Should this little girl be medically covered?

[RandomGuy]

End-of-life counseling, basically presenting people with their realistic options in those situations, allows a lot of people to make the call about being alive on machines before it happens. Most choose not to be held in that state. , I would make the same call, and have let my wife know this.

This could be considered a "death panel", I guess. The study I read about showed that counties with good end-of-life counselling programs spent almost half as much per capita on medical costs, as the most expensive things are avoided.

We are all going to die. Suck it up, and figure out how you want to go.

[RandomGuy]

50% of our medical spending is on 5% of the population.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...ending/251402/

Suck on that for a while.

[JoeChalupa]

Cheney got a heart and there are always cir stances when it comes to healthcare. Death panels? Do I hear Sarah Palin?

[TeyshaBlue]

More bits to keep in mind:
The majority of your health care spending will be in the last 10 years of your life.
There is a 25% chance you will be incapacitated during that time, and require SOMEONE to make the call to keep you alive using machines or other highly expensive methods. In the end you will still die. That someone is usually a lifelong mate or close relative out of their normal mind with grief.
Studies have shown that simple things like DNR's or making your wishes about the amount of effort you want spent keeping you alive in a vegatative state, can cut health care costs considerably.

I have a DNR. My wife tries to execute it each morning.

[RandomGuy]

I have a DNR. My wife tries to execute it each morning.

LOL. My alarm clock pointedly ignores mine.

[Agloco]

Okay, fine. Now she's 85 years old and wears a hoodie. Still worth it?

Ok. The line must be drawn somewhere.

The hoodie being the limiting factor no doubt.

I have a DNR. My wife tries to execute it each morning.

And finally......

Frankly, when you look at how much money we spend to kill people, $1M/year looks like a drop in the bucket, especially for a rare case like the OP indicates.

A single F16-D (just the unit cost, without maintenance) would pay for 19 years of treatment...

I don't believe affordability from a societal standpoint is as much of an issue as most make it out to be. NoNo's post points this out quite succinctly. The sad truth is that is a large amount of inertia to overcome as it relates to the care of people (I should say "others" here for better perspective).

[JoeChalupa]

Romney Justifies Denying Health Care To People With Preexisting Conditions: ‘We Can’t Play The Game Like That’. On Leno lastnight.

[CosmicCowboy]

Romney Justifies Denying Health Care To People With Preexisting Conditions: ‘We Can’t Play The Game Like That’. On Leno lastnight.

Logically, we can't.

People are rational. If they knew they could always buy insurance when and if they got sick then they wouldn't waste the money paying those premiums BEFORE they got sick. It's simply not rational.

[CosmicCowboy]

Compare it to car insurance. If you could drive without paying for insurance and then go buy insurance to fix your car AFTER you have a wreck, you would be an idiot to pay a car insurance premium every month you didn't have a wreck.

[JoeChalupa]

Logically, we can't.

People are rational. If they knew they could always buy insurance when and if they got sick then they wouldn't waste the money paying those premiums BEFORE they got sick. It's simply not rational.

I concur. But I think that an otherwise healthy person should be able to get insurance and then not be denied because an examination found cancer or the beetus. Now, I can understand if a person who is terminally ill wants insurance but I also don't think Romney has ever had to worry about insurance and simply doesn't have the understand or compassion of the uninsured. Well, perhaps he does he just doesn't across as giving a damn.
He was still as a board last night on Leno.

[CosmicCowboy]

I concur. But I think that an otherwise healthy person should be able to get insurance and then not be denied because an examination found cancer or the beetus. Now, I can understand if a person who is terminally ill wants insurance but I also don't think Romney has ever had to worry about insurance and simply doesn't have the understand or compassion of the uninsured. Well, perhaps he does he just doesn't across as giving a damn.
He was still as a board last night on Leno.

They can. The insurance just wouldn't cover the cancer or diabetes because they were pre-existing conditions.

[CosmicCowboy]

This is the terminal flaw in the new health care legislation.

For it to work, everyone would have to purchase insurance.

The $400 fine/tax for not buying insurance is a joke. That won't cover a months premium.

Rational people will pay the $400 fine and then go get insurance when they get sick. Insurers will pass the cost off to the dummies that try to "do the right thing" and pay their monthly premiums before they get sick.

Nothing changes except the costs are even higher with the new mandates.

[JoeChalupa]

They can. The insurance just wouldn't cover the cancer or diabetes because they were pre-existing conditions.

And that is the problem.

[elbamba]

Just to play devils advocate with you, don't courts put monetary values on life fairly regularly? Don't individuals put monetary values on their own lives when deciding how much life insurance to carry? I get the inherent desire to say that life is priceless, but there seem to be plenty of examples where we do just that.

Again, just playing devils advocate here.

To take it a step further, courts and especially administrative courts put a monetary value on body parts. Workman Comp administrative hearings routinely take the body part injured/lost, give it a value and determine whether it will ever recover. I once had a client lose the use of his left arm. He was almost 70 so they gave him around 50,000. I have not taken a workman comp case since.

[LnGrrrR]

Frankly, when you look at how much money we spend to kill people, $1M/year looks like a drop in the bucket, especially for a rare case like the OP indicates.

A single F16-D (just the unit cost, without maintenance) would pay for 19 years of treatment...

I think that's only partially tangent. After all, those F-16s end up working out to about a million a year as well... We have some old airplanes in our fleet.

Course, I am one who thinks we should scale down our military in order to afford more domestic security/spending, so I agreed with they our main point. I just would've used all the gas the military uses as an example instead of the jets.

[JoeChalupa]

So bottom line is that if one gets diagnosed with an illness they are pretty much screwed the rest of their lives?

[JoeChalupa]

Those billions we are spending in Afghanistan each week could help here at home.

[CosmicCowboy]

So bottom line is that if one gets diagnosed with an illness they are pretty much screwed the rest of their lives?

Bottom line, like the President says, everyone should buy insurance if the system is going to work.

[Agloco]

They can. The insurance just wouldn't cover the cancer or diabetes because they were pre-existing conditions.

That would be perfectly useless tbh.

Un and Under insurance is a downward spiral. You wind up being obligated to take care of these people in emergent situations on down the road. That's a far greater cost burden.

EDIT: Missed the context. Was this in reference to universal care?

[ElNono]

There's such an obvious conflict of interest with the whole healthcare-insurance system as the primary driver of care access. The rest of the world figured it out a long time ago.

[CosmicCowboy]

Those billions we are spending in Afghanistan each week could help here at home.

Sorry, they have already used those projected savings elsewhere.

[ElNono]

Bottom line, like the President says, everyone should buy insurance if the system is going to work.

Or move away from the insurance system into universal care + an optional, secondary insurance system...

[ElNono]

This is the terminal flaw in the new health care legislation.

For it to work, everyone would have to purchase insurance.

The $400 fine/tax for not buying insurance is a joke. That won't cover a months premium.

Rational people will pay the $400 fine and then go get insurance when they get sick. Insurers will pass the cost off to the dummies that try to "do the right thing" and pay their monthly premiums before they get sick.

Nothing changes except the costs are even higher with the new mandates.

Actually, the terminal flaw is that it doesn't do anything to control costs. Increasing the pool won't bring down medical service prices, just make insurance companies fatter...

[CosmicCowboy]

Actually, the terminal flaw is that it doesn't do anything to control costs. Increasing the pool won't bring down medical service prices, just make insurance companies fatter...

It actually increases costs. You can't add coverage for an additional 30 million people for free. The ones that are paying now will just have to pay more.

[CosmicCowboy]

Actually, the terminal flaw is that it doesn't do anything to control costs. Increasing the pool won't bring down medical service prices, just make insurance companies fatter...

It actually increases costs. You can't add coverage for an additional 30 million people for free. The ones that are paying now will just have to pay more to cover the cost of the ones riding for free.