Death Panels in America

Just over a year ago the Republicans in the US rolled out their hysterical mobs with cries of "death panels" when they opposed the Obama healthcare initiative.

The joke is, simply being alive is a death sentence. We all live under a death sentence. And all societies have a limit to how much they spend to care for the really bad health cases. You can't avoid "death panels".

In previous days, it was the immediate and extended family who were the "death panel". They would scrape together money to buy what medical care they could, and when the money ran out, care ended, and death took its course.

The Obama plan would have put limits on health care. Every system has a limit. But the Republican opposition pretended that until Obama came along, there was no such thing as a "death panel". But in recent years with the spread of health coverage in the US, the death panels moved inside the insurance companies. They took in insurance payments and had to ensure that payouts didn't exceed income, so they put limits on what they covered. They usually dressed this up as "not willing to pay for 'experimental' treatment". But everybody understood that 'experimental' meant the new stuff that cost a whole bunch more.

But the Republicans ignored this reality and got their fanatics riled up and on the warpath about Obama "death panels".

Well... here's an example of the real death panels in America:



The benefit of removing private insurance companies from health care and making it a function of government is that you can rationalize the death panel to something that is uniform across the country and is established on a more rational basis of just how far you pay before you give up on a case as "too expensive for the expected benefit". Here is the example of the Oregon public health care system.

Here is another example of the irrational "death panels" in America, this is the example of Arizona:

Part 1:


Part 2:


In a rational, caring world, you help others. You don't make the ridiculous statement that "each life is priceless" and put in place a system that will pay unlimited amounts for anybody regardless of the rationality of the action. For example, giving heart transplants to those over 100 years. Who in their right mind would make children and adolescents line up behind 100+ yearl old seniors? Well... not every life is "priceless". It is more rational for a society to put the help into the young with a long life ahead of them.

Christopher Hayes in Part 2 who points out that "austerity" means that the "sacrifice" typically falls on the few unfortunate like the two examples that Keith Olbermann has put forward. Death panels are real. The Republicans were cynical in stirring up a hornet's nest over "death panels" as if they don't exist was a cynical and cruel ploy. There are real death panels. The purpose behind a government plan is to remove the profit-making pressure that skews decisions and deny help to those who deserve help. No plan, whether private insurance or public health plan, can cover everybody all the time. All plans have to rationalize the costs.

I find it incredible that in the recent mid-term elections, the American electorate returned the same idiot Republicans who destroyed the economy with their "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate" political philosophy and their cynical call that "government is your enemy, not your friend". When Christopher Hayes talks about austerity and the "horrible cuts coming" is the reality that is coming because the American electorate has failed to recognize what the role of government is in ensuring a modest level of "fairness" in life.