Coyote Blog

4 Comments

1. Victor Morris:

   We'll either need to dramatically increase the amount of health care available overall, decrease the average health care received of individuals, or come up with a completely new structure for development, delivery and payment for health care.

   Which way(s) is/are likely?

   July 27, 2009, 10:25 am

2. Evil Red Scandi:

   1) I'd imagine that the percentage of medical care these people see out of the ER is pretty damned close to zero.

   2) We're already paying for that (however indirectly) anyway.

   3) These people make little or no taxable income.

   ... so I don't see it as really making much of a difference.

   Socialized medicine isn't as new as we'd think.

   Maybe as a "cost savings measure" we could create a "Darwin committee" that looks at the medical cases of indigent, self-destructive people and says "screw it, we're not paying for you anymore."

   Yeah, yeah, I can dream...

   July 27, 2009, 11:13 am

3. Tim:

   Would that Darwin Committee look anything like the mandatory end-of-life "discussion" that would be mandated for Medicare recipients under the proposed programs?

   July 27, 2009, 12:57 pm

4. Evil Red Scandi:

   @Tim: Only if they're indigent and self-destructive.

   Frankly, I don't get this whole "end-of-life" debate. Either you have the desire and the money to spend squeezing every last uncomfortable picosecond out of life or you don't. It only becomes an issue if you abdicate responsibility for your medical care to others. This is simply like everything else in the world - if you hand it off to others, you get what they feel like giving you. If you don't want other people to have this power, then don't give it to them (yes, this means you'll have to step up to the plate). This isn't freaking rocket science.

   July 27, 2009, 3:36 pm