…that Cheney was right:
There is a principled human-rights position on all this. You can say: “No one wants to see bad things happen to people, but I honestly believe abusive tactics are so corrosive of our society’s principles that it would be better for 10,000 Americans to be killed in a terrorist attack than for us to prevent the attack by subjecting a morally culpable terrorist to non-lethal forms of coercion that cause no lasting physical or mental harm.”
That would be the honest argument, but it is not going to persuade many people. Thus the continued pretense, against all evidence and logic, that the tactics don’t work. Fewer and fewer people are fooled.
No, this administration and its enablers (including some in my comments section) is having trouble continuing to fool us on many fronts.
[Update a few minutes later]
Thoughts on “the Narrative,” and the lies of both commission and omission of the leftist media.
[Update another few minutes later]
Fouad Ajami — Obama’s summer of discontent:
A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the “loudest voices” are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.
It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-confidence. Historically, this republic, unlike the Old World and the command economies of the Third World, had trusted the society rather than the state. In a perilous moment, that balance had shifted, and Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of that shift.
So our new president wanted a fundamental overhaul of the health-care system—17% of our GDP—without a serious debate, and without “loud voices.” It is akin to government by emergency decrees. How dare those townhallers (the voters) heckle Arlen Specter! Americans eager to rein in this runaway populism were now guilty of lèse-majesté by talking back to the political class.
We were led to this summer of discontent by the very nature of the coalition that brought Mr. Obama, and the political class around him, to power, and by the circumstances of his victory. The man was elected amid economic distress. Faith in the country’s institutions, perhaps in the free-enterprise system itself, had given way. Mr. Obama had ridden that distress. His politics of charisma was reminiscent of the Third World. A leader steps forth, better yet someone with no discernible trail, someone hard to pin down to a specific political program, and the crowd could read into him what it wished, what it needed.
I think the spell is finally breaking. The polls would certainly indicate it. And without his charisma, he is truly an empty suit.
Read the whole thing.
Hah. Trust the state. Europeans do not trust the state. It is just that they trust corporations less. Google “maxwell pension scandal” for one example.
I’m not trying to fool anybody, unless by fool you mean “provide facts.” But here are some facts in the order of the posts above.
1) Actually, all the Cheney memos prove is that guys we tortured talked. What is not proven is did they talk because we tortured them, or in KSM’s case, because he thought we already knew what he told us?
2) They guy who got roughed up at a townhall meeting has been quite well publicized, lying media or no. I’m not sure what Rodney King (police brutality) has to do with a guy getting in scuffle outside a meeting.
3) I think the issue with the town hall people is not that they are debating, it’s that they are arguing based on lies. Standing up at a town hall saying you’re against “death panels” that don’t exist, or arguing about a “VA death book” that doesn’t do what you think it does is at best not productive. Shouting down somebody who’s trying to explain that you’ve been lied to is pretty stupid.
The Left is losing support for its schemes and has decided to take the nuclear option of ramming it through unilaterally. To assist, the Obama-Media administration has decided to change the subject.
Is it working?
Titus – The “Left” has a solid majority in the House and Senate. In a democracy, he who has the majority passes the laws. If they wanted to “jam through” something, it would already be done.
You may not like who won the election. Feel free to campaign for somebody else.
One thing the investigation on torture may bring to light is whether any information was gleaned that actually prevented a real, planned terror attack. The prior administration has never presented any hard evidence that any information obtained, under torture, prevented an actual attack that, for sure, would not have been prevented otherwise. The realist/pragmatists argument for torture, so bandied about, on this blog, rests on the supposition that at some point, in the recent past, torturing a suspect saved some real lives. I don’t think that supposition is true but I am anxious for the facts to be revealed.
The thing that makes me nuts is people insisting that this or that document proves Cheney right, when it does nothing of the sort. Remember that Cheney claimed that “enhanced interrogation” saved possibly hundreds of thousands of lives. Nothing in the public record comes close to supporting that statement.
As for Ajami, anyone who thinks that the legislative process for health care reform is “akin to government by emergency decrees” is clearly nuts. Congress has been working on this since before the 2008 elections, and the various health care bills have been through a number of different committees in the House and Senate, each with its own hearings and votes. Hopefully a bill will soon make it to the floors of the House and Senate (where it will need 60 votes for cloture), and if each body passes a bill it will then go to a conference committee to reconcile differences. Then the compromise bill will go back to the House and Senate, and only if it passes both houses again will it go to Obama. Our system is anything but government by emergency decree.
…while he can — and if he does so over the opposition ofa suddenly awakened majority of the electorate, the duration of “while he can” tends to be mercifully short.
1) Actually, all the Cheney memos prove is that guys we tortured talked. What is not proven is did they talk because we tortured them, or in KSM’s case, because he thought we already knew what he told us?
According to what Steve Hayes said on Special Report last night, there is a timeline in the recently released documents that indicate what KSM said before EITs were used on him and after, and there’s a clear difference — he started singing like a bird after the waterboarding. You can stand on a position of needing “absolute proof” that EITs were the reason, which is probably safely unobtainable, or you can use common sense.
Standing up at a town hall saying you’re against “death panels” that don’t exist, or arguing about a “VA death book” that doesn’t do what you think it does is at best not productive
The reason people are shouting is because they believe that calm, persuasive arguments will do nothing to stop the current regime from doing whatever it wants. Obama’s own formulation: expand coverage, increase quality, and decrease costs is a tautology that even the least sophisticated voter can call out, i.e., it’s a load of crap. If the debate is going to start with one huge lie, why in the world would anyone expect to have their criticisms dealt with honestly.
The “truth” of the death panels lies not in whether or not the dishonest framers wrote it plainly into the bill, but in what can be reasonably foreseen based on what was. Our wise elders see Obama claiming he can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but they’ve seen that trick before, and know what to expect when costs on the future medicare-for-all program begin to soar: Presto change-o! their medical benefits disappear.
duration of “while he can” tends to be mercifully short
This may be so. At any rate, using a majority in the legislature to pass laws persuant to what you campaigned to do is hardly “jamming it through” or “government by emergency decree.”
According to what Steve Hayes said on Special Report last night, there is a timeline in the recently released documents Having in fact read the documents, there is no such timeline, as least in the unredacted sections.
You might think that if such a timeline was there, Hayes would have put the words up on the screen, maybe with a fancy graphic or something.
The “Left” has a solid majority in the House and Senate.
No, the Democrats do, but the Left has no such majority, despite being in control of both houses — it is this control they intend to leverage in the next session.
If they wanted to “jam through” something, it would already be done.
Nonsense. Congress is not in session right now, and it took them all summer to discover that socialized medicine is not popular. Why would they have opted for the desperate measure first in the spring when a possible popular plan would have yielded everything they’d hoped for?
Obama’s own formulation: expand coverage, increase quality, and decrease costs is a tautology that even the least sophisticated voter can call out, i.e., it’s a load of crap. If the debate is going to start with one huge lie, why in the world would anyone expect to have their criticisms dealt with honestly.
Exactly.
“it would be better for 10,000 Americans to be killed in a terrorist attack than for us to prevent the attack by subjecting a morally culpable terrorist to non-lethal forms of coercion that cause no lasting physical or mental harm.”
I think this is somewhat of a straw man because it assumes the choice is whether to torture “a morally culpable terrorist”. It assumes that you know for certain before you start the torture that the person is guilty, and that they have information that can prevent an attack, and that they will give that information if and only if you torture them.
I think the moral argument on the other side is more like “If we allow this we will inevitably torture innocent people who we thought were guilty, and even guilty people will be needlessly tortured if they have no information to give up, and just their guilt alone does not justify torture based on our values against cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Europeans do not trust the state. It is just that they trust corporations less.”
Hmmm… that’s interesting. In general I’ve always thought that reducing government’s power relative to the corporations is the right way to go because:
1) The corporations do not have the same power behind them to get us to do what they demand. They can’t throw us in jail and impose fines and enforce them. They cannot tax.
2) Corporations can and do lose out to competition. They can and do disappear or become less powerful. For example Microsoft used to be an ‘evil’ corporation to some (Google: “don’t be evil.”), but with linux and mac and google and mozilla their power has diminshed.
3) Generally, they cannot reduce our freedom.
However, that being said, it’s certainly possible for large corporations to behave in ways that are very contrary to the interests of many. They are run by people, as are governments, who can be mistaken and even malevolent. Big corporations are known to get in bed with governments to protect their markets and keep competitors down, just as Wal-Mart seems to be trying with it’s support of the health care reform fiasco. They also try to get at the tax trough in various ways by getting tax breaks and taxpayer money to do various things. Big corporations might make shortsighted decisions in their own self interest that harm many others, as some have by externalizing the cost of pollution by dumping all their waste in the river. Big corporations donate lots of money to politicians, hoping to get favorable treatment in the law–either to be left alone or to have laws written that give them an advantage. They are “greedy” in the sense that they may do morally reprehensible things in order to save or make money, e.g. by firing somebody a month before he gets his 30-year pension.
I’m thinking non-large corporations are better than large corporations.
I guess, by and large, I don’t want government to DO very much–I’d love to it out of a lot of things it’s in. I guess most of the things I want government to do vis a vis corporations is to create and enforce regulations which keep corporations from doing really bad things. Clearly there’s a lot of room for debate about what exactly that means, but micromanaging health care doesn’t fit in that purview as far as I’m concerned.
I think most of the problems with health care we have now were caused by the government, starting with the wage/price/tax policy decisions which tied our health care to our employers and the crazy mandates government has put in as requirements for health care.
Oh, and government also needs to rein in the lawyers too. While somebody should probably be able to sue somebody if there is gross negligence, doctors should be able to practice without having to pay so much for malpractice insurance. Lawyers are probably quite necessary for our society, but somehow they don’t seem to produce as much that is useful to society as do engineers, doctors, nurses, mechanics, farmers, teachers, manufacturing workers, food service workers, construction workers, etc. Lots of lawyers are smart. Maybe we could have an incentive plan to convert some of them to doctors to increase the supply of doctors thus decreasing medical prices.
Congress is not in session right now, and it took them all summer to discover that socialized medicine is not popular
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/20/new-poll-77-percent-suppo_n_264375.html
Really unpopular.
‘3) I think the issue with the town hall people is not that they are debating, it’s that they are arguing based on lies. Standing up at a town hall saying you’re against “death panels” that don’t exist, or arguing about a “VA death book” that doesn’t do what you think it does is at best not productive. Shouting down somebody who’s trying to explain that you’ve been lied to is pretty stupid.’
Chris Gerrib says the ‘town hall people’ are ‘arguing based on lies.’ He then goes on to cite ‘”death panels” that don’t exist’ as an example of such a lie. This seems disingenuous to me. Nobody rational thinks there’s anything specifically named ‘death panels’ in any proposed health care legislation. Politicians aren’t quite that stupid. Well, at least not all the time. There might be a few oddballs who think that’s the case, but I’d bet a large majority of the ‘town hall people’ know the words ‘death panels’ or even something similar do not appear in the legislation. However many people have the following line of reasoning not at all based on ‘lies:’ the government is setting itself up to decide which treatments are effective and/or cost effective; Pres. Obama makes comments suggesting his grandmother perhaps was not the ideal candidate for joint replacement surgery; therefore the government is going to have people, panels, groups, bureaucracies, etc. to make these types of decisions. Palin’s characterization of ‘death panels’ simply serves as a rhetorical device for summarizing the eventual government machinery for making many types of health related decisions, some of which will in fact involve life or death issues to some patients–including patients such as her down’s syndrome child, Obama’s grandmother who might like to have another joint replaced, and your and my Mom who maybe would like to be treated just to live a few months longer to see a grandbaby born or a great grandchild graduate. And please don’t tell me the government would ‘allow’ that–the person or group in the government that is allowing or disallowing that is, rhetorically speaking, the ‘death panel’ that supposedly doesn’t exist.
I’m starting to think the terms ‘lie,’ ‘liar,’ and ‘fact’ are pretty much null words in blogs and blog comments. Lots of people on both sides always shout ‘lies’ and ‘liar’ about each other so much we should just take it for granted that some percentage of people on each side think many of the people on the other side are liars. Don’t bother saying it now, it’s a waste of my time. Think of something more constructive to say. And I often see “fact” used in a far different way that what I understand the word to mean.
I definitely heard Michael Moore once, in trying to paint Bush as a liar, define a lie quite differently than I thought it was defined. Moore said that Bush had said that there was WMD in Iraq. There weren’t (Moore said), so that was a lie. In the context of the interview, as I remember it (I won’t claim perfection), it was clear the interviewer was trying to ascertain if it mattered if Bush knew that there were not WMD in Iraq, but had said there was. This was when Moore came up with the “he said there were, there weren’t, so he lied” formulation. Now we can certainly argue about whether Bush knew or not, and even whether their were WMD in Iraq when bush said it, and how certain Bush might have been that this was actually the case, but for something to be a lie I always thought you had to know what you were saying wasn’t true. That’s the main difference between being wrong and lying.
According to what Steve Hayes said on Special Report last night, there is a timeline in the recently released documents that indicate what KSM said before EITs were used on him and after, and there’s a clear difference — he started singing like a bird after the waterboarding.
The “timeline,” such as it is, is not nearly that clear-cut. KSM was waterboarded almost immediately after his capture; there’s no telling what he would have given us if we’d tried conventional techniques for a while.
Plus there is no evidence that KSM’s information was decisive in stopping any attacks or saving any lives, much less the “hundreds of thousands” of lives claimed by Cheney.
Obama’s own formulation: expand coverage, increase quality, and decrease costs is a tautology that even the least sophisticated voter can call out, i.e., it’s a load of crap.
There are numerous examples of health care systems with wider coverage, higher quality, and lower costs than the system used by American civilians age 0-65 (e.g. DOD, VA, Medicare, France, Switzerland, etc.).
The feasibility of such a system is only a “load of crap” to the incurably ignorant.
Palin’s characterization of ‘death panels’ simply serves as a rhetorical device for summarizing the eventual government machinery for making many types of health related decisions
No, it was a reference to reimbursing doctors for talking to patients about living wills and advance directives, which are about giving the patient (and not the doctor, hospital, or government) control over her end of life care. In this context “death panels” is a “white is black”, “war is peace” sort of lie: it states the exact opposite of the truth.
As for “machinery for making many types of health related decisions”, every health insurance system has such machinery — private insurers do not cover everything. Quite the contrary — they refuse to insure individuals with pre-existing conditions, and drop sick patients as customers. They discriminated against 12 million Americans seeking insurance in the last three years. Private insurers have real death panels, and the health insurance bills being demonized by the likes of Palin are our only decent shot at curtailing their deadly power. Again, the “death panel” argument is used to defend giving someone besides the patient control over her care.
Note: in her original “death panel” note Palin referred to grandparents. Grandparents over the age of 65 already get government health insurance, complete with rules on what is and isn’t covered, presumably administered by “panels”. Does Palin not know this? Does she propose eliminating Medicare?
Now we can certainly argue about whether Bush knew or not, and even whether their were WMD in Iraq when bush said it, and how certain Bush might have been that this was actually the case, but for something to be a lie I always thought you had to know what you were saying wasn’t true. That’s the main difference between being wrong and lying.
If I say that there are WMDs in my bedroom, and it turns out there aren’t, how could you ever prove that I was lying? I haven’t looked under my bed recently, so I don’t know for a certainty that there isn’t sarin gas hidden there.
Your formulation makes lack of curiosity a defense for lying. Bush did not know that Iraq did not have WMDs, but if he’d bothered to look hard at the evidence he would have known that it was quite possible they didn’t. Instead he stated flat out that they did, and Cheney added that he had “no doubt” about it. Maybe they didn’t “lie”, but they certainly should have had more doubt than that.
Jeff Mauldin – The corporations do not have the same power behind them to get us to do what they demand. If you look at, say the history of the labor movement in the 19th century, you might re-evaluate that statement. Corporations used private police forces to beat and kill strikers, for example.
When Sarah Palin doubles down on ‘death panels’ by deliberately mis-reading a specific portion of the bill, she’s either stupid or lying. It’s just not in the bill, nor is it done in any government-run plan, to include Medicare or the VA.
I have to disagree with Jim – Bush did not know that there were no WMDs in Iraq. He believed there were (as did I) and so did not lie when he made his WMD claims.
Bush was wrong about WMDs, and as a leader, had a higher responsiblity to get it right. But being wrong is not a lie.
RE: “death panels”:
“We call this new invention ‘the Kinetic Soil Irruptor.’ It’s part of the government’s new regulatory oversite of the backyard gardening industry. No longer will old ladies have to get on their knees to dig holes with an old teaspoon to plant their petunias! Everyone with a garden or a windowbox or a geranium in a pot will be assigned a Kinetic Soil Irruptor and instructed in its use, at a nominal licensing fee of course, with weekly inspections by civic officials. Projected costs for development are only about 9 trillion quatloos.”
“That’s a spade.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“That’s just a spade. It’s a picture of a spade. I’ve got one in my garage. You haven’t invented anything new. And not everyone needs one — for example, people don’t need spades to plant geraniums in pots.”
“How can you call it a ‘spade’, when it is clearly a totally different thing!”
“It’s not. It’s a spade. And we’d like to decide for ourselves whether to buy one, and we don’t need the government telling us how to use it.”
“Racist!”
(Cue Mr. Gerrib complaining that I’m calling him a racist again in one, two, three…)
“Racist!”
Oops, don’t know where that extra “racist!” came from. Maybe it just wanted to be sure…
Andrea, given all the wolf-cries of “racism”, I don’t believe they can be overly-mocked in this respect.
Andrea, your logic escapes me. Or more accurately, logic has escaped you. We have right here in the USA government-run health care. It’s called Medicare. We’ve had it since 1964. It doesn’t have death panels or any reasonable facsimile thereof.
The proposed amendment that Sarah I was for death panels before I was against it Palin objects to makes it optional to allow doctors to consult on end-of-life issues.
Regarding racism, I think I objected to you thinking I called Bush a racist. It may not have come out that way – sorry.
We have right here in the USA government-run health care. It’s called Medicare. It doesn’t have death panels or any reasonable facsimile thereof.
In case you didn’t notice, that’s one of the reasons it’s going broke. In order to “bend the cost curve,” they have to have death panels.
Yeah, it’s only about “allowing” doctors to talk about end-of-life issues, because before they were forbidden by law to so much as hint at the “d” word. (Do I need to put a sarcasm here? Just asking.)
Anyway, where I come from, “end-of-life” means “death.” Therefore “discussing end-of-life issues” means “convening a death panel,” only it doesn’t sound quite so comfy. And no one object to doctors talking with patients and their families about this stuff, and the cost, and so on. (“I have [a spade] in my garage.”) What they object to is the idea of some unknown bunch of bureaucrats in Washington DC or some other far away place doing it without the patient and their family requesting it. Most people would like to decide for themselves whether to pay for expensive, possibly unsuccessful treatments or to just go home and die, but if health care is placed completely under the government they fear that they won’t get to choose, because after all as Rand has pointed out government money (like what funds Medicare) is a limited resource out of the control of the patient, unlike said patient’s own money.
Andrea, given all the wolf-cries of “racism”, I don’t believe they can be overly-mocked in this respect.
Ah, the self-pitying American white man, so certain that wolf-cries of racism are a more serious problem than, say, actual racism….
And no one object to doctors talking with patients and their families about this stuff, and the cost, and so on. (”I have [a spade] in my garage.”) What they object to is the idea of some unknown bunch of bureaucrats in Washington DC or some other far away place doing it without the patient and their family requesting it.
The provision that was struck from the bills was not anything like that — it let the doctor bill insurance for having that talk with patients (and family, if the patients desired). It was approved by a unanimous vote of the committee in question — every Democrat and every Republican supported it. It was completely uncontroversial until Palin misconstrued it as convening “death panels”, when in fact it gives patients more control.
Most people would like to decide for themselves whether to pay for expensive, possibly unsuccessful treatments or to just go home and die, but if health care is placed completely under the government they fear that they won’t get to choose, because after all as Rand has pointed out government money (like what funds Medicare) is a limited resource out of the control of the patient, unlike said patient’s own money.
Again, you’re whacking away at a straw man. No one is proposing to require that people get government health insurance, much less outlaw paying for medical care with private funds. Canada is the only developed country in the world that restricts access to private medical care that way, and they can get away with it because their citizens can easily come here.
In case you didn’t notice, that’s one of the reasons it’s going broke. In order to “bend the cost curve,” they have to have death panels.
No. If you look at the research, it’s clear that at least a third of the money being spent by Medicare is wasted. We can “bend the cost curve” without any death panels — in fact health will improve because we won’t have 20,000 people dying every year because they’re under- or un-insured. And we won’t have people denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, lifetime limits, etc.
I want to live in Jim’s world. I’ll bet it has honey lakes and chocolate rivers, and no racists.
Jim’s world is a world of limousine liberals where making categorical statements about “white men” is neither racism nor sexism. So sayeth the holy writ of post-modernism.
Andrea – in my world, professionals want to get paid for their work. That’s what this bill would do.
If you look at the research, it’s clear that at least a third of the money being spent by Medicare is wasted. We can “bend the cost curve” without any death panels
Great. Let the clean up Medicare first. Lets see their track record of success before they start telling the rest of us how to spend our money. Until then, the incompetent spendthrifts can eff off.
Let them clean up Medicare first. Let’s see their track record of success before they start telling the rest of us how to spend our money.
It doesn’t work. Their response is always, “We can’t fix Medicare without taking over the rest of the health-care system.”
Which speaks volumes about their motives.
It doesn’t work. Their response is always, “We can’t fix Medicare without taking over the rest of the health-care system.”
I know, but I just like baiting the totalitarians (even though I shouldn’t…)
Wow, you mean I should have gotten paid for all those discussions with my dad about what to do with his body once he kicked it? (“Throw me in the trash” and “cremate me and spread my ashes in Biscayne Bay” were two of the scenarios we discussed.) Awesome! I’ll send an email to the White House requesting a check.
Awesome! I’ll send an email to the White House requesting a check.
Hold up — they might pinch you for practicing medicine without a license…
I think most of the problems with health care we have now were caused by the government, starting with the wage/price/tax policy decisions which tied our health care to our employers and the crazy mandates government has put in as requirements for health care.
I suspect, even if there were no market distortions applied by the government tilting the field towards employer provided health care, the trend towards employer funneled schemes would still exist. Anyway.
Supposing that could be done, supposing you still have Medicare to (badly) plug coverage holes among the destitute, there will still be, I bet, a fair amount of people who will prefer to pocket the difference. Then these people will find out they are sick, try to get health coverage on the spot, insurance penalties be damned. But wait. They cannot work anymore because they are sick. So how will they pay for coverage? Of course they should have saved several months salary, but they did not. Catch-22. At this point they are screwed.
The hospital will not refuse you treatment, it is just that you will rack up a bill that only a Saudi prince could afford. So saying anyone can get treatment under your system is like saying anyone can buy an A380/Mercedes/whatever (hey if Prince Al-Walid can, anyone can).
I am still waiting for an alternative system to government health care that actually works reasonably when you include human greed/short sightedness as a factor.
Their response is always, “We can’t fix Medicare without taking over the rest of the health-care system.”
Nobody says anything about taking over the health care system. Medicare has lower cost inflation than private care, so it isn’t as if Medicare is the worst part of the problem. There is no political constituency for making Medicare more efficient*, but there is political support for expanding coverage. Tying the two together is the only way to actually get anything done.
* If the tea party people were serious about the threat of deficits, they would be clamoring for measures to reduce Medicare spending on unnecessary procedures; instead they worry about death panels and complain about spending (e.g. ARRA) that is dwarfed by Medicare waste.
Left unrefuted is the fact that Medicare, and the U.S. health care system in general, can be made much more efficient without “death panels.”
in my world, professionals want to get paid for their work.
In your world, volunteers want to get paid too.
Leland – I have to admit that when I suggested volunteers wanted a token of appreciation, I was thinking of the occasional “show up for the annual fundraiser” type volunteer. But every piece of management and leadership training I have had since and including the US Navy tells me that giving people a small but public “thing” as a sign of appreciation is a good way to motivate and retain people.
More on point – people get paid to perform work. That’s the definition of “employment.” This includes doctors, lawyers and the guy behind the counter at the gas station. Why it would be at all radical to expect a doctor to get paid for spending time and effort explaining end-of-life issues is completely beyond me.
“The hospital will not refuse you treatment, it is just that you will rack up a bill that only a Saudi prince could afford. So saying anyone can get treatment under your system is like saying anyone can buy an A380/Mercedes/whatever (hey if Prince Al-Walid can, anyone can).”
No, it’s not the same thing, because no one needs an expensive car, but at some time of their lives they will need health care. Also, no one will be able to knock expensive car payments down to what they can afford to pay based on their income; most hospitals will work with you to get your bill payments to what you can afford. And medical debts are often treated with more forgiveness than, say, liens for repossessed vehicles, because it’s assumed that the medical treatment or hospital stay wasn’t frivolous or unnecessary.
Having a big hospital bill sucks, but you’ve got to ask yourself, what are you paying for, and whether the price is fair for everything. That’s the problem — not that we don’t have “free” health care like they do in Canada. (Where you are “free” to be kept in a hospital corridor for hours and hours and be mostly ignored by the medical personnel. I’m not saying this doesn’t occur in hospitals here but I’m tired of hearing what a paradise for sick people Canada is as compared to the brutal, people-dying-in-the-street USA.)
Nobody says anything about taking over the health care system.
Jim the Bigot should read the bill. HR3200 determines what’s for sale, how much it costs and madantes that everyone buy in. This is a variation of a classic tactic: only the Left gets to decide what Leftism is. (e.g.: “See, it’s not socialism because the government only controls 95% of the GDP!”) To Jim, nothing short of single-payer immediately is a “take over.” Anyone who understands basic economics knows better.
There is no political constituency for making Medicare more efficient*, but there is political support for expanding coverage. Tying the two together is the only way to actually get anything done.
* If the tea party people were serious about the threat of deficits, they would be clamoring for measures to reduce Medicare spending on unnecessary procedures
Presh. There’s “no political constiency,” but the “tea party people” should waste their time anyway. Nothing’s stopping you from throwing such a party, Daddy Warbucks…
people get paid to perform work.
I’m not sure what the value of this epihany of yours is. The USSR paid people to work too, but it doesn’t mean I want a Communist government just to make sure everybody gets paid to work.
And if you think I’m off in referring to the Communist government, keep in mind that Jim’s pointing to Roemer’s Law as evidence that costs can be lowered without rationing (not that that is what Roemer’s Law actually suggests, but it is what Jim claimed it suggests). Roemer wrote this law after studying the effectiveness of health systems in the US, Europe, and USSR. Roemer came to the belief that the most efficient in terms of cost and benefit was the USSR.
To tie this all up, the issue isn’t whether Doctor’s should get paid. It’s that Doctor’s have a conflict of interest in the issue. That’s why people don’t see Doctor’s to write their wills, whether they be living wills or final wills. Doctor’s can provide advice, but their real job is to treat patients, not get paid to suggest financial advice. I want Doctor’s to get paid, but more importantly, I want them to determine what procedures will improve my health. I don’t want them making cost/benefit judgements for me. And when Doctor’s take it upon themselves to do so, I find a different one. That’s something I can still do in a free market.
It’s that Doctor’s have a conflict of interest in the issue.
Countdown to when we’ll get a clear explanation of how capitation (limited per-patient payment) + death coaching is somehow not a conflict of interest on the doctor’s part in 1,000,000…999,999…999,998…
Titus – when you die, the doctor stops getting the per-patient fee. It’s in his interests to keep you alive as a patient.
Of course, it could just be that, as a human being and a professional, he’s also interested in your health.
It’s in his interests to keep you alive as a patient.
Who’s going to pick-up the difference?
Also, Jim the Bigot’s beloved Roemer’s Law tells us that the doctor can easily replace you with a less expensive patient should your medical expenses exceed the third-party payer’s remittances…999,997…999,996…