CHUCK GETS A THIRD ONE

No sooner do I get done posting an observation that completely humiliates and degrades one of the leading Conservative spokesmen (Charles Krauthammer) the idiot in question comes out with an even more despicable column. Having completely run out of ideas (i.e. “lies”) to aid in derailing a health care reform bill to benefit American society he’s decided to dredge up a recent lie and dress it up with some twisted form of “logic”. His assumptions and those of anybody who agrees with him refer to the non-existent “Death Panels” that will be instituted if any kind of change in the current health care system takes place.

He tones down the patently absurd rhetoric and then makes an even more preposterous assertion: Your doctor would rather see you die then undergo any further treatment if your case appears to be terminal. A provision in the proposed health care reform allows for reimbursement for “end of life” consoling which every doctor would gladly pounce on for a few quick and easy bucks. I can’t imagine what the pay is for a physician to offer you alternatives when facing the grim reaper but apparently you doctor is in favor of death (or, as Chuck says” we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.”).

The sum and substance of his column is that there’s so much more profit in it for your doctor to pull the plug that he’s bound to encourage you in that direction. Apparently the fee for counseling you to die is more profitable then continuing to administer treatment. In the Conservative world doctors are only in it for the money. Apparently there’s some kind of bonus in it for them to get in you in the ground rather then treat the illness.

Chuck even cites a personal example though I’m really not sure what course he chose. He claims the decision was obvious, but the rational choice completely contradicts the point of his column. So, allow me to explain my own circumstances when dealing with an end-of-life-consultation:

My older brother was determined to be brain-dead after a brief hospitalization. I sat down with the Chief of Neurology and he explained the situation and the alternatives. I sat down with the family and discussed the alternatives and we decided to terminate any further treatment. I don’t know how much longer the insurance carrier he had would have continued to pay to keep him on the respirator. The cost was never a factor. The doctor I talked to was sympathetic and open to the alternatives. There was no additional charge for that end-of-life-consoling. Frankly, there was more money in it for the hospital if they kept him there rather then pull the plug. So how does the Conservative lie of “Death Panels” or alternative form thereof make any sense? It’s always more profitable to continue “treatment” then to terminate the patient. Why would any greedy, capitalistic doctor choose the path of least riches?

In order to believe any Conservative viewpoint on this matter you have to believe that every doctor (including yours) wants nothing more then to get you “out of the way”. You have to believe that the only reason any doctor (including yours) went to Med school was to make a lot of money. You have to believe that every doctor (including yours) is a pawn of the government and one of his main objectives is to eliminate the infirm and elderly from society. You have to believe that there’s a conspiracy among all the doctors (including yours) to reduce your care and encourage your death. There’s absolutely no other way to interrupt the gross stupidity being asserted by moronic Conservatives spouting such outrageous nonsense.

Even though I’ve just made it crystal clear as to why Conservatives are complete idiots and liars, they will continue to influence a large number of people. Fortunately (and amazingly) more and more Americans are beginning to realize what liars they are. They have become relatively insignificant as their desperation continues to grow. However, they do seem to have enough influence on the American public to further wreck our society. I can only hope that Chuck’s Living Will is adhered to. In his own words “If I have anything so much as a hangnail, pull the plug.” Let’s hope so.

WHY CONSERVATIVES HAVE LOST

One of the leading and realistic spokesmen for the conservative movement isn’t the blowhard Rush Limbaugh or his idiot cousin Sean Hannity but the “distinguished” moron Charles Krauthammer. Chuck is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group and has the onerous responsibility of representing the conservative point-of-view. Apparently he makes a decent living spouting any nonsense that appeals to the ignorant masses. So, in order to collect his check, he defends the conservative point-of-view at any cost and will lie like a rug to convince anybody near brain death that there’s some validity in the conservative philosophy.

A recent column of his (read it yourself) makes the idiotic “point” that prevention is even more costly then simply letting people suffer or die. In his opinion column he sites like thinking idiots that preventive medicine will in no way save any money and will actually cost more. I’m going to rip him a “new one” and I certainly hope you have enough functioning brain cells to realize how stupid he actually is. I’m using the word “stupid” because if he actually believes what he says he clearly is an idiot. It’s crap like this that is making health care reform totally impossible. So, here are the indisputable facts:

1) Quote from the column: “The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment — that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them — is simply nonsense.” This statement of his is clearly nonsense. That, or the moron has never heard of (or understands) the concept of vaccinations. Polio has been completely wiped out (he’s obviously too stupid to understand what the Salk vaccine accomplished). Nor does he have the common sense to understand what your annual flu vaccination does. Currently the CDC is feverishly working on a vaccination for the Swine flu. Regardless of how you feel about the coming “threat” getting a shot that will preventive you from becoming infected and spending money on over-the-counter medications to relieve your symptoms and the lost time at work don’t factor in to the obvious costs of being ill. No, (and this is sarcasm for all you die-hard Conservatives) preventing hundreds of thousands of people from contracting the flu and developing further complications is clearly a waste of money.
2) Not vaccinating the general population from something as “simple” as the flu would result in billions (if not trillions) of dollars being spent on treatment and the dreaded “lost time” that conservatives love. What could this idiot possibly be thinking?
3) Again, he quotes an equally moronic “authority”, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf who says.” "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness." The idiot (and I mean the idiot Elmendorf) adds “we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses.” Really? No kidding? Gee if only we did know in advance which patients would develop costly illnesses! I got an idea…why don’t we test them!
4) I was just in for a physical and the doctor tested my blood pressure, my lung capacity, and gave me an EKG. So far so good. Everything’s fine. I could relate the story of a friend of mine who went in for the exact same tests and much to his surprise he found that he had suffered two major heart attacks in the recent past (no, he didn’t realize that. It happens.) His doctor immediately admitted him to the hospital and he had a triple by-pass that saved his life. And, it also eliminated all the potential expenses related to his having a third attack. True, it would have been more cost effective if the first one would have killed him. Sorry about Conservatives.

The whole point of Krauthammer’s ranting is that he’s attacking one of the proposed features of health care reform. Preventive health measures would reduce medical costs in the long run. That seems pretty odd considering insurance companies that provide health care for a profit routinely approve any number of tests recommended by a physician. Whether you or Chuck realizes it or not, if you’ve been to a doctor you’ve been checked for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart and lung damage, and probably a lot of stuff I’m not aware of. And I’ll just through vaccinations in here just to rub Chuck and Doug’s faces in it one more time.

I’m supposed to schedule myself for a colonoscopy. Yeah, I’m putting that off but I’ve decided to schedule one. It’s a standard test guys my age are supposed to get. And my doctor who doesn’t have any overt political affiliation that I know of and actually understands medicine informed me that it’s one of the few ways a cancer can not only be detected early but totally prevented. Obviously my insurance company agrees with him but for a different reason. I have no idea what a colonoscopy costs but my insurer sure does. And they know that the aggregate cost of early detection is more cost effective then shelling out even more money for treatment. Chuck probably hasn’t had one since his head seems to be up there most of the time.

I’m pretty sure, without “researching” the cost of every conceivable test to be administered to every citizen, that the cost of such tests would exceed the cost of treatment. But, I have a solution for that little “sticking” point: as the other idiot (Elmendorf) said, we just don’t know who would benefit from what test if we blindly administered them to everyone. That being the case, why don’t we get a bunch of highly trained, highly skilled people to examine individuals and recommend the appropriate tests. You know, people like doctors!

The entire point of the foolish column was to argue against the case that improved health care would save money by preventing major illnesses. So-called “researchers” have done the work and declared it to be so. Well, those guys can skew (i.e. “lie”) the numbers anyway they want. The guys that depend on accurate, profit making research (i.e. “the insurance companies”) have already done the work and have determined that it’s better to give the tests and vaccinations rather treat the illness, even if they don’t know in advance who’ll get sick.

Billions (oh hell, let’s say “trillions” since that seems to have more impact) have already been saved on preventive health care measures. Even the insurance companies agree with that and that’s their business. You can be sure if a columnist from say “The Washington Post” develops any kind of symptom he’ll be expecting a full battery of tests to determine the cause. After all, diagnostic medicine isn’t part of his job description. Pandering to mindless followers with any kind of drivel that can get him noticed is.

WHEN I’M RIGHT MOST EVERYONE ELSE IS WRONG

As I pointed out well before any one else, there will be no meaningful health care reform. Forget “meaningful”…there will be no health care reform. There will eventually be some form of mock health care legislation passed that will be trumpeted as “reform” but nothing will change. The more cynical among us will attribute the failure to the usual politicizing of the issue or be even more accurate by attributing the failing to the usual greed and corruption running rampant in Washington. The trillion dollar a year health care industry has too many palms to grease, too many “donors” to satisfy and too many special interests to placate. Couple that with the almost total ignorance of the general population and what ever measures are passed will be insignificant since no one will really know the difference. But, as usual I understand the real reason things will only get worse regardless of what pitiful changes emerge from the health care debacle.

There isn’t anybody smart enough or committed enough to propose a real plan. Either party coming away from the health care debate without having formulated and enacted a real solution will be proving beyond any doubt that are totally ineffective and useless as leaders. Of course the Democrats will be the biggest losers since they brought the critical issue up in the first place and actually pursued it. But they were too stupid to design a program that could be easily understood and implemented. Nobody even knows what the basic components of their “plan” is.

Taking much less heat will be the Republicans who have made no attempt to have a plan and spent all their time and energy stonewalling any potential improvements. They lose big time if anything substantial happens but that would in no way benefit them. In fact, it’s in their best interest if no plan is implemented. Any meaningful health care reform would only benefit the other party and maybe the country. But that isn’t their goal. They’ve made it their goal to lie about the costs and scare people about the possible consequences in order to be able to point to the failure of the current administration in hope of getting their jobs back.

Both parties suck at what they are being over-paid to do. Democrats achieved control because the previous Republican administration demonstrated clearly they were either too corrupt or too incompetent to run the country (take your pick). Democrats won control because of the ineptitude of the past administration and the promise to change things which they simply haven’t done. The coming failure of health care reform will be ample proof of that.