WE HAVE DEATH PANELS NOW!

I hate to break this to you Sarah Palin, but we have death panels now and they are the most shameless, crass and uncompassionate type of business arrangements that involves milking the Medicare program until it has exhausted how much an individual patient can be entitled to receive during a catastrophic, end-of-life situation.

To clarify this I will give you two examples of just how this is happening. My ex-wife’s grandmother was suffering from cancer of the tongue. From the time she was diagnosed to the time of her passing, she underwent numerous procedures and tests that Medicare covered. Finally, when it was obvious that the cancer was so advanced that her chances of survival were nil, she was admitted to the hospital where she spent 29 days. During her hospital stay, she was subjected to unnecessary tests like CAT scans and blood, urine and a myriad of other tests that contributed nothing to her hopeless situation. She was not going to get any better and the cancer had no cure. Yet they subjected her to numerous unnecessary tests and put her through uncomfortable and painful tests.

Then, on the 29^th day of her hospital stay, they sent her home to die. She had exhausted the cap of how much money any one under Medicare can spend but the hospital wanted to make sure that they got as much money out before she died. The thing is that she outlived their estimates and now she was sent home during the most critical period of her situation, just at the point when she was going to expire.

The other case is that of my own father. He had advanced diabetes that had damaged his kidneys and was reaching the point when his demise was eminent. He had refused receiving dialysis treatment and the man was at the point where he wanted to die to be relieved of his pain. He had to go to the doctor and the lab almost on a daily basis to receive I don’t know what. But he was admitted to the hospital after the illness began to take a final stage and after a series of expensive and unnecessary tests he was sent to a hospice. He was there exactly five days and then sent home to die. It is true that he requested to be sent home, but it is also true that after all the treatment, all the tests he had received, he had also exhausted the cap that Medicare would pay in his case. Again, here is a patient who is sent home precisely at the point when he needed the care, when it was most critical. But this was not to be because he had outspent his cap. Yes, the Medicare program did send a nurse over and she was there at the moment of his passing. But I question whether he would have been more comfortable and his passing made easier if he had been in the hospital rather than at home.

So, my message to all of you is this: We have a death panel now. It is real, someone at the hospital made sure that the hospital milked the system for all it was worth and someone there also decided that once the hospital could receive no more funds from Medicare, in both cases, Daisy’s grandmother and my own father, they were sent home to die.

And my message to Sarah Palin: Shut the fuck up, you hypocrite useless opportunist. The reality is that if either grandma or my own father had not been subjected to all these unnecessary tests and uncomfortable procedures that did not cure them or even made them feel better; there would have been extra funds for other people, at least ten more persons would have received critical care at the end of their lives. But the hospital (Hialeah Hospital) wanted to make sure they got all the money they could legally extract from the system. By the way, this is the same hospital that demanded I pay an ESTIMATE of a total bill when my youngest daughter was born, if I didn’t they refused to allow the mom and my daughter release.

It is not just insurance and pharmaceutical companies, some hospitals have learned to milk the system and abuse the Medicare Program. That is why I believe that saving and streamlining the whole system is entirely advisable.

This also shapes up my conviction that it is unethical to make a big profit out of people's health and it is downright IMMORAL to make an obscene profit out of people's misery.