U.S. Congress - H.R.3200 America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
H.R.3200 - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 view all titles (5)
All Bill Titles
- Official: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as introduced.
- Official: To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes. as introduced.
- Popular: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as introduced.
- Short: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as introduced.
- Short: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as reported to house.
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When you die, life ends. → end of life?
That section refers to end-of-life counseling and the procedures your doctor is required to make you aware of during that conversation. Consider it a checklist for doctors.
This happens in the medical industry now. My mother had a stroke of the brain stem. Immediately after her surgeon performed surgery to release the pressure from her brain, he came out of the operating room to tell us we need to consider taking her off life support. I was so upset that he would even approach the subject before her body had time to respond to the treatment he had just performed. Ultimately, we did remove her from life support, not because he suggested it. My mother, unlike some, made her wishes clear to her family. Counseling only provides options to you while you still have the ability to say. Many people fail to have written a Living Will which causes their families to make the decision. Family members may not agree.
This kind of “bean-counting” is going on now, by the insurance companies. It’s how they maximize profits, by excluding those they would have to cover. Health care reform would prohibit insurers from excluding people based on past or pre-existing conditions.
“To make this economically viable the government has to become beancounters with our health.”
There are $11 billion in health INSURANCE industry profits that are more than sufficient to mitigate the cost of subventing those with family incomes below the 400% poverty line standard.
I might agree with you if you wished to push that standard down a few thousand dollars.
I have read 500 pages of the 1000 page bill so far, so perhaps I will find it soon, but where is the point system described?
I registered here specifically to respond with the answer you’re looking for. Ethical “end of life counseling” is hospice care. When my dad became terminally ill, his normal GP dropped him. He was referred to a doctor who cared for terminally ill patients.
My father broke down crying when he talked with his new doctor. It was the first time anyone directly addressed his fears. As a result, dad was put on strong painkillers that allowed him to finally sleep through the night; to eat regular food again; to have some respite from the pain.
He was tended to by a hospice nurse at home. She was able to look after him while my mother wrestled with the situation. She fed him, made him comfortable and kept him clean and free from bed sores. That is end of life care means from a family who’s dealt with it.
Regardless of what else might be said about this bill, support for end-of-life counseling is a moral and just imperative. I ask you to please reasses your opinion based on my story.
tell me where exactly in the bill it says that please.
If I had a stroke and couldn’t move or speak or had terminal cancer it would have been comforting to know that my doctors and family knew my wishes as to what to do. As it is now that that part of the bill is gone I guess I’ll just have to waste away with a feeding tube in my stomach while my family argues in the waiting room of the hospital. Thanks folks!
We already have the option to make living wills. This is our prerogative, not a government mandate. Government mandate is the difference and the problem. If you waste away . . ., it’s your own fault! At least you have that choice, for now.
You are correct, we do have the option to make a will, but you will have to pay for it. There is no mandate in the new bill that you have to make a will, except you decide to do so, the government will pay for it. Get it?
It is already free to do a living will why would the government want to pay for something that is already free?
abarator, its me again – same screen name
yes, everyone can set up a living will just go to legalzoom.com and download the form. However, the living will aka advance directive about end of life decisions when the patient is mentally unable or in a coma, is not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t involve your personal physician to see to it that your wishes are carried out. It is the fee that the doctor will charge that would be covered by insurance.
Living wills are not authorized in every state, for example not by Michigan law. There you will have to get a durable power of attorney; this has to be drawn up by an attorney – costs about $250.
Sweet for a savings of only $250 dollars i can throw away all personal freedom and responsibility and Go feed at the teat of my neighbors…… and they said social fascism would never fly in “america”. I am so glad i stumbled acroos your comments whilst cleaning my guns and reading my Bible(GWBush edition). While I 100percent agree that the healthcare system needs fixed i think we can do better if we just let real competition work and perhaps look at tort reform. Too bad our “glorious leader” has been a lawyer too long to piss away his lobbyist support. If the bill is so good why are the government workers exempt from it?
HMOs were created from the “free market”. I have one of the so called great health insurance plans, but I have seen the HMOs stifle wage increases and choice. My employer dropped 3 of the biggest healthcare providers as the premiums became unsustainable for them and for me. Each time that happened, I had to choose a different doctor or my doctor didn’t accept the healthcare carrier because they hated having to fight to get paid or treat their patients. Tort reform is a small portion of the problem with the rising health care cost. Now if we really want to fix healthcare, let’s talk about insurance reform, (remember AIG).
The govt workers already have good govt insurance. I’m not an expert at what ails private insurance. I know mine is not the best and I get turned down by Blue Cross frequently for a host of seemingly random excuses. I want what the govt employees have.
Government employees can choose Blue Cross Blue Shield or a number of other insurance plans provided thru the GEHB (Governemt Employees Health Benefits), we have choices based on area or national plans, where I live the national plans are the better choice, and we still have to pay our part and their are also deductables, so don’t tell anyone that “Government Employees” or retires get free medical we don’t!!!!!
We all do, but, you wont get that with this legislation!
false HMO’s were established by the HMO LAW put in place during the Nixon administration, HMOs were created by government intervention.
I agree with your comment on insurance reform, but, it’s deeper than that. It’s SYSTEMIC reform. BTW – HMOs were a mandate from our wonderful government:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organization_Act_of_1973
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_maintenance_organization
Filtered Comment [ show ]
The $250 document is how things function now and is a reflection of your desires.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_attorney
Maybe you should read a history book? or a dictionary?
1.) Social fascism isn’t even a term (that I am aware of)
2.) If you’re calling HR3200 socialist, you have no idea what socialism is
If HR3200:
-Collectivized the hospital system
-mandated government insurance (single-payer)
or -banned private insurance
that would be socialist. and not to say socialism is a bad thing. socialized medicine works in many countries around the world.
well lemme see now. a public option = competition?
oops. didn’t see that one coming?
government workers aren’t exempt from the plan. they’re already on it. oops. another blindside.
Moderated Comment
The Government by the people was to ensure that America did not have a king. They setup a government that balanced the powers. Their approach was to ensure that your rights as they interpreted them in the 1700 and 1800s’were not taken from you. I see the health care problem as a modern problem that the people of America need to fix. If it is unconstitutional then the Supreme Court was setup to address that very issue. So if you believe in the constitution then let the government do its job and start trying to solve the problem instead of worrying that the government might take your rights, the same government our founding fathers setup to protect your rights. The United States has never lived under the rule of a king because of the balance of powers and although many social issues were not addressed when
Really? And you talk about me being ignorant? “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,…” do you recognize this? Any form of government, including our own can and will trample the rights of the individual.
To ensure America doesn’t have a king? No. The design of our government is such in the best effort to put the power of government into the hands of the people. Your allusion to the “rights they interpreted in the 17 and 1800’s” being moot because we live in a different time is a misunderstanding of your own argument. Principles, the basic principles to which you refer below (I’m getting there) do not nor will they ever change.
Very well said, thank you I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Where in the bill does it say government workers exempt from it.
It says the govt will pay for the counseling once every five years.
Most Americans couldn’t define socialism or fascism so your question will fall on dumb ears. Heck, Americans don’t know what true capitalism is either.
What happened to people working hard and paying there own way. Im unemployeed right now and it would greatly help me because i need a shoulder operation but it would hurt our economy. We have to think of whats best for the countries finances. If the dollar is worth more. Then these people have more value to buy insurance right?
Two Voices | Two Guys
To encourage the type of counseling that convinces elderly and terminally ill patients to throw in the towel ASAP. This one of the ingenious ideas the authors of the bill use to save money for this nightmare that is being crammed down our throats.
It benefits the doctors and the people committee in charge of funds. The doctors get paid for a previously free service, which provides them with the extra incentive to promote the end-of-life options of the gov’t’s choice (after all, that’s who the docs will be working for), and the money that would have been spent on life saving procedures can be spent on other things (like abortions and prozac) because the patient has been sold on the idea that their life is not worth living.