McMegan McArdle: Insurance companies already have those undertreatment incentives, but it's hard to act on them. Right now, people know that their insurance companies would love to provide self-serving "end of life" counseling that would encourage sick people not to waste so much valuable money. But they are limited by, first, competition--an insurance company that tried to do this too blatantly would suffer horrible publicity and ultimately lose business--and second, the threat of lawsuits and/or regulation...Compare this pet claim of the right to what actually happens:
Southern Beale: Don’t Talk To Me About Death Panels: You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document. If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is. So don’t talk to me about “death panels” you heartless, cruel, greedy sons of bitches...What is interesting is that roughly half the American population who know that the Reagan "trickle down" economy never deliver, who know that George Bush ran up huge debts, started unnecessary wars, botched emergency relief of New Orleans, and tried hard to gut social security with a plan to get people to buy stocks just before the greatest crash since 1929, still buy the swill tossed out by the right wing talking heads. It is simply amazing.
I saw the equivalent back in the 1960s as deaths from Vietnam mounted, the government kept talking about "a light at the end of the tunnel", the official policy was to keep ratcheting up the number of US troops, and as independent news reporters sent back grim details on the battlefield, the official military "press briefings" were full of phantom "body counts" and assurances that the war was being "won". I watched as half the population bought that swill.
I sometimes wonder. Lincoln claimed "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." But I'm not so sure. History seems to be proving that you can fool and electable majority all the time.
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