The Health Of The Elderly

Mr. Timothy's earlier comment:

Seniors in America already have Government-run healthcare in the form of Medicare. As far as i've heard, they have not been forced to die off en masse. I don't see how you can define something like this as a death panel when you already have insurance companies deciding not to treat people who are going to die because it is unprofitable. Caring for someones health is not always going to be a profitable endeavour, so they cut them loose through loopholes in the contract. It's happened so many times. The main goal of a corporation is to maintain (or increase) profits for the shareholders, and I don't see how philosophically that can be reconciled with caring for sick people. Their profits rise as the price of premiums increase and the depth of coverage declines.

America already spends more money in healthcare per person than any other country, and because it goes to subsidising private companies and not actual care, millions aren't insured, many of the ones who are are underinsured, and everyone still has to pay a sizable sum to be insured. It's absurd.

Although I applaud Timothy's attempt to understand another nation's health care I insist that he is far from understanding our current health care situation.

Firstly, insurance companies are not lining their pockets. My insurance company is HMSA, and they are on the verge of bankruptcy and they are far from alone. If any company declares bankruptcy the shareholders tend to lose the vast amount of their investment. If they were simply scamming people out of free money, why would they be on the verge of bankruptcy? If the CEOs were overpaid they would cut their salaries. Americans pay the highest amount of money toward healthcare because we have the greatest health care quality in the world. Why do you think people with prostate cancer are twice as likely (40% vs. 80%) to die from prostate cancer in the UK than if you had it in the US?

The other reason we pay so much is because the trial lawyers (who funded Barrack Obama's campaign) are lining their pockets and providing basically no help to Americans other than driving the cost of malpractice insurance up and along with it the cost of health care. Tort reform would massively lower costs for average folks many times more than "prevention" and other hyped up nonsense. [1]

Second, the goal of any corporation is to earn money (as opposed charities, which 80% of Americans believe work better than government aid) and I expect every corporation I have invested money in to make every dollar they can. My question for you, Tim, is how can a company make money by denying coverage to paying customers when they can switch their providers? If the government is the only health care provider and they say, "No" then who can you turn to? Not the insurance companies if the government drives them out of business.

Third, the status of executions en masse of the elderly with medicare and medicaid is in question. Obamacare is already in place in Oregon and they're telling some cancer patients they will not be compensated for life-extending drugs. Right now the Democrats are targeting medicare and medicaid because the funding of these entitlement programs is getting in the way of financing Obamacare. So basically the Democrats want to tell grandma to take a painkiller and forgo the surgery so they can pay for universal healthcare without breaking the bank (it would have broken the bank anyway, but not as obviously). Barack Obama has already put this on the table, and I find it very difficult to look at this option as anything other than a "death panel". To say that it doesn't currently kill seniors en masse doesn't mean the government is not planning to do this (it is), and the government is already doing this to some extent.