Comments on: Medicare adopts “never event” policy

By: OBQuiet

OBQuiet — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:02:45 +0000

I don’t understand what everyone is complaining about. This is the best thing to happen in Medicine in the last 1000 years!

All we have to do is get Medicare to add Breast Cancer, Heart Attacks and Asthma to that never list of theirs. Think of all the people this will CURE!

We have to start small since we don’t want to put every doctor and hospital worker out of business at once by eliminating all illnesses at the same time. We have to allow time for these workers to be reabsorbed into the workforce as Lawyers, Politician, Bureaucrats and other highly productive types. But we are now within a single generation of DEFINING sickness out of existence!

Can’t you see the advantages of eliminating an entire class of worker that only exists because of others misery? Or are you pro-suffering?

By: rxc

rxc — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:47:12 +0000

This is the medical equivalent of the “mark to market” rule that is causing the current financial meltdown – a rule passed by a Congress that is determined to ensure that something “will NEVER happen again”, because something that is CERTAIN to happen again in the future, got blown all out-of-proportion by the chattering classes. For an engineer, it is a classic example of setting up a system in such a way that is is sure to fail in the future, catastophically(sp?), as soon as the appropriate trigger is indentified and set in motion.

Let’s all give a cheer to our politicians, and the people who swarm around them, and live off of them….

By: Soronel Haetir

Soronel Haetir — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:52:24 +0000

Especially given that one of the major points of Medicare is that the provider can not go after the patient for charges that Medicare does not approve.

I can fully see the other ramifications, rationing, transfers etc though.

By: Soronel Haetir

Soronel Haetir — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:48:33 +0000

I would have thought that the hospital-Medicare agreement would have terms excluding such a solution.

By: Petra

Petra — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:09:58 +0000

It’s just back door rationing. As doctors refuse to treat risky patients they’ll just die, saving money; and when enough people complain the policy will change (or not).