I think what Keith is getting at is that it’s unwise to label things with broad generalizations.

Speaking as someone who cared for their parents during their final days: Olbermann, you need to stop pimping out your dead/dying parents. Find some other way to get attention.

BR says:
March 2, 2010 at 6:39 pm

Amen! My husband and I cared for our parents for a total of 21 yrs (almost 1/2 our life together) and then I by myself for Mama for 2 yrs till she died in my home at age 100. All this was at home, except for hospital stays.

This is what I just wrote at another site. At first I didn’t want to even watch this latest rant. Finally I did and this is my comment from J$P.

I finally watched this video and I never would have thought my opinion of KO could have gone lower. It hasn’t actually gone lower, it has PLUMMETED.

As Jed Eckert said many of us have been thru situations such as his and some of us multiple times. I can attest to that.

KO is living in some strange world if he doesn’t understand that considering all the potential outcomes and options is an ongoing ordeal, sometimes for years. Doctor’s ARE paid for it b/c it is part of their ongoing care and interaction with either/or/and the patient and family.

These matters are discussed on an ongoing basis at regular office appointments and during hospital stays. In the hospital that is part and parcel of the daily professional fee charged by the attending physician whether he sees you and/or the patient every day or not Doctors spend a lot more time reviewing and consulting other doctors sometimes then they spend with the patient/family.

I can’t even feel pity for him.

This is just HIM and HIS PERSONA in this particular situation. It is exactly the way he behaves in any other situation. It is all about him and by God he is not to be questioned or thwarted by that great unwashed mass of “Tea Baggers”.

Well, Tommy, you act as though there’s no alternative to the current health care situation than the status quo or a quasi-nationalized system.

It’s fine to rail about profit by saying that insurance companies ration now (and they do) and that they do so for profit (they also do it as a way of managing the health care industry’s profit motive…), but so too does Medicaid and Medicare. And both these entities set the standards in the industry.

The problem is that consumer don’t own their insurance policies, their employers do. Or the govt does. There is virtually no consumer driven element in the pay for service industry, other than the motivation insurance companies have to provide policies for businesses. Not that businesses (mandated by govt to provide such coverage) aren’t captive audiences themselves.

Both insurance companies and employers are motivated to keep cost down by rationing services. This will not change under Obamacare. We’ve already seen how readily the Democrats handed their hats to insurance companies.

I’d like to see individuals get the same sort of tax deductions for insurance premiums that businesses receive. No, this would not insure that everyone was insured…. people with pre-existing conditions would still find it tough. However, as individuals and groups (churches, unions, the Lions Club…) banded together and bought coverage, risk could be spread throughout these groups and causing insurance companies to be more amenable to providing coverage for everyone. PLUS the group could threaten to walk unless they did.

Ahhh….the virtues of people owning their policies… The virtues of a consumer driven system…

As for death panels, here is a link to a NYT interview with candidate Obama mentioning non-determinative panels that would give advice based on end-of-life issues. As shown in the excerpt below, money is very much an issue in the president’s mind:

“THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03Obama-t.html?_r=1

Olbermann can rail at Sarah Palin and he can call it a “life panel”, but she’s not wrong on what will be the result in govt insuring so many people. There will be an impetus to “do the right thing” on behalf of the taxpayer.

That the potential for this sort of pressure, institutionalized via govt, is more frightening and damaging to a society than the coldest mercenary decision by any business seems to something that you don’t consider, Tommy.

What the hell is Olbermann talking about. These sort of consultations about end of life care have been going on forever and doctors can bill clients them NOW under known medical codes.

How in the world does anybody buy the notion that Sarah Palin was talking families making determinations about palliative care when she used the term “death panel”!

Olbermann is a complete moron who hatred for anyone who doesn’t think like himself cannibalizes everyone near him!

All we owe Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, the tea toddlers, most if not all of the republicans is a visit to a bear cage. Close the door and walk away. There’s your death panel. The government isnt the death panel. Its the bought paid, sold and slave to the big banks who they said they didnt want to save (funny how that is) and big business who are the death panels.

I’ll take it on directly. Under ObamaCare Keith’s dad would already be dead. The entire point of Palin’s “death panel” comment was to highlight the fact that a board of unelected bureaucrats will decide which procedures “work” and those will be the only ones the government pays for. By “work” they of course mean “cheapest” and things like age, etc. also come into play. The other irony here is that Keith likes to squawk about the wonderful Canadian system that rations care. Canada would have let Keith’s old man die long ago under their system. If anything Keith’s little performance only highlighted exactly why America has the best health care system in the world and we shouldn’t do anything to destroy it.

Chris Jones says:
March 2, 2010 at 11:09 pm

You are so right, Chris. By work they also mean percentage of success when correlated with all kinds of factors in addition to cost and age such as prior overall condition and level of care that will be required if the patient survives.

Also, I’ve got news for KO. This “life panel” conversation he had was and is now a service that is charged and paid for. If he had any real long long term with these types of issues he would know that these weighing conversations and decisions go on constantly both during regular office visits and during hospital stays with patients and/or their family. In a hospital it is covered by the Physicians Fee that the attending physician charges for every day in the hospital and otherwise by an Office Visit charge.

He simply has no idea of the reality of many of these situations and that they are not finite linear equations for anyone involved and they can go on, waxing and waning, for years and years.

Tommy, I can’t believe you consider yourself a reporter. Aside from one slip where you made a great defense for trannies, you are a very biased s$$-hole.

Of course, I meant to label Tommy Christopher an “a$$-hole,” not an “s$$-hole.” I was so angry after watching the video, I kind of lost it. As a parting thought though, I could care less about Olbermann or his father. With all the lousy things The Bitch Queen of MSNBC has said about others, with all the hurt he has inflicted; I’ll bet his upbringing was really something. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Agree, Cecelia.. Maybe Tommy Christopher should have went to Harvard, represented ACORN, and been a community organizer.. then he could run the entire US healthcare system, too, not as though he’s any less qualified now though.

Screw crazy Keith,with all his personnel attacks on other people now he wants to complain about people attacking him personally or his dad.