Kate wrote: I think it's a decision only a patient and family can make, with guidance from their Doctor. It's not a decision that insurance companies should be making.
So the person paying the bills has no say?
As medical skills have improved and become more costly, these issues are arising. In the old days, often there wasn't much doctors could do but hold your hand. They didn't have the expensive options that are available today.
Example, my parents have had 6 heart attacks between the 2 of them, if these had occurred 20 years etc, they probably would have been dead by now. Instead they have been through costly stents, etc and they still have a good quality of life so they were lucky that way.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Kate wrote: I think it's a decision only a patient and family can make, with guidance from their Doctor. It's not a decision that insurance companies should be making.
So the person paying the bills has no say?
As medical skills have improved and become more costly, these issues are arising. In the old days, often there wasn't much doctors could do but hold your hand. They didn't have the expensive options that are available today.
Example, my parents have had 6 heart attacks between the 2 of them, if these had occurred 20 years etc, they probably would have been dead by now. Instead they have been through costly stents, etc and they still have a good quality of life so they were lucky that way.
Do you want the insurance companies saying "SS109 is 65 years old. He's had a average length life, so even though this procedure will extend his life 2 years, the cost to benefit ratio is too great, so we're going to deny his coverage and let him die."
Kate wrote: I think it's a decision only a patient and family can make, with guidance from their Doctor. It's not a decision that insurance companies should be making.
So the person paying the bills has no say?
As medical skills have improved and become more costly, these issues are arising. In the old days, often there wasn't much doctors could do but hold your hand. They didn't have the expensive options that are available today.
Example, my parents have had 6 heart attacks between the 2 of them, if these had occurred 20 years etc, they probably would have been dead by now. Instead they have been through costly stents, etc and they still have a good quality of life so they were lucky that way.
Do you want the insurance companies saying "SS109 is 65 years old. He's had a average length life, so even though this procedure will extend his life 2 years, the cost to benefit ratio is too great, so we're going to deny his coverage and let him die."
At 65, I am on the goverment's health insurance.
Although I am sure there are some people here who would love to pull the plug on me right now.
Actually back to your point, the patient should be able to sue over a decision like this.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Kate wrote: I think it's a decision only a patient and family can make, with guidance from their Doctor. It's not a decision that insurance companies should be making.
The insurance company is not making any decisions other than whether or not they are obligated to cover the costs under the terms of the contract that you have entered into with them. They are not making any decisions with regards to treatment, that decision is left in the hands of the family and the physician as it should be.
That is what is particularly troublesome to me Kate, you are attempting to portray something in a manner which isn't accurate. The insurance company made no life or death decision for Ms Sutton, it made no diagnosis, suggested no course of treatment - QALY or QARY is not part of the private insurance model; but it is part of the government model in the very countries "progressives" tell us we should be progressing towards such as Great Britain and Canada.
Speaking of Canada, here's a couple gems from a Canadian doctor in 2001 -
A recent report suggested that 63% of X-ray equipment is out of date, as is a majority of all diagnostic machinery. A third of the radiological equipment in the city of Victoria, for example, is more than two decades old. When a hospital there tried to give one of its ultrasound machines to a local veterinarian, he declined because he already had better equipment.
Government already has enormous control. No province is allowed to charge user fees, and private insurance has been effectively outlawed. As a result of government price controls on pharmaceuticals, research is minimal. Canada is now tied with Italy for the lowest ratio of R&D spending to domestic drug sales.
The head of trauma care at Vancouver's largest hospital announces that they turn away more cases than any other center in North America. "This would be unheard of in the United States," he says.
But since the private health insurance model contains flaws that occasionally result in someone dying because their application for the insurance company to pay for something was initially denied, and despite the reality that this will not change by a shift from private to public insurance models, we should be "progressing" towards a system which has resulted in things that "would be unheard of in the United States" like a veterinarian who has more advanced ultrasound equipment than that used for the purposes of diagnosing and treating human illnesses.
There is no death panel in the private insurance model Kate. There might be a difference of opinion on whether the contract you entered into with them covers a given treatment or medicine, but there is no panel at the insurance company who is issuing guidelines on recommended courses of treatments based upon QALY standards for physicians to follow, which is exactly what the ObamaCare CER based generalized clinical recommendations will be doing. Think you have a problem getting a treatment or drug now? Just wait until the guidelines issued by an executive department of the federal government give it a low CER score and have recommended another course of treatment for your condition instead.
Yes, there are "death panels" in the private insurance industry. They are paid to deny, deny, deny...and if they can't deny it, then they look for any excuse to rescind the policy and kick the insured off the coverage.
Too Sick for Health Care How Insurers Limit and Deny Care in the Individual Health Insurance Market[/b]
Conservatives claim that comprehensive health care reform will lead to government control and rationing of care. Yet private insurers already effectively limit and deny the health care that their policyholders can access, especially those who have to find coverage in the individual market. And make no mistake—the insurance companies are well aware that just 20 percent of patients are responsible for 80 percent of health care costs in the United States. That’s why insurers try to limit the coverage of this 20 percent, especially in the individual insurance market.
The recent testimony of former insurance company executive Wendell Potter before the Senate Commerce Committee offers insight into the practices that protect insurers’ economic interests at the expense of their policyholders’ best interests. In an effort to limit their costs, Potter explained the techniques that insurers use to try to drop sick individuals from coverage. One approach is “purging,” where the monthly costs for some individuals are significantly increased in the hopes that the individual will choose to drop coverage.
Health reform will bring an end to insurers’ practices that limit care and bring stability to families’ insurance coverage. To their credit, the health care insurance industry has stated that they would accept changes to improve the stability of coverage under certain circumstances. But the industry actively opposes the creation of a public health insurance plan as part of an insurance exchange that will enable employers and individuals to purchase insurance as a group under market reforms that prohibit screening for pre-existing conditions and other conditions that insurers like to use to deny coverage. These reforms will finally make insurance affordable and available for all while creating a marketplace that has a choice of plans that will have to compete with one another.
Potter has been blowing the whistle on the for-profit scumbags for several years now. This is a long article, but it pulls back the curtains on a huge list of the "cute tactics" the industry uses to deny coverage and decide who lives and who dies. THAT's the definition of a "death panel."
