Well, we can all feel more secure when the insurance companies http://pudsandlosers.blogspot.com/2009/08/insurance-company-death-panel.html make these decisions, eh?

Exactly. "Death panel" is really just a new term for an old entity: the health insurance company. We should come up with some other new name for them, like "death control companies" or something similar to expose their true nature.

It amuses me that all of the overblown accusations, theoretical problems, and lies leveled against the various national health care proposals are actually all real parts of our current health industry (I intentionally refuse to put the word "care" in that phrase, because there is no "care" in the American health industry, just the bottom line). It's amazing how no one in opposition to national health care seems to notice how many people under the market system are currently refused insurance, kicked out of hospitals, refused care, have limits placed on services, or sentenced to death.

Calling the existing system a "market system" is just wrong. The government has distorted the market by encouraging the use of medical insurance by providing corporate tax breaks. This combined with medicare and medicaid blow prices through the roof. The freest portion of the medical market is lasik, which gets cheaper and better every year.

i've read of a woman in Russia in her early 90s that had blood pression spikes everyday, so they were calling ambulance everyday and pretty soon they stopped coming at all. She was over a 100 when i read this.

All health "care" is essentially, is death-delayment.

Everyone dies.

The only TWO questions are A) how much total money do you want to spend as a society on delaying death

and B) how do you determine who deserves to have their death delayed more.

While I will never agree with withholding nutrition and water from anyone under any circumstance; the "outrage" advertised here is interesting to compare to what people were doing the "omg outrage" dance about 20 years ago. Stories, editorials, and movies were written in quantity, promoting the notion that end stage life support was a horrible thing to inflict upon people.

Well, bureaucrats (private and public) being the dull lot that they are bought it hook, line, and sinker. When they withhold WATER from an infirm, elderly person, they don't feel like they are committing a crime, they feel like they are avoiding a moral horror.

Funny now though, that same generation that wrote that earlier stuff, is now all bent out of shape at the notion of government or private insurance companies doing what they suggested was the moral and ethical thing (when they were not at risk of being the subject, that is) for them to do.

My lawyer is now working on my living will with medical directives. The main thing is designating the person or persons you want deciding things (you can name your own "death panel" of you closest family and/or friends). Kind of interesting the directives you can make. The one phrase of not wanting any treatment which only has the "purpose of prolonging the process of dying" (or something to that effect) is in the draft. The interpretation of that is interesting. In a way, breathing is prolonging death. Food and water is to be given only if it "provides comfort". We recently asked my dad what he wanted since he doesn't have a living will and he said he didn't want to be kept alive "by unnatural means" - again a lot to interpret. It all boils down to who is making the decisions on your behalf.

While living wills are an interesting topic, let me poke a touch of reality. The action that decides how things will play out really happens when the afflicted person reaches for the phone to dial 911, or not. If the person with the living will turns around and dials 911 for emergency health needs, by the time anyone gets around to reading documents or talking to lawyers, the afflicted one will have had most of the immediate procedures done that turn normal "death by hearth attack" into "will live a long long time unless we withhold water and nutrition".

If one really doesn't wish to interfere with these natural means of death; they need to take steps to prevent others from overreacting, they need to make sure their normal doctor is ok with it (dieing of cancer with no pain management would REALLY suck), and they need to be mentally prepared to not freak out.

Oh, yes I forgot about the "pain management" clause of the living will. There is lots of pain management specified. Lots and lots. I don't have it in front of me but the phrasing you are allowed to use (or at least that will be accepted by the courts) varies by state. In Virginia, what you can say is that you desire that all possible pain management tehniques be used to include the "administering of Morphine in doseages exceeding recommended medical levels" (or something to that effect).

yes there are chances where person is not agree with death panel chances.But we agree when see it physically.

I love it.

Trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan - not a peep.
TENS of trillions handed out to banks, insurance companies and car companies - not a peep.
Ubiquitous surveillence apparatus, complete with citizen snitch lines - not a peep
"Rendition" and torture openly acknowleged - not a peep

But threaten to give brown people health care? Well that's grounds for revolution!

It's the welfare warfare state.