We are being told that Obama’s health-care plan will evoke “death panels;” people will decide who can live and who must die. I say these panels are unnecessary; the decision of who lives and who dies is already in the current health-care plan!
1. Under the current system, this scene is played out every day: A person is called into a hospital conference room to meet with a hospital administrator; there they are told a family member’s insurance policy will not cover any extended stay in the intensive-care unit. The hospital administrator tells them that they need to make some decisions, like whether their family member should be released and sent home to die, or if they want to pay out of pocket to keep the family member in the ICU. When asked how much that would cost, they are given a number so impossibly large that they realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for them. Relationships do not matter, the bank account and the insurance policy have made that decision for them — unless, of course, they are extremely wealthy and can afford the additional cost.
2. An investigation by the Hearst Corp. says an estimated 200,000 Americans will die this year from preventable medical errors and hospital infections. Hearst dubbed its report, “Dead by Mistake.”
See, under today’s system “death panels” are unnecessary. The extreme high cost of medical services, what insurance policies will pay for a given service and medical errors already serve as an adjunct death panel.
Wade Boyd
Everett
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