WTF?????

You really are f.cking idiot.....

At least I didn't shoot my dad...

Did those mean prison guards teach you grammar?

This [censored] is over your head and reasonable discussion is too....I understand you limitations. Really I do.

RvW,

Actually, I think most people will read our two messages and conclude that in fact *you* are the guy who's confused:

a) CPR isn't ordinary care? Really? I learned how to do it when I was 14, as did lots of other 14 year olds. 14 year olds are not a lot of things, but ordinary comes to mind.

b) You then go off and talk about bridges being built even though they might fail some day. While I appreciate and agree with this pragmatic and candidly pretty obvious point, I have no idea how it relates to the topic at hand.

c) Your point about "more than once this ridiculously expensive technique saved a life!!!" proves you missed my point.

What if I told you there was a 1 in 100 procedure, cost $1000, that could save a baby's life. Would you do it? What if it cost $10,000. What if it cost $100,000? What if it cost $1,000,000. This is a legitimate medical ethics question--and we must get comfortable with answering it. At the extremes, the answers are easy -- you would obviously spend $10, for a 1% chance at saving a baby's life. You would obviously NOT spend $1 Billion to save the baby's life. Somewhere in the middle is the uncomfortable place where yes turns into no. Modern technology has made this scenario not theoretical, but actual. We must decide.

Still confused...or are ya' having following your own line of "reasoning"?

No, you're just confused. Let me see if I can un-confuse you with a scenario: Ask yourself this question -- what magnitude earthquake could said bridge withstand as you drove across it. There absolutely *is* a point at which it'll collapse... Guaranteed. And a whole bunch of "Bridge DEATH PANEL members" made up some engineering guidelines for what reasonable bridge building standards are.

These are all life-and-death decisions, and the reason you make standards up in advance is so that the emotion of a singular situation doesn't cause you to constantly make bad decisions. This holds for bridge building, and for decisions about what extrordinary measures should be used to attempt to save individual lives.

So, RvW, are you implying that here in the good ol' USA--ranked 37th in the world on healthcare, btw--this scenario would never play out as long as we stop "Obamacare?" It's because the UK has socialized healthcare that this happened?

Why didn't that lady have supplemental health insurance? After 5 miscarriages she didn't think that might be wise? There's no law in the UK forbidding additional insurance. So why is it the government's fault?

Are you honestly going to try and convince us that here in the US--most expensive healthcare in the world with least return, btw--if she was lucky enough to find insurance after having 5 miscarriages, that the insurance company wouldn't have made the same decision? C'mon, now.

IR-------I agree with everything in your last post! Nothing lasts forever...hence my........." Engineers and the other examples you cite don't guarantee that the bridge will last forever anymore than doctors do...everything will eventually fail but should the bridge not have been built because we know it won't last forever? Should the doctor not try his/her best because they know death is possible and eventually inevitable?"


I suppose that your "bridge death panels" would be my "doctors consulting" with each other to find the best course of treatment for the Bridge/Patient.

No only if that's the model we use.

Having what???

"TROUBLE"?!? (with grammar again?)

In a nutshell.

I guess that everyone can keep clapping their gums, but that said all there is to say that matters.

I didn't realize "Obamacare" was already in action. If it isn't, how did this happen?

Did someone get shot?

Surprised to see AM throwing some logic into the mix... a nice change I must say. Quality of life AFTER a medical procedure SHOULD be a deciding factor. I'm pretty sure that I could keep my dog alive for another couple of years but I doubt I will. That is life.

That is one TINY hand...

I am now intending to hijack this thread, but this ranking pisses me off. Here are the criteria that the WHO uses to rank countries healthcare. If you look at the criteria you will see that they favor socialized systems HEAVILY!

Five factors went into WHO's calculation:

• Health level, as defined by a measure of life expectancy, which shows how healthy a country's population is. This factor gets a 25 percent weight.

• Responsiveness, which includes factors such as speed of health services, privacy protections, choice of doctors and quality of amenities. This factor gets a 12.5 percent weight.

• Financial fairness, which measures how progressive or regressive the financing of a country's health care system is — that is, whether or not the financial burdens are borne by those who are economically better off. This factor receives a 25 percent weight.

• Health distribution, which measures how equally a nation's health care resources are allocated among the population. This factor receives a 25 percent weight.

• Responsiveness distribution, which measures how equally a nation's health care responsiveness (which we defined above) is spread through society. This factor gets a 12.5 percent weight.

Common sense began and ended in the third post, by IrishRogue. From there on it's just responding to an individual that is clearly barking mad.

I didn't leave anything out. Those are their published criteria. But if you would like to discuss longevity perhaps we should factor in fatalities from auto accidents and the murder rate. We are the highest in the world in both categories, which does impact our life expectancy numbers. If you remove those from the figures our life expectancy goes up near the top.

Not going to argue cost, cause I am sure we agree something needs to be done. Based on other threads I know we won't agree how to get er done!

Vic... you need to stop for a second... put aside that fierce nationalistic and partisan pride and realize that not everything bad is the fault of Obama and Democrats.

Until you do... the only person you're foolin' is yourself.

Uh??? Where did I even mention Obama? I posted the criteria that the WHO uses to rank healthcare.

So the 50,000 people that die on our roads every year don't impact the life expectancy numbers? How many other countries have a stat any where near that?