Palin Wins

[makattak]

Where is the mandatory aspect of this coming from?

In the bill, it's not.

However, too many people cannot think beyond intended results to unintended consequences. The current writers of these bills intend it to lower prices and increase coverage. EVERYBODY WINS!

Unfortunately, those two goals are necessarily contradictory. More coverage= more demand for goods. More demand for goods= higher prices.

Lower prices= greater quantity demanded of goods.

EVERYTHING the bills intend to do will increase demand or quantity demanded for medical care.

The only way to decrease prices, then, is to either set up price controls (creating shortages) or simple rationing (sorry, you just can't get that care).

The proponents of these bills think they are being misrepresented because that's not what they want to happen. Unfortunately, the laws of economics are just as immutable as gravity.

Even though I don't want to hit the ground, when I fall out of a tree I'm in for pain.

If those proposing these bills want to honestly assess them and argue whether it's better to allow a government panel to prevent grandma from getting her hip replaced since she's likely to die in two years or to let her and her family decide that issue (yes, AND the insurance company with whom they have a contract), then I'll be all for it.

So long as those supporting government healthcare are either lying about or unable to comprehend the consequences of their proposals, they will continue to feel like they are "misrepresented".

[Iain]

In the bill, it's not.

That's the facts of the matter then. The rest is speculation of a slippery slope nature.

Are the writers of the bill being merely 'misrepresented' when Betsy McCaughey says:

One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home)

and then when challenged:

“In so many words, it is — because although it is presented in the bill as a Medicare service, when a doctor or a nurse approaches an elderly person who is in poor health, facing a decline in health, and raises these issues, it is not offering a service. It is pressuring them,”

That's not mere "misrepresentation". It's outright fiction.

Now I note that the conservative blogosphere has gone out to try and prove a chain of events like you have, but the simple fact of the matter, it is not in the bill and to say that it is is to lie. There may or may not be some logic in the chain of events, that's not particularly relevant really, the fact is this 'debate' in your media has been characterised by the construction of lies about what the reforms are or are not, and what the NHS is or isn't, with the words like 'evil' thrown around liberally.

[Rudy Kohn]

Except that the real consequences of the bill are a real concern.  Your argument is akin to saying, "Well, that house bill calling for a 5000% tax on ammunition isn't a gun ban, or a shooting ban, so it doesn't come up on the wrong side of the second amendment."  Logical consequences of bills absolutely can be considered in deciding whether or not to support them.

If the bill as written provides a framework that can (and, as Makattak argues, inevitably must) be used to do certain things, then those consequences are important to those deciding whether or not to support it.

Unless Congress intends to harness the heretofore untapped potential of rainbows to magically increase the supply of health care without paying more money, and to build a system that encourages unlimited demand without eventually requiring clamping-down on distribution, then the likely consequences of the bill, as determined through an economic analysis, are a valid point against the bill as written.

If you disagree with the analysis, then it is necessary to provide your own framework as to how the system will work, or at least points regarding why said analysis is incorrect.

One thing I think isn't being said enough in these health care threads is that, from my (and perhaps others') perspective(s), simple cheapness is not the only measure of the system.  Rather, I would certainly prefer to have a system in which the care I receive is determined by voluntary choices by myself and the costs I am willing to shoulder, as opposed to a system that is a little cheaper, but removes my freedom of choice from the system.  As soon as I admit that monetary cost is the primary issue, I have conceded my personal freedom as unimportant.

[Iain]

The relevant section of the bill merely makes provision for the funding of end of life counselling, something that Republicans have supported in the past and prior to this storm was uncontroversial.

As of right now there is no provision in the bill for mandatory end of life counselling and to say otherwise is to lie. Yes, the possible consequences are interesting and purely speculative, but that is not the debate that is being played out in the public arena or by the media.

In this thread we've had two separate claims that end of life counselling would be mandatory under this bill before that was clarified. It's a simple factual point, free of speculation. I'm not arguing with the speculation, other than to call it what it is. If there are clear claims such as McCaughey's, that end of life counselling would be mandatory under this bill I want to know if that is what the bill says, not what we think might happen.

[MicroBalrog]

That's the facts of the matter then. The rest is speculation of a slippery slope nature.

This is, in my mind, the main problem with a lot of US politics.

Take a gun analogy:

1.Obama says he supports gun licensing, and a new A-Salt Weapons Ban, and opposes people carrying guns.

2.American gun rights groups, who have seen this movie before, release material warning that OBAMA IS A DANGER TO YOUR GUN RIGHTS.

3.Newsmax, WND, and the like release exaggerated material talking about how OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE YOUR GUNS. Some less-smart gun owners probably think that Obama is going to literally pass bills that ban all firearms.

4.Leftists are outraged – outraged, I say! - by this phenomenon. They look at each other and they go: “Oh,  those wacky right-wingers! Obama has never actually sponsored a bill saying WE WILL COME AND TAKE YOUR GUNS! They just say it because (gasp!) they're racist!” Samples of the material in 3 are handed around to 'prove' the paranoia of all gun owners.

5.Leftists are infinitely perplexed as to why gun owners don't believe them, attribute it to paranoia.

We know already that slippery slopes exist and play a role in the development of public policy.(Read The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope for more). They've played a role with guns, drugs, medicine, tobacco, and so forth – and yet you tell us we should ignore their existence now?

[Iain]

Actually micro, all I'm saying is that the real danger in all this is right there in your post:

3.Newsmax, WND, and the like release exaggerated material talking about how OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE YOUR GUNS. Some less-smart gun owners probably think that Obama is going to literally pass bills that ban all firearms.

Bloggers initially reported mandatory as a nice easy stick to beat liberals with and then retracted saying that McCaughey was wrong and moved on to a slippery slope. That's good, but the message was already out, and provides a nice easy stick for liberals to beat conservatives with.

There may or may not be some value in the slippery slope in this instance, but the false claims of 'mandatory is in the bill' have only further opened the culture war divisions you allude to.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

It's a game of plausible deniability.  By writing the bill in a way that doesn't explicitly state what results will occur, politicians are able to deny the results, and to deny critics who are opposed to those results, simply by saying that the results aren't in the bill.  They are correct in a literal sense, but not in a practical sense.

The results of the bill are the bill.  Whether the bill states the results explicitly or not is irrelevant.  If the results of the bill are XYZ, then XYZ is in the bill. Period. 

[makattak]

Actually micro, all I'm saying is that the real danger in all this is right there in your post:

3.Newsmax, WND, and the like release exaggerated material talking about how OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE YOUR GUNS. Some less-smart gun owners probably think that Obama is going to literally pass bills that ban all firearms.

Bloggers initially reported mandatory as a nice easy stick to beat liberals with and then retracted saying that McCaughey was wrong and moved on to a slippery slope. That's good, but the message was already out, and provides a nice easy stick for liberals to beat conservatives with.

There may or may not be some value in the slippery slope in this instance, but the false claims of 'mandatory is in the bill' have only further opened the culture war divisions you allude to.

Incidentally, Palin's death panels comment is not necessarily about the "End of life counseling", although that is what her opponents attribute her opposition to.

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090813/pl_politico/26078

“Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system, these ‘unproductive’ members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care,” Palin wrote in a note on her Facebook page.

“The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled ‘Advance Care Planning Consultation.’ With all due respect, it’s misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients,” she continued.

And, the original statement:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote last week.

Her statement is not that Section 1233 of HR 3200 represents the "death panels," but that the "death panels" would be a necessary result of this health care plan.

She did allow herself to be sidetracked into the argument about that section, but it was not her original point. I fail to see how a that section could be implicated in a statement about a Down syndrome child. The "death panels" are the government rationing board that I alluded to in my post about the necessary consequences of increasing demand and quantity demanded while having no effect on supply. (And, "lowering price!")

As for those who claim the part of the bill demands that, it is disingenuous. That it will lead to such consequences is not.

As for the disingenuous debate, though, those who claim all the opponents are saying it is in the bill are also guilty of mischaracterization. As I just illustrated, Palin did not claim it was in the bill, she explicitly stated: "Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care."

She's not stupid and is quite right about this. Writing in soundbite size, however, does not allow one to go into the detail I used in my post. I wish she would, though.

[roo_ster]

Where is the mandatory aspect of this coming from?

As of right now there is no provision in the bill for mandatory end of life counselling and to say otherwise is to lie.

Incorrect.

End of Life Counseling
The House bill that passed out of committee had "shall" language imposed on the doctor, indicating that the doc must present this sort of counseling to the patient. The other two bills floating in the House have similar language.

Denying this is compulsory is akin to denying that those end users who buy gasoline pay taxes when the state imposes taxes on every gallon sold by the retailer.

Such language has (perhaps) been yanked from the more amorphous Senate version.

Death Panels
Also, whatever the name, the function of rationing care and determining who is to get what sort of care when will have to be accomplished with the gov't running the show.  It is a classic case of Lenin's "Who? Whom?"

Slippery Reality
Of course, what some call "slippery slope" is what others call "regulatory rule-making reality" as these directives are interpreted by bureaucrats and expanded upon.  Especially when the POTUS and his hand-picked political appointees shepherding this matter are on the record supporting the formation of gov't panels with these functions.

Accepting this abortion of a plan means accepting that gov't has jurisdiction over your hip, spleen, whatever...and that the citizen's interests will be subordinate to the gov't's interests.  That is hateful and unacceptable.

...if Obama, Pelosi, Waxman et al get their way, the relationship between the citizen and the state is profoundly, and perhaps permanently, altered and down that path lurks death panels. Oh, they won't be called death panels, but that function will lurk like the ghost in the machine of the federal bureaucracy. Back when the health-care debate was abstract and liberals were sure they would win the day, they were far more comfortable talking about this sort of thing. Barack Obama talked about rationing care for people like his grandmother and seeking guidance from a super-smart panel of experts in this regard. Just a month ago, the New York Times magazine saw nothing wrong with running this unabashed love-letter to a health-care system, in effect, ruled by death panels...

What drives me crazy about liberal complaints about conservative tactics these days is how selective they are. Obama, Barney Frank, Jacob Hacker, and others have said that they want these reforms — specifically the public option — to lead to single payer. But when conservatives take them at their word, suddenly it's outrageous misinformation and "fishy" stuff. When the wind is at their backs, liberals look way off to the horizon, like Obama at a podium, dreaming of a future of European-style statism. But when conservatives use this to their advantage, suddenly it is outrageous to even consider the possibility of a road to hell being paved with good intentions. Suddenly liberals bleat that it is scare-mongering to look beyond what they are proposing in this exact moment, outrageous to ask "Where will this lead?"...conservatives are under no obligation to unilaterally agree to liberal terms or definitions but rather, ..."Our function is to call the opposition on such hair-splitting nonsense, not to make the fog harder to pierce."

[roo_ster]

Nat Hentoff explains the detail in a simple and fairly comprehensive manner:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff081909.php3

[MicroBalrog]

There may or may not be some value in the slippery slope in this instance, but the false claims of 'mandatory is in the bill' have only further opened the culture war divisions you allude to.

1. Nobody here has made such claims. Not Sarah Palin, not any of the posters in this thread. Accusing Sarah Palin of making this claim is an exaggeration equal to the original one.

2. Why would I be opposed to opening the culture war divisions? Don't you remember anything about me?