Are BARACK OBAMA's OWN WORDS in this interview evidence of HIS PLAN FOR DEATH PANEL & reducing "80% of total"?

Question

No matter how many liberally biased "FACT CHECK" pieces I read saying the notion of Death Panels is false, I go back and re-read the President's own words in this interview and redouble my belief that SARAH PALIN got it right.

Read it yourself and tell me if you think me and Sarak Palin are crazy?

Does PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA talk about a panel "guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists" to consider "very difficult moral issues" "accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill"?

Here is fuller excerpt:
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THE PRESIDENT: ...
"Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care" —
NYTimes - "Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life."

THE PRESIDENT: "Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting."

NYTimes - "And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it."

THE PRESIDENT: "So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here."

NYTimes - "So how do you — how do we deal with it?"

THE PRESIDENT: "Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now."
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Three more points:
1. The End-of-Life Counseling that was just removed from the Senate Bill was in a section devoted to cost reduction measures.
2. Ezekiel Emanuel has advised the President on healthcare issues has publicly talked about changing the doctor's oath from beinf a committment to the individual patient to one committed to the community.
3. Obama's handpicked Science Czar John Holdren co-authored a book in the 70s that openly contemplated governemnt measures to reduce population's demand on resources such as sterilization of the water supply and forced abortions.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

If you look at Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin's own words, just a couple of weeks or months before this nonsense, they speak very strongly in favor of use of LIVING WILLS to make sure that people's end of life wishes are known and followed - not only because it's wastefully expensive but to follow their wishes and so they don't suffer needlessly. Both of them, however, specifically talked about the cost-effectiveness of following end of life wishes. So which Sarah Palin do you say was right, the one in favor of helping people to specify their wishes, or the one that was against?

These proposed counseling sessions are NOT mandatory, they don't force anyone to do anything. If someone has end of life wishes, these counseling sessions make sure they know what their options are and that they have the documentation to make sure the wishes are followed out.

If you think an independent panel determining medically appropriate care is a "death panel," then every type of insurance right now, private, public, for profit, nonprofit - they all already have "death panels."

This would be no change. Your quote from Obama shows that he clearly wants that determination to be made by independent medical experts based on medical effectiveness.

You seem to think that private, for profit accountants looking to maximize profits should make that decision.

Your method sounds a lot more like a death panel then Obama's.

Yes, Holden looked at hypothetical scenarios, in a very analytic way. That's what scientists do. However, he never, ever ADVOCATED the use of anything like that.

Physicists may right a paper on how, potentially, there might be the possibility of artificially creating black holes. That doesn't mean they want that to happen.

Of course, anyone could have stopped reading your post after "redouble my belief that Sarah Palin got it right."

Yes, Sarah Palin is crazy. Your apparent desire to twist and turn to believe that kind of hysterical paranoid fantasy does not speak well for your state of mind, either.

Source(s):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#32…

Answer 2

who the hell wants to read all that

Answer 3

No.

Source(s):

logic

Answer 4

"It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance."

READ YOUR OWN REFERENCE NEXT TIME.

Answer 5

My gosh! Private insurance companies would never do something like this! (sarcasm)

Answer 6

Giving people medications like chemo when they are going to die anyway often makes them die QUICKER and in far more discomfort and pain than they would have without.
Risk/Benefit/Cost analysis has always been a part of medicine - this is nothing new. People are just seeing it spelled out in black and white for the first time.

Source(s):

Can't believe the tools giving me negative feedback - it's true boneheads.

Answer 7

No it does not. And how likely would a Private Insurance Company be to give an elderly terminally ill patient a hip replacement?
Whistle blower executive from CIGNA
Yahoo!
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/p…
About End of Life Counseling:
My mother had it when she learned that she had cancer. It is a very helpful service. She made a living will and named my sister for the "power of attorney" and executor of her will. She wrote her will with her attorney to leave to her children (there are 3 of us) a fair division of her property. Having such guidance can prevent an inter-family war over who should get what. In her last days she was home with hospice care. My sister was her primary care giver and I spent mornings with her for my sister to get a break and do things she needed to do. She passed with all three of her children at her side with our hands on her. She did not want to be kept alive by artifical means and in some situations that can spare close family members the agonizing decision of pulling the plug. I could tell you a friends horror story about her mother having to make that decision but I will spare you from that.

Answer 8

President Obama is speaking about his own grandmother's experience. And he is right that a lot of those issues are not clear-cut. Both having the hip replacement surgery and not having it in such a weakened condition were bad situations. It is often difficult to guess what choice would result in the least suffering.

The choices about what to do should be the choices of the patient. If the patient is unable to make those choices, they should be made by the person designated under advance directives to make those choices. Those choices should not be made by any experts even if they are called ethicists. The choices people made about someone who is not your own are not the same as the choices you make about those who are.

Answer 9

End of life counseling is not, and never was a death panel. It is a reasonable discussion of ones options between a patient and doctors, explaining the dangers and consequences of treatments. Anyone relating compassionate, end of life care to death panels is quite simply crazy.

Answer 10

Too long to read all the stuff you quoted, but I do want to say that Sarah had quite the point.
I think the possibility of a death panel kind of thing truly exists. If we go with some form of socialized medicine, there will always be some kind of ruling about when it is and isn't cost effective to pay for a certain type of care.
I am insured by a BC/BS plan. If I object to their decision, I can ask for a review and if I am still unhappy, I can complain to the state insurance commissioners office. When I file a complaint with the government about the plan's decision, they investigate and I get action. If we have a government plan, who then becomes the watch dog to protect us? I have no answer. It's downright scary that our lives and our loved one's lives are on the line.
The government is "always right" and that saying "you can't fight city hall" has merit. I don't want them involved and I certainly do not want my private health records government property.
So, when you and I need chemo and we are over age 70, is someone going to say that it's just not worth it due to our age? Will they be looking at some life expectancy chart and saying we will need end of life counseling instead? I'm sorry, but I just don't want end of life counseling, I want to fight for my life and I want to make sure it's covered and that I can get the best possible care.

I do want to add that I have no problem if tax credits or allowances are given for unemployed people who buy their own insurance or something else to help these poor people out. But, I want the corrupt government hands off my personal health decisions. This is not negotiable for me, it is huge and I will attend protests and will work like a dog to prevent this from happening. This is the land of the free, and it is seeming more and more like the Soviet Union or Cuba each and every day.