Sarah Palin Jumps the SharkFollow

I hope she's in it next time too. God, I hope she gets the republican nomination.

Democrats hope, beg, and pray that the Republicans will nominate Sara. Also.

There is no fifth "Democrats want Palin to be the republican candidate too" joke.

Are you insinuating that her baby is retarded? That's not very nice you know. I don't know how you could be so heartless as to call that beautiful child "retarded."

So if you think it doesn't exist, you wont bother to look for it? Look specifically at the "Complete Lives System", which is advocated in the paper. It very clearly advocates a mechanism whereby some authority determines who receives care based not on need, but on the amount of life gained and the value of said life. So an adolescent or young adult is intrinsically more valuable to the state/society than an infant or the elderly.

Palin's interpretation is pretty spot on.

And in case you think that since this was a collaboration, it can't be Emanuel's ideas on how the government should manage health care resources, here's one he wrote on his own

In that article, he's arguing that government should provide "basic" medical care (as opposed to "discretionary" care). In his view, basic medical care should be defined entirely by the degree to which the person participates and contributes to society (or can/may do so). He gives specific examples of care that should not be "basic": Dementia in the old, and learning disabilities in the young (both presumably also moderated by the cost of the treatment and likelihood of resumed social productivity/participation).


So yeah. She didn't invent this. These are the ideas of the folks who will have significant influence on the shape of publicly funded health care. So maybe we ought to think about whether we agree before giving them the authority and power to maybe do something like this? Ultimately, I don't see the harm it at least pointing this out...

No.

The Complete Lives System is a suggested method for the distribution of pharmaceuticals in pandemic situations. Literally, we have 10,000 people with Zamtosis and we only have 1,000 zamtosis vaccines on hand, who gets them? The pdf specifically says "complete lives system is not appropriate for general distribution of health care resources."

Palin is suggesting that the government would choose not to provide health care to individuals on the basis that they aren't worth it. The complete lives system is solely limited to situations where the government cannot provide care to all individuals. It's a system for allocation not qualification. That is a huge difference.

Edited, Aug 10th 2009 9:00pm by Allegory

No. That's just one of the examples. Others included in the first paragraph were transplant organs and beds in intensive care units.



No. You just quoted from the "objections" to the Complete Lives System. That's one of the objections people opposed to it have. The papers attempts to debunk this position, not agree with it.

The writers are advocating the Complete Life System. That means that they either disagree with the objections, or they don't think the objections outweigh the benefits.

The relevant quote is the following:




They don't say it's a bad idea, but rather it's "premature". They must "first" reduce waste and increase spending. Um... That somewhat implies an intent to implement this at some point after doing that other stuff, right?

The article is about "scarcity" of medical resources. So sure. If we assume that a health care system will always have sufficient medical resources for everyone, then this isn't a problem. You could say that this would be limited to emergencies and massive disasters. We all understand and accept that doctors may make difficult choices when deciding who to save in situations like that. But this paper very clearly advocates this system of decision making for non-emergency type situations.

Any scarcity would presumably fall under this heading. So. When there are more patients who need a given test than there are doctors, time, or equipment to administer it, this would be their recommendation as to how to determine who gets it. Which is *exactly* what Palin was talking about. This is doubly relevant given that most of the proposed health care bills include taking funds away from medicare in order to make them available to other, younger people, who are currently uninsured. It doesn't take a genius to see that the principles of the "Complete Lives System" are at work already. And certainly, once the funds are shifted around there *will* be a shortage of resources for the very people Emanuel seems to believe aren't important enough to require the same level of care as everyone else.

Read the section under objections where they dismiss concerns about ageism. It's pretty scary stuff really. Basically, it's not really discrimination to provide resources to younger people over older people, because the older people were younger (and thus had priority then) at one point too. Which is kinda funny, since it's a direct reversal of the concept of medicare, which is that we should all pay into the system to provide medical care to the elderly because we're all going to be old and need it some day (unless we die along the way of course).



Lol! We don't have sufficient resources to provide all care to all individuals NOW. That's what you're not getting. While Emanuel and his co-writer talk about reducing waste and increasing spending "first", the reality is that we'll start out with a system in which we are not spending enough. We're there right now. Even assuming we had enough doctors, nurses, beds, shots, and equipment to fulfill all the medical needs of all the people in the country, it's unlikely we could get the public to agree to foot the bill to actually pay for everything for everybody (which was the subject of his other paper if you bothered to read it). Thus, the rationing component (their "complete lives system") would almost certainly be implemented, not after eliminating waste and massively increasing spending, but as a consequence of not eliminating waste or massively increasing spending. It would be the method by which limited funds, people, and material in the health care system would be allocated.


How do you not see this? Scarcity doesn't just occur in a disaster or emergency. It happens all the time. There is never a sufficient quantity of all the things we want. Ever. Thus, rules to manage scarcity will be applied all the time. That's why this is so disturbing.

Yes you do, you're just doing an unbelievably horrible job of spending it efficiently.

This sounds exactly like the current system, only with "basic medical care" no longer being an empty set for everyone.

Death Panel Overlord Johnny Isakson (R-Gehanna) gave an interview to the Washington Post saying that Palin was off her nut.

In the same way that it's a good thing that when combat helmets became standard issue gear for infantry divisions, the rate of head injury (and associated medical costs) tripled.