OT: Hurricanes Lounge XLVI: Really, It's All About Beer and Bojangles

[MinJaBen]

You forgot using legs as a scratching post

My couches wish that were true...

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

This is one of the fundamental problems with rationing any scarce resource. The problem is not the rationing, but the motivations and the mechanisms.

Does everyone remember the "death panels"? It was a very compelling political point, because it had a kernel of truth. In any collectivized healthcare system with finite resources, someone has to decide who gets care and who doesn't.

Exactly this. I go back to when my mother passed away in 2000. She was visiting and started having problems that we thought was a stroke, but when they brought her in, they found she had a very advanced, aggressive brain tumor. They told us she has 6 months to live. The fighter that she was, she said she was going to do everything in her power to see her grandchildren grow older, so she started the treatments. Chemo, radiation and a whole host of other specialized treatments.

6 months later, she passed away. She was never a smoker, never a drinker, walked 5-6 miles a day, played golf, and ate a very healthy diet (because of my Dad's heart attack). Just unlucky.

I'm sure if someone in charge of rationing had told us that it was a lost cause and they wouldn't provide treatment, we'd have been very upset, but in hindsight, it was not money well spent as callous as that is to say.

The current problem is that the death panels are now in the hands of a private industry with perverse incentives.

Amen.

 

[cptjeff]

This is one of the fundamental problems with rationing any scarce resource. The problem is not the rationing, but the motivations and the mechanisms.

Does everyone remember the "death panels"? It was a very compelling political point, because it had a kernel of truth. In any collectivized healthcare system with finite resources, someone has to decide who gets care and who doesn't.

The current problem is that the death panels are now in the hands of a private industry with perverse incentives.

That's not what the death panels were. The "death panels" in the ACA were, in fact, an expert panel to create a reimbursement model for doctors discussing end of life care with patients and their families. DNRs, whether to take brain dead grandma off a ventilator, aggressive and painful cancer treatment that might only extend your life for a few months versus palliative care that will make you feel comfortable during your final months, etc.

Those are lengthy and difficult conversations and doctors are entirely unreimbursed for them. There was no rationing of care at all, it was just a way to pay doctors for spending hours of their time helping patients make those decisions. And thanks to the 'death panels' horseshit, that got taken out of the bill and they're still not reimbursed for that.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

That's not what the death panels were. The "death panels" in the ACA were, in fact, an expert panel to create a reimbursement model for doctors discussing end of life care with patients and their families. DNRs, whether to take brain dead grandma off a ventilator, aggressive and painful cancer treatment that might only extend your life for a few months versus palliative care that will make you feel comfortable during your final months, etc.

Those are lengthy and difficult conversations and doctors are entirely unreimbursed for them. There was no rationing of care at all, it was just a way to pay doctors for spending hours of their time helping patients make those decisions. And thanks to the 'death panels' horseshit, that got taken out of the bill and they're still not reimbursed for that.

Ahhh, interesting! I don't think I ever knew that.

But if anything, the complicated truth serves to reinforce the simple point. Sticky ideas like "a panel that decides who lives and who dies" are scary when the government runs them, even with oversight, and ignored as business as usual when corporations run them, entirely without oversight.

 

[Unsustainable]

 

[hblueridgegal]

Yuck. I just can't see this delivering a natty...

Who knew?

 

[cptjeff]

The rumor was that part of it was a guarantee that Steve Belichick would be his successor. I think that's a big draw for him going to the college ranks- he knew he could find a school that would guarantee him the opportunity to groom his son into a head coach.

 

[MrazeksVengeance]

I hate to break it to you, but furries have been around long before Animal Crossing. Even long before the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube. You can blame Disney for that, for the most part.

Look at medieval tapestries. Look at Greek Mythos.

Disney merely cultivated seeds that WERE ALREADY PRESENT.

 

[MrazeksVengeance]

That's not what the death panels were. The "death panels" in the ACA were, in fact, an expert panel to create a reimbursement model for doctors discussing end of life care with patients and their families. DNRs, whether to take brain dead grandma off a ventilator, aggressive and painful cancer treatment that might only extend your life for a few months versus palliative care that will make you feel comfortable during your final months, etc.

Those are lengthy and difficult conversations and doctors are entirely unreimbursed for them. There was no rationing of care at all, it was just a way to pay doctors for spending hours of their time helping patients make those decisions. And thanks to the 'death panels' horseshit, that got taken out of the bill and they're still not reimbursed for that.

This makes me… just… sad.

Delivering this kind of news, guiding the patient through it… guiding their family.

This ain’t fun and games.

Sometimes you spend a work week and your idea of win is fixing a terminally ill patient enough so they can die home surrounded by family and without pain, shortness of breath etc.