I know you think you know it all but you don't. For crying out loud ,when even Obama News Network gets it, why don't you get it?

When did I ever claim to know it all (as opposed to you, Miss Condescending KNow-It-All)?

You are pig-ignorant on anything that doesn't have to do with the inner workings of your favorite mythology. I know more than you, but the bar wasn't set very high.

You are a mindless drone. You know nothing, absolutely nothing because you don't have the brains to do any digging on your own. You believe exactly what big media tells you and what Obammy tells you and that is that.

Question authority, slave!

[Choobus]

It's lucky lily told me that all's y'all were getting pwned by the sementologist because otherwise I would never have known.

[nkb]

Lily wrote

You are a mindless drone. You know nothing, absolutely nothing because you don't have the brains to do any digging on your own. You believe exactly what big media tells you and what Obammy tells you and that is that.

Question authority, slave!

Says the woman who mindlessly repeats what the conservative talking heads say.

Show at least a smidgen of critical thinking, will ya?

[Victus]

Waddlie wrote

I never realised private healthcare companies could magic organs out of thin air. That is indeed amazing, it's no wonder you yanks don't care for the NHS with it's lack of organ-creating technologies...

It's true. This is why no one die on transplant waitlists, or is denied because of their age or current health behaviours.

Lily wrote

They do not ration. Look the word up in a dictionary. Honestly, how hard is that?

Oh, Ok.

Sharma, R., Stano, M., Gehring, R. (2008). Short-term fluctuations in hospital demand: implications for admission, discharge, and discriminatory behavior. RAND Journal of Economics, 39, 586-606.

Billings, J., Anderson, G., and Newman, L. (1996). Recent findings on preventable hospitalizations. Health Affairs, 15, 23–49.

Tamblyn, R., et al. (2001). Adverse events associated with prescription drug cost-sharing among poor and elderly persons. Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, 421.

Lily wrote

Single payer, which is what this plan intends to bring about, will put private insurance companies out of business.

This has been covered before. Nothing in the immediate bill (which has merely passed committee and is not finalized) creates a single-payer system.

http://factcheck.org/2009/06/health-...mercial-style/

Lily wrote

So just exactly where will I buy insurance for all the things the government plan won't allow me to have?

The insurance company. My understanding is that government will set minimal standards for what is included in insurance packages, not maximum levels of coverage.

Lily wrote

I know you think you know it all but you don't. For crying out loud ,when even Obama News Network gets it, why don't you get it?

Fascinating. I've never seen someone attempt to expose the "fine print" without actually citing the fine print. Maybe you can do it for us, since you're so knowledgable. Please cite the particular pages where each of the mentioned freedoms is expressely recinded.

[ILOVEJESUS]

What is a death panel when its at home? You yanks seem certain that ou NHS has them , I havent ever heard of them. Is it just republican scrare mongering?

ILOVEJESUS wrote

What is a death panel when its at home? You yanks seem certain that ou NHS has them , I havent ever heard of them. Is it just republican scrare mongering?

Hardly. Universal health care must mean rationing. Costs cannot otherwise be controlled. We have neither the doctors, nor the hospitals, nor the pharmaceuticals, nor the wealth to provide unlimited services to everyone. Ergo, they must be limited. How will that happen rationally? Well, one obvious way is to import the NHS's model for deciding those things-- Are you not aware that you all use a "Quality-Adjusted Life Year" formula to make such decisions. Are you likely to die in the next year or two? Well, it doesn't make sense to ok you for a new knee. It is sad that you will be in pain for those remaining years but knee replacement is expensive and it just doesn't make sense to spend the money on you.

You get points taken off for being in a wheelchair and a whole bunch of other measures that Americans won't stand for (except die-hard socialists and the morally illiterate). And that is why we have shortened it to death panel. Obviously if a board that doesn't know you is going to measure out your health care according to a cost benefit analysis based on how long you are going to live, how much value you have to society and other utilitarian measures, they are, de facto, sentencing the elderly, the very young, etc. to death. It isn't that they are going to pull the plug on granny-- Obama graciously assured his subjects he wouldn't-- it is that granny is going to have a hard time getting plugged in, in the first place, as the remarkable and always funny Mark Steyn puts it. (Thank you for him, Britain. Keep your health care and send us more Steyns!)