Health Care Rationing Coming Your Way Soon
All the boomers that voted for Obama will suffer more when they become old and sick
WASHINGTON — In the weeks before he was elected president, Barack Obama confronted a life crisis all too common in families across America. His grandmother, who already had a diagnosis of terminal cancer, fell and broke her hip, possibly because of a mild stroke. The question became whether to replace her hip even though she was dying.
As Mr. Obama recounted the story, his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, decided to have the surgery, but then, two weeks after the operation, everything went downhill. Ultimately, Ms. Dunham, who helped raise Mr. Obama, died in Hawaii two days before her grandson was elected president.
Mr. Obama discussed the episode in an interview with The New York Times Magazine, posted online Wednesday and scheduled for print publication on Sunday, to point out one of the thorniest issues involved in overhauling health care: Much of the spending on medical care in the United States goes to people in their final months of life. If society is to rein in health costs, at what point are expensive operations like Ms. Dunham’s hip replacement surgery no longer affordable?
“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Mr. Obama said in the interview with David Leonhardt of The Times. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement, just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model is a very difficult question.”
It is less difficult for him, because he can afford to pay whatever it takes to help a loved one. The rest of us can just pound sand.
- Aggie
Carol said,
April 30, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
Additionally, there is no such thing as society in the aggregate making these difficult decisions. It ends up being a bunch of stinking bureaucrats who have rules and manuals and the complete absence of giving a damn about anything but their rules and manuals. To think differently is to delude oneself.
Jefferson Brick said,
May 1, 2009 @ 9:34 am
There is a problem-health care costs more and more with the development of new and expensive treatments-however we need atomic weapons and to have troops in 136 countries. Perhaps some juggling with those realities could enable a citizen to decide.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
May 1, 2009 @ 11:35 am
Jefferson,
That’s all fine with me. I think that we should mail the keys to the world to China and let them handle it. They are quite tolerant of differing viewpoints - see Tiannamen Square or Tibet. The world will be a much better place once the United States decides to crawl into a quiet hole somewhere.
- Aggie
Zee said,
May 1, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
At least you’d have the option of paying for it if you could. Here in Canada that’s illegal. If we want to pay for medical procedures out of pocket, we have to go outside the country.