I thought dissent was patriotic

[black francis]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 1297.story

[Dr Evil]

There is no doubt that the European model of health-care is far more civilized than the American system, which even turns middle class American families into paupers should one member of the family get sick. And of course it is set to bankrupt what is left of the U.S. productive capacity-though most has been outsourced or destroyed by imports from worker slave states.
The French and German system are a good model for the president to promote-state health-care, but without "death panels" restricting high technology or innovative interventions in otherwise terminal conditions-LVAS devices for example.
The republicans do have a point when highlighting the British example of "death panels"-my own mother was a victim of one. They even went so far as to block her transfer for a clinical trial of a (cheap) drug which had the potential to improve her condition and prolong her life enough for more radical (private) treatment which might be a cure. What started as an attempt to cut spiraling costs has quickly become an excuse for conservative treatment of the elderly to cover doctors backs against any legal problems-they would rather see someone die then try anything even remotely innovative. Even more common treatments are discouraged. When I told a doctor my "treatment plan" (perhexiline followed by tissue engineering) he said "brilliant-but she is eighty!"- In effect there is now a policy of forced passive euthanasia for anyone of pensionable age.
If the president wants a civilized health-care system he must strongly condemn this aspect of the UK NHS, which is an aberration by European standards. He must create strong legal safegaurds against rationing and age discrimination.
As for funding, the invasion of Saudi Arabia for reparations would sort that out.

[Mr. Brian]

Maybe Obama can have "free speech zones" like this. I'm sure the Republicans would agree to that since they were so agreeable to them such a short time ago.

[withahip]

Dissent is fine. (Especially when you are about to thousands and thousands of people die in a war under false pretense.)


Screaming people down while they are trying to speak in a civil manner and spreading lies that there will be euthanasia camps and Trig will die when the health bill on the table has no wording in it is more like shock radio.

Remember in school, we raised a hand and then we spoke? Screaming in class was considered rude.

Next thing we will be acting like the Taiwanese Parliament.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSvPtyCoEs[/youtube]

[withahip]

Planting fake MDs in the audience is not very nice and is not what free speech is about Mr. Obama.

And false info does not help discussion either :
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/healt ... ei=5087%0A



There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure. But over the course of the past few months, early, stated fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Mr. Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda, combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other “end of life” services, fed the rumor to the point where it overcame the debate.

When the Democrats included money for family planning in a proposed version of the stimulus bill in January, the socially conservative George Neumayr wrote for the American Spectator: “Euthanasia is another shovel ready job for Pelosi to assign to the states. Reducing health care costs under Obama’s plan, after all, counts as economic stimulus, too — controlling life, controlling death, controlling costs.”

[withahip]

<table><tbody><tr><td><a>The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</a></td><td>Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c</td></tr><tr><td><a>Glenn Beck's Operation</a></td></tr><tr><td><a>www.thedailyshow.com</a></td></tr><tr><td><embed src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:240989' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'></embed></td></tr><tr><td><table><tr><td><a>Daily Show<br> Full Episodes</a></td><td><a>Political Humor</a></td><td><a>Healthcare Protests</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

[withahip]

<table><tbody><tr><td><a>The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</a></td><td>Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c</td></tr><tr><td><a>Fox News: The New Liberals</a></td></tr><tr><td><a>www.thedailyshow.com</a></td></tr><tr><td><embed src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:246922' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'></embed></td></tr><tr><td><table><tr><td><a>Daily Show<br> Full Episodes</a></td><td><a>Political Humor</a></td><td><a>Healthcare Protests</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

[black francis]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 98676.html

Death panels have no truth behind them? Says the NY Times?

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama:

"Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

Or how about this chestnut?

"Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys."

Sounds like he's a proponent of "death panels" to me. Someone has to decide who gets what and while yes nobody is going to pull grandma's plug what they will do is eliminate her options until the only one left is hospice care and painkillers.

I think Ted Kennedy got the best health care available to prolong his life despite having terminal cancer, being overweight and elderly. And I would argue he wasn't a productive, fully functioning member of society.

[withahip]

He will probably set up death camps.

This guy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/healt ... .html?_r=1

Given Dr. Emanuel’s well-publicized repudiations of doctor-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, and his calls for a national health insurance voucher system that would eventually eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and employer-provided insurance — nonstarters at the White House — Dr. Emanuel says he is perplexed by depictions of him as a socialist euthanasia proponent.

“You can only call me someone who’s interested in euthanizing patients and denying care to patients by willful distortion of my record,” he said in an interview.

Dr. Emanuel rose to prominence in the late 1980s with a popular standardized medical directive that made it easier for terminally ill patients to share their wishes with doctors before becoming too sick to speak for themselves.

In a 1997 article in The Atlantic, he argued against doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia, warning it would “become the rule in the context of demographic and budgetary pressures,” and “would make us want to extend the option to others who, in society’s view, are suffering and leading purposeless lives” — concerns reflecting the exact opposite of the views his critics now ascribe to him.

Peter R. Orszag, the president’s budget director, said in an interview that he had hired Dr. Emanuel on his own merits, as opposed to his brother’s advice, after he offered to help with health care policy. Mr. Orszag said he was not surprised that Dr. Emanuel’s writings had drawn scrutiny.

“You can look at anyone who has written tons of stuff and play the same game,” he said.

Ms. McCaughey, Ms. Palin and others have based accusations that Dr. Emanuel would direct treatment away from the disabled on a 1996 paper he wrote for the Hastings Center bioethics institute.

In it, Dr. Emanuel did not assert that “medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled, “ as the critics have said.

The paper laid out what he called a growing consensus among competing political philosophies about how a society should allocate health care services. In clinical terms, he said that consensus held that those who “are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens” should not be guaranteed the same level of treatment as others.

He cited as an example, “not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Dr. Emanuel said he was simply describing a consensus held by others, not himself.

But even some colleagues said in interviews that the paper did not go far enough in repudiating the view.

“Maybe if I had been a smarter, more careful thinker about how people could interpret it, I would have qualified it and condemned it more robustly,” he said. “In my 1.2, 1.3 million written words, you can’t find another sentence that even comes close to advocating that in my voice. When I advocate, I’m not shy.”

[withahip]

Scare tactics work.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/deadly-doctor/

What Emanuel Really Said

Emanuel, Hastings Center Report, 1996: Communitarians endorse civic republicanism and a growing number of liberals endorse some version of deliberative democracy. … This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. … Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity – those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations – are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.

Emanuel conceded that the article is "pretty abstract" and may be difficult to follow for those who are not academics, but he said that one should not then "take two sentences out of context."

"This is clearly not written in my own voice," he said. "I am not advocating this."

We’ll leave it to you to determine the merits of Emanuel’s philosophical observations. But the context makes it clear that Emanuel is describing the implications of a particular philosophical trend, not offering a policy prescription.

We’ll also note that Emanuel’s article actually said that children with learning disabilities should get medical help to ensure that they "can read and learn to reason." We’re not sure how McCaughey interpreted this to mean that services should be withheld from "a child with cerebral palsy."

McCaughey also pushes the idea that Emanuel would want to ration care for seniors by quoting from a January 2009 article that Emanuel coauthored in The Lancet journal. Here, McCaughey says, he "explicitly defends discrimination against older patients."

[black francis]

The old I didn't mean what I wrote/said back then defense? Seems to be a popular refrain in the Obama administration.

And nobody is accusing him of proposing euthanizing patients. That's another tactic being used (admittedly by both sides) to make the other side look ridiculous. In his own words he has said some people are more deserving of services than others. If you're fine with that then just say it. But all this back pedaling and I didn't mean this and I was misquoted here is nonsense.

[withahip]

The old I didn't mean what I wrote/said back then defense? Seems to be a popular refrain in the Obama administration.

Unlike the Bush Admin or Fox. Guess you missed the Glenn Beck video on health care up above.

The old I didn't mean what I wrote/said back then defense? Seems to be a popular refrain in the Obama administration.

And nobody is accusing him of proposing euthanizing patients. That's another tactic being used (admittedly by both sides) to make the other side look ridiculous. In his own words he has said some people are more deserving of services than others. If you're fine with that then just say it. But all this back pedaling and I didn't mean this and I was misquoted here is nonsense.

It is not backpedaling. It is clearly explained. It would not matter if it was an all out fabrication, your mind is made up. You agree with the health care industry's stance.


We are all fine with that. That is why we have private health insurance and medicare and medicaid. Private health insurance is good enough for those of us who can afford because the argument goes we work. Those who can't afford it don't deserve it or don't deserve care as good as those who can afford to pay more.

In other words, the way this system is now up is "some are more deserving of services than others."

I love America. We don't discuss issues - we just hear what we want and ignore what we dislike.

[black francis]

Never seen a Glenn Beck show. Sowwy. I'm a Rush Limbaugh drone.

And when did Jon Stewart become a serious political pundit? Oh wait never. He scores cheap shots to please an adoring and intellectually non-curious demographic.

What has Bush backpedaled on? For all his faults the dude never backpedaled on anything even when it would have been politically expedient to do so.

The problem is it is NOT an all out fabrication. Obama himself said maybe you're better off taking a pain pill instead of getting surgery. How does anybody even know what wording is in the bill when nobody has read it? Why try and ram it through in two weeks time?

Nobody claims Obama is going to sneak in the room and put grandma out of her misery but that's the only point he keeps bringing up to make any debate seem ridiculous. People know when something stinks and something is not right with this plan.

Hilarious either I'm with Obama or I agree with the health care industry's stance? Sounds like someone has their mind made up and it's not me.

[withahip]

Well, then I guess you dont know me, huh?


I think that is an epiphany - though - that people are denied health care as the system is.
I know I am scared that if the system is changed I will lose my level of care.
I also know that medicare and medicaid need to be straightened out before I could even think of getting behind
any federal health care plan. Especially after the mass bailout and resulting deficit.
Actually, straightening out medicare and medicaid may do more to come closer to providing a federal plan than any new plan.
I have also read about ten pages from the bill. Just ten and those ten pages left me ill. There is one part where doctors are not allowed to receive discounted treatment. That is like telling a employee of the Gap they can't get clothing discounts.

[black francis]

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