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

To: longnshort who wrote (8653)	8/24/2009 6:57:23 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Good point. Palin is being criticized for mentioning "Death Panels" -- while there was, in fact, no panel by such name specifically mentioned anywhere in the bill. Of course it wasn't! Clearly, Palin used the term in a more general sense, the way you, and most people, think of it - as [more institutionalized, rigid] rationing of services.

To: longnshort who wrote (8653)	8/24/2009 7:41:53 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

if there is a panel that rations health care, and if someone dies because of that rationing is that a death panel or a rationing panel ? It seems to me there is a big difference between a mechanism, be it a panel, a bureaucratic entity, or an abstract set of parameters, that determines policy with regard to what is covered by a program and a "death panel," which would make decisions about coverage on an individual level based on some notion of the value of continued life for that individual. What's on the table is the former, not the later. No one is remotely suggesting a panel that picks and chooses among supplicants and arbitrarily denies Aunt Suzie her treatment thus effectively condemning her to death. One reason I don't understand what all the fuss is about, and perhaps you can explain it to me, is that we have mechanisms now that identify what is to be covered and what isn't. I can't imagine that any plan covers experimental treatments, for example, or triple bypass operations on centenarians. Both private insurance and the public programs have these mechanisms. We were regaled on this very thread about some of the procedures not currently covered by Medicare so surely everyone is aware that none of these insurance vehicles covers everything. Yet I don't hear anyone accusing Medicare of having a "death panel." I don't get it.