Oh please rfidler
your protestations of innocently wishing to ‘learn the workings of the progressive mind’ are betrayed easily by your garbage:

Most of the posters on this site are totally impervious to satire, actively ignore empirical evidence, the laws of economics, and basic human nature, and do in fact believe that the world runs on moonbeams. They are masters of the non-sequitur, the oxymoron, and above all, the ad hominem attack. They blame all the world’s ills on the US and Israel, think Cuba’s health care system is better than ours, and think 9/11 was Cheney’s doing.

This shows plainly that your mind is closed already, and way before you wandered in here….

Well Rfidler, the End of Life Counciling had been around for over ten years and had been passed by a Republican House and Senate with a Republican president so why the change? Fear mongering propaganda where the grass is suddenly redder over there as the Repubs jump almost to a man out of their previously comfortable nitch. Confusing at first until you study them and see how they operate in this partisan way. Its the corporate money stupid! Should come to mind.

As has been discussed before we already have death panels with our present corporate system and the cost of living is put to the test by they accountants on who gets what at their hospitals so? Does that bother you at all?

“Get the government out of my Medicaid.” Sound idiotic to you? It is an example of what propaganda can create in the minds of people. Do you approve? Am I getting through to you?

End of Life issues has been in use for 10 years and no problems until now where it is politically expedient to do so.

Does this help you Rfidler?

ardee:

I’m here because I want to know how the “progressive” mind operates.

I, unlike many in your milieu, want to understand how people with a diametrically opposite belief system from my own have come to their beliefs. I’m open to rational debate. All I get are ad hominems and Tourettes Syndrome-like outbursts of “Ch-Ch-Cheney” and “Z-Z-Zionism” and “Cap-Cap-Capitalist pigs!”

So far I’m not encouraged.

rfidler, August 25 at 3:03 pm #

Tour post begs the question; why are you here?

Hulk2008:

Do you really believe that a government-run system would have treated your dad better? How did your malpractice suit (sounds like, the way you describe the situation, you had a slam-dunk case) against the “pass-through physician” work out for you?

By the way, how much health care did you really consume while you were in the Air Force? I’m guessing that you were a typically healthy 20-something, and the answer is, apart from annual physical exams, not much. I was in the Air Force for 21 years and most of us used CHAMPUS- private care reimbursed by the Air Force- instead of the base hospitals, even though there was usually some additional out-of-pocket cost. Why do you think we made that choice?

Getting back to the Reverend’s article, why is “end of life counselling” such a big issue in the health care bills? Why do Dems want it so bad, and conservatives hate it so much?

Ah Yes, these people…reminds me of stories my grandmother, from the Panhandle of Texas, use to try to tell us about “those people”, you know, the ones that live on the other side of the tracks? Find another site to peddle your thoughtless garbage.

Ben Franklin:

If you’re still reading this thread let me give you some advice: Most of the posters on this site are totally impervious to satire, actively ignore empirical evidence, the laws of economics, and basic human nature, and do in fact believe that the world runs on moonbeams. They are masters of the non-sequitur, the oxymoron, and above all, the ad hominem attack. They blame all the world’s ills on the US and Israel, think Cuba’s health care system is better than ours, and think 9/11 was Cheney’s doing.

You’re wasting your time trying to reason with these people.

Unfortunately, the self-labeled “Ben Franklin” and others who oppose government in all its forms have never worked in health care or have been victims of insurance companies and their diabolical profit-by-all-means rationing schemes.  By contrast, I have worked in health care software over 41 years; I have observed the detalied specifics of insurance claims logic and the arrogance of pompous doctors.  My father was, in fact, rationed to death by private insurance: he was misdiagnosed, released from the hospital prematurely for fear his care would exceed clerk-imposed limits, repeatedly re-admitted and re-released on the mere paper-dictated whims of doctors and clerks who had never before even heard his name.  As one of his pass-thru “physicians” put it, “A hospital is not an old folks home.  They come in here for treatment and we release them because they don’t take care of themselves.  They return and then leave here feet first.”  This same “physician” arbitrarily placed a do-not-resuscitate band on Dad’s wrist without consulting the family; he lied in his medical notes to the charge nurse about that decision and only reversed his order when one of the grandchildren noticed the band and begged the nurse to remove it. We confronted the Doc; he said “Oh, well.  I asked some of the other doctors what they would do.  It seemed reasonable to me.”
  I hope for “Ben Franklin’s” sake that neither he nor his relatives end up in similar situations.
  By the way, I was in the USAF for 4 years in the 60’s - government health care - it was just fine.  Will “Ben” take away the health care from servicemen too?

Both Charles Krauthammer & Rush Limbaugh have worked to advocate, in subtler language that the end of life councilling is a sly way to eliminate you and me. (Not that they need an excuse.) Too bad we already know that the Death Panels have been in operation at area PPO’s, HMO’s & hospitals for decades. Penny pinching corporations dictate to doctors what they can do for their patients. Dumping is optional, literally on the street! But then they like the set up so they will say anything to make sure we never get even a smidgin of repair to our Death Care system.

NABNYC - Loved it, loved it!  Whether it was tongue in cheek, or serious, it was funny and wonderful!  I own a home for seniors who can no longer live at home (or go to the bathroom by themselves) and there is no way in hell they would live at our facility if they didn’t already have advance directives about what happens when they start to “fail”.  If anyone has ever had a family member who is at the end of their life, I guarantee if there is no advance directive, they sure wish to hell there was!

Once again, the disabled are left out of the discussion about the disabled, and elderly in re
“end of life” care - even in the discussion on DemocracyNow.

I urge people to look at the really good blog of
Not Dead Yet, a group begun in the 90s, and the blog
is written by Stephen Drake, research analyst.
Diane Coleman is one of the founders.  The articles
are on all related topics, including “death panels”,
short and with links to some great sites. (This group is not affiliated with any political party.)
http://www.notdeadyet.org

“Christian” Doctors Oppose Snuffing Grandma.

My local community has a mega-church/Christian Casino where the rich people go to steal money from the poor by threatening them with the fires of hell and eternal condemnation unless they give big money into the buckets every Sunday.

One of the constant threats that gets people to open their pocketbooks is that if you don’t give enough money, God won’t like you, then you won’t be able to spend eternity with your family—they’ll be in one place, you’ll be in another. I guess they never met my family.

As for snuffing grandma, I know a lot of old ladies I’d personally snuff with or without a kick-back from the insurance companies. Top of my list would be the ones under 5’ tall who drive the big cars, can’t see anything, get a determined look on their face and step on the gas pedal, in reverse, public be damned. I’d pull the plug on them in a heartbeat, the number of times they’ve scared the pee out of me. Go ahead, honk at them—they’re deaf, and they can’t hear. Or they pull out across 3 lanes and wait for everyone to stop so they can go all the way over into the 4th lane, because seventy-two miles from now they need to be in the 4th lane so they can turn right.

There’s also the old lady who works at a local retail store as a checker, and every time she hands me my bag full of whatever junk I just bought she always says “Have a blessed day,” and I always recoil in horror, grit my teeth and close my eyes tight, turn away before I give in to my impulse to put my hands around her neck and squeeze. I bought some paper towels—I didn’t come in for a prayer session.

And why does everyone talk about snuffing grandma, anyway? Why not snuff grandpa, who for whatever sick reasons can never remember to zip his fly? Whole generations of children have been traumatized by flashing grandpas. Why not snuff them, if we want to rid the world of some real unattractive folks?

My local newspaper today had 3 articles written about healthcare in the opinion section. One by a highly respected doctor in the community said nobody’s talking about snuffing anyone, the right-wing is crazy, we do need healthcare reform, everything costs too much, and we need to get serious and stop the screaming. Another one basically said yes we need some, but maybe not everything should be changed.

But the third article was written by a group of 8 “Christian” Doctors. Christian Doctors Against Healthcare Reform. Including 2 plastic surgeons, and we all know how critical they are to the Christian faith. Nobody wants to go to church on Sunday and look at a bunch of ugly people with big noses and tiny little chins. Actually, I think the ugly Christian have to go to to the poor church in the “mixed” neighboring town (you know—the one where everyone isn’t of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion).

The Christian Doctors, each of whom undoubtedly is worth multi-millions of dollars, focused their article on the claim that Obama’s health care reform will “inevitably” lead to doctors murdering patients, pushing confused old people (grandma again) to “choose” “assisted suicide” so the doctor can knock her off rather than treat her. You know—that section of the pending bill. F-ing Morons.

I have a modest proposal. If the only way we can have a functioning health care system that doesn’t bankrupt the country is by exterminating huge groups of people, I say let’s start with the Christians. Hands off Grandma.
http://NABNYC.blogspot.com

Hey Ben Franklin
Have you considered the career options of being a
dining room table?
You are more rational than some but you got
arbitrary when you claimed that the insurance model
of health care was not broken. In a nation of 307
million and counting, people will die from the faults
in the current insurance system. My son would not be
alive today if his leukemia treatment had relied solely on his commercial coverage. That is one of
many lives saved by Medicare.
I hope you don’t learn the truth about insurance in a
“they won’t cover what” moment. 
Note that the congress and the senate already have a
very solid government run health care system. Try
asking the opponents of reform in the legislature if
they want to renounce their government run system.

“Ben Franklin” wrote:

“I am fairly certain Obama has never thought an issue through
in his entire life.  It must be quite a shock to him to be getting
smacked right in the face with the laws of economics and
physics.

Unfortunately, it will take several generations to pay for his
education.”

2000-2008 must’ve been a long time to be in a coma.

If you let people have a choice about their own manner of death, then you run a risk that someone might decide to use an advance directive and implement a “Do not resucitate” order.
That would “rob” the pharma of its greatest source of income.  The last months of a persons life consumes more resources than all the resources they consumed during their whole lives.
This argument is not about morality or religion it is simply about money.
Keep them alive at all costs is the Big Pharma message.  The hell with quality of life, just one more day of suffering makes the “bottom line” look so much better.

The end of life provisions were collateral damage, the intended target being any
sort of reform of the current wealth extraction system that masquerades as health
care system. Palin, Grassley and the media played their parts well in an
impressively orchestrated and effective flexing of the health insurance industry’s
muscle.

That the industry saw fit to pulverize what was really only a meager reform
package should be very sobering to those hopeful for true reform. Obama is
either the worst tactician in the world or he never was serious about a public
option.

I’m confused.  The same people who, if I remember correctly, called a special session of Congress to decide the fate of Teri Shivo (sp?) - I call that government interference big time - are now the same people against any government involvement in end-of-life etc. procedures.  Am I missing something?

The good reveerend here is telling the simple truth, as opposed to the truth he tells his flock on Sundays.  Well, both the Gops and the Dems also tell their flocks the Goptruth and the Demtruth, seven days a week. They both specialize in the dinglebat truth. The Dems being the lesser evil, so they are the lesser dinglebats.

The dinglebat truth of the Gops is butressed by Religous Faith, the dinglebat Demtruth by Political Hope.  They both lie to the population, the Dems being the Lesser Liars.  They both tell the poltruth that helps them win elections.  Since they are both funded, media’d and ruled by the ruling class, they both delude the population with power delusions that legitimate them and divert attention from their oppression.

They are bipartisan deluders on the most important things, but the Dems are Lesser Deluders on those things that don’t much matter.  On important matters, like death, they are right there with the Gops in obfuscation.  Cosnequently the American people are deluded in two different ways, by the Goptruth and by the Demtruth, another example of American Freedom&Democracy;.  Extolled by both.  but only the Dem lemmings, the lesser dinglebats,  get to sing the Dem lemming song:

    Oh, I’m a dinglebat and I’m OK
    I lie all night and I Hope all day…

Now the fervent Hope is for medical care.  The Hope is that the Dem party will rpovide.  I suggest lighting a candle; it is cheaper than insurance and almost as effective.

As an elderly gent, I don’t want emotionally involved people like my wife and my kids making decisions about my death.  I’ve got advance directives and living wills and stuff up the wazoo just because I want someone professional to say to me or my family, “It’s time to pull the plug.”

Besides dening end of life counciling they also are against youngsters learning that we all have timers that at one time not of our choosing (usually) we will all die. Ironically in the 1890’s children were taken to funeral homes to see what happens when someone dies from the embalming room to the tomb stones. Such regressive Christians are of the unfounded idea that if we show children that it will somehow warp their sensibilities. I find it odd for people who preach about an after existence and human mortality that they would want them to know about it. I don’t know what changed their mind from their 19th century predecessors.

But then many of them really have no interest in quality of life just life no matter what, even to the point of unnatural life via machines. A slavish interest in others lives. They should mind their business in this case. Free choice is what they say they believe in but they don’t practice it.

FYI,The Veterans Administration provides the forms for a living will, without so much fanfare.

Ironic that the counciling of the elderly was first written into Medicare by Bush 43….oops!

It is not really amusing that, in a system wherein majority rules, the minority is wagging the dog. How absolutely ridiculous do the Democrats appear, with a majority in both Houses and a President in the White House, being led by the nose by an increasingly small and virulent bunch of extremists?

I believe, barring some miraculous surgical procedure in which the sock puppet Democrats have the Insurance industry and big Pharma’s hands removed from their rectums, that health care reform is a dead issue. The tens of millions of dollars in bribes simply cannot be overcome.

This is all part of the grand Republican design. It is obvious that the Republicans will not vote for any healthcare bill.  But they will tantalize Democrats to water down the bill and make it virtually useless and impossible to succeed.  Then when it passes on Democrat votes alone and then fails because of the flaws put in it to satisfy Republicans, the Republicans can say I told you so and then win in 2010.  Thats all this is about and Democrats better wake up and realize that Republicans are scorpions and they will sting you no matter what they say.
Republicans are beneath contempt and we should be putting together the best healthcare bill possible. This gives it a chance to work and tell the Republicans to take a hike on the old “appalacian trail”.

The Republicans are the real death panel. They don’t
care how we die as long as the insurance and
pharmacutical companies prosper and throw obscene
amounts of money their way. The lies and fear mongering
are disgustingly immoral.