Sunday, April 19, 2009

Life Is Sacred, Unless There's Taxes Involved

From last week's 60 Minutes episode on CBS:
Recently thousands of letters went out across Las Vegas telling cancer patients that the only public hospital in the state was closing its outpatient clinic for chemotherapy.

It's the next thing in the recession - communities cutting back on services like schools or cops or public hospitals because tax revenues have fallen with the economy.

One of the charity patients who got that letter in Las Vegas is Helen Sharp, who didn't realize how a crash on Wall Street might threaten her life.

[...]

Silver told 60 Minutes she had to defend her unique services like the trauma center, so she chose to sacrifice services that are duplicated at private hospitals, even though patients may not be able to afford them.

Asked what services she had closed, Silver said, "We no longer provide prenatal services. We closed the outpatient oncology program. We cancelled a contract for outpatient dialysis. We closed the dedicated high risk obstetrical unit that we had. And we stopped doing outpatient mammography."
I wonder how often scenarios like this are being played out around the country. How many people are being handed death sentences, just because a small group of loudmouths don't want to pay taxes.

I wonder if these selfish, greedy egocentrics even thought of these people that they were giving a death sentence to while they gathered to hurl insults at their local and state politicians or at President Obama.

I wonder if any of the mad hatters would even stop to explain to the people, like the woman in the story, that they're sorry they had to die, but they think that they can spend their $20 in a better way.

And to think they call themselves the moral ones. Bah!

9 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure I watched the same 60 Minutes show and part of the problem was the people who needed treatment weren't poor enough to get it for free or rich enough to pay for it. It was a heart-breaking story. But (there is always a "but" hey?) you can't blame those who don't want to pay more taxes for the problem. I think we first need to look at what is draining our hospitals and medical system causing them to go bankrupted.

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  2. Well, the answer is that health care insurance is so expensive due to their high profit margin. Universal health care would cut those costs, but they are against that as well, even though it would save them money.

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  3. Yeah...I was thinking of this when I woke up this morning and I remembered some of the health/medical insurance companies dropped the people in the story who needed treatment which is why they couldn't afford the treatment. 60 Minutes reported after they began looking into why some of them were dropped the health/medical insurance was reinstateded and they started to receive medical treatment again (thank God).

    I really don't think most people are against paying for taxes (at least I'm not) but I don't think throwing more money after a broken system is going to help anything. The bad guys in this story weren't the tax payers who feel they pay enough taxes. The bad guys were the health/medical insurance companies...along with the other reasons why hospitals and clinics can't afford to treat people who don't have insurance anymore.

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  4. Methinks that there is enough blame to go around.

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  5. There is always enough blame to go around...the problem is you didn't blame anyone but the greedy taxpayer who wants to hold on to their twenty bucks. Honestly...I have never given paying taxes a second thought until recently and that's only because we are starting to feel the pain too. I don't think it's fair to put all the burdens of the world on the taxpayers.

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  6. I feel the pain as well. I have spent many a restless night due to my worries.

    But losing some luxuries pales to losing one's life. It is all a matter of perspective.

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  7. You know...I knew you were going to say that. I was going to do a "BTW" and make it clear I wasn't comparing my feeling the pain to what these ill people are going through...but I was hoping it wouldn't be necessary. Argh. Trust me capper...I wish there was more I could do to fix the world too.

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  8. I agree. It does get frustrating.

    All we can do is just keep trying to fix our corner of it.

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