On Jan 1, 1:46*pm, bud-- wrote:
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?
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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?
I'd say a big part of the argument is that conservatives have a deep
seated
distrust of government and don't believe the founding fathers ever
intended that the
constitution give the fed govt the power to be in that position.
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.)
First, I don't know what actual questions were asked or how they were
worded.
But clearly, if the wording was as you stated it, ie "Will the
proposed healthcare
legislation stop care to the elderly?", then I'd say there is a big
problem in the
polling honesty. That is a poorly worded question. What does it
mean? Stop
all care? Stop some care? IF it means the former, then the answer
is no.
If it means the latter, then IMO, the answer is yes. Unless you
believe the nonsense
that you can cut $400bil from Medicare and not have it reduce some of
the care.
So, I'd say what you are seeing is that Fox viewers, being more
informed, understand
the implications of what is happening. And if the poll was done
honestly and fairly, a
much better question could be asked. I'd like to start with a poll
asking those that say they
watch NBC or CBS news and those that watch Fox news who the VP,
Secretary of State, and
Senate Majority leader are. Let's see what those percentages are.
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.
Sounds like "stopping some care to the elderly to me"
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.
Bingo! Yet that's the BS they used to push this bill, which no one
read, through
Congress. You admit that fraud is a major Medicare problem, but are
willing to
accept that eliminating that fraud will be a major source of funding
for an even
bigger govt program. And that there is no "clear explanation", is
precisely why
this should never have been passed.
Reducing medical costs, in general, needs a
lot more work.
Then why don't we get together the likes of Bill Gates, Jack Welch,
Andy Grove, Drs
health industry experts and figure out how to make the free market do
that, instead of
just passing some cobbled together new program based on lies?
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.
Let's look at one key republican proposal. That was to make it so
that insurance
companies could sell insurance policies across state lines anywhere in
the country.
That would open up choices for people and let free market principles
drive down
the cost. The Dems said no way. Not going to happen.
I saw Obama talking about how in one southern state, one medical
insurance company
has 80% of the market. Yet, the same day, when one of the democrat
leadership were
asked about fixing that, opening the market up to competition, the
answer was simple:
"That's a state issue and it's up to the state"
Yet, they have no problem forcing this national healthcare and all
it's requirements on the
states. Clearly they did not want any part of a free market solution.
And don't even get me started on the way they tried to get this
legislation through. Remember
the special $200mil for Louisiana to buy off the senator? The
$200mil to buy off the senator
from Nebraska? That alone was enough to tell you this stinks to
high heaven and should not
be passed until such time as it can be done right.
One of the Medicare changes is elimination of the "donut hole", a major
problem for some people.
And it'd going to create a lot more problems for other people. Right
now rates are going up for
most people with private insurance. You think the fact that they now
have to cover kids with pre-
existing conditions and "children" on parents policies until they are
27 have anything to do with it?
As for the donut hole, a simple one page bill could have fixed that.
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 same has been said for every other govt program that then ended up
costing
3X. And CBO has to go with certain premises provided by Congress.
Do they know
how much all the existing fraud is? No. Do they know how much can
or will be
eliminated? N0.
It's incredible that you admit that Mdicare/Medicaid is full of fraud
and yet want
to let the same guys create yet another, bigger program. 60 Mins went
down to Florida
and showed some of the places billing Medicare/Medicaid. This one
billed $300K
last month for treatments, wheel chairs, its. That one billed $400K
for rehabilitation.
Only problem, when they went there, the places were empty offices,
with no people.
They interviewed guys that were former drug dealers, telling how they
move from that
tom Medicare fraud because they could make as much money, and if
caught, the
penalties are less.
The right thing to say to that is "You've screwed this one up badly.
You have 2 years to
fix it, get rid of the fraud, waste, etc." Instead it was, OK, here;s
another new program for
you to screw up based on the notion that a large part of the funding
is coming from fixing
the program you've demonstrated you can't run right.
The health care system we can't afford is the one we had.
IF you thinnk this one is bad, wait until you see what's coming.
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