Via Josh Marshall, the genuinely demented Investors’ Business Daily published this in an editorial:
The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.”
One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.
The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
As Josh points out, Hawking is, in fact, British, and has lived his entire life in the UK.
I Best He Has Whiplash, Too. You may have heard that a African-American, anti-health reform protester in St. Louis was attacked beaten by SEIU “thugs” last week. According to the rightie blogosphere, the protester, Kenneth Gladney, is in serious condition. This is supposed to be a video of the attack:
I’m with Steve Benen — I can’t make out what’s going on in this video, or who is doing what to whom. The only two people I see in SEIU shirts are women who don’t look physicially capable of harming anyone, unless the one limping lady smacked the guy with her cane off-camera.
Let me be clear that this kind of shouting and probable smacking around of somebody, although I can’t make out who exactly, is unacceptable and inexcusable.
Still, Steve Benen gives us this tidbit from local news:
Gladney did not address Saturday’s crowd of about 200 people. His attorney, David Brown, however, read a prepared statement Gladney wrote. “A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”
Supporters cheered. Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance. [emphasis added]
And he has a lawyer, who no doubt is preparing to sue somebody. So much for tort reform.
Good Morning, Little Lulu. Malkin is outraged about the “freedoms” that will be taken away from Americans by “Obamacare.” What freedoms, you ask? Here they are listed; I paraphrase the first three somewhat to clear up some ambiguities.
- The Freedom to be ripped off by less-than-comprehensive junk insurance policies.
- The Freedom to see your premiums jacked up if you get sick.
- The Freedom to pay for your health care out of your own pocket or savings, or do without.
Here Lulu pisses me off:
-
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan.
The entire reason the Obama Administration avoided marching to single payer or Medicare-for-All is to allow people to keep their employer-based insurance, and this is the thanks he gets. We shoulda just said “screw ’em all” and go for single payer.
And the last is just a lie:
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5. Freedom to choose your doctors
We lost that freedom already, after most of us got shuffled into HMOs. Catch up. Lulu.
See also: Chris Good and James Fallows at The Atlantic;
Yes, it’s very hard to see what happened in the scuffle, but Gladney pops right back up. That’s him in the tan shirt, talking to the cop and milling around in the crowd.
And these are the same people who came up with John Kerry Purple Heart bandaids.
Hey, maha, your RSS feed is messed up. All I’m getting on Google reader is ads for pharmaceuticals. You might want to check into that!
Do I have this right? Gladney is a) anti health care reform, and b) recently laid off and has no health insurance? Could we have just encountered the ultimate low-information citizen?
Andy — some spam got into my source code but was cleared out yesterday. It may take a while for it to work its way through the rss feed, though.
Could we have just encountered the ultimate low-information citizen?
I say Sarah Palin has him beat for that title.
You do have the freedom to keep your existing plan, until you want to change it. The House bill mandates that if you want to change it at all, you can only choose from the accepted and mandated plans. Very large companies will have a 5 year grace period before this affects them. So, eventually, we will all only be able to chose from the plans government allows.
But, hey, don’t read the Bill or anything, Maha.
Interestingly, Obama says we have to do things completely different because they are broke, but, we are allowed to keep our broken health care plans? Yeah, that makes sense, but, this is all a way to force the country into single payer.
BTW, nice job smearing someone exercising his 1st Amendment Rights and getting assaulted by an SEIU thug. Figures.
Instead of changing the whole system, why not look at what is broke and target those for fixing?
You do have the freedom to keep your existing plan, until you want to change it.
Obviously you’ve never worked for a small company that changes health care providers every year. In the real world, people accept whatever health insurance they can get (assuming they can get insurance at all), whether they like it or not. There is little actual choice except for the very wealthy or people who work for large corporations.
So, eventually, we will all only be able to chose from the plans government allows.
Ttranslation: The health insurance companies won’t be able to sell worthless junk policies that don’t cover half the stuff the policy holders need covered.
But, hey, don’t read the Bill or anything, Maha.
I suspect I’ve waded through it more than you have. There is, in fact, no one bill at the moment. (Remarkable that all these righties have read THE bill when there isn’t any one bill.) I assume you’re talking about the most recent House version, but that is not THE bill.
Interestingly, Obama says we have to do things completely different because they are broke, but, we are allowed to keep our broken health care plans?
Straw man. He (foolishly, in my opinion) tried to take a moderately conservative approach and build a reform package that leaves whatever parts of the old system that still work in place, so that people who are satisfied with what they have can keep it.
But you righties are using Obama’s centrism against him. You exemplify why “bipartisanship” won’t work, because the Right cannot be worked with. You take everything positive anyone tries to do and twist it and lie about it and try to destroy it. He should have just said the hell with the lot of you and gone for a single payer system.
Yeah, that makes sense, but, this is all a way to force the country into single payer.
I wish.
BTW, nice job smearing someone exercising his 1st Amendment Rights and getting assaulted by an SEIU thug. Figures.
Not content to lie about the health reform plan, he lies about what I just wrote. Amazing. Pathological, but amazing.
Instead of changing the whole system, why not look at what is broke and target those for fixing?
That’s exactly what he’s attempting to do, and if you weren’t so brainwashed you might be able to see it.
Hey, “Teach,”
Before you can ‘teach,’ you ought to be taught – something or other, at least. The reson he’s talking about keeping things the same is to assuage folk’s like you. It’s NOT for us, who want to trash the existing peice of shit and go to single-payer.
What are you going to do about things?
It may determine whether or not you’re considered a “Thug.”
Time will tell…
I am fighting the insurance companies right now.
The problem with teaching Teach, is that he’ll likely redouble his self-educational efforts by listening twice as hard to Rush, Beck, Coulter… before coming out swinging again.
Speaking of Benen, his recent categorizations of modern conservatism (my quick interpretation/description):
The Greedy (plutocrats)
The Partisans (tribalists)
The Tin-Foil Hats (conspiracy theorists)
The Dupes (wingnuts)
The Wonks (usually thoughtful, more pragmatic, and/or moderate conservatives)
Anybody know where the Wonks are? Can Brooks or Stein even count?
Dear Ms. Palin,
Now that you’re about to sign a 7-figure for writing a book (you should be required to have read one before you write one – and no, “Goodbye Moon,” read 1,200 itmes a year to your children doesn’t count. You should teach them how to read – that might help!).
Trig, thanks to the largess of the right-wing publishing companies, is guaranteed some form of coverage for the rest of his life. You’ll be able to provide it.
How many other children like him are not? You can’t take off you your shoes often enough in a month, let alone a year, Sarah “Darlin’,” to count all of them.
My qustion is this: Out of the two of you, who should be denied due to a ‘pre-existing condition?”
You, are demostrably stupid. Your child has a disabillity.
I’d cover the child. He can’t help it, he was born that way. You can’t help it either. But, you chose to be either stupid or ignorant. That might, might, be a pre-existing condition that you could educate yourself to care about so that it would no longer exist.
But, before that happens, I have a better chance of seeing Obama lauded by the KKK…
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K.
Jeebus. Just… Jeebus.
I thought you banned the learning-impaired “William Teach” for wasting so much of everyone’s time. Oh well, I guess he makes a good strop against which to hone the facts. Thick rocks can indeed serve that purpose.
Oh, give Teach a break! Who among us doesn’t miss FedEx and UPS since the USPS drove them out of business? And how about dear old Harvard closing its doors within 5 years of UMass opening their’s? Personally, I blame Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. Once we had interstates, we no longer had Burma Shave ads, and the death of Western Civilization was only a matter of time.
And how about dear old Harvard closing its doors….
Be careful with that one; Harvard is thisclose to becoming the snark version of itself.
I read somewhere on a blog that this poor guy has insurance coverage through his wife’s health insurance at her job.
RE: Palin and Trig. Does anyone know how to legally find out whether the Palins drew any money from the state or federal governments for Aid to dependents with Disabilities?
I fail to see how being “forced” to choose from plans that can’t just take my premiums and then arbitrarily deny me coverage when I get sick should be understood to be a problem.
By definition, any such plan is better than the one I’ve got right now. A plan which, by the way, my employer (not I) chose, forcing me when I changed jobs. to abandon the doctors and health-care system I already used and switch to another. (As someone with a long and complicated medical history, this isn’t something I do lightly. I live in fear of my bosses deciding they need to cut costs, and make me switch again.)
This future world Teach speaks of, as he complains about an insufficient number or kinds of choices, is so much better than the current situation for many of us that I can’t believe he’s actually trying to use it as an argument against reform. Golly, you mean if at some point I want to change my plan, my only options will be better, more secure ones? Well, OK, then. If that’s the biggest problem with the proposal, I’ll take it.
biggerbox — yes, the idea that somehow Americans freely choose between competing insurance companies now is such a joke. And many times I’ve seen people have to change doctors because the company switched insurance providers.
Teach…I think they like you here at the Mahablog. I’d guess it’s because you convey a naive charm that leads people to believe you’re confused although well intended. I can see by your statement at the end of your post that you either don’t fully comprehend the health care situation; or you’re clever enough to make a statement of sound reasoning and prudence that intentionally circumvents the crux of the situation.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold myself out as the all knowing, but to my mind the health care situation won’t be straighten out by oiling some mechanisms and tightening a few bolt to make it run leaner..It’s going to require a major overhaul if any significant progression is to be accomplished.
Nobody wants to say the S word, but until we have a national health care assurance as opposed to an insurance the inequities of the system will remain and any changes will an illusionary.
Watched some of that video of some kind of commotion, and what I learned from it was a new respect for cops — in general, not wrt this particular mess. Or for the job that they face all the time with chaotic situations and no decent information and a need to keep from making things worse. Reminds me to cut them some slack; sadly, that leaves enough occasions when no amount of slack-cutting will suffice.
Oh but what I was going to say: NICE?? The Brits really had the nuts to call something that? I mean, that’s the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments that nearly ruins England in That Hideous Strength, the rather freaky third book of C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy. What do they teach them in school these days?
Good Luck Angelia! If you are in a Union sometimes they can help. When my spouses job changed insurance, the new insurance told us they would only cover six weeks of therapy for our child with cerebral palsy. The Union stepped in and was able to convince the powers that be to keep covering it.
My guess is WT hasn’t had much experience with insurance companies.
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