Maybe Pelosi and Reid could start a new committee. Call it the ... oh, you know.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Health bill's 'end of life' clauses are scary
Lane has good insights in Post:
Section 1233, however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?
Comment on Charles Lane:
His comments are very insightful. Still, you have to go farther. Look at the whole bill.
1. It clearly enmeshes every patient in a government-run system.
That makes the patient an object. Nothing in it will be voluntary, in a real sense. Read Sartre, all the modern thinkers. Subject and object: this makes us into objects of the government, which will the only true subject.
At one point I thought this bill would make us all serfs. (Mark Steyn has good insights here.) But it's worse than that: we just become things, statistics. And, for most of us over 50, bad statistics.
2. It makes every patient not a citizen but an expense. Look at the clauses that would take the money out of your account, or let government troll through your accounts and IRS returns.
This is what makes the end of life clauses so ominous.
And you have to read the whole thing. I don't care what one clause here or there says. The occasional reassuring sentence is negated by clause after clause, and, more important, the whole structure of the thing.
We wrote about it at Herald. Version also at:
http://tinyurl.com/DHhealthedit
Instapundit also links.
Section 1233, however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?
Comment on Charles Lane:
His comments are very insightful. Still, you have to go farther. Look at the whole bill.
1. It clearly enmeshes every patient in a government-run system.
That makes the patient an object. Nothing in it will be voluntary, in a real sense. Read Sartre, all the modern thinkers. Subject and object: this makes us into objects of the government, which will the only true subject.
At one point I thought this bill would make us all serfs. (Mark Steyn has good insights here.) But it's worse than that: we just become things, statistics. And, for most of us over 50, bad statistics.
2. It makes every patient not a citizen but an expense. Look at the clauses that would take the money out of your account, or let government troll through your accounts and IRS returns.
This is what makes the end of life clauses so ominous.
And you have to read the whole thing. I don't care what one clause here or there says. The occasional reassuring sentence is negated by clause after clause, and, more important, the whole structure of the thing.
We wrote about it at Herald. Version also at:
http://tinyurl.com/DHhealthedit
Instapundit also links.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
If VDH is mad ....
Nailing it:
There is, again, a mounting anxiety that the current federal expansion is politically-driven in rather radical ways—an effort to create a permanent new constituency of millions who either receive expanded federal largess or are gleefully employed in doling it out. The zealotry of expansive bureaucracy and dependency instills fears, rational or not, of a radicalized huge federal work force, a sort of national version of Acorn to the nth degree that in pack-like fashion is mobilized to target potential naysayers.
There is, again, a mounting anxiety that the current federal expansion is politically-driven in rather radical ways—an effort to create a permanent new constituency of millions who either receive expanded federal largess or are gleefully employed in doling it out. The zealotry of expansive bureaucracy and dependency instills fears, rational or not, of a radicalized huge federal work force, a sort of national version of Acorn to the nth degree that in pack-like fashion is mobilized to target potential naysayers.
Internet watershed?
Is the fight over Obamacare another milestone in online connection?
I'm an editorial page editor. I get paid to look this stuff up. But I strongly doubt whether, pre-Internet, I could have accessed HR 3200 so easily.
And, until you look at the whole thing, you don't really grasp how all-encompassing it is. No summary or comment can convey that; but once you at least look at the whole thing, then and only then can you grasp how this will completely overwhelm any "private" aspect of health care. Everything, everything, will be run by the government. Any "private" aspect will be private in name only; doctors and hospitals and insurance companies will be mere proxies for Big Bro. And they can't last long anyway -- as we said in edit, any more than a tropical bird can last long in Antarctica.
More important, online info (from e-mails and on the Web) helped me navigate this monster bill better than I ever could have done on my own.
Perhaps most important, I was able to get a sense of how others felt, and that this was a winnable fight.
I'm old enough to remember the Great Society. I was only a teenager, but there was no sense of any debate or opposition, with this kind of scale or intensity. Maybe it was there, but now you can see it.
And, of course, we're no longer just throwing words out there on page, but connecting back.
So this is not only an important moment in politics, it's important in communications and political action.
I'm an editorial page editor. I get paid to look this stuff up. But I strongly doubt whether, pre-Internet, I could have accessed HR 3200 so easily.
And, until you look at the whole thing, you don't really grasp how all-encompassing it is. No summary or comment can convey that; but once you at least look at the whole thing, then and only then can you grasp how this will completely overwhelm any "private" aspect of health care. Everything, everything, will be run by the government. Any "private" aspect will be private in name only; doctors and hospitals and insurance companies will be mere proxies for Big Bro. And they can't last long anyway -- as we said in edit, any more than a tropical bird can last long in Antarctica.
More important, online info (from e-mails and on the Web) helped me navigate this monster bill better than I ever could have done on my own.
Perhaps most important, I was able to get a sense of how others felt, and that this was a winnable fight.
I'm old enough to remember the Great Society. I was only a teenager, but there was no sense of any debate or opposition, with this kind of scale or intensity. Maybe it was there, but now you can see it.
And, of course, we're no longer just throwing words out there on page, but connecting back.
So this is not only an important moment in politics, it's important in communications and political action.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Health care options
Yes, Obamacare would be worse than nothing.
And there are better options.
And there are better options.
A patient-centered health-care reform begins with individual ownership of insurance policies and leverages Health Savings Accounts, a low-premium, high-deductible alternative to traditional insurance that includes a tax-advantaged savings account. It allows people to purchase insurance policies across state lines and reduces the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover. It reallocates the majority of Medicaid spending into a simple voucher for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance. And it reduces the cost of medical procedures by reforming tort liability laws.
By empowering patients and doctors to manage health-care decisions, a patient-centered health-care reform will control costs, improve health outcomes, and improve the overall efficiency of the health-care system.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
email to Mickey Kaus
Kausfiles: We pay 77 percent more on prescription drugs, we're paying $6,000 more per individual on health care than any other industrialized nation; here's all the failures in the delivery system that account for it. It's not just because we are somehow more obese or more unhealthy. It turns out actually we're a little bit healthier than most of these other countries because our smoking rates are lower and we're younger. So we should actually be paying less than they are.
kf wold be even more persuasive if could explain how the government is going to make things more efficient and effective, yet less costly.
You've been a trenchant critic of the auto takeover; you could explain why THIS takeover will be different.
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