"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K."

[Berzerker]

does everyone with als get Hawking's care in the UK?

[Kuciwalker]

Come on, it was reasonably cute.

[Guynemer]

Yes, very funny line, DD.


However, sadly, fear tops reason once more.

[Colon™]

As I said before. American healthcare reforms makes me question democracy. Rational debate appears impossible. The UK NHS furore is symptomatic of this. Not even considering the charges made against it, nobody seems to consider it's one of Europe's most statist models. The typical continental Europe's healthcare system would probably fall somewhere between the NHS and the reformed US system along the statist - private axis.

[DinoDoc]

However, sadly, fear tops reason once more.

Well in thier defense quotes like:
We recommend an alternative system--the complete lives system--which prioritises younger people who have not yet live a complete life and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles.

or

Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different states rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.

or possibly

Consideration of the importance of complete lives also supports modifying the youngest-first principle by prioritising adolescents and young adults over infants. 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. Similarly, adolescence brings with it a developed personality capable of forming and valuing long-term plans whose fulfillment requires a complete life.

from the health care "czar" Ezekiel Emanuel most likely didn't help the "death panel" discussion much. Out of context or no, that's just red meat for people in a situation where the plans coming out of Washington are ill defined and unread by most legistlators.

[Kuciwalker]

Well in thier defense quotes like:
We recommend an alternative system--the complete lives system--which prioritises younger people who have not yet live a complete life and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles.

or

Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different states rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.

or possibly

Consideration of the importance of complete lives also supports modifying the youngest-first principle by prioritising adolescents and young adults over infants. 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. Similarly, adolescence brings with it a developed personality capable of forming and valuing long-term plans whose fulfillment requires a complete life.

Anyone who disagrees with any of these is a moron.

[Dauphin]

The middle one is specious.

[DinoDoc]

Anyone who disagrees with any of these is a moron.

Regardless of your opinion, quotes like those are the source of the "death panel" fears.

[KrazyHorse]

So your point is "sure it's an irrational reaction to true statements, but they should have realized how irrational we were going to be, so it's their fault and our reaction is totally justified"

[JEELEN]

Two nations divided by a health service

The Americans have never cared for our National Health Service. They say they only have to look at our teeth to know that anything delivering such a service deserves immediate and compassionate euthanasia. Those Americans who live here joke that if they ever get ill, the first thing they will do is get a plane home.
Now, as President Barack Obama seeks to reform healthcare in the United States, the NHS has come in for a fearful bashing. Horror stories – some true, some false – have been splashed about to excite hostility to “socialist medicine”. An American business magazine claimed Professor Stephen Hawking would not have received NHS treatment because of his disability. The reverse, of course, is true. Others speak darkly of “death panels” to decide who will live or die. So strong has been the hysteria and the discrediting of our health system that when Daniel Hannan, the British MEP, gave a critique of the NHS on a right-wing American chat show, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown felt obliged to reaffirm their undying faith in the NHS.
There is much ignorance on both sides of the Atlantic. Most Britons do not realise that the US government already pays for half of all health spending. Nor do Americans yet know what the president is proposing because it has not been decided. And the idea that Mr Obama is trying to set up an American health service like ours is wrong; US policy discussions are concerned with the state provision of health insurance, not with the state provision of health treatment, so emotional comparisons with the NHS are largely irrelevant.
Mr Obama’s problem is twofold. First, one in six Americans is not covered by healthcare insurance. Second, the cost of all US healthcare is frighteningly high at 16% of the economy, compared with 8.4% in Britain and 11% in France. That is the cost now. When you add in the uninsured millions and allow for rocketing numbers of the old and sick, America’s future medical burden is horrifying: one authoritative report says it could bankrupt the country within 50 years. Americans are also suspicious of the president’s figures. The aim of expanding insurance cover while cutting costs is contradictory. Americans fear more tax rises and losing their generally excellent healthcare. Put bluntly, they don’t want to give another damn red cent to Uncle Sam.
While the debate there may seem unsavoury and uncharitable, there is no reason to feel smug here. Our NHS may be cheaper but it is not as good; mortality rates and waiting times are better in America. Above all, Americans have the freedom to choose treatment and doctors. Unlike us, they feel they can control their medical destiny and they instinctively dislike the NHS, which was set up in an era of nationalisation, rationing and the view that doctors and Whitehall knew best.
However, even though Americans spend twice as much as us, their health provision is not twice as good. Although the NHS may be bureaucratic and inefficient, it is a surprise to think it is relatively cost-efficient. Indeed, one recent study showed the United States was the least effective of 19 industrialised nations in providing healthcare for those aged under 75 who were amenable to treatment. That was put down to the inadequate care given to the 47m Americans who are not insured.
Socialised medicine does not have to be like this: European and Scandinavian systems have much better records in treating the sick. They have avoided the monolithic state system in favour of diversity and choice. Britain and America should learn from them.

(Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6797721.ece)

[MikeH]

does everyone with als get Hawking's care in the UK?

Yes, but his wheelchair he bought himself I think.

[Arrian]

That is so ****ing pathetic. A good provision stripped from the bill because of a dishonest smear campaign against it (a smear campaign that will simply move on to some other provision now, because it's not about "death panels" but rather about stopping the reform proposal in general).

Score one for the wingnuts.

-Arrian

[Japher]

Really? You think the government should run a competitive business?

[KrazyHorse]

I think he was referring to the death panels.

I would only support death panels if they involved fighting old people against Down's Syndrome children.

[Dinner]

That is so ****ing pathetic. A good provision stripped from the bill because of a dishonest smear campaign against it (a smear campaign that will simply move on to some other provision now, because it's not about "death panels" but rather about stopping the reform proposal in general).

Score one for the wingnuts.

-Arrian

Yep. Even Obama is now saying a public option doesn't have to be in the plan which basically means there won't be any meaningful reform and instead just a bit of tinkering around the edges (like making it so insurance companies can't reject people automatically because of a previously existing condition but likely can make it so expensive it amounts to the same thing). What really pisses me off is the proposal still has $60 billion a year in subsidies for insurance companies even though there is no longer going to be a public option; the whole point of the subsidies was to make it easier for private companies to compete against the public option so why are they still getting $60 billion a year scot free?