If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
------------- often attributed to Joseph Goebbels:
"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
---------- Herman Goering.
Seems to be working pretty good here.
This is 9-11 all over again...
No, not the planes flying into the Trade Center towers. I mean how we conducted ourselves during the aftermath...
My biggest fear after 9-11 was realized; that we as a nation would be driven to act based out of fear and that fear was manipulated by Machiavellian groups/individuals toward their own goals.
Afghanistan; That was and is justified. That's where the bad-guys were.
Iraq; We were lied to. Pure and simple. And our going there has created more damage and bigger problems. Now we're there and have a job to finish. A nation to repair.
And "We the People" (not the crusty individualists we like to imagine ourselves as) followed blindly along with whomever is screaming the loudest and angriest.
When you react to a problem with fear and anger, you end up making a bigger mess than what you started off with in the first place (see Iraq above).
I'm a nurse. I can tell you from the bedside that our (the US) system, isn't working. The waste is incredible, the fragmentation and redundancy is incredible, the opposition to fixing it... incredible.
I'm not a government mouthpiece. I'm not trying to save my job. If Health Care Reform shuts down my unit... so be it. My options of maintaining health insurance for my family while I find a new job would be better if I had a public option like Medicare to buy into. Who knows, if I had cheaper health care I could afford to work less and spend more time with my family. How's that for family values?
I support Obama and not unconditionally or blindly. I will happily point out what I disagree with him on.
I want there to be a serious attempt at tort reform. I spend more of my time as a nurse charting "in case of lawsuits" than I do taking care of my patients. I could give a lot better care if I didn't have to spend time writing everything down.
I've long said, "I'm not a nurse anymore,...I'm a pill-pushing scribe".
There are several points of stupidity that I would like to address;
The president's plan is socialized medicine.
First, Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property and
means of production are owned and controlled by the state
The plan(s) being considered do not consolidate health care into a single entity that distributes health care to everyone. There may be some individuals that want a “single payer” system, but even the most die-hard liberal likes to be able to shop around the competition for their hemp socks, and solar panels. Competition is good, it keeps prices down and quality up.
Obama's plan creates FOR THE UNINSURED a National Health Insurance Exchange "...a market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can".
“First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”
-------------- Barack Obama
What part of "market....shop... compare...choose..." falls under the definition of socialism?
Crying "socialism" is just like McCarthy crying "communist" during the 1950's. Get people scared and convince them that you have the solution to what you scared them about.
(see Goering's quote above).
The plan would establish the creation of "Death Panels";
1. Rule of thumb to remember: the scarier the image, the less accurate the argument. If someone paints a picture of what something is and you find yourself feeling afraid...that's a big red flag that they're trying to spook you into something that reason wouldn't.
2. I've read over the propositions. There is no "Death Panels" in there. It says Medicare will pay the doctor's fee for discussing end of life care. You want to make an appointment with your physician to talk about what you want done/not done. If it isn't a appointment addressing a current ailment, Medicare isn't going to pay for it. You will.
Some folks think this is morbid. I'm a nurse. I'll tell you about morbid.
Morbid is having to do CPR on an 87 year old with terminal cancer and feeling the ribs break and grind with each compression because the family and patient didn't want to discuss what care the patient wanted at the end of life.
Morbid is watching the in-fighting because one estranged adult child comes in from out of town and demands under the threat of lawsuit EVERYTHING be done, and since the patient didn't fill out a living will. There's nothing for the more reasonable children to fall back on except "mama said once she wanted.....".
Discussing living wills is not a death panel. It is a wonderful gift to give your loved ones. This removes all doubt what you want done and relieves your grief-stricken loved ones from having to make gut-wrenching decisions based on guessing what you would want.
Living wills are not restricted to the terminally ill or elderly. They are for people like me (at 45 and can die or become brain damaged in a car crash), they are for people in their 20's and just getting married who can save their new spouse from having to make decisions based on their short history together.
I consider not having a living will as being delusional (I'll never die or be injured), and selfish.
3. If it comes from Sarah Palin, it's got to be BS. Granted that is an ad hominem argument, and her track record on being well informed is not that impressive. Not that she invented it, this fear card has been played before
Medicare/Medicaid fraud is huge and more of my tax money will be going into the pockets of thieves and bureaucrats.
The U.S. spends more than $2 trillion on health care annually. At least 3 percent of that spending — or $68 billion — is lost to fraud each year.
------- (National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, 2008)
More than $2.4 billion in recoveries for fraud, waste and abuse in federal health care programs are expected for the first half of FY 2009 (October 2008 through March 2009). Some 1,415 individuals and organizations also were excluded from federal programs for fraud abuse; 293 criminal actions were brought, as were 243 civil actions.
-------- (Semiannual Report to Congress, Office of Inspector General, Department
of Health and Human Services, Office, 2009)
------------ Collalition Against Insurance Fraud
Excessive administrative complexity and bureacracy can be cut to drive down health care costs. Health care through the government will only be a money-pit.
"In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs.11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada.
Between 1969 and 1999, the share of the U.S. health care labor force accounted for by administrative workers grew from 18.2percent to 27.3 percent. In Canada, it grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996. (Both nations' figures exclude insurance-industry personnel.)
Conclusions The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system."
------------------ New England Journal of Medicine
"Administrative costs are lower under Medicare than for private health insurance, although Medicare costs are higher than reported in the Federal budget and private costs are not dramatically higher than Medicare once non-comparable costs (commissions, premium tax and profit) are removed. Our best estimates indicate Medicare at slightly above 5% of total Medicare cost in 2003, whereas the government currently reports about 2%.
Medicare administrative costs decrease because Medicare benefit costs increase at a higher rate than administrative cost increases. Benefit costs have typically been about double normal inflation (CPI increases) whereas administrative costs typically increase near the CPI rate."
----------------- Mark E. Litow, FSA Administrative cost study
In dealing with fraud and administrative costs. Electronic Medical Record (EMR) would be an effective tool in identifying fraud, and streamlining administrative efforts. As a nurse for almost 16 years, I've seen redundant orders, tests, etc because physicians at hospital B are unable to see what tests were ordered at hospital A. Some of my patients are very adept at doctor shopping, looking for pain meds, etc. They come through the ER (whose costs are higher), get admitted under a different on call physician and sit in the hospital sucking up Dilaudid until someone recognizes them from a previous admission...
My elderly patients can't remember which doctor prescribed which medicine for what, I get a lot of drug/drug interaction problems on my unit because docs can't easily talk to each other. Admittedly, these are anecdotal examples.
An EMR is a component of health care reform.
As far as administrative costs go, the data (remember data? those are facts that can be verified) suggests that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance companies (those are the ones whose CEO's make a helluva lot more than you do).
Obama is a Nazi and this is his final solution;
For crying out loud. Are these people serious? I know, stupid question. Of course they are. But, are people taking them seriously? Ok, ok, I know. Also a stupid question.
Ok, lets look at this objectively (radical idea, I know).
1. Nazi? Not even close. Democrats don't have anything to do with Nazi's.
Now don't get me wrong. The Democrats aren't blushing virgins in all of this. And, as the old adage goes power corrupts.
There's a rule on the web called Godwin's Law. It was intially put forth humorously, but as with all good humor it bears some truth. Once someone brings up a Nazi or Hitler analogy, the discussion or thread is no longer productive and whoever brought up the analogy "loses".
Brings to mind of "doing the dozens" when we were kids. Insulting the other guy or his mother and the first one that swings (a fist) loses, because he couldn't control himself.
2. Final Solution
In this context, they are referring to Action T4 where individuals considered genetically inferior were euthanized. This is what Sarah Palin was referring to in regards to her son Trigg. There is nothing in the proposals that even hint at this. Lets be real, this is nothing more than another scare tactic. (See rule of thumb above).
Anyone really wanting to confirm this can easily read the proposals online. I love the web!
However, given the preponderance of angry people saying stupid things, it doesn't look like many folks want to be informed. They would appear to be content with Rush and friends telling them what to think.
That is a whole lot easier.
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