Stipend as Welfare

Which is ironic since the idiots in DC are trying to ram this through without debate, and if it does go through, I doubt any of them will have read the actual bill they signed....again.

The Hippopotami Academy decided that we weren't takng it seriously enough and have refused to let us use it in future.
No we have to use the Giraffophatic Oath instead. "Long necks need bracing" etc.

It's been usurped by Congress. And slightly changed in it's spelling.

It does not - that is simply media spin. A simple google will give you the exact text of the bill and you can read for yourself. I have the pdf downloaded to my computer and I have read almost the entire 1000 some-odd pages of the crap.

It most definitely is a piece of crap that ought to be tossed out, but it does not advocate anyone advising patients to end their life.

It seems more about bribes and one hand washing the other, now more than in decades past. It's like Tammany Hall is alive again.

But then they'd be out of a job.

Alright. That part of it was from friends - I will try and get hold of a different source soon as possible, and ask them about it. But, no offense, I don't accept someone else's opinion/interp as gospel over someone's I've known over a decade. But I will try and find out details from someone else on that part.

So which part of the bill do you feel people were referring to there, as advocating suicide instead of treatment - and may have misinterpreted? This had to have come from somewhere.

PS the bit about private health care is from someone I'd implicitly trust to know.

What may be most worrying in the end is that our lawmakers seem to do all of the things they've been doing lately without caring a fig for what constituents want. Millions of dollars to billionaires, this health care bill...do they even care what the people want any more, or are we just troublesome sheep to them?

Get the exact text -- google "text health care bill" and you'll find it on the actual government website, then search for "end of life" and read starting a few pages before.

The problem is that the bill does specifically say doctors will counsel patients on 'end of life services'. The problem is that the bill goes on to define what it means by 'end of life services' but everyone else stops right there and just uses that phrase which can easily be assumed to mean "ENDING life".

Doesn't sound like my friends - they are usually very thorough. But, thanks.

I'll have to dig back in again on that as my last time thru was concentrating on the so-called suicide part, but give this phrase from the bill, I hardly see how that could be in the same bill that makes private insurance illegal:

Page 5:
INSURANCE REFORMS.—This division—
A)..
(B) creates a new Health Insurance Exchange, with a public health insurance option alongside private plans;

Additionally, page 521 specifically refers to "Federal and private health plans"



Anymore, I trust absolutely nobody on what they claim about our government or any bill. I always go get the text myself, though all of them damn lawyers do make it dry and difficult to read. This stupid thing is a bit over 1000 pages.

As I said I will try and get some specifics. But no offense meant, all those who read a given document are not equally qualified to interpret it.

Especially those enacting it's contents.

I think it was Sweden where all health care is provided by the government? Yes, taxes are way higher there, but that's besides the point.
After taxes, the money you earn from your every job is *yours* to keep. I'd gladly trade in the Dutch system (which is about halfway between private and public) for the Swedish one, even if I see a docter less than once a year and my net wages would go down a little.
So yeah, I'd be paying for healthcare on someone who's unable to work full days from a bad back or whatever, I don't mind.
I don't hear any complaints about having to pay for road maintenance either, even if most people use only about 20 kilometers on a daily basis, a bit more when they go on a holiday, but still won't see 99% of the asphalt in this country in their entire life. Cargo companies benefit a bit more from me paying for it, while it's the big corporations that don't benefit me at all that benefit most from it.
Getting proper treatment and care available to human beings is a bit higher on my prioritylist than laying a road to the middle of nowhere, while the people living there were perfectly fine without it, except for the cityfolks who decided to buy a summerhouse but who don't add anything to the community that already existed.

There is nothing wrong with that at all, but I think a lot of us here know how incompetent our government is and do not want them anywhere near our health care decisions. The current system is faulty, but for some the alternative is even worse.

Actually this is already available and may be a red herring in the debate.

I worked for Hospice for several years and Hospice care is now part of many private insurance company packages as well as Medicare, I believe. Definitely covered by Medicaid if the person has no financial means. And the particular Hospice I worked for, which was smallish at the time and an independent facility vs. not part of a large corporation that many Hospices are a part of, nor connected with a hospital. It was also a (what is the proper name for being able to function as a charity?) so the one I worked for turned no one away, regardless of ability to pay or not.

I was waiting on a prescription to be filled at my local pharmacy today and asked the pharmacist that I was just curious what her opinion of the proposed Health Bill was from her particular medical specialty viewpoint.

That began quite a rant that I had honestly not expected, but it basically underscored what those of us are saying about this being a horrible idea. We talked for quite awhile, and during that time a woman I would guess in her 60's and a young mother with a small child entered in the discussion as well and everyone said it was a very scary proposal.

The pharmacist said she had a lot of Canadian friends and hears how the socialized medical system works in Canada from them and that they come to the US for any major medical care.

But the thing that I found most interesting which has been alluded to here several times is the care (or lack thereof) for seniors. She said that once someone turned 60, they no longer mattered at all in a socialized medical situation and would either receive no care or have to wait so long that something that could have been taken care of fairly easily in the beginning, then became a major medical issue which was sometimes fatal. I'm paraphrasing for brevity but this woman is in the medical profession, has some knowledge of how the system works (or doesn't) in Canada from personal friends, and was very knowledgeable on her facts and figures.

What I find is ironic is until all this hoopla started, it was general knowledge that people are living longer - and living good quality of life longer - from a combination of more advanced medical care and people becoming more savvy about nutrition, exercise, etc. My father is three years cancer free after a diagnosis of inoperable, Stage IV throat cancer. He had an amazing oncologist who began extremely aggressive treatment immediately and having been in great health otherwise before this, my father researched and took heavy doses of specific supplements, etc. He walks 3 times/day...is way more active than I am, and people who meet him think he is early 60's at most. (He's 75.)

Under the proposed plan...it sounds like he would have been told - "Sorry, you're too old for cancer treatment. Let's discuss your end of life options."

As long as I can make my voice heard and vote, I will work to avoid this situation as much as I can.

I personally have not heard anything in the bill that advocates suicide, but rather instead of treating an elderly patient if it was the patient's choice, they would be denied treatment...thus the counseling to basically prepare for death.

In a roundabout thing it kind of works out to the same result.

And like you, I try to gather information from people who are intimately involved in a situation...such as my discussion with my pharmacist.

I know there is spin and it gets hard to discern the truth through all the smoke & mirrors...but I think that's what the government actually is trying to do - "Blind us with Science" so to speak so no one knows exactly what the bill says.

That is poppycock. And has all a credibility of urban legends.

You're talking through your nether regions again, Jig. All significant NHS medical decisions in the UK (and probably in other "public" health systems) are made taking into consideration the age and self-harming tendencies of patients.

Pep (You're not likely to get a transplant if you are over 60, or if you smoke.)

A transplant should go to a younger person. That may sound terrible to say. Smoking IS a factor, I agree. In order to save my family grief and expense I have a DNR already issued for myself. They can farm me or throw me away. If it comes to that, I have even written my own obit if I die in North America to confound those columns of relatives's name - "Jig Chippewa" 19** - 2***, "Rest, rest, perturbed spirit" Nothing else. Nor will I have a headstone or any marker, having been thrown into the sea that is at bottom of my garden.

Only the other week, I read one of saddest comments on a person's life in an obituary in a "local" paper ... "He loved polishing his truck and listening to country music"
That made me very sad. Not exactly a "full" life.

Out of interest, how does this compare with medical care for patients in the USA who are over 60 (or, indeed, under 60) and don't -- for whatever reason -- have adequate medical insurance or other financial resources to cover the bill for the prompt treatment of an ailment they may suffer that may become a major medical issue if not treated early on?

"pre-existing conditions are not covered . . . "

Pep (Standard contract phrasing)

In other words, "Hit the road, Bozo."

I promised myself I wasn't gong to get into this thread ... Oh well.

I don't know a great deal about the health care system in the UK, but I can say quite a bit about the one here. Universal medicare in Canada is now over 40 years old, so it is not exactly a "new" or "untried" system. It has its failings and problems, of course; what health care system does not?

The notion that lots of Canadians go the US to for major medical care is, however, utter nonsense. The VAST majority of Canadians use our own, very highly developed and sophisticated medical treatment centres and hospitals, and do so with complete (and justified) confidence.

Some do go the States because they want to jump the queue: care here is based largely on need. Waiting times ARE, of course, longer than if you simply threw money at a doctor or a hospital and said "take me NOW!" But then the point of our system is that care is needs-based, and not contingent on the amount of personal disposal income you have available. People don't need to mortgage their homes here for treatment. We don't have 47 million people without any sort of health insurance (we don't have 47 million people, period). And contrary to the crap being spouted by right-wing lobby groups in the States, we don't have scads of people dying while waiting for treatment: if a condition becomes critical, it is dealt with, immediately.

It has its detractors, but it remains enormously popular in Canada; so much so that Canadians in polls have frequently pointed to universal medicare as one of things that "defines" us as Canadians. Tommy Douglas, the NDP leader (the NDP is our democratic socialist party) usually credited with the introduction of the system is, frankly, revered: I read a panegyric to him just today in an affiliate of Canada's largest newspaper. Such is the popularity of the system that even our most conservative governments (such as that now in power) are VERY cautious about tinkering with it because they are well aware that an assault upon it would hurt them at the polls.

So yeah, there are problems with it that need to be fixed. But if after nearly a half century of experience with it, Canadians as a nation are still happy with it . . . well, I'd say that speaks pretty well to its efficacy. We aren't so stupid up here in the Great White North that we wouldn't have got rid of it if it wasn't working.

One thing to add here is that one of the alleged 'problems' is the increasing percentage of the GDP health care is taking up. What they do not tell you when they present that figure is that everything else has been cut back more. Thus it is not so much that the spending on health care is increasing in an unsustainable way as much as by way of cutting other spending it ends up a larger percentage of the overall budget.

It is various lobbies playing 'fun with statistics.' The sad thing is that a large number of people (including many politicians and reporters) do not understand enough math to be able to see through the sham.