It’s strictly semantics. Whether the Republicans use the word to instill fear in the elderly or the Democrats want the word stricken from the dictionary, “death panels” do exist. Clearly however, this word, nor any of its’ broadest purported hidden meanings do not exist in the on-the-table health care reform bill. The preposterous musings of politicians on vacation, on talk shows, at town hall meetings and on Facebook, still doesn’t make it true. There is absolutely no “Pull the plug on grandma” wording in the bill, and now anything even remotely smacking of end-of-life anything, has been stricken from the bill.
But, we are all acting like this is some new word. When in reality, for eons death panels used to be called “greedy, insensitive, blood sucking, SOB, private insurance companies.” The words just got shortened. At least our government brings us Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Private insurance companies bring us; thank you for your years of premiums but we can’t pay for your hospital stay because that will eat into our profits and CEO’s bonus. I mean come on, these are the people that literally have our lives in their hands.
Many of them play God (if you believe in a God) , they are judge and jury, the big kahuna, whatever you believe in as a higher power they are IT. They have the power and they use it with swift and final force. If you have a catastrophic illness and you have private health insurance that decides not to pay, you are basically screwed. They can come up with so many reasons not to pay that your head will swim. You can try and sue but they have so much money (yours also) that you will die before it ever hits court. They can find the smallest possible error on your initial application and tell you it’s fraud. They have lawyers on retainers just itching to find a way to not pay for the doctor you just went to. Another tactic is delay, they continually put off approving something that might be life saving, and in the meantime you die. Yes, they know all this, they have stats on every known illness, life expectancy, etc. They play with our lives like they play the stock market. Win some, you lose some.
Yes, the insurance companies are the “death panels”. They just never got the proper label. I figure the shoe fits…
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