Who do you think works at insurance companies. The entire staff is part of a large bureaucracy. The goal of a health care company is to make money. Their revenue comes from their clients you and me. Their costs are paying all their employees including millions to CEOs, paying their stockholders, and paying out claims when people get sick. To pay stockholders and CEO's more they have to cut the only thing left: claim payments. The entire bureaucracy of an insurance company is driven to find ways not to pay claims.
The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.
That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions.
From
This is a transcript of the 1971 conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman that led to the HMO act of 1973:
John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”
President Nixon: “Yeah.”
Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”
President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”
Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”
President Nixon: “All right.”
Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”
President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not to keen on any of these damn medical programs.”
Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”
President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”
Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”
President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”
Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”
President Nixon: “Not bad.”
