The worst kept secret is now out in plain sight. The purpose of Obamacare is the destruction of private health insurance providers.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116752/ezekiel-emanuel-book-excerpt-end-health-insurance-companies
Ezekial Emanuel (brother of the Mayor of Chicago) is the author of the policy research that has been characterized as “death panels”. Rush has described it in some detail – the principle is that whether to approve spending money on medical procedures should take in consideration where the person is on their life:
– are they still working?
– are other people dependent on them?
– how much will the procedure and ongoing care cost? Will it extend life and/or improve the quality of life?
In my ideal world, these decisions would be made by the patient and their family because they are paying the bills themselves. If a hip replacement costs $50,000, the patient could decide if they’re willing to spend the money. If the person has the cash or being able to walk easier could enable them to work and pay for the surgery, they may decide to go ahead (or the price of the operation might drop). If people believe others are paying the bills, there is little motivation for patients to decline treatment or providers to reduce costs.
So once you socialize the costs by mandatory insurance or government run services, there have to be rules on who gets preference for finite resources. His plan is not irrational. Giving a hip replacement to an 82 year man in a nursing home is not going to give the payback of providing good prenatal care for 100 mothers.
Yeah, all true stuff. Obama is a big believer in “Live and Let Die”, of course so long as it doesn’t touch him and/or the things he cares for (Billion Dollar Vacations).
And Kaiser Permanente is playing for the end game – being the folks running the entire health care system.
Where the rubber hits the road is the notion that costs can be cut by early intervention. So what happens in Mr Emanual’s model when a person or group of people refuse to be compliant with their doctor’s “orders”? Put them on trains and send them to camps where the government can put people in government housing, eat only authorized food, wear government issued clothes and take regular showers?
You are a prophet, Art.
You got that picture right. We will all be spied on and loose lips will lead to internment camps and “re-education”. Have you checked the quality of schools lately? One of the first things Communist dictators do is to kill (substitute purge if you’re squeamish) all of the educated people. Pol Pot in Cambodia decided that anyone who wore glasses was educated – they could read. We may end up a nation of zombies kowtowing to the government bureaucracy.
My niece who is approaching 30 is probably in the 1% of the 1%. She could have gone to Harvard or Yale on a full scholarship and did go to Columbia Medical School. She is beginning to exhibit self awareness of how defective her education has been, but still is content that watching Jon Stewart keeps her up to speed on current events.
I was quite aware as a young person how actively the education establishment was dumbing down education compared to my parents. I believed at the time (and still believe) that for political reasons that the establishment was trying to hold up the lie that all people have the same ability to learn, given enough tutors, head start, free food and love. When that proved to not be true, they had to lower the expectations so that the fastest learners would be constrained to not learn faster than the slowest child. When the smart kids get impatient, you label that a disease and drug them into compliance.
I think there is a lot of truth to that. Competition solves a lot of the issues.
New studies also show that allowing the students to be more “self directed” in how they learn is a good idea. There are many different ways to learn something. At the very basic level, some people learn better from visual, some better from audio, some better from tactile.
In the past, math was taught with number lines and some x-y axis – static drawings on white paper. Some students would learn multiplication concepts better with physical blocks they can manipulate, or 3-D interactive computer images. etc.
There is no one method that is best for every one.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you’ve just restated the education establushment’s explanation of their failure. I pretty much have heard the entire teacher union’s rationalization multiple times.
Yes and no. The teacher’s union is against standardized testing. To me, it doesn’t matter how students learn, so long as they do learn.
Standardized tests are the only way to measure that and hold teacher’s accountable.
It’s not perfect, but it is a means of comparing teacher performance. You can change different teaching variables each year and see what works best overall, as well as what works best for different types of students.
saw on the CBS (alleged news) this morning. Headlines: Prison inmates signing up for Obamacare in record numbers originally from the New york times. CBS says that way inmates get Medicare, since they have no income and the prison system gets the health costs re-imbursed.
Expanding medicare coming to a state near you.
thanks obo, You dumb (beep) !
parrot
Well, if they’re in prison, they can’t work, so they’re disabled!