QandO:
I don’t think any freedom loving person has to ask how I feel about this outcome:
The parents of a critically ill infant in the United Kingdom have withdrawn their weeks-long efforts to get Charlie Gard to the United States for experimental therapy. Their attorney told the court today that time had run out for Charlie as the parents burst into tears.
Let me translate that for you – the state procedurally delayed to the point that any hope that there was for the child’s treatment and recovery was overcome by his deteriorating condition. They outwaited an infant. They usurped the parent’s ability to decide what was in the best interest of their own child and then declared that dying was in his best interest. And they eventually have gotten their way. We’ll never know if the therapy might have worked for the child, but the parents and the child were never given the opportunity to try, were they? The government should be incredibly proud of itself.
There was a government in the 1930s that acted much like this. It was described as “monstrous” by many. I see no difference here. Citizens of the UK should be even more aware now that it is the government that owns their lives and has final say as to whether they live … or die.
When you give the power of life and death to the state in the form of your health care, you can be assured the state will exercise that power. It will decide who should receive treatment and who will die because it has no choice but to ration health care. Always. And when the health care workers work for the state, they have no option but to follow the dictates of the state. That’s the NHS, the single payer health care system the UK adopted around 1948.
Remember Sarah Murnaghan?
Simple math:
Cost of lifesaving healthcare = A
Expected taxes paid over lifetime after treatment = B
If A>B, treatment refused.
(Extra value will be added to B if patient is politically connected)
Dear “QandO”: It was the inevitable ending of an extremely rare and invariably fatal genetic condition for which no known effective treatment exists, you politically opportunistic a-holes. Do you not understand that when death cannot be prevented, “palliative care” is the medical option that focuses on reducing any discomfort and suffering to the greatest degree possible? Forcing a terminally ill infant to remain alive via full life support while he’s pumped full of experimental drugs having no proven therapeutic value isn’t necessarily the kindest thing to do.
Liberals would allow a infant to die while doing all they can to save a pit bull that mauled a innocent child to death Liberals are a sick sick bunch
@Greg:
Never try anything new, man will never fly, they will never step foot on the moon, pumping a virus into a healthy person to prevent POLIO, OMG u r crazy! There just isnt any money for this new and crazy trial stuff, give em another dose of morphine and hold their hand til they pass. After they are dead get into your buggy and roll home, write the letter to send on the pony express to inform the family of the sad news.
Progressives are just not for progress, unless one of the already ultra wealthy political donors can really cash in.
@kitt: Actually IMO Progressives are now and always have been for progress as the name implies. Conservatives and Repubs. are the knuckle dragging return to the good ol day good ol boys and evangelicals.
@Rich Wheeler: Today’s “progressives” want to return to the good old days of the USSR and National Socialism.
@Rich Wheeler: There you go again the boogeymen
The good old days when it was under 50 bucks to see your doctor, they looked for cures not to keep you as a patient by prescribing drugs that in the end destroy your system.
Rich you need to back up and take a good look, take stock in who you are and if its so important that your government needs this strangling control over every citizen.
Socialized medicine does not foster new treatment or cures, you become a condition with standardized prescriptions and treatment, even if it kills you.
The authors of this article are essentially using the tragic story of a terminally ill child to argue against a single payer system that provides health care access to millions of other children who would not otherwise have it.
It’s that very system which has covered the costs of this particular child’s care—costs which would undoubtedly be beyond the means of nearly all parents who find themselves in such a situation.
They’re spinning a lie, aren’t they? The ultimate point of which is to allow the wealthiest to pay less taxes.
@kitt:Absolutely agree that drugs destroy your system.–72 and have never taken a med. Exercise and a decent plant based diet work for me.
Big Pharma a big problem.Admittedly don’t understand Obama Care or Trump ccare–large majority of Americans against both.
Stay heaithy my friend.
@Greg: Again you missed the point, the entire point just flies unobstructed into one ear and out the other not running into any grey matter on the way.
The government refused to release that poor ill baby, they held him away from alternative treatment, why? Because they could, the parents did not have the option, that system gave that child a death sentence.
It is socialists who spin the lies everything is free, the rich pay for it all, you dont have to earn it for yourself, then you get Venezuela, and no compassion from a rigid mindless government bent on control of all citizens.
Freedom is a much better choice, a doctor that is not confined to standardized guidelines, not buried in paperwork and regulations, making a decent living for the years of college and hard long hours.
@kitt, #11:
I understand the point of the article well enough. It’s a shameless effort to convince people by means of a duplicitous argument that a single-payer healthcare system inevitably leads to the death of a helpless infant.
What do these people imagine would be the effect of a proposal that would cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance coverage? That’s what would follow, if you slashed Medicaid funding as proposed.
The CBO projected that, under the proposed Senate plan, 4 million more employed Americans would lose their employer-provided health insurance by the end of 2018.
I get the point, and it never seems to be what republicans claim it is. It’s about cutting the taxes of those who are already doing very well indeed, and shafting those who aren’t doing so well to make it possible. It’s also about convincing enough gullible voters that what you’re really doing is something else entirely.
@Greg:
Hmmm… Obama used tragic stories (which he made up) to sell Obamacare, which was designed to usher in socialized medicine. This article shows one of the results of socialized medicine. Another is that in Britain, older patients are euthanized to free up beds in over-crowded hospitals.
The child could have been treated with the experimental techniques to, at the very least, further research… but saving a nickel and not spending money on those who may not contribute to the collective is more important.
I’ll try this once more; where was the liberal outrage when the CBO scored Obamacare as costing $2 trillion and leaving 30 million without insurance? Is the CBO faulty or do liberals only care about the uninsured when they are in obstruction mode?
Making people buy something they don’t want and is too expensive, with sky-high deductibles and a shrinking doctor pool, is doing a pretty good job of shafting the public. Kicking them off the coverage they had with the doctors they liked is shaftage as well. But, again, liberals don’t worry too much about those people.
@Greg: The single payer destruction of our healthcare system was always the end game, welcome to the VA system on steroids.
Shabby run down hospitals, filthy, poorly run, roaches in the food, give em a painkiller and up the dose if the keep complaining.
Hint, the Rinocare plan is Obamacare designed to fail, they are ignoring the voters who are begging them to repeal only then work on the parts of the system that need to be reformed..
As of April 2017, more Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act than disapprove.
Republicans ought to sit down with democrats and figure out how to fix the ACA’s problems. Otherwise, they’ll get run out of town on a rail, and we probably will wind up with a single-payer system. They should listen to John McCain.
Instead, they’re now trying to gather support for an Obamacare repeal vote pretty much devoid of provisions, with a built-in two-year delay to shelter them from negative consequences at the ballot box in the next election. How pathetic is that? It’s not going to fly.
Bipartisan group of governors call on GOP to reject skinny repeal
And when the USA adopts Single Payer World medicine will begin its trek back to 1910 or so. Giving the government the job of medical care gives the government control over R&D because of what the government will or can pay for. Medical advance becomes a cost of government that competes with welfare, the military and roads for funding. R&D is entirely too expensie and the bureaucrats will announce that we are already the most advanced medical system the world has ever seen and do not need to seek ever more cures for the diseases of a miniscule portion of the population. When the antibiotics progress to impotence as they inevitably do, there will be no R&D and no R&D establishment to replace the no longer useful extant antibiotics. You get sick, you die.
@Greg: It was the Dems who screwed this up to begin with, and if you missed it McCain has a brain condition.
There are alternatives that if the GOP rejects all hell will break loose the next election, with little hope for the dead DNC who have put no ideas forward aside from tax tax tax and go on with the disaster.
http://senioramericansassociation.com/2017/07/26/video-cruz-calls-senators-explains-freedom-lowers-health-care-costs
From the NYT, around an hour ago: Senate Health Care Vote: Parliamentarian Chips Away at Health Bill
That’s correct. The Trump administration has threatened economic retaliation against the state and people of Alaska if its Senators don’t vote in support of the new minimalist healthcare bill.
The Senate’s minimalist, “skinny” repeal bill has finally been pared down to the point where there’s no mistaking what it actually is: a calculated act of deliberate sabotage intended to bring about the collapse of the Affordable Care Act—which evidently isn’t actually in a “death spiral” and in danger of imminent collapse without a deliberate republican assassination effort. The bill would eliminate both the individual and employer mandates, guaranteeing the ACA’s financial collapse. Republicans would do this without offering anything in the way of a replacement—something which there is no indication they’ll ever be able to agree on.
To pick up a few more votes, the “skinny bill” also includes a provision to defund Planned Parenthood for a year. Apparently women who lose their health coverage have no need or use for community-based women’s health services, either.
There’s no question about this being nothing more than an intentional sabotage effort. Consider what Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said today (Thursday):
@Greg: OMG the 2 biggest lies Obama told will be repealed???!! How awful…NOT To be forced to buy or provide non insurance the biggest fraud and transfer of wealth from the middle class ever forced on the American voters. If you are shocked by back room deals and threats just remember the deals made for Obama care https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-new-louisiana-purchase-obamacares-43-bi
But any Government control of my healthcare sucks.
@Greg: In the first place, you assume these people aren’t lying. Also, notice the total absence of any threats, implied or overt, in the article. Did you notice that missing element, Greg?
@kitt: Yes, Obama used bribes and promises of government jobs to bring along his greedy little Democrats. But, of course, that was OK and well worth the cost in order to enable the wrecking of 1/6th of the economy.
Trump and his administration lie constantly. Why should anyone believe them, rather than Alaska’s two republican Senators? What would be their motive for lying?
@Greg: Well, first, they DON’T “lie constantly”. I mean, they aren’t lying like Obama did to sell Obamacare, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and every time he moved his lips.
Again, did you not notice that there was no mention of a specific threat in your little article? Or, did you even read it, gobbling up the headline instead?
THE MOOCH is going after PrIebus and Bannon–NY justice.–good stuff
@Bill… Deplorable Me, #22:
Getting specific would be dangerous, removing the subsequent cover of plausible deniability. Why do you think the threat directed at James Comey wasn’t explicit? Had it been, it would have been difficult to deny why he was actually fired.
@Greg: Getting specific would be… well, specific. As in credible.
@Rich Wheeler: Yeah, boy. Area 51 is really great, too. And Bigfoot.
Here are some of the wiser heads of your own party, warning that the “skinny bill” going up for a Senate vote tonight is a scam. If this joke gets passed, they don’t trust the House not to immediately pass it and drop it on Trump’s desk for his signature—even though Ryan has pledged that won’t happen.
@Rich Wheeler:
Yes, this the meme from the 80s and 90s. It’s the backward mentality most are now running off of (like you).
Prog and Con mean different things now, than they did 20-30 years ago.
You comment above is why it’s hard to take you seriously, as you might as well be slinging a racial slur.
@Nathan Blue: Are you saying Evangelical Christians are not the base of The Conservative Party?
@Greg: Lucky us. We get to see the painful death of the Obamacare failure.
@Rich Wheeler:
THE base or a member of the base? How many “evangelical Christians” do you think there are?
@Bill… Deplorable Me: Rich, Greg and the others that have the progressive disease will never understand truly what happened in the last election. They create boogeymen put them in the standard boxes that keeps them ignorant of the lack of logic, evangelicals, racists, islamaphobes, deplorable all the boxes are labeled. They all use the bible and constitution only when they can bash with it, other wise they are both forbidden and not to be understood. We have our own problems on the conservative side some call themselves conservative but have no understanding of what the hell that is.
Last nights vote on repeal just shows we need a new Party in the USA, Republicans(snort) have no respect for the Republic. Democrats have morphed into radical socialists. So we only have leftists and really really leftists. Both bent on absolute control of every aspect of our lives.