Life Panels or Death Panels

The FOX talking heads keep talking about death panels. The original issue was should we pay doctors to discuss with seniors and their families the ramifications of their decisions when creating a living will, which every adult should have unless they like the idea of being a vegetable on life support forever, bankrupting their family while they linger in the land of the brain dead but still warm.

Want to know about a death panel?
 Here's one. A health insurance company that drops a loyal customer becaue they got a serious life threatening illness. No insurance - no treatment. Try to get another policy when you are already diagnosed with a serious illness. Been there done that. You can get one but it won't cover anything that could be in any way remotely connected to the pre-existing illness, even if you have been deemed cured for over 5 years according to real live medical doctors instead of insurance clerks. Once you get sick and lose that first policy you're just flat out of luck, buddy. And if you think you can't get sick you're not living in the sane world. Happens to healthy people every day. One day you're doing fine and the next a doc says malignant and your world just changed bigtime.

Here's another one. A health insurance company refusing to pay for procedures that the medical establishment has deemed necessary and appropriate for the treatment of many illnesses. My policy includes an annual checkup. One of the 2 covered doctor visits a year I can make. Doesn't cover a basic blood panel workup tho, so all they really cover is the doc taking my weight pulse listening to my heart and lungs and telling me to turn my head and cough. How's my cholesterol and all that stuff? Who knows? Can't tell anything important like that without bloodwork. 

At the end of the day, it's health insurance companies who decide medical care in this country. People say they don't want government getting between them and their doctor. Well guess what? Government looks pretty good for those of us who have been buying retail for awhile. If you have insurance through your job you are fortunate. If you lose your job you will find that COBRA will cost you about 3-4 times what you have been paying, and any other retail policy will be just about as bad. who can afford to triple their health insurance bill when they just became unemployed? 
Geez I could rant forever. thee's so much ignorance surrounding this issue and so much misinformation, and it's health insurance companies behind it all. Ask yourself why.