I held off on this for a while. Olbermann is talking about some very personal and painful experiences and I wasn’t sure it was appropriate to politicize this. Then I realized that he already had.
See, it turns out that Olbermann’s father is sick. Really sick. Keith used his father’s condition and the care he was receiving to drive home a point about health care in general and “death panels” in specific.
It sounds like Olbermann and his father had the conversation that no one wants to have with their parent; a plan to deal with end of life. Because Keith and his dad DID have this conversation, there was a clear set of instructions that were to be followed. In the Special Comment, Olbermann notes when he was free to use his discretion and when he was to follow his father’s direction. It is clear that this conversation brought some form of peace to Olbermann as he goes through this painful ordeal.
However, when Olbermann gets to the point where he and his father’s doctors discuss next steps, possible outcomes and medical process, he mistakenly lashes out at the Right for calling that conversation a “Death Panel”. He is wrong, and whats more, I think he knows he’s wrong. He’s lying.
It is that very conversation and the options that are the result that we are trying to preserve. It’s the ability for a patient and his family, in close and private consultation with their doctors, that is at the heart of my opposition to this health care bill. Because when the government controls our care, they will control these conversations. The government will begin to see that providing care is a cost and not a product. They will not strive to innovate or excel; they will cut services and raise prices. How do I know this? Because they are doing it as we speak.
The government will order a committee, they will study care, it’s intended results and the cost. Then, then, they will begin to craft recommendations surrounding the application of that care. They will make decisions as to which people, in which circumstances ought receive a given treatment or not. In short, they will have created a “Death Panel”. Obama himself has discussed this:
The president’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had a hip replaced after she was diagnosed with cancer, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.
“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”
Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.
“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “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.”
Did you SEE that? He already knows where 80% of the costs come from. Don’t think for a moment the government won’t try to limit that.
Olbermann is a big fat liar!
The fact that the right still clings to the fictional “Death Panels” is understandable, considering the success they have had in convincing so many undereducated Americans to support the economic interests of the insurance companies and the very rich over their own with these outright, baldfaced, lies. Your participaion may be due to ignorance, or it may be that you are one of the puppetmasters. Either way, you can balance the fact that you are a cog in a successful machine against the immorality of the position.
These outright, baldfaced, lies.
Do you dispute the fact that the Post Office is reducing services due to the fact that it can’t manage itself?
Or, do you dispute the fact that Obama himself can’t justify allowing his grandmother the option of hip replacement after she was diagnosed with cancer?
I cede that “Death Panel” is inflammatory, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are, in fact, making actuarial decisions based on age and expected benefit.
Currently, actuarial decisions are made by insurance corporations, influenced in many ways by profit. That is, they are for those who can afford any health care at all.
I personally would rather have my medical decisions made by those chosen to protect us then by those who brought us the credit collapse, like we have now.
I see you got your post office talking point in your email. Hey, that’s all right, the ditto express of market crafted conservative talking points seems to be working on the common man, so I don’t blame you. But I think if you are goint to argue against the addition of a not-for-profit option that will provide millions of currently uninsured Americans access to heath care, you should not use an arguement that suggests you are for the elimination of the US Post Office, which is implied in your analogy. Medicare would be a much better example.
Obama’s example was obviously meant to show the difficult choices that come up now that we have let the insurance companies and their conservative supporters run the cost of medical treatment up so far in this country.
Currently, actuarial decisions are made by insurance corporations, influenced in many ways by profit.
I would argue that they make decisions based entirely on profit motives. And this is exactly why they are effective. When decisions are made for political reasons we get a bunch of huey.
That is, they are for those who can afford any health care at all.
This isn’t true. If there is a significant market of people who don’t make a lot of money, the insurance industry will adjust and offer products that fall in that price range. Will those products come with the bells and whistles of a more expensive product? Surly not. But if the argument is that medical bills shouldn’t bankrupt people, then the market is already providing such services.
you should not use an arguement that suggests you are for the elimination of the US Post Office, which is implied in your analogy. Medicare would be a much better example.
I disagree. The post office offers an excellent service. A letter sent from here to there for about $0.47 or whatever. The problem is that it costs the Post Office much much more than that to actually deliver the letter. They simply can’t make a profit; and we suffer because of it.
Medicare would be a much better example.
Yes. Medicare is another example of where the government is unable to run a business. It is horribly corrupt, subject to fraud and abuse and loses TONS of money every year. We should get rid of it as well.
Absolutely true, the left gets themselves worked into a tizzy if a right leaning person uses something like this as a political move and then they turn around and do the same thing. Shame on Olbermann.
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