Sarah's Death Panel Comment

SP is taking a lot of heat because she used a phrase in one of her remarks on BO's .... uh... hi, uh.. ever-changing, ever-revised-once-people-read-it-and-mention, his... views on health care in America and where he wants it to be -- America, that is.

Actually, Sarah is saying things that free thinkers are coming up with. BO's plan is to get people talking about what HE thinks his health care "reform" will provide for The Sheeple. Sarah's plan is to talk about what his health care "reform" will actually do to the health care delivery system as we know it. And as a health care worker for some 40 years, please indulge me while I provide one hourly worker's viewpoint and observations.

I remember when DRGs were introduced by some think tankers from an Ivy League school. Diagnostic Related Groups were the initial foray into socialized medicine. It's exactly when the patients ceased to exist and became diagnoses. He was no longer Mr. Harris in 310-1 with cholecystectomy and choledocolithotomy, with daily charges, charges for each dressing change, use more-pay more, physician-driven actual health care delivery.

It became the gall bladder in 310... -----(comments heard in administrative offices: “and he had stones? Great, we can bump him into the next DRG. A simple gall bladder operation will get only $4378” (I'm making these numbers up but you'll get the idea) “but if he had gallstones we'll get $5139. We'll get that because we're a "rural" health care delivery establishment in an area of less than 100,000 people. Now, if we were in a metropolitan area of over 100,000 we would get $6293!”-----

It doesn't matter if the patient is hospitalized for 2 days or 7, they're still going to get the same dollar amount. The record keeping gets a bit tedious for the hospital because now they keep dollars per bed ratios per physician. If the lengths of stay exceed what the administration wants, the doc gets a letter… or more often a “visit in the lounge.” Oh, those pesky patients demanding treatment! They’re just a necessary evil in the scheme of things – just like voters are to politicians.

Remember when hospitals became smoke-free environments about 20 years ago? (Rightfully so, and I am a former smoker.) There were signs posted in various health-care facilities saying things like, "We're phasing in a non-smoking environment for the health of our patients!" "We care about your health so we're eliminating smoking!" The real reason is the US Government was going to withhold Medicare funds from any facility that permitted smoking, the those guys are the NUMBER ONE HEALTHCARE INCOME PRODUCERS for all hospitals.

The rural vs. metropolitan "reimbursements?" You probably have experienced costs in a large city compared with a small city. Well, the DRGs take that into account, by golly. That's how a little podunk hospital in Marietta, Ohio gets a lot of money. They have small town expenses but they're considered a metropolitan area because of Parkersburg, WV being nearby.




My former mother-in-law passed away years ago and I helped get the paperwork organized from those final weeks. The primary cause of death was breast cancer. Up until the last few weeks she was getting chemotherapy on an out patient basis. I vividly recall some of the crap on the bills for just one of the times she went in to get a dose of chemo. How is it done? The drug was injected directly into a vein and given there were no complications like an anaphylactic response she was released to go home for the puking part. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, the government is involved so here we go.

There were separate charges for:
medication preparation (drawing it into the syringe)
injection site preparation (wiping the arm with an alcohol sponge)
venipuncture (sticking the needle in)
aspiration (making sure it’s in the right spot)
medication delivery (pushing the plunger of the syringe)
site dressing (wiping the blood off and putting a band-aid on)
bio-hazardous waste disposal (throwing out the syringe and needle)

Physicians and Surgeons sent staff to dozens of meetings and classes to learn how to get more out of the system, how to codify diagnoses to wring the maximum payment for each visit. Now it’s time to give Sarah’s comments a view:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.


Isn't not paying for something like passing judgment? Isn't not paying for healthcare the practice of medicine?


Sarah's comments are not so out of line, huh?