Without Bush to kick around

[chcr]

You know, I can't but think that it would surprise some of these mouth breathers to know that health care professionals have been required to discuss end of life issues with patients by federal law since the Reagan administration. It's neither new nor threatening. I guess they think it sounds so if you scream it in a panicky manner.

Perhaps the eggheads might read that does not MEDICAL PROFFESIONALS, it says the SECRETARY, as in beauracrat. Although it is always good to see you particiapte in these conversations. You add so much swill & bile.

spike, learn to read lawyerese. A judge sure will. Shall does not mean if you feel like it.

You know what? Never mind.

 

[Cerise]

Geezus Cerise. Do your research a little better.

They are available (authorized) every five years or more often if there's a change in health condition. Still optional.

You're still wrong.

You are in denial.

Would you agree that when something is "optional" an individual can choose it if they want it?

When 1233 allows the doc to initiate the subject, how can you consider that "optional?"

(hhh)(1) Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term `advance care planning consultation' means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years.

(3)(B) An advance care planning consultation with respect to an individual may be conducted more frequently than provided under paragraph (1) if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual, including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury, or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility (as defined by the Secretary), or a hospice program.

 

[2minkey]

allows the doc to initiate the subject.

right. and anyone today who lets the doctor dominate the conversation and direction of care is an imbecile. grow up and be your own advocate, otherwise you'll be getting an unnecessary colonoscopy or four.

"initiate" does not equal "decide," "force," or "mandate."

fucking drama queens...

 

[Gonz]

How often have you accompanied your elderly (parents, grand-folks, aunts, uncles, etc) to their quack? The doctor knows best doncha know.

 

[spike]

"initiate" does not equal "decide," "force," or "mandate."

fucking drama queens...

No shit, not to mention the word "initiate" is even in the passage she quoted. Trying to make a lot of drama out of an optional service is going too well.

 

[Cerise]

But the question was "When 1233 allows the doc to initiate the subject, how can you consider that "optional?""

 

[randomJACKASS]

No see there will be no death panels for us rational people. That only applies to right wing nutjobs (you know who you are).

 

[randomJACKASS]

In fact someone like you Cerise might be offered "end of life" (usefulness) counseling in as little as six months after the legislations implementation.

 

[Cerise]

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

 

[Cerise]

 

[randomJACKASS]

I have to choke back the tears I am crying for those poor widdle insurance company millionaires! It is just so unfair!

 

[Gonz]

Ugh, you do know that, by annual pay, our legislators are in the top 5%, nationally?

 

[2minkey]

How often have you accompanied your elderly (parents, grand-folks, aunts, uncles, etc) to their quack? The doctor knows best doncha know.

wow. um, yeah. great point. yawn.

fortunately my parents are perfectly competent to doubt their own doctors without my input. my grandparents are all fucking dead.

 

[2minkey]

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

you'd the first one to cheer when they came for those folks, silly!

yeah wonderful quote. what it's supposed to mean... oh right be tuff and make a stand!!!


when you have something of your own to say, let us know.

 

[randomJACKASS]

Ugh, you do know that, by annual pay, our legislators are in the top 5%, nationally?

Here's an idea then. Let's take all the insurance folks, and all of congress and put them in exile? Sounds good to me!

 

[Gonz]

wow. um, yeah. great point. yawn.

Perhaps you need to enlighten yourself.

 

[spike]

But the question was "When 1233 allows the doc to initiate the subject, how can you consider that "optional?""

1. Nothing in the passages you quoted refers to the doc initiating the subject.

2. Doctors can already initiate the subject with our current system. And it's optional.

3. Doc says "we have end of life counseling available if you're interested". Patient says "Nah, I'm good. Thanks though." Still = optional.

Available but not required. Sort of the very definition of optional.

So the real question is how you can possibly consider it not optional?

 

[spike]

you'd the first one to cheer when they came for those folks, silly!

Yep.

 

[randomJACKASS]

you'd the first one to cheer when they came for those folks, silly!

yeah wonderful quote. what it's supposed to mean... oh right be tuff and make a stand!!!


when you have something of your own to say, let us know.

I doubt she'd be cheering, she would be among those coming for to be rid of undesireables!

Kill Babies!

 

[spike]

A few months ago, a recent board member for several private health corporations called Betsy McCaughey reportedly noticed a clause in the proposed healthcare legislation that would pay for old people to see a doctor and write a living will. They could stipulate when (if at all) they would like care to be withdrawn. It's totally voluntary. Many people want it: I know I wouldn't want to be kept alive for a few extra months if I was only going to be in agony and unable to speak. But McCaughey started the rumour that this was a form of euthanasia, where old people would be forced to agree to death. This was then stretched to include the disabled, like Palin's youngest child, who she claimed would have to "justify" his existence. It was flatly untrue – but the right had their talking-point, Palin declared the non-existent proposals "downright evil", and they were off.

It's been amazingly successful. Now, every conversation about healthcare has to begin with a Democrat explaining at great length that, no, they are not in favour of killing the elderly (yep) – while Republicans get away with defending a status quo that kills 18,000 people a year. The hypocrisy was startling: when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she encouraged citizens there to take out living wills. Almost all the Republicans leading the charge against "death panels" have voted for living wills in the past. But the lie has done its work: a confetti of distractions has been thrown up, and support is leaking away from the plan that would save lives.

These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".

This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

It's a shame, because there are some areas in which a conservative philosophy – reminding us of the limits of grand human schemes, and advising caution – could be a useful corrective. But that's not what these so-called "conservatives" are providing: instead, they are pumping up a hysterical fantasy that serves as a thin skin covering some raw economic interests and base prejudices.

For many of the people at the top of the party, this is merely cynical manipulation. One of Bush's former advisers, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as "nuts" as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe this stuff. They are being tricked into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured – and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn't laugh; I wanted to weep.

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" – which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...gion-and-the-triumph-of-unreason-1773994.html