Obama used Palin's Death Panel as a Deflection

Palin's death panel comment where about passive euthanasia not active euthanasia. All the uproar was directed at the end of life panning provisions. That was over the active euthanasia and removed from the Senate bill. Palin's comment about passive euthanasia are not out of the bill. Mainly due to the fact it was never directly in the bill. It has always been a likely consequence of the bill. In can happen in two ways. One, you dump several million more in to the system but don't add any more doctors, nurses, hospital or clinics. There is the same amount of heath care and more people. Logically that means less for everyone. Who gets what? Who makes that call? Death panel?

Second, is the slow single payer take over. Why slow? They know they just can't pass it. They can set up (by reducing the people using it) the private insurance to become to expensive (a free market kiss off). They could put in so many rules to make it fair that they can't make any money( populist strangulation). It is possible they only partially do either of those and pass legislation latter to finish the job.The less apparent option, leave the door open for HHS, blue ribbon panels or the "smart" people to make some of the rules. "After much deliberation" they enact rules, under the authority of the final bill (buried on page xyz) to enact rules that have the same effect.

Single payer means the payer makes the rules. If you only have one buyer you sell to them or sell nothing. They may not own the heath care system (socialized) but they would control it (corporatism). At this point they have to make it work. There is a balancing act to be done. If you are going to give every body what they want we have to raise taxes, but there are not enough taxes in the world to be able to do that. On the other side is cutting expenses. The choices: efficiency, prevention (mounting evidence good for people but more expensive), less pay for docs, nurses, hospitals ect., or less heath care. The money is clearly running out. We can only borrow so long. The saving from prevention I'll leave alone. You will get some savings from efficiency. We can cut pay only so much before large numbers of poeple leave the profession. They have to eat to. That leaves us with less heath care. Who gets what? Who makes that call? Death panel?

Pulling the plug on grandma was never the issue with Palin. The issue has always been not plugging in grandma. Its not killing infants with heart defects. Its making infants with heart defects conformable (before they die).

The dropping of the pay for panning was not a victory. It was a deflection that everyone has bought in to. All of the press I've seen has this completely wrong. As of right now it's a victory for the statists. There is a scene that this little battle coupled with the probable elimination of the so called public option (not an actual public option) has turned the tide. This whole debate is absolute quick sand. There are hundreds of ways this turns out badly and a very few almost impossible good ones.

Paying Doctors to Point the Easy Way Out

The "death panels" are not the same thing as end of life planning. It as well is not they same as medicare/medicaid paying for hospice if needed. The payment of docs to have conversations on end of the life planning may encourage at the very least more people to give up on life. It's out of the senate bill for now. That's a good thing. It would have been a reminder, every five years, that it might be better to just die quietly. Nothing wrong with dieing quietly, but do we need a reminder?

How does that conversation go. Your fine there is nothing wrong, but if something does go wrong your need to have something in place. A will and advance directive... and so on. If you get sick though you need to think about at what point do you want to give up on living? You can go to the hospital and try to get better or go into hospice? You can't have tubes, IVs and be poked and prodded or you can be left alone and just given pain killers? Do you want to put your family though all the worries of you in a hospital and see your that way or give them time to quietly say good bye and to help them begin to deal with your death?

How do you give the equal weight? Not to make light but does it make hospice seem the easy way out? How hard do you fight when "give up at any time, its easier" is drummed into your head. It seems there you only want to bring all that up if there isn't a reasonable expectation of getting well. They say its out so I'll leave it.

Town Hall Tight Rope

Both side are massively off the point on most of the town hall anger. That is not a comment an the substance, just how it is being handled. The thing I scream at the TV/radio/compu tubes the most is that we should be more civil. What the hell are we supposed to do when, at the very least, they distort the facts and most of the time out right lie. I have finally read someone who has it right.

"I agree with Krauthammer, more, but not fully. Public spectacle does have a bit of usefulness. But only a bit. In the end this is an attempt to persuade the persuadables, not preach to the choir, not try to top each other with how super-duper ragey-angry of a YouTube moment we can produce.

Where Krauthammer is wrong, though, is that if we're "perfectly civil," we basically allow these guys to stage-manage the events and offer tissue-thin platitudes instead of answering tough questions. It's only the jeering, and hooting, and yelling, and refusal to be fed pablum that results in the questions Krauthammer approves of being asked at all. Otherwise these jerkoffs would take our "civility" as a license to steamroll and ignore us."

Don't get me wrong either, I love Krauthammer, all ways has an insightful logical take. I however, was shocked at his comments on this issue.

Aside from that I am trying to give this blog stuff another go