Yes, we need “death panels”
This morning, my colleague Jay Bookman had a very thoughtful post on why rationing health care — “death panels,” if you will — is quite necessary. I wrote on a similar subject in my Sunday column.
If we keeping spending our health care dollars disproportionately on the elderly, we will have little left to spend on children. That makes for an upside-down society that cannot thrive for long.
I happen to think the entire column is worth reading, but if your time (and patience) are short, focus on the grafs in which my brother, a Boston kidney doc, talks about dialysis for the elderly who are already dying:
If resources are limited (and they are), the nation needs to make choices – some more painful than others. My brother, Kevin, a Boston physician who treats kidney disease, talks about the Medicare program that pays for dialysis for anyone with failing kidneys — including the terminally ill. Started in the 1970s to help adults still in the workforce, its fastest-growing population is now over 65, he said. And it costs tens of billions a year.
“It may not be the best use of resources for the frail and infirm elderly, and it also forces many elderly patients to spend their last days in the hospital, rather than at home,” a more comfortable setting, Kevin told me.
Yet, many patients, even octogenarians who don’t expect to recover, find it difficult to turn down the treatment. “And physicians resist having a conversation with patients that recommends they forego dialysis because it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have. It’s easier just to recommend the treatment,” he said.
But those are exactly the adult conversations we ought to be having.
Those will undoubtedly be very painful conversations. But we simply don’t have the money to spend to prolong the life of a terminally ill 87-year-old for a few weeks.
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234 comments Add your comment
EJ Moosa
April 21st, 2011
8:01 am
Unhappy with the “unfairness” of people pursuing their own health care, you have now created a system that forces everyone into the same program.
And because you control the doctors with your plan as well, the government now gets to choose who is worth to receive services and who is not.
Freedom is Control must be the new mantra.
Orwell would be pleased.
But you should choose to call them Life Panels. After all the death of one you no longer desire insures the life of the ones you prefer, right?
The Eugenics crowd of the 1930’s would be so proud of you. It took you 80 years to embrace their beliefs, but you are there.
Not Blind
April 21st, 2011
8:02 am
Dang, I completely forgot about the mentally ill !!!
Dave
April 21st, 2011
8:03 am
Keep in mind that there are many people, myself included, who have strong beliefs against anything that could be considered suicide. If I were terminally ill or even very sick, I cannot choose the option that would cause me to die earlier since that is akin to suicide. So if the state were to make that decision for me, it would then no longer be suicide.
Really?
April 21st, 2011
8:03 am
If we need end of life death panels, how about beginning of life death panels too? Maybe forced abortions if the cost of the child might be “too” great? Maybe we shoudl withdraw care from chidlren whose life long medical expenses are seen by the panel as too high? Where might Ms. Tucker’s horrific vision end?
Eventually, what happens if the family does not go along with the death panel’s “recommended solution”.
Do people have more value than just the dollars and cents that Tucker wants to spend somewhere else?
4 Score
April 21st, 2011
8:06 am
as pointed out, I think that the concern is who will be making the decesion. The patient and family or an unknown beaureacrat? What criteria do you set, how do you determine value of life? Would Steve Hawkins life had been cut short. How about the evil wealthy who can afford it? hmmmm
Not Blind
April 21st, 2011
8:08 am
Hey, how about them badly wounded soldiers ??? Heck yeah, lets save money. We might could then afford the entitlements to the healthy bums and illegal aliens.
Not Blind
April 21st, 2011
8:11 am
Lawyers would never let it happen. They get a court order to review the case and the treatment must be maintained while the case wends it’s way through the courts. The person dies in the mean time but the medicos got their cut and the lawyers now get some too.
AT
April 21st, 2011
8:12 am
Where was all this honesty back when gov’t healthcare was being “sold” to us? Good grief. Opponents were lambasted for even suggesting that death panels existed in the bill, or that they existed by default from such a bill. Now the same accusers, Bookman and Tucker included, are saying, basically, that the opponents are right!
The evil of death panels is not that people die, that is going to happen, it happens to all of us. The evil is that some bureaucrat will decide that for you. It won’t matter if you have more money than Barack Obama, you won’t be allowed to get your dialysis. “We’ve decided that someone else needs to use the machine more than you.” Someone that the gov’t deciders choose.
buck@gon
April 21st, 2011
8:15 am
Oh yes!!
Death Panels!
Run on that for 2012. I dare you!
Dave
April 21st, 2011
8:20 am
its not like we don’t already have death panels in health care. There is one for every health insurance company.
PrivatizeHealthcare
April 21st, 2011
8:25 am
Cynthia, your brother’s comments completely underscore why government should NOT be involved in healthcare at all – he’s talking about a Medicare program. The health care system must be changed, and the only way to fix it is to get rid of government involvement at all, as well as to stop tying it to jobs. I totally agree with Clark Howard who said the way to fix it is to privatize it – make it the individual’s responsibility to purchase, and competition will set the price and keep it low. How many more examples of the government messing things up (i.e. your brother’s story above) do Democrats need to realize big government is not only inefficient and cost ineffective, but it is destroying our country!
khc
April 21st, 2011
8:29 am
seems like a lot of folks are really scared of the life’s they’ve led
The Times They Are a Changin'
April 21st, 2011
8:33 am
20+ years ago Gov. Lamb of Colorado famously declared that old people have a duty/responsibility to die (villified by many, of course) as country was spending 2% of GDP on keeping people alive in the last six months of their lives (if true today, that is about $300-400 billion per year). Most of that would fall in Medicare and Medicaid (mainly Medicare, as one presumes that most people who die are elderly).
Gravity does have a way of continuing to operate…and finally it weighs down so much on liberals that they finally get hit in the head by it (trillions and trillions in debt later). At least liberals are now ready to have the conversation while only the bow of the Titanic is under water…..
Frank
April 21st, 2011
8:34 am
Every day I pray to “The Panel of One”. The “Great I Am” blessed us with a 100% mortality rate. We all simply have to get out o’ the way of the following generations.
‘Difficult for us mortals to comprehend. But the beauty is that we can live forever without understanding.
Chris Matthews
April 21st, 2011
8:37 am
You will stand before God one day and answer for your death panels and your abortins killings!
jconservative
April 21st, 2011
8:44 am
Notice that the dialysis that is the topic is a government program. Private insurers long ago refused to cover anyone requiring dialysis.
The private insurers imposed their own brand of death panels and the American people accepted it.
But if the government wants to do death panels it is a horror.
That makes no logical sense to me.
If death panels are a horror they are a horror regardless of who is calling the shot.
But we all know the answer. Private industry use of lobbyists. The lobbyist have convinced the American people it is OK for “Joe’s Insurance Company” to let people die but it is not OK for Big Government to let people die.
Literally, only in America.
T-Town
April 21st, 2011
8:49 am
I do not fear death, I fear life as a vegetable. Death is inevitable, it should be with dignity no matter what your believes are. Living wills and ones wishes should be made well known.
Gator Joe
April 21st, 2011
8:52 am
Cynthia,
The only thing the health care “insurance” industry insures is their profits and diminishing care for their policy holders. Imagine spending all we are spending on wars and wastefull defense spending on the health and well-being of our citizens.
Tech Man
April 21st, 2011
8:55 am
jconservative
April 21st, 2011
8:44 am
Boo Hoo those private firms hiring lobbyists….
Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image….
When local governments want money from the state or federal government, they often hire lobbyists with political connections, usually former elected…
The school board voted 7-2 on Tuesday to hire the federal lobbying firm for a one-year, $60000 contract….
Montgomery County officials plan to hire a federal lobbyist to draw more government agencies to the county and help those already operating here to expand…..
Dan Clark, the former chief lobbyist for the Indiana State Teachers Association, has been named executive director of the Indiana Education …
dw
April 21st, 2011
9:01 am
miss cynthia,
you are so full of hypocracy. i can recall not long ago, that “…wouldn’t pull the plug on grandma…” to suit your garbage for the day (your love of everything Obama). now your onboard for the opposite.
Tech Man
April 21st, 2011
9:02 am
CT – A woman that draws a line in the sand and stands on the bedrock of unwavering principles.
Hard to do when standing on the shifting sands of Democratic trade winds.
German
April 21st, 2011
9:13 am
These liberals have no sense of decency. They kill them in the womb and they kill them when they deem them useless. God help them!
Call it like it is
April 21st, 2011
9:14 am
Interesting…..Hmm So who determines when enough is enough. I guess if Cindy Lou was in charges we wouldnt have Lance Armstrong and others who fought cancer and won. Oh well, away with the surplus poplulation, Cynthia “Scrooge.”
Mary
April 21st, 2011
9:18 am
It just would not do for you to try to make sense of this issue here in your column.
This takes the “IQ” ratio of very intelligent people to deal with and understand to the point of compassion. After spending 40 years in the health industry, the doctors are the key—must be held accountable.
Review boards can also be powerful in fiscal resposibility in hospitals.
Thank you for your tireless efforts. Todays generations coming along
are amongst the most insensitive group ever to walk the face of God’s green earth.
John
April 21st, 2011
9:20 am
CT:
Interesting topic. You and JB are sounding like you’re starting to lean right.
But, the problem is much deeper. In fact, it cuts right to the core issue in the USA today. Whenever the right argues that certain entitlement programs need to be cut, you always hear the obligatory comment from a lefties to the effect that children or the elderly will suffer, starve or go without medical care if we cut back. Just last week Nancy Pelosi harped on about how thousands of ederly would go hungry if a certain program were scaled back. Of course, I realize this is political-speak, but why do we have to care for everyone? The reasion the USA came to be is because people wanted to live in a country where they could care for themselves and earn and live as they please. To be sure, I recognize there are needy who can’t care for themselves, but that number is relatively low. If we’re going to redistribute health-care, which is exactly what you and JB are advocating, can’t the exact same be said about every entitlement? Why should I have to pay for children borne out of wedlock or otherwise to poor mothers? Why should I have to pay for the lazy and the illegals? At what point do we draw the line and say that this is unfair to the workers and taxpayers (me)? And, why are people like me labeled a racist anytime we try to have an “honest” discussion like this? Isn’t it time we “honestly” discuss the elephant in the room? Isn’t it time we insist that black leaders and the NAACP come down hard on their own people? You don’t see the same problems in the Jewish community and lord knows they’ve been discriminated against and excluded by pretty much the same groups as the blacks have.
So, here’s question. At what point do we draw the line, and who decides? My personal opinion is that there must be a means test for entitlement and it should be administered by volunteers who are free from bias. I resent it when I hear comments from liberals who complain about tbe wealthy getting too many tax breaks. I’m certainly not wealthy, but even I recognize it’s their money. It does not “belong” to the Gov’t (or anyone else for that matter). How dare anyone purport to tell anyone else how to spend their money. The problem in this country today, as I see it, is that EVERYONE knows of the enormous waste, abuse or flat out fraud that goes on. Walk into virtually any Gov’t building and you’ll see bloated employee rolls, manned by people who really don’t work hard at all. And if you’re white, fuggedibout prompt, friendly service. We all know stories of the new Gov’t employee being chastised by the “veterens” for working too hard and making them look bad. As a result, many of us don’t trust the Gov’t. Why should my taxes be raised to support this? Why should the Gov’t be trusted to doll out money to people who claim to be in need when in fact all of us know that many are simply lazy?
We spend way too much money on literally everything. Why does a MARTA station have to be nicer than many people’s homes? Why do the school buildings of today have to be so eleborate? According to reports, we did much better years ago academically – when our school buildings were nothing more than a one-story cinder block structure with no HVAC. It’s time to seriously consider rolling back our expectations, mindset and spending to the 1930s. We must get back to every able bodied person carrying their own weight. The USA has become bloated and soft. We’ve lost our pride. We’ve also lost our sense of responsibility. This is especially true of our Gov’t. The liberals wailed when we went to war if Afghanistan and Iraq. They cried we are spending money we don’t have. Yet, they stand silent when Obama takes us int Libya. Hypocrites! What in hell are doing in Lybia?
There are so many on welfare and unemployment that nonethless are capable of working. They sufer no disability. They simpluy can’t find the job they really want. Yet, there are tons of jobs out there. If you’re underemployed for short time, who cares? isn’t that better than accepting a handout? Can you imagine your grandfather sitting at home collecting unemployment? No way! Pretty much all of us have parents and grandparents that would have taken ANY job. These people had pride and wouldn’t be caught dead taking a handout. Yet, drive through any low income neighborhood these days and you’ll see tons of able bodied young adults who simply don’t want to work.
Today in the USA we spend money we don’t have and no politician, especially Obama, appears to care at all. I would think that even you, CT, would like the idea of going back to the way we used to run the country given the fact that FDR was in charge in the 1930s. If you agree with me, then I’ll support your so-called death panels.
the gutless left
April 21st, 2011
9:22 am
The quacks on the left keep hypocritically preaching about how everyone needs to sacrafice. Why dont they for once practice what they preach and all get together and abort themselves for the greater good?
Tech Man
April 21st, 2011
9:32 am
One thing is for sure we can’t count on VP Biden to give anything voluntarily to help the poor. Look at his charitable deductions the past several years.
Oh, I noticed Obama took advantage of every known deduction even though he is rich rather than voluntarily paying a little more tax.
jconservative
April 21st, 2011
9:58 am
Tech Man
You miss the point or I did not make it.
The problem is not the insurers. The problem is the screaming about death panels in the 2009 to 2010 health care debate when they have existed in private industry for 40 years.
So the question is still there: are government death panels a “NO NO” but private death panel an “OK OK”?
sport
April 21st, 2011
10:00 am
CT- you seem to be uncapable of taking a look at the greater picture. In this case, don’t you think if the govt spent less revenue on wsteful spending, we wouldn’t have to decide on who dies and who lives.
How in the world you became an award winning writer is way beyond me. You are sick.
Dirty Dawg
April 21st, 2011
10:02 am
Just reading the vitriol and the hate being spewed-forth in these posts has to give you a feeling of hopelessness for our future. Both ’sides’ believe what they believe and aren’t interested in changing those beliefs.
All Cynthia was saying – at least I think she was – is that when we get to that age and stage in life where the cost of treating our ‘maladies’, and the quality of life we can expect even with treatment, we need to stop and consider the options and decide, with our families, what we want to do. Some people have called ‘em ‘death panels’, a piss-poor name for a serious decision process and reality. The individual, their family and their doctors are the ones that should deal with reality and come to a decision.
And as for the attack on the Delta employees on the MARTA train Sunday morning. It’s horrible and MARTA must deal with it by putting officers, including plain-clothed ones, on the trains – armed and willing to use those arms. Was it a hate crime, probably, but then gangs of any description that target others are like that. Skin-heads attacking gays, hispanics, blacks…black kids targeting whoever is in their path with the ‘bank-now-pay-later’ chant…they are all equally vile and need to be stopped. By the way, the Delta employees were not ‘almost beaten to death’, their injuries were described as ‘not serious’…bad enough, but let’s get the story straight, OK?
sport
April 21st, 2011
10:03 am
last time I’m reading this garbage, how you have a job is beyond me.
Back Seater
April 21st, 2011
10:16 am
Don’t you understand, she writes or cut and paste these articles to stir it up so her hits grow and she get’s to keep her job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No other reason for this type of cra[ journalism
Tech Man
April 21st, 2011
10:20 am
jconservative
April 21st, 2011
9:58 am
I was responding to your rant on “private” Lobbyists.
You Asked
April 21st, 2011
10:23 am
I’m sure someone can explain what “Bank Now Play Later” (BNPL) means…
I’m not very hip-hop so I’m sure one of our AJC readers can elucidate the statement for me.
If it means what I think it means 30 thugs beating up two MARTA riders and splitting the contents of their wallet doesn’t sound like much of a bankroll. Hey kids, what ever happened to mowing lawns and paper routes for pocket money?
You Asked
April 21st, 2011
10:24 am
I hate skinheads too. For the record. But skinheads weren’t in the news this week for attacking anyone on MARTA.
Tech Man
April 21st, 2011
10:30 am
jconservative
April 21st, 2011
9:58 am
I have a problem with Dem talking points denying “death panels” and now are celebrating them.
I have a problem with both parties more interested in the success of themselves as a group than for the people they all represent.
I have a problem with Obamacare paving the way to Single-payer and the government making this type of decision as the only provider.
Contrary to googing bloggers there are currently choices in private health care that don’t result in what is termed “death panel” situations. All that is needed to be protected is the advice of a professional agent. Of course Obamacare wants to eliminate them. I have a hard time believing a federally high paid, no requirement to be trained, “navigator” has my family’s best interest at heart to advise our financial health care future.
hobby
April 21st, 2011
10:42 am
granny? granny? where are you??
Why are you not defending CT on this?
Or does the prospect of a death panel seem a little too close to home for an elderly person?
0311/0317 -1811/1801
April 21st, 2011
10:53 am
“Yes, we need “death panels”
We already have one. It’s called PLANNED PARENTHOOD.
Really last word
April 21st, 2011
10:56 am
So if an elderly person needs dialysis they are not to get it because they’re going to die anyway . . well if a child (or any body else for that matter who is anything less than an elderly person) needs dialysis who also is going to die anyway or they to be treated differently because they are a child or a person other than an elderly person? Should their life be prolong even if there is little or no chance for survival more than a few months or a year or two?
B Cosby
April 21st, 2011
11:02 am
CT, I agree with your stance on the death panels. Let’s start with journalist that have no worth to society. You good with that?
Really last word
April 21st, 2011
11:06 am
Dirty Dawg April 21st, 2011
10:02 am
Where have you been all your life . . those types of decisions are made everyday (without government mandates) . . . their made with EVERY age group . . . because unlike those Cynthia Tucker types who think end of life only occurs w/the aged . . . it occurs with every age group and family members and/or the sick/dying individual along with medical professionals advice makes the decision having to do with more treatment or a dignified death EVERY day! The difference now vs. ObamaCare is it is mandated and the consultation paid from by taxpayers!!
Kamchak
April 21st, 2011
11:10 am
sport
April 21st, 2011
10:03 am
last time I’m reading this garbage, how you have a job is beyond me.
If I had a ha’penny for every time that sentiment is expressed here, I could pay off the national debt.
And still give every Chinese citizen a hundred dollars..
For a hundred years.
Really last word
April 21st, 2011
11:11 am
As far the MARTA incident . . I use to ride MARTA every day . . and found myself the only white on the train many times . . and I recall more tha one incident when young black men would gather on the train and talk out loud (intentionally) about whites and how they felt about whites so as to intimidate me!! It happened then and I’m sure it is no different now.
AT
April 21st, 2011
11:28 am
Jconservative,
There are no death panels in private industry. Maybe they won’t pay, that, I will give you, but anyone with cash or a plan that will play can get care. It doesn’t matter if you are 106 years old, your money is good. Cynthia is describing the necessity, under gov’t controlled healthcare, of the gov’t making the decision that care for certain people is not worth the effort and/or cost, regardless of their ability to pay, and that they should just go ahead and die, for the benefit of “we”. That’s what rationing comes down to. It destroys yet another freedom, for the “benefit” of “all” of us.
LeeH1
April 21st, 2011
11:44 am
Lower costs by investing in more schools and graduating more doctors. If we doubled the number of docotrs, nurses, pharmacists, etc., the price of medical care would go down. However, as long as the AMA tells the government how many docotrs can be educated each year, in order to keep competition low, then we will have high prices. Double the doctors and halve the costs!
Mike K.
April 21st, 2011
11:55 am
“Those will undoubtedly be very painful conversations. But we simply don’t have the money to spend to prolong the life of a terminally ill 87-year-old for a few weeks.”
This statement sums up the problem with the left-wing approach to health care – it’s basically communism. Who doesn’t have the money to pay for prolonging the life of an 87 year old? Liberals have done their best to create a health care system in which the government pays for everyone’s health care after they turn 65 and then turned around and argued that rationing is necessary because the costs of health care are shared by all of society. It’s basically the same as bread lines in the USSR.
If health care were provided in a free market, as opposed to the government picking up 95% of the costs for the elderly, then people would consider costs. A lot of terminal patients would forgo expensive treatments with low success probabilities, in favor of leaving a larger estate to the living. That’s reasonable. However, the decision of whether or not someone who can afford to pay his health care bills should or should not receive a treatment should be up to the patient himself; the decision should not be left to a faceless, government bureaucrat like it would be in Cynthia’s ideal future.
Michael6179
April 21st, 2011
12:15 pm
When will readers of this paper come to the realization that Cynthia Tucker and Jay Bookman are nothing more than far left lunatics? The fact they get paid is a mystery, but if you look at the circulation drop of the AJC, maybe there will be an end in sight for these two fools.
Michael6179
April 21st, 2011
12:21 pm
I agree with fed-up….Liberals really don’t care about the less fortunate….they are simply vote scavengers. They know if they say they will give more to this entitlement program or that social program, that the lazy do nothing’s of society will vote for them. How do you think Obama got elected? It wasn’t the vote of hard working, educated American’s. It was the vote of the moocher class, and the uneducated, uninformed, american idol crowd. How else can you explain people voting for Obama to run the country, when this unqualified fool couldn’t run a lemonade stand without putting it into massive debt.
Libwit
April 21st, 2011
12:24 pm
“If we keeping spending our health care dollars disproportionately on the elderly, we will have little left to spend on children. That makes for an upside-down society that cannot thrive for long.”
How ironic that the liberals who tout Republicans want to take away Medicare/caid and throw old people out to the curb apparently want to do just that with that farce Obamacare. Use the old people through scare tactics (lies) to keep Democrat political hacks in office (including the current one in the White House who can only go around to colleges on “town hall” meetings with no resistance – he’s been nothing but a campaigner for the last two years in office). Then kick them to the curb.
How pathetically hypocritically disgusting. But it should come as no surprise. Liberals have no shame. And the other ironic part of Cynthia’s whine is even mentioning children. Why, there aren’t even children BORN yet who are going to be paying for all the liberal/Dimocrat spending wastes on entitlement programs. Oh the painful irony of it all. Literally.
Oh I feel a tremor beneath the surface that is going to overcome Democrats next November.
Michael6179
April 21st, 2011
12:26 pm
Hey Lee H…..Are you kidding me? Where did you come up with that nonsense? Or should I guess…Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? I think they should have invested more money in your education.