Tuesday, August 11, 2009

HEY SARAH! INSURANCE COMPANIES HAVE DEATH PANELS


Sarah Palin in a recent Facebook rant said that was what if Obama's heath insurance reform passed that "Death Panels" would be convened to decide who lives and dies.


What she seems unaware of is the current existence of these "Death Panels" in each and every Health Insurance Company. Denials of life saving treatment are an everyday practice. Exclusions of certain tests, "experimental" treatments (like bone marrow transplants) and delays in treatments often result in death of the patient.
Refusals to cover prescription medicine prescribed by doctors is also like a death sentence if the patient cannot afford to pay for it out of pocket. So the pharmaceutical companies have death panels, too, by virtue of their pricing.

Refusal to accept an applicant for insurance due to a "pre-existing condition" throws millions into an uninsured abyss. Those denials are sort of like death threats.
Even people who have no history of ill health but who admit that they smoke or are overweight are denied (as happened to me and my husband when we were in our forties.) Considering the low threshold of pre-existing conditions, I wonder just who is considered insurable? Very thin young Nuns, perhaps.

5 comments:

knittergran said...

Thank you for this. Now can you send it out to all the people who shout any sense out of town meetings? They just don't want to hear actual facts, apparently.

Nan said...

I don't think thin nuns can get insurance either. Despite the vows of abstinence and chastity, they might still have "female problems." Now if they were only men who wanted Viagra they'd be covered. . .

themom said...

I am in the red zone of frustration, with the clones of Palin - and even she herself. Everything that is being quoted from SP, is surely being written by others. She cannot put one sensible sentence together if her life depended on it. You betcha!

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

Amen. I had an experience today that reinforces just what you said.

Suburban Correspondent said...

Sing it, sister! Rationing already exists...