Are you out of your mind?? Where are you getting your facts? The OPTIONAL benefit of having the cost of an expert who can help you understand your legal and medical options covered as a family member prepares for the eventuality of death is a threat? These are the words of an extremist kook who is out of touch with reality. I would respect you more if you were at least a realistic extremist kook who did fact checking before spouting off your opinions.

2) Insurance is a “profit making” endeavor, much like gambling. Usually the house wins in the long run.

3) Fair is a man-made concept.
Life is not FAIR. No amount of government meddling can make it fair. It is a food chain.

4) Compassion. Not sure where to start, societies are complicated. Some of the cruelest things are done under the name of compassion. The pain of the “unfunded” life should be a natural deterrent to making unsustainable choices. As a society, we give and receive help, actions. Today most think money and usually someone else’s will fix a problem.

5) The “Healthcare System” is a mess. The biggest reason is the lack of consumer participation in the payment end of things. “Insurance” has been picking up the tab so long (People have bragged for years how an illness didn’t cost them more than a co-pay.) individuals believe they should not have to bear the cost of their care.

6) Education has become “Indoctrination” of citizens, not the development of critical thinkers. Teachers and Professors have long over indulged their egos and taught more opinion than fact and skill. The arm twisting by local “do-gooders” has gone national and government wide.
Elected Officials are more worried about their legacy than the true results of their actions. The balance of individual choice and responsibility is unbearably tedious.

7) The lack of simple solutions does not automatically mean the government (the citizenry of the USA) can or should collect a larger share of the productivity of the people to ease the “suffering” of the more “compassionate”. This society has lost touch with the purpose of and
essence of life. Health is more than access to a DR or procedures. Lifestyle, religion (shouldn’t have said that…), nutrition etc, all play a part. Leading a healthy life is full of many HARD daily choices.

Insurance should be for the “unpredictable” and catastrophic.
Routine care should be paid out of pocket and the costs contained by competition and cooperatives arrangements, not government dictate.

9) Greed on the part of consumers is equally destructive as the greed currently attributed only to the insurance companies.

10) YOU can not get something for NOTHING! Only thieves get a free lunch-for awhile.

Dear Che’ Obama: Like your style and content, too. LBT

I find most of what Dear Leader says is disingenuous subterfuge. His willingness to talk and listen to the opposition is exemplified by the dispersions used by his party progressives against average American Citizens.
Even our CON-gressional misrepresentatives here in WA will not return emails or phones calls regarding basic questions on the issue, then they find the nerve to slander us from behind locked doors… There is no dialogue or debate on this issue…Reality and the substance is whether or not the American people will allow themselves to be further subjugated by the Bush/Obama Change we never imagined and in this manner…Can anyone imagine what government mandated vaccines and preventive medicine will look like?

It make me shudder to think of all the possibilities…

“Why a universal health care system is desirable is that countries which have such a system have better statistics ”

Statistics say whatever the statistician wants them to. We can’t even agree to define what good health care means. These statistics are meaningless. For example, how can we compare infant mortality between the U.S. (where all postpartum deaths are counted) and Cuba (where only deaths after the age of 3 months are counted)?

Basically government is power. Power will always be abused. This utilitarian approach to solving problems will generally come up with the wrong conclusion.

Years ago, I had some gastric reflux. Last year, my family physician (who is coincidentally a gastroenterologist) recommended an EGD, which involves inserting a tube with a tiny TV camera down one’s throat and into the stomach and duodenum. He found a precancerous growth in my duodenum, which I am given to understand, invariably turns into a nasty cancer of the bile duct, liver, and especially the pancreas. I was very lucky because mostly people do not notice this problem until they have intestinal blockage and a very dangerous cancer. After he did the one inspection, he did three surgical procedures via EGD. Then he found the growth was too infiltrated for him to treat.

Subsequently, I went to a prestigious NJ hospital and had some more EGD inspections and attempted treatment. They gave up. My bile duct was almost closed off by the adenoma. Then I went to a very famous specialist in CA. I had a couple of procedures there, including one which involved threading a wire through my back through my liver into my bile duct! Finally, the surgeon did an EGD procedure which had not been possible before. Turned out that the growth was imminently cancerous. Back to NJ. I went to the NJ hospital and had a Whipple procedure (as did Steve Jobs.) 6.5 hours on the table! OK, they ripped out my duodenum and part of my pancreas and a lot of little bits and pieces which I can hopefully do without. So, now I am fine and am told that the pre-cancerous growth won’t recur. Since my paternal grandparents live almost to 100 years with their full mental faculties, it gives me hope that this was all worthwhile.

All of this, at full prices, probably would have cost $300,000. Between Medicare and my health insurance company, both aggressively beating down the hospital “list” price, it was probably $150,000. (It is maddening to attempt to decipher the mass of billing statements and determine who paid how much for what. I gave up.) Anyhow, I am out of my pocket about $10,000. (Yes, I could have paid the entire cost myself, which would be the entire $300,000. That probably would have given me an ulcer!)

Speaking hypothetically,I like to think that if I were not otherwise in excellent health, and say, had Alzheimer’s creeping up on me, a bad heart, and sundry other afflictions that I would have chosen to fuhgeddaboudit (I am from NJ!) and just have myself doped up to semi-unconsciousness and let nature take its course. In the 1950′s, I watched my father slowly dying over the course of a year. He spent the last couple of months in a hospital with many tubes stuck into his body (including one in his urethra which really caused him a great deal of discomfort). There was no question in those days of anyone deciding to just let someone die. Any and all heroic efforts would be and were used to keep him alive. He was semiconscious, did not really recognize any of our family, utterly miserable, and doomed to die. There was no way at that time to heal him. I think, but don’t know really, that, had it been my choice alone, I would have told the docs to just remove the life support for him.

Well, that is just my personal view, and maybe I would not have had the guts to “just say no.”

But should a gaggle of government ethicists or whatever do the deciding by structuring their consultation to coach the patient’s family to agree to abandon treatment? No way.

###

Do you honestly believe that our society can afford unlimited health care for all, under all circumstances? This is why we have 40 trillion in unfunded Medicare/Medical liabilities. Because people won’t be honest with themselves and admit that there are limits.

Remember, you are asking someone else to pay for your health care, of course there are limits (if you pay for it yourself, feel free to spend whatever you want).

Let’s get some common sense back into the discussion.

Thanks,

Great letter. Any man who thinks the cost is more important than hip replacement surgery for his grandmother raises doubts about his motives in saying he wants to take care of all of us. I hope Granny disinherited him whether she had any money or not.

In case the Shooters wondered, you and I are neither related nor acquainted! There is no nepotism here at W&G. Every person who makes these pages (except me. I got lucky.) EARNS it, as you demonstrated so ably above.

Those who would be chosen to grant life or death, healing or pain, or walking or a wheel chair would be from the ranks of the AMA and big Pharma. They would not see patients, only numbers. There would be no exceptions and no consideration of other factors. I smoke and am 69, so the answer would be “no” to any treatment, no matter that my only drug is thyroid. Charles is 72, smokes, and is on no medication at all, but the answer would still be “no.” Those judging never noticed that what the Framingham study REALLY established is that those most at risk of heart attack are men with cholesterol below 170!

Welcome to the wonderful world of W&G, not relative!

Linda Brady Traynham
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!

Great letter. Any man who thinks the cost is more important than hip replacement surgery for his grandmother raises doubts about his motives in saying he wants to take care of all of us. I hope Granny disinherited him whether she had any money or not.

In case the Shooters wondered, you and I are neither related nor acquainted! There is no nepotism here at W&G. Every person who makes these pages (except me. I got lucky.) EARNS it, as you demonstrated so ably above.

Those who would be chosen to grant life or death, healing or pain, or walking or a wheel chair would be from the ranks of the AMA and big Pharma. They would not see patients, only numbers. There would be no exceptions and no consideration of other factors. I smoke and am 69, so the answer would be “no” to any treatment, no matter that my only drug is thyroid. Charles is 72, smokes, and is on no medication at all, but the answer would still be “no.” Those judging never noticed that what the Framingham study REALLY established is that those most at risk of heart attack are men with cholesterol below 170!

Welcome to the wonderful world of W&G, not relative!

Linda Brady Traynham