Health Care - The New Camel's Nose

~Cato

Obama on health care:

“End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we [the government] can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhhh, not having the surgery but taking, uh, the painkiller.”

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Couple of points here:

First: I do not need the government letting me know, or letting my doctors know, about things that are, or are not, going to "help". That is what I already pay my doctor for, and seeing as how I have at least a wee bit of grey matter, I can manage just fine without "the man" telling me.

Second: In Arabia they actually have a way of getting across the idea that there is a real danger in granting an entity the license to do something under an "... at least" subterfuge. It is called the nose of the camel, and as we all know, the camel is NEVER satisfied with just his nose under the edge of the tent. Indeed, it does not take much to see that this health care initiative represents the nose of a very big camel.

Third: "Public Service" messages from an entity in whose best interest it is that I go ahead and die, are suspicious.

Fourth: Everyone focused on his conclusion: that maybe the woman should take a painkiller. What is more insidious is the fact that he thinks that it is the government that should get to help her determine that she do so - or actually that the government should get to dictate that she do so.

No, Mr Obama. These are not decisions that you “are going to have to make” – and the government does not need to let doctors know anything. They already know it. In addition, using advice and counsel from their physician, it is the patients (or their appointed family) that get to make these decisions on whether to take the pill or have the surgery, on whether to pull the plug, not some insurance company .... and certainly not you.

Both my parents have suffered life-threatening illnesses – never at any time did they have to make any decision about treatment based on the cost, which combined has run well over a hundred thousand dollars. Why? Because they had purchased supplemental and catastrophic coverage so they would not have to make decisions based on costs. My mother had a shattered knee that cost thirty grand, but it didn’t cost her a dime because she added a five dollar rider to her policy so that she would not have to make decisions based on cost.

She just had three MRIs, all covered by Medicare. My father’s heart-bypass operation was completely covered by Medicare. My parents were never denied any medical coverage the doctor ordered. (And by the way, my parents raised four children with no insurance at all, except for one three-year period when my father worked for a large company, when my and my brother's birth were covered.)So don’t give us this malarkey about you, or Medicare or Medicaid or private insurers making medical decisions. They practice insurance. Let the doctors practice medicine and provide all the advice I need. I as a person paying the freight am the only person we need making decisions. I do not need to give the government any power of attorney over my life.

The truth of the matter is that Obama is wanting Medicare and Medicaid in some reconstituted form to not act as insurance, but to act as arbiters of whether a procedure is going to be provided.