wrote:
On Dec 31 2010, 11:23 am, bud-- wrote:
HeyBub wrote:
bud-- wrote:
A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press about a
year ago
http://people-press.org/report/537/
found that almost half of regular Fox viewers thought "health care
legislation will create death panels", an absurd propaganda piece.
## And guess what? They were correct.
(Wall Street Journal, December 29th)
"On [last] Sunday, Robert Pear reported in the New York Times that Medicare
will now pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling as part of seniors' annual
physicals. A similar provision was originally included in ObamaCare, but
Democrats stripped it out amid the death panel furor. Now Medicare will
enact the same policy through regulation."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...57604570280391...
(San Jose Mercury News, December 27-28th)
"Welcome back, death panels. Really.
"New Medicare regulations taking effect Saturday will pay doctors who advise
patients on end-of-life care, including options for advance directives on
how they want to be treated. This is all the health care reform proposal
ever intended."
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stori...nclick_check=1
"They were correct"???
The Palin, et al, propaganda was that a "panel" would deny care to the
elderly.
- Where is the panel?
- Where is the denial? There is only counseling? Patients get the care
they decide they want. They can change their minds. Are republicans
against choice? (Or do they just lie about what is in legislation to try
to defeat it?)

What was/is proposed is only a "death panel" to an idiot like Sarah
Palin or someone who is dishonest (Fox?).

A NBC/Wall Street Journal poll about a year ago had 75% of Fox viewers
believing the health care reform would "Stop Care To The Elderly". Why
did such a high percentage of Fox viewers believe this insane lie?

--
bud--- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Bud, in all honesty, there is a death panel at every insurance
company, be it private or
government. Surely you've heard all the stories over the years of
patients with a terminal
disease being denied access to a new, expensive treatmentthat offers
some chance of
success because the insurer does not believe the treatment is
justified. In other words
they are making a judgement call on the cost/benefit of the treatment
options, some of
which will result in patients dying.

Of course. Also losing insurance if have big claims and caps on lifetime
payout.

It is one of the stupidities of the Palin, et al, death panel nonsense.
So is Palin too stupid to understand, or just dishonest?

Progress was held up for 3 months while 3 democrats and 3 republicans
supposedly tried to negotiate a bill. Toward the end one of the
republicans, Charles Grassley, talked about "death panels".


As for Fox viewers believing that the bill passed would "Stop Care to
the Elderly", I can see
why they would answer Yes. The bill was being sold to the public
partly on the basis that it
was going to be funded through huge savings in the current Medicare
program, to the tune of
$400Bil. I think many of
us believe if you reduce funding to Medicare, it will reduce some care
available to the elderly under
the current program. The pollsters obviously chose and worded that
particular question to get
the results they wanted. I believe if they actually do cut funding,
then it will stop some care to the
elderly.

Not likely there were problems with poll questions. There were problems
of people believing lies. The percentage of Fox viewers that believed
this was well over double the percentage of MSNBC and CNN viewers. (The
percentage of Fox viewers that believed there were death panels was
almost double the percentage for network news.)

The $400B figure is over 10 years. About 1/3 of that would be from
elimination of subsidies to private insurance companies for Medicare
Advantage (Medicare part C). This is a insurance company subsidy used by
maybe 20% of Medicare recipients. I have not seen a clear explanation of
the rest of it. Fraud is a major Medicare problem. One of the ways
health costs, in general, can be reduces is by looking at 'best
practices', which is in the bill. It is highly unlikely there would be
major cuts to health care that is provided under Medicare. That simply
does not work politically. Reducing medical costs, in general, needs a
lot more work.

This is, of course, not taking place in a vacuum. How much would
Medicare be reduced if republicans got what they wanted? The only
concrete proposal I remember was from Paul Ryan which the CBO scored at
$650B/10yr cuts to Medicare (with Medicare becoming a voucher system).
That is, of course, a lot larger than the $400B that the republicans and
Fox were hyping.

One of the Medicare changes is elimination of the "donut hole", a major
problem for some people.


And that brings up one of the stupidist parts of this whole plan. The
govt actually wants us to
believe they are going to partly fund a new program by simply
reducing waste and mismanagement
in a current govt program, ie Medicare. Wouldn't a rational person
simply say, you've been running
that program for 45 years and it's full of waste, fraud and
mismanagent that comes to $400Bil.
Go straighten it out FIRST, then when we see the
results, we can consider letting you expand into a bigger program?

There are, in fact, a number of funding mechanisms. Medicare cuts are
only one of them.

The CBO estimates the deficit will be reduced by over $100 billion in
the first 10 years and over $1 trillion in the second decade. Other
'independent' economists I have seen also say the deficit will be reduced.

The health care system we can't afford is the one we had.

--
bud--