January 25, 2002

11:18 PM

Troll of trollsIn this one tiny piece in Modern Healthcare hot button issues are pressed all over the place: abortion, public funds ($40 billion) for religious doctrine, contraception, patients rights, etc. etc. Of course none of this would be an issue if poor unwed mothers would take West Virginia up on their offer of $100 to just get married. Flame away...
posted by victors (6 comments total)

I'm not sure how much you're kidding, and I'm not sure how those three links go together, or whether they were meant to.
posted by bingo at 12:48 AM on January 26, 2002

sorry, but the government has no business telling a religously-affiliated hospital that it has to perform procedures antithetical to its core beliefs in order to get reimbursed for Medicaid and Medicare. For one thing, the first amendment is supposed to protect churches from exactly this sort of gov't meddling. Even if you don't buy that, think about the practical effect of forcing catholic hospitals to choose between taking Medicaid and Medicare and performing abortions. They're gonna choose to stop treating medicaid and medicare patients. How does that improve access to health services for anyone?

Now the one case that i will admit is somewhat problematic is the case of a rural area where the only hospital in a particular service area is religiously-affiliated. In these cases, the argument for regulation is stronger. But even then, linking Medicaid and Medicare payments to compliance is a stupid way to regulate.
posted by boltman at 1:22 AM on January 26, 2002

[standard one-sided and intentionally myopic argument, made with regards to calculated, ire-inducing fpp]

You know, If you hold down the Alt+Ctrl+Del keys, you can get a variety of stock MeFi inserts like this.
It's cool. Try it.
posted by dong_resin at 9:52 AM on January 26, 2002

...and here I thought thread killing argumentum ad hominem were the terrain of MeTa.

In fact the issues at stake are huge. As boltman points out the case in rural areas are critical where merger mania has kept activist groups like MergerWatch very, very busy (the first link was forwarded to me by a doctor working in just such a hospital in just such a community).
posted by victors at 10:59 AM on January 26, 2002

See, If you'd read your own link, you'd see that an ad hominem attack is one made at the individual, which is exactly what I didn't do. I'm sure you're beautiful human being who is kind to puppies, the retarded, and the sort of people who think Sex and City is clever.
But your fpp came off a bit calculated, which kinda speaks down to us, the readers.
If you're going to obvious, you can't then be sensitive about it. "Flame away..." shot this thread in the foot.
posted by dong_resin at 3:32 AM on January 27, 2002

I know this will sound like a cop but god I wished I cared that much about it one way or the other -- sorry if I came off that way
posted by victors at 11:13 AM on January 27, 2002