It is not a tumor!

[Rookie120 0]

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HOW 'LIBERAL' CARE WOULD KILL TED
By ROBERT M. GOLDBERG

Kennedy: Getting care denied by 'liberal' health regimes.
June 5, 2008 -- IRONICALLY enough, the dangers of the lib eral health-care agenda are being made clear by the care that a liberal icon, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has received since his brain seizure last month.

One day after an MRI detected a tumor, Kennedy was quickly diagnosed with a malignant glioma - a rare and often-fatal form of brain cancer. Less than two weeks later, his tumor was being removed by one of the world's experts in brain cancer at Duke Univeristy Medical Center. He'll follow up with chemo and radiation therapy tailored to the genetic makeup of his cancer to keep the cancer from spreading.

He'll likely take Avastin, a drug that in experiments with brain cancer has extended survival by months. A new cancer vaccine being developed in partnership with Pfizer could extend his life by six years.

Of course, with his wealth and power, Kennedy would get good treatment anywhere. But the same care is available to every American.

Not so - if we make the health "reforms" called for by Kennedy and other liberals.

Filmmaker Michael Moore gives their standard line when he says: "There are problems in all health-care systems, but at least Europeans and Canadians have a health-care system that covers everyone."

Problem is, governments that promise to "cover everyone" always wind up cutting corners simply to save money. People with Kennedy's condition are dying or dead as a result.

Consider Jennifer Bell of Norwich, England. In 2006, the 22-year-old complained of headaches for months - but Britain's National Health Service made her wait a year to see a neurologist.

Then she had to wait more than three months before should could get what the NHS decided was only a "relatively urgent" MRI scan. Three days before the MRI appointment, she died.

Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.

Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn't worth the money - and denied coverage for it.

Barack Obama - and other Democrats - have been pushing a Senate bill to set up a similar US "review board" for Medicare and any future government health-care plan.

After denying this treatment completely for seven years, the NICE (did whoever named it intend the irony?) relented - partly. Even today, only a handful of Brits with brain tumors can get Temodar.

And if you want to pay for Temodar out of your own pocket, the British system forces you to pay for all of your cancer care - about $30,000 a month.

Things are no different in Canada, where the wait for an MRI (once you finally get a referral) has grown to 10 weeks. For Canadians relying on their government health care, the average wait time from diagnosis of cancer to surgery is beyond the guideline set by both the US and European societies for surgical oncology.

And HealthCanada, the government system, similar refuses to pay for treatments that are often covered in America.

Chad Curley, a 37-year-old auto worker from Windsor, Ontario, had a brain tumor like Kennedy's but can't have surgery because his is too large to be operable.

His tumor didn't respond to Temodar and the same doctors now treating Sen. Kennedy told him and his wife that the Avastin combination could stop his tumor from growing and add months to his life. But HealthCanada wouldn't pay to use Avastin to treat his tumor.

Chad's family and friends scraped together the $5,000 for the first round of treatment in mid-November; they later saw Chad's left-side paralysis start to subside. But the money ran out - and he died on Feb. 21.

In pushing for government-run health care, liberals are pushing for a system where only the Ted Kennedys of the world can get cutting-edge - and life-saving - care.

I wonder what kind of care I would get under Obama's health plan. My health care is the last thing I want the govt to be involved with. Everything they stick their hands in turns to shit. Stay out of my life is the best thing they can do.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[kelpdiver 2]

yet in such a [vaguely described] Obama plan, if you ever had a minor cancer before, you'd still be able to obtain health insurance. In the current model, once you've been blacklisted, if you ever lose access to an employee group health plan (fired, laid off, change jobs, etc), you're fucked forever.

So you might be worse off if you're in the small subset getting critical illnessness like this, but you might gain substantially if you're in the millions with more treatable, but repeatable illnesses like skin cancer.

[lawrocket 3]

I might be able to get insurance. But I might not. Get treated.

So what's the point?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

> I might be able to get insurance. But I might not. Get treated.
> So what's the point?

No point at all. If you can afford to "get treated" no matter what, then basically none of this applies to you.

[kallend 2,150]

What a stupid article. Effectively it's saying that being poor gives you worse healthcare than being rich (well, duh!), disguised to scare uncritical readers into thinking something about the healthcare system is reponsible.

Someone with Kennedy's money will get good healthcare anywhere. Someone indigent will get better care in Canada than in the USA.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rehmwa 2]

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>No point at all. If you can afford to "get treated" no matter what, then basically none of this applies to you.

I'd wonder how many people would lose the ability to independently afford that treatment after the plan kicks off - these are the people that lose more than anyone else - essentially, they are pushed from the category of 'doing fine and reasonably well off' into the category of 'relying on the government for one other thing'.

would it be any family that makes between $40K and $100K? between $30k and $150K

I wonder.....

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[pirana 0]

Some good thoughts in this thread, and a bit of hyperbolic BS.

Care needs to be guaranteed, employment status needs to be removed from the equation, and everybody gets to make a choice about what they want based on what they can afford.

Got no money? Then you get to choose between some no-out-of-pocket options. Nothing glitzy, but good basic coverage.

Incentives for everybody for preventive care, disease management, healthy choices, etc.

Everybody in this business worth their weight in salt knows exactly what it would take to not only fix the things that are broken, but to create the ultimately caring yet responsible system. Problem is some of those on the inside are greedy fucks; and most of those on the outside that rely on the current order are more afraid of a future they don't know than the present they don't trust.

We are already spending more money than needs to be spent. We could spend less than we do today, and get much better results; but it would mean change on a level that scares many of the current vested parties.

The problem is that the current system is inefficient and getting worse instead of better. The dilemma is the politics and protectionism. The solution could be worked out by a pack of Cub Scouts (given a little time to study the situation). The only real question is whether or not the system will implode before the stubborn stakeholders let go of their little fiefs.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[rehmwa 2]

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and a bit of hyperbolic BS

I'm here to serve

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[lawrocket 3]

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Someone with Kennedy's money will get good healthcare anywhere.

Not in Canada.

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Someone indigent will get better care in Canada than in the USA.

Not necessarily.

Look - every healthcare system has some form of rationing built into it. Any socialist system is rationed on the basis of what it can afford. There is simply no way to supply superior health care to everybody equally upon demand and inexpensively.

So, in socialist systems everybody gets the same treatment, however good or bad, and you can't opt out of it. Like in Canada, where people go to the US for lifesaving treatment that is unavailable to them.

In the US, it is rationed by price. Which is, if you think about it, kind of a good way of doing it. I call it the "personal importance" thing. For example, there are plenty of people out there who have a medical issue that they'd like to get treated. "I don't have the money to get this thing treated," i.e., "This dang mole is looking funky. But I'm not insured, and that doctor will cost me at least a couple of hundred buck to get rid of it and biopsy. Screw it. I can't afford that." They'll suck it up because it's not worth spending their money to fix themselves. Especially if it means givign up things like skydiving, beer, etc.

This means that whatever problem they are having is not worth it to them to fix it. Not every time, but MOST every time, they make the decision to do so on the basis of what they believe is the utility of doing so.

The problem, to them, is not worth $1,000. It's like the person who bashes in a fender. It'll cost $1,500.00 to fix. That's not something that he'll use the money to fix.

Ah - but what if they can get someone ELSE to pay for it? If the insurance covers that fender, they'll take it.

Or, more appropriately, if the government says, "We'll take care of that mole for you" then the person will, of course, find that to be acceptable.

What happens, in turn, is what we've seen with the price of health care. Obviously, increased use of a finite resource increases its cost. The "free" healthcare (which actually can at a pretty hefty price) now comes in at an even higher price.

The payor now has the choice: increase the funding to make the services more available to everyone? That's difficult to do, since a goal is to keep the healthcare affordable.

Or, do you maintain funding but ration the care? As seen in every socialist system, the care gets rationed. Thus, the person who now wants to get that mole taken care of for "free" ends up getting it not taken care of for "free." Of course, he is no worse off, with the exception that he is paying for it now, whereas he wasn't paying for it before.

And we are also faced with a situation where a person who would have gotten that mole taken care of immediately (it was worth it to him) is now denied the choice as a consumer to fix his problem on terms he desires.

Thus, there are always significant problems.

The story of Ted kennedy getting the best treatment is something to certainly look upon with some note. The healthcare system, if it is "fixed" by elected leaders, would merely mean "fixing the game" to determine the winners and losers.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[mnealtx 0]

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Someone indigent will get better care in Canada than in the USA.

Assuming they live long enough to get the advanced treatment (as shown above).

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[lawrocket 3]

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Care needs to be guaranteed, employment status needs to be removed from the equation, and everybody gets to make a choice about what they want based on what they can afford.

These are the problems. "What level of care is guaranteed?"

The policy-makers will have to make the choice of no more than two of these three factors:
1) Inexpensive;
2) High quality;
3) Availability.

You can have high quality care available on demand, but that is expensive.

You can have inexpensive care available on demand, but it will be poor quality.

Or, you can have inexpensive care that it high quality, in which case it will be rationed.

Those are the choices.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[mnealtx 0]

I invite everyone to visit The Munchkin Wrangler to find out the first-hand effect of socialized medicine from someone who lived under that system for 20-some years.

Money quote:

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First of all, socialized medicine, like everything “free” doled out by the government, is enormously expensive. The government does not generate money out of thin air; they have to confiscate every dollar (or euro) they spend from the paychecks of the working population. Like any government program, the services-per-dollar ratio in public health care is extremely inefficient, since there are not only doctors to be paid, but also the legions of government bureaucrats who are in charge of parceling out that “free” health care. As a result, public heath care systems are always short on cash, no matter where you look.

Because of this, the quality of public health care is invariably inferior to that of the private sector. The government doles out what’s available, and since there’s always more demand than supply, the bureaucrats make decisions about the doctors you can see, the medications you can take, and the money your doctor is allowed to charge the system for his or her services. If you think the personification of evil is the organ recipient who dies because they were not high enough on the organ waiting list, and you think that socialized medicine would fix such ills, you have a surprise coming your way. In socialized-medicine countries like Germany or Great Britain, you’ll be shocked to find waiting lists for seeing the doctor.

So...tell me AGAIN why everyone that can do it comes to the States for medical treatment, instead of staying in Britain/Canada/etc?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[pirana 0]

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Care needs to be guaranteed, employment status needs to be removed from the equation, and everybody gets to make a choice about what they want based on what they can afford.

These are the problems. "What level of care is guaranteed?"

The policy-makers will have to make the choice of no more than two of these three factors:
1) Inexpensive;
2) High quality;
3) Availability.

You can have high quality care available on demand, but that is expensive.

You can have inexpensive care available on demand, but it will be poor quality.

Or, you can have inexpensive care that it high quality, in which case it will be rationed.

Those are the choices.

It will never be inexpensive - - at least not by most people's standards.

What should be sought is a reasonable balance, an avoidance of extremes. That is the role market forces will play, and the reason to avoid just going to a government-sponsored all-inclusive everything-for-everybody solution.

Good post earlier about what happens when it is "free." As Peter O'Rourke said, "If you think it's expensive now, wait until it is free."

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley