They Really Do Want to Kill Us

[Rickson]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...html#pagebreak

Last week, a new initiative called Choosing Wisely got a lot of positive attention for gathering nine medical specialty groups and coming up with 45 procedures that even doctors think doctors shouldn’t do. But a new study on end-of-life care suggests that actually implementing those recommendations will be difficult.
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.“Physicians are not perfect but we do have a lot of experience with death,” says Morden. “We should be better judges of when things are futile. And our job, then, is to be informing patients.”

Yikes! I guess this is one way to rid the country off all those pesky pension and SS obligations...

This central planning and gov't takeover is all about getting you into the coffins quicker, I'm going long pine boxes and shorting hover-rounds/med alert monitors.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

There are times when extending a persons life does nothing but extend suffering.
I think doctors should try to identify and communicate this to people as part of the 'do no harm' section of the Hippocratic oath. Forget all of the societal and financial arguments, sometimes the pain of living in a failing body becomes a tragedy all on its own.

[2pac Shakur]

Yea - so much of our healthcare spending is done when the end is inevitable.
That being said, I don't want the damn gummint having ANYTHING to do with this decision.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

Originally Posted by 2pac Shakur

Yea - so much of our healthcare spending is done when the end is inevitable.
That being said, I don't want the damn gummint having ANYTHING to do with this decision.

^2

[Egghead]

Originally Posted by 2pac Shakur

Yea - so much of our healthcare spending is done when the end is inevitable.
That being said, I don't want the damn gummint having ANYTHING to do with this decision.

But how would you feel if the government were to use the list of 45 procedures which the docs agreed was never worth doing, and removed those from the list of covered procedures under Medicare?

Would it change your opinion if it were found that deeming these services non-covered would produce hundreds of billions in savings?

[erosewater]

and if you could still get them by paying out of pocket?

[Standtall]

Originally Posted by erosewater

and if you could still get them by paying out of pocket?

Or buy insurance to cover them privately?

[satogaeru]

The report doesn't say the procedures aren't worth doing. It outlines situations where they are worth doing and recommends they not be done in other situations. Is this not a reasonable criterion for insurance coverage as well?

[2pac Shakur]

Originally Posted by Egghead

But how would you feel if the government were to use the list of 45 procedures which the docs agreed was never worth doing, and removed those from the list of covered procedures under Medicare?

Would it change your opinion if it were found that deeming these services non-covered would produce hundreds of billions in savings?

Sounds great in theory, but that's not what would happen.
The procedures that provide the least benefit to (D) and (R) political donors would be removed.