[karajorma]

One member of the audience, Jane Sturm, said, "My mother is now over 105.  But at 100, the doctor said to her, 'I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.'  I said go for it, she said go for it, but the specialist said no, she's too old. When the other specialist saw her, saw her joy of life, so on, he said, 'I'm going for it,' that was over five years ago.  My question to you is, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who's elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?" 

I can't believe somebody is actually asking this question of the president of the United States in this country, but it happened.  A woman asks the president, "Would you let my mother live?  Would you take into account her joy of living?  Would your plan let my mother live?" Can you believe that we're even asking that question?  Sadly, it was asked, and here's his answer.

OBAMA:  I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's spirit.  That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making.  I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.  End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make.  But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another.  If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers.  At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help.  Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller.

Congratulations on missing the point of your own quote. Did you not notice that your supposed death panel already exists?

but the specialist said no, she's too old.

And that's before Obama did anything. These death panels the right wing have been going on about already exist. The insurance industry has been running them for years and no one complained then.

[Liberator]

WeatherOp, the random stuff you pull out of your ass on the effectiveness of government health insurance conflicts with my actual experience with government health insurance. Hmm...

He's not talking about your government insurance zack, he's talking about colossal cluster****s that the vast majority of government programs of the size and complexity we're talking about are.

[Flipside]

Then surely the problem is not with the proposed system, but with the way the these kinds of things are handled?

So why weren't these same Republicans shouting louder at the complete screw up of the funds in the Iraq war? Why is it only suddenly a 'fight for America' when its the opposing political party, and, I will add, they are NOT mis-managing funds, it's merely being assumed they will, yet Billions were disappearing in Iraq, and a lot of the conservative talking heads said nothing about that.

It just amazes me that the one solution I haven't seen yet is 'fix the corruption that causes the money to vanish in the first place', instead, people would rather forget even trying.

[Turambar]

It just amazes me that the one solution I haven't seen yet is 'fix the corruption that causes the money to vanish in the first place', instead, people would rather forget even trying.

I suggested it (my suggestion involves firing squads), but really it will never happen since campaign finance laws need to go through congress, and congress likes money too much to actually pass the laws.

[Spicious]

When I said having an enemy, I meant something literal, as in something you can face. When your worst enemy is yourself, guess what happens?

You're right, Americans need someone to fight. Introducing something as an improvement would be admitting that America isn't perfect in every way which would be unamerican.

Oh so having faith in a politician, a politician, just because we don't know he will fail is a good thing? Even when this faith is a trillion dollars. Ohh, so Bush wasted money, so we have to let Obama waste money too?

Yes, trust in the big faceless corporations instead, who like this thing called profit. Surely letting Obama splurge like Bush is only fair. At least his splurges would improve quality of living for tens of millions of your own population instead of ruining the lives of however many people your invasions did.

Please, let him prove his huge stimulus package was worth it and let him drive us out of this recession before we let him spend another trillion dollars.

Bush didn't prove his first war was a good plan before starting his second one.

Personally, I don't know what we can do about solving the healthcare problem here. But, I'll tell you this, what the insurance companies gouge out of us, is nothing to what the government will if they spend a trillion dollars and crap it up.

Perhaps, but those trillions would provide actual healthcare to everyone instead of arbitrarily cutting it off when they feel like it.

Limited supply of what? Uranium is everywhere and is a surprisingly common resource. Part of the problem with time to build power stations is that there's enormous amounts of beaucratic red tape as well as constant lawsuits against it.

See point 4 of http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/opinion-greenhouse-solution-myth-fallacy-spin.

[iamzack]

WeatherOp, the random stuff you pull out of your ass on the effectiveness of government health insurance conflicts with my actual experience with government health insurance. Hmm...

He's not talking about your government insurance zack, he's talking about colossal cluster****s that the vast majority of government programs of the size and complexity we're talking about are.

You mean like Tri-Care?

[Kosh]

See point 4 of http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/opinion-greenhouse-solution-myth-fallacy-spin.

BS

On top of that there's still Thorium based reactors, and Thorium is many times more abundant than Uranium (even though it is also very abundant). That we can even get Uranium from fraking SEAWATER if we have to makes me want to call BS on these "we just have a few decades left" predictions.

[Spicious]

That doesn't seem to address the cost/emissions in obtaining and preparing it.

[Kosh]

So we go from "we're going to run out" to "it's going to become too expensive", progress I suppose.

A.) Even though something is initially expensive, economies of scale generally drive the prices down. When the prices of commodities get higher, then it makes less easy to get reserves economically accesible, pushing the prices back down again.

B.) I'm also calling BS on emissions, just because we use fossil fuel based technology to do all that stuff NOW does not mean that we have to or always will. France's nuclear waste reprocessing facility is, IIRC, powered by a nearby nuclear reactor.

[Colonol Dekker]

Mass divergence although interesting, is hard to follow.
 
I can see, political discussion, death panel, health care and fission vs solar. . . .at least that's uh impression I get.
 
 
 
Btw. . .it's heavy water ie- deuterium, not uranium from sea water.
 
Regarding healthcare, people slag it off til they need it. And i'm not starting on overpopulation as a counter to to the death panel topic.

[Spicious]

Good, peak oil shouldn't be a problem then; its demand is at such a scale that prices should be compressed down.

I don't think there was anything about solar vs. fission. They're really complementary options. It's just that fission isn't going to solve our power or pollution problems.

[Kosh]

Btw. . .it's heavy water ie- deuterium, not uranium from sea water.

No, it was talking about Uranium. Another description.

It's just that fission isn't going to solve our power or pollution problems.

That's because our power problems go much deeper than simple supply issues. The grid itself is antiquated, and badly in need of an upgrade in many places. We still get half of our power from coal, if nukes were to replace that it would cut emissions (even factoring in emissions from Uranium mining, processing, and transportation using fossil fuel based vehicles) from power generation drastically.

Good, peak oil shouldn't be a problem then;

You're not one of those people who believes PO will be the end of the world, are you?

[Spicious]

No, it's just that the price of oil and its derivative products will likely only increase from that point on. It really seems like you skipped the bit on different grades of uranium.

Nice ad hominem though.

[Kosh]

It wasn't not an ad home, it was a question, or at least that was how it was intended.

[Tomo]

I just realized that my medical history will probably prevent me from getting health insurance that I can afford after I lose my parents' insurance. Frak.

Obamacare, please!

And there are the real death panels.

The Death Panel decides that you're too much of a risk to insure because you've got sick.
The Death Panel decides to set your deductibles so high that you would have to more than bankrupt yourself, and thus you don't get the treatment.
The Death Panel decides that your illness isn't bad enough to treat, or that your *specific* illness isn't covered by their plan.

Every time your insurance company finds a way to deny coverage, that's the death panel at work.

These Death Panels are beholden only to their shareholders, so you can't even vote their masters out of office if you don't like them.

[SpardaSon21]

And Obama's "death panels" aren't going to be any different, except they will be run by the inefficient government bureaucracy.  Also, chances are they will be "removed from the political process", which translates pretty well to being unaccountable since the political process is what provides accountability in government.

[General Battuta]

So, were you paying attention for any of the n-billion posts where iamzack and nuclear1 talked about how great their government-run Tricare insurance was?

After a massive economic collapse caused by a lack of government regulation, more privatization is the last thing we need.

[Liberator]

I think they don't realize that they're "government" insurance isn't actually run by the government, merely paid for by same.

[General Battuta]

Uh, no? It's run by the TMA, under the Secretary of Defense (or some underling.) Very definitely government.

[Colonol Dekker]

  I don't like this thread anymore. But i'm gonna let it run.......