I have far too many tabs open in my browser, and some of them have been open for days. I am never going to get to all the ranting I want to do, and quite frankly, it’s a waste of my time to rant for too long about some of the idiotic and downright insane things people are saying about health care reform. But some of the things I would like to rant about are at least worth pointing out, even if I can’t be bothered to write a thousand words about each of them.

If you read none of the rest of the links I am about to post, read this one: Health care debate turns vile with Nazi analogy. It’s an excellent editorial and sums up rather well my thoughts on the matter.

Apparently, Alaska doesn’t need “death panels” in order to get rid of their old and sick:

State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life — taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom — are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found.

The situation is so bad the federal government has forbidden the state to sign up new people until the state makes necessary improvements.

Doctors and other health care providers wrote to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid with concerns that the state wasn’t responsive. Some alleged that the lack of state controls “has resulted in the death(s) of the active clients,” the federal review said.

While the people served are frail and suffer from chronic health issues, the state never investigated to determine if any failure in service contributed to the deaths, the federal review found.

“Thus, if someone passed away because a (personal care assistant) did not show up, for example, there was no indication this would have been reported or investigated,” the report said.

The print version of this editorial –How House Bill Runs Over Grandma– has been changed, but the audio version still contains the stupidity they’ve tried to edit out of existence. Let me share it with you:

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Seeing as Hawking has lived his whole disabled life in the U.K., I think we can see it isn’t true the U.K. health care system kills off the weak and sick who are deemed “worthless” … now do they? The rest of the article is just so much more hogwash and bullshit.

Senator Spector has been having town hall meetings, and while he is not quite as insane as some of our elected officials, he did recently agree with something the crowds are shouting about that simply isn’t true.

The senator agreed with the crowd on some issues, saying he opposes mandatory counseling on end-of-life issues called for in a House of Representatives version of health care legislation.

There is no mandatory end-of-life counseling in any version of any of the health care bills. Let me repeat that: there is no mandatory end-of-life counseling in any version of any of the health care bills. No one is going to make anyone sit down and contemplate what they want done as their life comes to an end. Everyone will still be free to not have a living will or a DNR or any kind of plan in place at all for what happens as they die. No one will be knocking on grandma’s door and signing her up for a visit to a gas chamber because her hip needs replacing. So, Senator Spector … better than some of our elected officials, but in the end, still stupid and has apparently not bothered to read any of the bills.

Here and there on the internet, I have run into people decrying the “horrific” and “outlandish” ideas of Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, who is a presidential adviser on health care economics. What I never heard or found was an example of the “horrific” ideas the man supposedly has in his head. As it turns out, he is a supporter of doctor-assisted suicide, and it’s this article he wrote on the subject in 2007 which is causing all the outrage and apparently is causing people like Sarah Palin to believe there will be “death panels” mandating said doctor-assisted suicide.

I think it’s unfortunate others don’t feel I or anyone else should have the right to end our lives with grace and dignity^†, or that allowing people to have this right is some kind of slippery-slope argument leading to forced euthanasia. Oregon has had doctor-assisted suicide as a legal option for 12 years. Very few people qualify to use it, and of those who do, even fewer choose to do so. Thus far, in all this time, there hasn’t seemed to be one instance of someone being forced to die. If there had been, I’m fairly certain some crazed right-winger would be shouting about it and linking to the facts proving how horrific it was.

And now, because my physical health is very poor today and I am feeling downright ill, I am going to go take a nap and stop thinking about all the insanity this attempt at health care reform has caused. Fact is, I doubt any tangible reform will happen, and I further doubt that any reform that happens will change anything in my life whatsoever. If all these screaming people think they have it so good, then go on and let them continue to have it just as good as they’ve got it –which isn’t all that damn good. I’ll just continue to be uninsured and living my life wondering what’s going to jump up at some point and kill me without warning. I could be dying right now. Who would know?

So yeah, go ahead and not give a damn about anyone else, scream about “socialism” and “death panels” and “forced euthanasia” while patting yourself on the back for having insurance, and stop this reform in its tracks, but … no complaints when your insurance company denies you coverage for some seemingly crazy reason, or you’ve used up your lifetime payout of health insurance claims, and you find yourself “rationed” right out of health care altogether by the limited size of your bank account. Deal?

And what the hell is up with the spelling and grammar errors at The Atlantic?! Do they not have editors? If they do, they should be fired.

1. † I happen to agree with the concept of doctor-assisted suicide, because I know that if I found myself facing a decision between 6 months of living hell fighting a disease that has technically already killed me or going peacefully, surrounded by my loved ones, in a way I knew would work flawlessly and painlessly, and when I felt the time was right (and I’d had enough suffering), the choice would be an easy one for me to make. [↩]