Sooner or later you will face the death panel

News.com.au - DYING cancer patients could be weaned off taxpayer-funded drugs as the Federal Government is confronted with spiralling health costs. Health Minister Nicola Roxon wants debate about the moral challenge as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee plans trials to determine when costly drugs become ineffective and should no longer be dispensed. ......Prof Sansom said more information was needed. "We need trials to be done ... to address any advantages in continuing with drugs when the patient (cancer) has progressed. If there is any benefit," he said.

The Australian Medical Association vice-president Steve Hambleton said the issue was sensitive and some doctors had trouble saying "no" to patients. "If you're on your last legs, there's no point in having expensive chemotherapy if there's no clinical benefits," Dr Hambleton said. But apart from cancer drugs - which can cost taxpayers up to $50,000 a patient - Ms Roxon is asking why doctors dispense expensive, subsidised drugs to patients when cheaper generics are prescribed.
You can call it a death-panel, you can call it the cost-curbing-office, even the office of medical efficiency and better health outcomes or something that doesn't allude to the real purpose. But the reality will be that no matter what you call it or how it's done, it'll still be your ass on a bed somewhere dying of cancer and other people, not you or your family, will sit around a table and deliberate over your life. You know, Tom here has had a good innings, he's had a good life but he hasn't worked for the last 15 years, essentially he's a largely useless parasite, it'll just be a waste of money, just tell em' nothing can be done and move on.

It can be cold and callous like that or they can pass the tissue box around the table and say, oh this is just terrible, poor Sarah, I don't know what can be done, how can we make things better, it's such a shame, she's so polite and never complains, look at all those grand children, but if we don't give her those expensive drugs we can fund that new machine for premature babies. They can deliberate for a few hours and try to make things more comfortable and make it sound better and all that, but it's really the same thing, with socialized medicine your life is essentially in the hands of those whose eye is on the budget, not you.

Just the other day, I saw a report about an old lady who died in hospital because she contracted an infection from her own urine that they left her in. The nursing staff didn't bother to clean her or change the sheets or anything. Terribly sad but what makes it even worse is the usual inquiries called for and demands that this never happen again. It happens every other week, story after story, some hospital is shamed, the relevant minister calls an inquiry and promises this will never happen again and blah, blah. A week or so later, the tape is replayed at a different hospital and yet we still won't get it.

When an obama tells you that he won't ration care, that you won't be facing a death-panel of some sort, he is lying, you lie Mr President! Expecting socialized medicine not to ration care and consider letting you die for the 'greater' good is like seeing a giant power pole in front of you and walking/running directly towards it and expecting not to walk/run into it.

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