Ellington

Over on Salon, Mike Madden responds to ex-Gov. Sarah Palin's latest idiocy, stating what should be obvious to all of us: The "death panels" are already here:

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."

Previous Comments

ID

150771

Comment

Read the whole story -- I heard some of these items on "The American Life" the other weekend and it's chilling. If nothing else happens with healthcare (insurance?) reform this session, it needs to be a more complete solution for people who don't have employer-supported policies. I was freelance writer for 10 years before we started the JFP and had a helluva time being able to get and afford insurance, even thought I wasn't exactly on poverty wages and a book author, magazine writer and even a TV host for a few years. I had insurance through the national writer's union that was $500/mo for an individual and ridiculous stories like that (despite never even going to a doctor for about 10 years). As we come out of this recession there's going to be more-and-more pressure for people to work for themselves, work as contractors, work freelance from home -- and we need solutions that allow not just poor folks, but professionals as well to have flexibility and affordability in their coverage.

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2009-08-11T16:12:48-06:00

ID

150777

Comment

sing it, itodd.

Author

2599

Date

2009-08-11T18:08:00-06:00

ID

150779

Comment

The insurance companies run health care in america, along with the trial attorneys basically. The trial attorneys set what the standard of care is, and the insurance companies pay the least amount to stay out of the courtroom. One thing to consider is most policies will have a lifetime cap on benefits, ie 1 million or 2 million dollars so if a treatment is proposed that exceeds that cap the patient is out of luck and while not a death panel per se it can sure smell like one at times. But if there weren't limits, I'd hate to see what our policy rates would be otherwise. Medicare's cap is on hospital days, once those are used up, the rest of care is paid for by the patient, assuming he or she is still alive. What Obama has to make a case of and here I think he's failing is how his plan is going to be better for the majority of people who currently have insurance.

Author

GLewis

Date

2009-08-11T19:08:48-06:00