Now comes the hard part: saving money. Healthcare reform means cuts in Medicare payments. One approach, what Simple Sarah Palin calls 'death panels', means government counseling people not to accept treatment they are entitled to. A Colorado governor once said it best: "We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."
We don't need death panels. Instead we need a living lottery. In 1969 Americn held its first living lottery. That lottery decided who could live and who had a better chance of dying by being sent to Vietnam. In the future we need a national living lottery for people on Medicare to decide who gets all the expensive treatment in their last six months of life. It's as simple as that. Of course members of Congress need to be exempted from the living lottery or the current Congress will never vote to approve the reform but people in Congress are a minute drop in the bucket of Medicare costs.
People who win the living lottery, say 10% of Medicare recipients, would be eligible for all the macho methods of modern medicine. The losers would be eligible for a more dignified demise with Medicare paying for hospice care. The current healthcare reform bill amazingly even cuts hospice payments. A lottery is a much fairer way to make this healthcare reform bill actually work.
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