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snousleIt seems kind of obvious to me what the flap about medical insurance reform is really about: using fear and hysteria to channel as much money as possible into the medical-industrial complex.
Terri Schiavo was a living (?) moneypot. When she died, the money stopped flowing. So of course there were lots of people who wanted to keep her body alive! It is the logical goal of the health care industry to have as many people as possible involuntarily committed to situations where they rack up gigantic medical bills and have no say in the matter.
The way to ensure that this money keeps flowing is to cast sane, sensible people - who pull the plug when appropriate - as murderers, and to cast ethics panels that help determine these boundaries as Nazis. By doing so, the industry gets their hands into every pocket that's got money in it.
Of course, no individual that works in health care sees themselves as a blackmailer. It is a systemic problem, which is neatly masked by the superficially helpful actions of every actor.
There will always be limits to appropriate care. People will always die earlier than they would have if they had unlimited funds to spend on treatment. Life-extending treatment has to be withheld at some point, and the principles for when it should be withheld will never be easy to swallow. The alternative is to spend, conservatively, more than one-third of your entire life earnings on medicine (the current rate is approximately one-sixth), and enjoy only marginal quality-of-life gains for doing so. The United States is headed rapidly in that direction.
I saw a tee shirt a while back, a Harley-logoed "biker" tee rather than a political one, but I think it had the right message: "EVERYONE DIES - GET OVER IT".
Not a popular sentiment in America. But it's the right one.
Terri Schiavo was a living (?) moneypot. When she died, the money stopped flowing. So of course there were lots of people who wanted to keep her body alive! It is the logical goal of the health care industry to have as many people as possible involuntarily committed to situations where they rack up gigantic medical bills and have no say in the matter.
The way to ensure that this money keeps flowing is to cast sane, sensible people - who pull the plug when appropriate - as murderers, and to cast ethics panels that help determine these boundaries as Nazis. By doing so, the industry gets their hands into every pocket that's got money in it.
Of course, no individual that works in health care sees themselves as a blackmailer. It is a systemic problem, which is neatly masked by the superficially helpful actions of every actor.
There will always be limits to appropriate care. People will always die earlier than they would have if they had unlimited funds to spend on treatment. Life-extending treatment has to be withheld at some point, and the principles for when it should be withheld will never be easy to swallow. The alternative is to spend, conservatively, more than one-third of your entire life earnings on medicine (the current rate is approximately one-sixth), and enjoy only marginal quality-of-life gains for doing so. The United States is headed rapidly in that direction.
I saw a tee shirt a while back, a Harley-logoed "biker" tee rather than a political one, but I think it had the right message: "EVERYONE DIES - GET OVER IT".
Not a popular sentiment in America. But it's the right one.
