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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (8612)	8/22/2009 5:19:34 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 42652

I smell death panel

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (8612)	8/22/2009 7:25:45 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Some information on Tarceva Yeah, I looked that up, too. Also, the woman may not have been a good candidate for Tarceva. There's way too much we don't know about this case to make a judgment about the decision. Who knows if private insurance would have responded differently. That's an interesting way of looking at the story. It didn't occur to me that the issue was private vs public. (I wonder why the woman had public coverage...) Knowing the poster and from the video I took it to be a political statement of opposition to assisted suicide. Assisted suicide got a lot of attention in the story even though that has nothing whatsoever to do with the decision. It was probably there to provoke outrage from folks who are inclined to be outraged over such things. I, OTOH, look at it as a question of allocation of resources in a shortage scenario, commonly and dysphemistically referred to as "rationing." At $4,000/month for a year is it a good use of resources for an additional month of life? It would seem that you do, too. Do we know that treatment would run for a year? We have a monthly cost only. If the course of chemo is only, say, three months, the cost it's not as great. It's easier to justify that extra month of life if it costs $12K rather than $48K. Not a slam dunk, but easier. Whenever payment comes from communal funds, whether public or private, standards will be set for how much to expend for how much added life. That is inevitable, seems to me. Communal pools simply can't allow individuals to raid the pool. When the individual is funding the treatment, then he or she can decide what the added life is worth. If donors are funding the treatment, then they can decide what they're willing ton contribute. When we turn funding over to insurance companies, we abide by whatever the contract says. When we turn it over to the government, we abide by whatever the regulations say. There's nothing complicated or untoward about it, IMO. The only thing at issue is setting the threshold. We all have our own sense of what is reasonable to pay from a pool to which we are contributing. There has to be a threshold amount. My own sense is that $50K per year for life, however long that may last, is too much to expect from any but high-end private insurance.