LET'S PLAY "DEATH PANEL"
Here's the deal. Let's pretend there really were "death panels". A panel would consist of seven people, One Pro-Mercy, one pro-death, one private sector owner, one clergy, one physician, and two non-relative, non-acquaintances (excluding your treating physicians) to be selected by the patient.
Your panel consists of Mother Theresa, Dr. Kevorkian, Andrew Carnegie, Michael DeBakey, and Norman Vincent Peale. What two public people do you pick to fill out the panel if you are the patient who either gets curative or palliative (hospice) care, based upon the panel's decision?
NOTE: This is an intellectual exercise and it is stipulated that this concept is both fictitious and disgusting. Please don't waste our time with decrying the concept. Either play or don't.
posted by UMRBlog @ 08:01
13 comments
13 Comments:
I'm going to with Paula Abdul and Michael Jackson: two folks who know the value of using A LOT of drugs.
Of course, if I wanted to go, then I guess I'd pick Sarah Palin and Roberto Duran- two people who know how to be quitters.
Sorry, I don't want NVP as my "clergy".
And why do I have no family members on this panel? I should be allowed to have "personal rep". In fact, I would say clergy person and one family member should be my choices. This panel shouldn't in fact include ANYone that I don't choose or at least approve of.
MY doctor, MY priest, MY family member, MY friend, and MY choice on the other three. Hell, this wouldn't be anyone else's decision but MINE.
1128,
I forgot to tell you about Rule 6(b)(1)(c)(iv). If you protest the panel in any way, You get Idi Amin and Papa Doc for your two.
Thank you for playing "Name that Drug Cocktail."
1120,
That's too funny. You're Hurting me. No Mas! No Mas!
TYFCB
Put life in the hands of two 90 year partiers that drank moderately and traveled the world.
They'd let folks have that hip so they could cruise and spend their last days and dollars having fun, till the body fell apart.
Definitely NOT blood thirsty lawyers (as opposed to UMR type lawyers) that would do the minimum legally feasible, while isolating the elderly, drugging them, stressing them, then changing their will ... before allowing them to die alone.
We will indeed have people deciding how much to allow during the later stages. And even "old friends" can be brutal and heartless when chasing those dollars.
If we're nominating quitters, then I nominate Lane Evans.
Even though Evans knew for at least a decade that he was sick, he waited until he had won his 12th (13th?) primary to declare one week AFTER victory that he was too sick to continue.
He then threw his support behind his office manager, who now proudly serves as our congressman, because after all, the Democrat elites who were responsible for naming his replacement couldn't deny a sick man his last wish, could they?
No mas, indeed.
Way to pick on the veteran with Parkinson's...classy!
OK, given that the rules specify "public" rather than friends or family, I'm going with President Obama and Secretary Sebelius. They're both familiar with the issues, and they seem to be reasonable people. Obama has personally experienced these issues recently with the end of his grandmother's life, so he would know the emotional territory.
Besides, if I'm going to support their health care reform plan in the abstract, it would only be proper to accept its implications in the particular.
Um, OK 6:36, Evans knew he had progressive, incurable Parkinsons for over a decade, yet it was only AFTER he won his non-contested primary that he SUDDENLY discovered he was too sick to carry on and threw his support behind his office manager, thus securing Hare's victory---classy.
Isn't it really simpler to do it the way we do now? Pay or die?
Thats more annointing your successor than it is being a quitter though.
Well maybe 7:53, but Evans knew he had Parkinsons in '95 but didn't bother to tell his constituents until '98, so that tells us something about his character.
He could have quit any time after that, but he chose to quit at the optimum time to choose his successor and bypass the democratic process.
Classy.
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