The Ugly Bureaucrat

[woodchip]

So a young 10 year old girl needs a lung transplant in 5 weeks or she dies. What is the response of the Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius? After denying the request Sebelius responds, "Someone lives and someone dies".
And there you have the ugly face of the federal death panel writ large. How compassionate but then what do you expect from a govt. that allows babies to be aborted willy nilly.

[Spidey]

Her parents must be Tea Party members.

[Sergeant Thorne]

Careful there, Woody. Found this quote with a google search...

In a contentious exchange with Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, Sebelius acknowledged that Murnaghan’s transplant request is an “incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies.”

Those words shouldn't be left out. I can only say that a system which weighs the old over the young seems to me to be exactly backwards. Whatever happened to considering the fact that younger folks "have their whole life ahead of them?"

[flip]

Well, nobody lives forever, but this is exactly the person I feel should receive medical care. Some people think medical should be a right extended to all, but people die. Some before others. Why extend medical coverage to people who smoke or drink or generally do not take care of themselves. Common sense would tell you that they are gonna have shorter lifespans, but children should be covered regardless.

[callmeslick]

good job, Thorne, of clarifying to avoid the spread of sheer BS. Further, the case is VERY complex, and has to do with more than youth vs aged. If this girl was but a few years older, she would be first in line, but for a host of reasons(some valid, some suspect) she has the receive a child's lung, as opposed to an adult lung. Thus, Sibelius is stuck with pondering overturning prior, longstanding, medical practice to make an exception for one person, and for her to do so would be EXACTLY the sort of bureaucracy trumping medical practice that many here decry and fear. Yet, when she REFUSES to do so, the predicted cheap-shot artists use that refusal to jump on the Obama administration, as always.

[Grendel]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/0 ... 85819.html
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/225025 ... -murnaghan

[Will Robinson]

You want some cold hard logic? Move her to Chicago where the odds of juveniles suddenly dying go way up.....

[Tunnelcat]

I thought conservatives didn't want that big, impersonal government involving themselves in life or death decisions? Wasn't that the rant of Sarah Palin about Obamacare? Government death panels? And speaking of the opposite situation conservatives wish for, how is a totally free market health care system controlled by the whims of profit seeking insurance companies any more fair to children with life threatening conditions?

[woodchip]

It's fair TC because the private insurers wouldn't want this kind of exposure and would of had a nice press release on how the little girl would be taken care of as it would of gotten more customers as the customers would believe the insurer was a company with a heart. Now do you understand how business works.

[Tunnelcat]

On what planet does some company give a damn about their "appearance" when the product they sell is dependent on inelastic demand? I can guarantee you that for every single high profile media fueled sob story they publicly pay for, there will be hundreds of others they bury under the rug because of cost.

[woodchip]

You do realize TC that there is more than one insurer. Where competition for business occurs, appearance is everything.

[Will Robinson]

I thought conservatives didn't want that big, impersonal government involving themselves in life or death decisions? Wasn't that the rant of Sarah Palin about Obamacare? ...

I think most conservatives see this as big government telling the 10 year old she can't have a transplant because of the leader of the 'death panel' clinging to outdated rules.
So your suggesting Palin's position puts her on the side of Sebelius is red herring.

[woodchip]

Well it turns out a federal court judge told Sebelius to go suck on eggs and put the girl on the adult list. Sebelius probably thought the girls parents were Tea Party members and could treat her like the IRS treated other conservatives.

[callmeslick]

Well it turns out a federal court judge told Sebelius to go suck on eggs and put the girl on the adult list. Sebelius probably thought the girls parents were Tea Party members and could treat her like the IRS treated other conservatives.

pure BS

[woodchip]

Well it turns out a federal court judge told Sebelius to go suck on eggs and put the girl on the adult list. Sebelius probably thought the girls parents were Tea Party members and could treat her like the IRS treated other conservatives.

pure BS

What part is BS?

[callmeslick]

the whole concept of Sibelius somehow picking on the girl....since when should a court. or a cabinet official decide to bump someone into the transplant line for an adult organ which might not even work with a 10 year old's physiology? And, of course, you had to throw in some goofy political dig about the family being Tea Partiers, which if it were true would likely mean they couldn't even spell the word 'lung'.

[woodchip]

At least they would know what the word "decorum" meant.

[Foil]

Cool it, boys.

[Tunnelcat]

You do realize TC that there is more than one insurer. Where competition for business occurs, appearance is everything.

You don't get it woody. There is no competition. The market is inelastic. Costs will keep rising everywhere, no matter how many insurance companies there are in the mix. There are no restraints to cost control because demand in infinite. Cost control can only be achieved through rationing BECAUSE the market is inelastic.

But if you're speaking of Obamacare, that may be changing because all these insurance companies now have to post their rates VISIBLY so that people can see them all in a convenient "table" and COMPARE. Before now, it's been downright impossible and time consuming for the "individual" to hunt this information down.

[Spidey]

Actually if demand is “inelastic” that simply means that the supply and demand formula only has one aspect…that being supply.

This means that the more supply there is, regardless of the “inelastic” demand, prices should go up or down depending on supply.

Of course we both know, the medical care system does not work on market principals. So people must stop trying to base assertions on such.

AJFTR there is no such thing as infinite demand.

[Tunnelcat]

AJFTR there is no such thing as infinite demand.

I disagree. And I should clarify. I meant inelastic, not infinite demand, although when a person stares death in the face, the will to live is very infinite. Either way, no one wants to die. They may skimp on their teeth or some other health item they think they can do without, but most people will pay whatever it takes to not die from some illness. In other words, they want as much care as the system can provide to cure some fatal disease, no matter what it takes or costs. No one ever thinks about that detail until they're in the hospital and the bills start rolling in, very expensive bills. Even then, people will say, keep me alive. I saw that with my mother and her mother. That sounds pretty inelastic to me.

Say you get cancer. Say that any treatment only has a 50/50 chance it will cure you. What are the odds that you'll want that treatment, despite the fact you'll spend a lot of money on a treatment that only has a 50 percent chance of cure? Pretty high chance for a poor end result at a very high cost. I'm betting that when death is staring you in the face, you'd run to the doctor first and think of cost in a distant second. So say you have insurance. That company has got to get back some that money you spend on treatment. Where is that money coming from? Why, the rest of us in those nice high insurance rates. Even if you didn't have insurance, you'd try some way to get the money from family or find charity to help you out. I don't see you just sitting there, throwing up your hands and saying, I guess I just have to die because I can't afford it.

http://insureblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/ ... -care.html

[woodchip]

You do realize TC that there is more than one insurer. Where competition for business occurs, appearance is everything.

You don't get it woody. There is no competition. The market is inelastic. Costs will keep rising everywhere, no matter how many insurance companies there are in the mix. There are no restraints to cost control because demand in infinite. Cost control can only be achieved through rationing BECAUSE the market is inelastic.

But if you're speaking of Obamacare, that may be changing because all these insurance companies now have to post their rates VISIBLY so that people can see them all in a convenient "table" and COMPARE. Before now, it's been downright impossible and time consuming for the "individual" to hunt this information down.

Seems to me TC I read somewhere that those states that limited how many insurers were allowed to offer plans (like 1 or 2) the rates were much higher than those states that allowed a lot more insurers to offer plans. I think Fla was a prime example as the rates plummeted after they increased the number of insurers allowed in.

[Spidey]

That link demonstrates just how confusing this issue really is.

The principal of supply and demand states that prices can be affected by changing either side of the equation…that means if supply is constant you can change price by varying demand…and if demand is constant then you can affect price by varying supply.

Equating health care services with gasoline is very disingenuous, because oil is a diminishing commodity, and in theory there is no limit to health care services.

Our system restricts the supply of health care services by making the education and licensing of providers very expensive, not to mention the many other things that make providing health care services very expensive, such as malpractice insurance etc.

But as I have said before, countless times…health care does not respond to market forces, and never will as long as providers are charging insurance companies for their services, instead of the people receiving those services. (one thing that link gets right…you have no skin in the game)

Also, as I have said before…health care in this country is an elitist system that “deliberately” limits the amount of supply.

So if you don’t understand that health care works under a completely different set of principals, you can never come up with a solution.

[Tunnelcat]

Oh, I agree that the whole system is screwy. Insurance for everyday health issues is ludicrous. It should only be for major injuries and illness, like car insurance or house insurance. If we had to actually pay for services rendered, we'd be more choosy customers. But there are consequences for those choices. What is the cutoff point for insuring necessary treatments, and unnecessary ones? If people delay treatments because of cost, what happens down the road when an earlier, less costly intervention may have prevented a more fatal disease down the line? And would it be better for patients to have a system that is pay-for-performance instead of fee-for-service? The way it is now, the only motivation for doctors and hospitals is to push as many people through the system as possible to make a profit. I don't see that as very conducive to giving people better health care.

Here's an example of abuse in a fee-for-service system. Profit before patient. Fill our hospitals, no matter what it takes. Revenue through admissions. Tell me how profit motive helps sick people?



http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/dec ... 0-minutes/