Here you have it once again:
Closing performance gaps would bring real benefits in terms of health, patient experiences, and savings. For example:
Up to 101,000 fewer people would die prematurely each year from causes amenable to health care if the U.S. achieved the lower mortality rates of leading countries. Thirty-seven million more adults would have an accessible primary care provider, and 70 million more adults would receive all recommended preventive care. The Medicare program could potentially save at least $12 billion a year by reducing readmissions or by reducing hospitalizations for preventable conditions. Reducing health insurance administrative costs to the average level of countries with mixed private/public insurance systems (Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) would free up $51 billion, or more than half the cost of providing comprehensive coverage to all the uninsured in the U.S. Reaching benchmarks of the best countries would save an estimated $102 billion per year.
But instead of reading discussions of ways of injecting facts into the discussion, for a change, I have to wade though incessant, surrealistic whining about death panels, tea-bagger mobs, the impending death of Trigg, and whatever else resounds in the echo chamber of the American mainstream media. The same is true for those media of which I had hoped that they would know better than to think that one can report as news what is heard in the echo chamber without being part of it and amplifying the mindless din!
Am I the only one who is about to tune out of this "discussion" out of total disgust with the blabbering and blubbering of our progressive friends? Seems that David Lindorf is fed up too:
OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic "town meetings" to promote the president's health care "reform" program are being bused in from out of town?
Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp!)
But wait! That's exactly what we on the left always did when we held demonstrations--at least if we could. Who in the trade union movement hasn't called on fellow workers in other unions to join them in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join sparse picket-lines? Who hasn't pulled out the stops trying to get people from other cities to attend a local protest?
It would be bad to end on a sour note. Maybe I should supply a pointer to a rare, rational discussion, one by Peter Singer about rationing. The r word, I said it; may I rot in health care! American or third world? Same thing!
Do you still think the drug is a good value [in extending life by six months of low quality living]? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?
Where is Obama when we need him to address the American people as if we do not consist of a bunch of ten year olds. We have seen him do it: Yes, he can!
Or maybe not?
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform.
I have seen the loony fringe's outrage, but where is the progressive outrage? Where is the middle of the road outrage? Where is the conservative outrage?
101,000 fatalities and no outrage? Why not? Please explain this to me before I give up!