Shot in the Dark

Skin In The Game

If  this particular Andrew Breitbart piecewere about nothing other than the hypocrisy of Hollywood eminimenta lecturing and scolding the rest of us about not paying more in taxes for healthcare – and their inability to carry on a coherent argument to support nationalized healthcare that doesn’t submerge itself immediately in ad homina  – it’s be totally worth the read.

But that’s only the beginning:

Vera Wescott was a single-mother who worked in a factory and sprinted home during her half-hour lunch break to check on her kids during the summers. She had no high-school diploma and late at night after making dinner, cleaning the house and putting the kids to bed, she worked and worked, until she’d earned it. She went on to have a nice quiet life, remarrying a man named John, and the two traveled together, eventually retiring.

So far, so good.

But as they aged, the two decided to return to Canada so that their health care would be provided for. In the summer of 2004, Vera slipped in her apartment and was taken to a Canadian hospital. While there, they discovered that she had mid-stage, but treatable colon cancer. But because the government of Canada has to “cut waste” (sound familiar?) to have enough money to treat people, Vera was told she would need to wait 6 months for treatment. She was sent to a Convalescent Home near Toronto where she died in September.

I was a pallbearer at Vera’s funeral. She was my grandmother.

In the United States of America, her cancer would have been treated, and the treatment would’ve begun on the day they discovered it regardless of her insurance or ability to pay.

[Film director] Adam McKay [of Ron Burgundy fame] has never had to lower his grandmother’s casket into the earth because the government, acting as the final arbiter of life and death, decided it was time for her to die so that they could worry about someone a little younger or a little more healthy. I don’t expect him to understand.

Anecdotal?

Yep.  Over and over and over again.

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Mitch Berg

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22 responses to “Skin In The Game”

  1. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    This is what it is really about. If you are 80 years old and need surgery to live another year so you can see your great-child born or a grandchild graduate from college, some bureaucrat is going to weigh the costs and benefits of paying for that surgery against, say, paying the salary of additional pediatrician at a clinic.
    The bureaucrat will be empowered to determine what is waste and what is not waste.
    Using the most rigorous scientific and actuarial principles, of course.

  2. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    Chances of survival (5 year) at that stage are about 70%, if I remember correctly. My mom had colon cancer at about that stage and made it four years.

  3. kel Avatar
    kel

    “some bureaucrat”
    lets call them by the name they currently travel under Case Manager or Case Management Team and they do currently condemn people to death or penury they just have a few more obstacles in their way that a government/public option would handily remove for them.

  4. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    Left unsaid: in the U.S., her treatment would have been paid for by Medicare, which you kooks oppose. Does anyone actually suppose that in your Ayn Rand fantasy world that retired lady would be better off having to pay out of pocket?

  5. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    “which you kooks oppose”
    Liar.
    “your Ayn Rand fantasy world”
    An idiot who can’t tell a conservative from a Libertarian.
    “better off having to pay out of pocket? ”
    Pay out of pocket or dead? What a moron you are, Mr. Clown.
    Don’t try to argue a point. You are not good at it.

  6. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    Left unsaid: in the U.S., her treatment would have been paid for by Medicare, which you kooks oppose.

    That ship sailed over 40 years ago, dude.

  7. Right Avatar
    Right

    AC, I’m not opposed to Medicare but it’s been pretty much broken since it was created. It was a bad idea to begin with, but the horse is out of the barn.

    What I am opposed to is an expansion of Medicare/Medicaid, which is exactly what ObamaCare is intended to do.

  8. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    Isn’t it that kooky Obama guy who wants to cut $500 billion out of Medicare? Why yes, it is.
    Thank Dailey he’s working hard to line the pockets of his Chicago cronies by flying to Denmark. Those Olympics will look really good on his resume.

  9. Badda Avatar
    Badda

    That was a piece not by Breitbart, but at Breitbart’s site Big Hollywood, written by Michael Wilson… the documentarian who made the funny and entertaining “Michael Moore Hates America”.

  10. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    AC, if you want to bring medicare into it, you’re going to need to deal with the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are the main forces driving the explosion of health care costs. Econ 101 will tell you what happens when you don’t tell the buyer what the product actually costs–demand and costs will explode.

    So yes, I favor eliminating Medicare over time, especially in light of its tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. I also favor it in light of the fact that many people might just avoid diseases like colon cancer if they knew that paying for its treatment could gut their estate.

    The end of the matter is that with one system, you have exploding costs. With the other, you have imploding care. Maybe let people see the costs of their own care and see what happens?

  11. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    Kermit wins the Best Comment Of The Day ribbon for that one. Bravo!

    Thank Daley indeed. HAH!

  12. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    OK, bubbasan, just don’t pretend you’re in favor of expanding access to care. Cause you’re not. It’s ridiculously dishonest, even for wingnuts, to be all “look at this poor old lady who couldn’t get healthcare!” Cause you don’t actually care.

  13. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    Actually, AC, it’s you who supports less care for people. Government care can only work by “tweaking” the supply and demand curves, and that always results in fewer people getting the products they need.

    It’s Econ 101, AC. Don’t they teach in New Yawk? The only reason for government care is to change who gets care, because it cannot increase the number of people getting the care they need.

  14. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    Is it really bubbasan? Maybe give Angryclown a cite to the introductory economics text that actually says that. Or maybe you’re just repeating stuff you hear from your wingnut pals and don’t actually have the first idea what you’re bleating about.

    Angryclown’s money is on the latter.

  15. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    Economics in one lesson, Hazlitt. You lose.

  16. kel Avatar
    kel

    ac
    http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/economics/supplyanddemand1.htm

  17. Troy Avatar
    Troy

    angryclown said:

    “don’t pretend you’re in favor of expanding access to care”
    “Cause you’re not”
    “Cause you don’t actually care”

    and then:

    “maybe you’re just repeating stuff you hear … and don’t actually have the first idea what you’re bleating about”

    First angryclown does the behavior, then he describes it.

  18. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    bubbasan, Obammy will pay for his plan by eliminating Fraud and Waste. That’s how politicians always pay for their grandiose schemes. After all these years it’s hard to believe that there is any Fraud and Waste left to cut, but if there is anyone who know how to find it, it’s a Democrat dominated House and Senate. They’ve got the government running so lean I’m surprised they need my tax dollars at all.

  19. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    Kel, nice try, but that doesn’t get you there.

  20. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    AC, actually it does get you there. Fix the supply or demand curve at a certain point, and you are guaranteed to get a shortage or surplus of a commodity. If in doubt, look up “rent control in New York City.”

    Or San Francisco, or anywhere else it’s practiced.

  21. kel Avatar
    kel

    ok ac I see that I really have to spell it out for you

    http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/economics/supplyanddemand2.htm

  22. jpmn Avatar
    jpmn

    Name that politician… “Show me the dead Canadians.”

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