Reply #10: Death Panels

[Edith Ann]

46-47 million people are uninsured. That's the Republican Death Panel. No coverage-die. These people don't have a choice or get to make their own decision.

BTW,as a Social Worker, I talk with people all the time about Advanced Care Planning and what their end of life wishes will be. A lot of people want to make their own decisions and have living wills. Even those who choose not to have living wills don't want to be on life supports and rot away. Life supports provide an opportunity for decisions to be made re: life and death and quality of life. A lot of people who are in accidents survive due to life supports. People who are brain dead do not benefit from longterm life support, as with Terri Shavio whose brain turned out to be half the size of a normal brain on autopsy.

In spite of taking the provision for Dr's to be paid out of the health care bill, people will still get education re: Advanced Care Planning from medical personnel, Dr's, nurses, social workers etc. It's part of the Medicare Conditions of Coverage.

Charles Grassley voted for this provision in the Medicare D legislature. (I read this on the internet.) As far as I know it's still there. So he's a real pandering piece of s**t.

We as taxpayers pay a lot more money for uninsured ER visits than we will to cover people on insurance. A diabetic who gets a small ulcer doesn't go to the Dr. because he doesn't have insurance of the money to pay for the visit. He ends up in the ER with gangrene and needs a hospital admission to amputate his leg. He will cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax money depending on complications. The Dr. visit would have been 60-80 dollars and cost of meds. The system we have now is inefficient with time, money and lives. Insurance companies ration health care now depending on the profit margin. The government couldn't be worse.

There are people who say "I don't want my tax dollars to go to pay for someone else's health care." Well I don't want my tax dollars to pay for a multitude of things, War being one of them. We don't get to chose. That is the Social Contract we have.

One last thing, We the people, need to pay more attention to the ethical part of religion and less attention to the me, me part of religion, what ever your religion is. This would cure a lot of ills and save money on wars.