Can you imagine, doctors and hospitals being allowed to REFUSE to try to save a helpless child? And the liberals want US to have socialized medicine?

(grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)

Exactly. You let someone else pay the bills, then you let them decide when to stop paying---and, therefore, when to stop treating. It's that simple.

The only thing is, people already feel an inappropriate sense of entitlement here with our private insurance program. Think about all the stories about people whining and moaning because their insurance company won't pay for this or that treatment. As if paying a fixed sum a month entitles someone to whatever they need no matter the cost.

Hmmm.

As if paying a fixed sum a month entitles someone to whatever they need no matter the cost.

Isn't that the point of purchasing health insurance?

Additionally isn't it the point that such insurance policies offer a first adopter process to the healthcare industry that other first adopters do to the computer and electronics industries? Pay the high costs to have the early procedures which are fairly rare and expensive. And thereby drive down the costs as these procedures are improved and spread around?

Isn't this how Lasik has become almost a commodity? Among many other healthcare procedures? How about hip and joint replacements? Once they were extremely expensive and restricted to an elite few. Now your grandmother could get one.

Isn't this process useful or are you advocating the elimination of it? Or had you not completely thought your position through and didn't forsee this possible unintended consequence?

The child was born three months prematurely via emergency cesearean. At birth she was the length of a ballpoint pen. She has damage to several organs, including her brain. The doctors are not malicious, money-grubbing, baby-killers. They simply want permission to not resusitate her if her quality of life drops so low that it would be torturous to keep her alive. Her parents object to her not being kept alive at every cost, hence the court procedings.

An adult can sign a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order if he or she is in very poor health and doesn't want to be kept alive with machines, and having no quality of life. This is basically what the doctors are arguing that Charlotte deserves as well.

~Nay

Isn't that the point of purchasing health insurance?

No. Never has been, never will. Insurance companies have a responsibility to control their costs. This responsibility is not just to their shareholders, but to their customers. And though many plans do have caps on out-of-pocket costs, they don't cover every conceivable procedure.

Additionally isn't it the point that such insurance policies offer a first adopter process to the healthcare industry that other first adopters do to the computer and electronics industries?

That's a nice side benefit, but insurance companies regularly place limits on their coverage of experimental and investigative procedures, drugs, or equipment. It is at their discretion to add such procedures to their coverage.

How about hip and joint replacements? Once they were extremely expensive and restricted to an elite few. Now your grandmother could get one.

Sounds like you're supporting my point now. The way you've just described it, the first adopters in this case were the "elite few." If the insurance companies were all playing first adopter as you claim, it would have been widely available from the get-go, right?

Isn't this process useful or are you advocating the elimination of it?

I'm not advocating the elimination of it at all. What I'm saying, and what you have completely failed to refute, is that by depending exclusively upon a private insurance plan to pay the bulk of your bills, you are at the mercy of a company which must inevitably make decisions not just on the basis of medical need or opinion but on fiscal solvency as well. Inevitably that means placing some limits on coverage.

Or had you not completely thought your position through and didn't forsee this possible unintended consequence?

I remain comfortable with my position. I hope for your sake that you have read your health insurance company's coverage agreement in full, front to back, cover to cover, so that you understand its exclusions and limits.

Hmmm.

@ mcg

Ahh ok now I see the problem.

As if paying a fixed sum a month entitles someone to whatever they need no matter the cost.

We're talking past each other.

My point was that point of paying a fixed cost per month does allow for health insurance to pay whatever the purchaser needs regardless of the cost. What I didn't think I needed to point out is that such costs are always bound by the limits of the contract and that health insurance policies can vary widely in their maximum benefits.

If I pay a sufficient amount per month for a very generous policy then I can effectively have any procedure, regardless of the cost, for my fixed monthly payment. This is often included in executive compensation packages and is even offered, I think, to members of Congress. I guess what you're assuming is the scenario where someone who is paying a low fixed monthly payment is expecting a large long-term benefit payout.

What my point was is that this isn't the only scenario.

We may indeed be talking across one another on some finer points.

Given the somewhat exclusive availability of true "no restrictions" health insurance, as your examples suggest, imply that would be incredibly costly to offer such coverage on a universal basis. And frankly, the failures of the Canadian and British health systems suggest the same.

I think what we're seeing is that as long as the practice of medicine costs money, inevitably there will be decisions made where cost influences medical decisionmaking.

An adult can sign a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order if he or she is in very poor health and doesn't want to be kept alive with machines, and having no quality of life. This is basically what the doctors are arguing that Charlotte deserves as well.

And since the baby is not an adult and can not make those decisions for herself, the parents not the state are primarily responsible and liable for the care of the child. The state, which can not be held liable if the child should die unecessarily, is trying to usurp the parents responsibilities.

03-13-06

Subject: The American Left's Abominable Moral Failure

The Left's broken moral compass has created an American cultural revolution that makes Sodom and Gomorra seem like Disneyland.

Life itself, in the mind of the American Left, has been devalued to the point of the absurd. Human babies growing in the womb are portrayed as nothing more than a strange, unknown growth that, though quickly growing through miraculous stages of one of a kind human development, is not considered a viable human life source until brought out from water into air.

The most abominable assault of all takes place during the last late term delivery of the baby, which is of course, the procedure known as "partial birth abortion," also known as "infanticide." The baby, partially delivered, is stopped and its skull is punctured by the doctor, the baby's brain is sucked out compressing the skull and murdering the heretofore live, healthy, viable baby.

Not even the idolatrous, homosexual perverts of Sodom and Gomorra could have envisioned such a perversive nature being unleashed by one human being on another. Hopefully, in the near future, and with God's guidance, Justices like John Roberts and Sam Alito, along with the other conscientious justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will put an end to this monstrous, criminal act, along with all the earlier term abortions in America that have caused the murder of an estimated 45 million American children of God since the legalization of abortion in America some 33 years ago.

May God Bless the Supreme Court of America and forgive those that ask to be forgiven regarding their consent in committing the near unpardonable, murderous act of abortion.

NOTE: All Christians and interested others, both Left and Right, should consider the Scriptures in Luke 1:39-45 that shows the preciousness God puts on the life in the womb, considering Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah, previously found barren, who would bear John, the precursor to Jesus, and Mary, God's chosen hand maiden, who was to bear God's only Son.

Tony Valeri, 65 W1 Division Ave, PMB 305, Eugene, OR 97404 Tel: 541 607-6305
(lookinghard@cmc.net)