Bloomberg: Deny Elderly Patients Treatment For Cancer, Europe’s Health System Good

A resurfaced video of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg emerged over the week that showed him discussing health care while visiting a Jewish family in 2011 where he said that elderly people should be denied treatment for cancer as a solution for managing hospital’s scarce resources.

Bloomberg, who railed against Obamacare while talking to the Jewish family, said, “All of these costs keep going up, nobody wants to pay any more money and at the rate we’re going, health care is going to bankrupt us.”

“So, not only do we have a problem, it’s going to bankrupt us and we’ve got to sit here and say, ‘which things are we going to do and which things we’re not,’” Bloomberg continued. “Nobody wants to do that.”

“You know, you show up with prostate cancer and you’re 95-years-old, we should say, ‘go and enjoy, have a nice [inaudible], live a long life,’” Bloomberg continued. “There’s no cure and you can’t do anything, if you’re a young person we should do something about it. Society is not willing to do that yet, so [health care] is going to bankrupt us and we’re not looking at prophylactic care, we’re not trying to take care of things, so we don’t get sick.”

Bloomberg later praised the socialized medicine that Europe has, suggesting that it was better than America’s health care system.

“If you look in Europe, if you look in Europe, we spend here about $7,000 odd dollars per person per year on health care in the United States,” Bloomberg said. “In Europe it’s about $3,300, less than half, their life expectancy 2-3 years greater.”

WATCH:

Samuel D. Finkelstein II@CANCEL_SAM

Bloomberg explaining how healthcare will “bankrupt us,” unless we deny care to the elderly.

“If you show up with cancer & you’re 95 years old, we should say...there’s no cure, we can’t do anything.

A young person, we should do something. Society’s not willing to do that, yet.”

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1:06 AM - Feb 17, 2020

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TRANSCRIPT:

BLOOMBERG: “It’s going to get worse with [Obamacare] and with the governor’s cutbacks because the governor’s cutbacks, which you may not have any choice in all fairness to the governor, but there’d be less money. Some of these small hospitals will close, some of these other programs, and people will come into the HHC hospitals and that’s, you know—”

PERSON IN ROOM: “They will be there for days in these emergency rooms.”

BLOOMBERG: “Well, they try to decide what things they can fix right away and what things they can’t fix right away. You know, if you’re bleeding, they’ll stop the bleeding. If you need an x-ray, you’re going to have to wait. All of these costs keep going up, nobody wants to pay anymore money and at the rate we’re going, health care is going to bankrupt us. So, not only do we have a problem, it’s going to bankrupt us and we’ve got to sit here and say, ‘which things are we going to do and which things we’re not.’ Nobody wants to do that. You know, you show up with prostate cancer and you’re 95-years-old, we should say, ‘go and enjoy, have a nice [inaudible], live a long life.’ There’s no cure and you can’t do anything, if you’re a young person we should do something about it. Society is not willing to do that yet, so [health care] is going to bankrupt us and we’re not looking at prophylactic care, we’re not trying to take care of things, so we don’t get sick. Nobody ever says thank you for keeping you from getting sick, they say thank you if you’re sick and we cure you. If you look in Europe, if you look in Europe, we spend here about $7,000 odd dollars per person per year on health care in the United States. In Europe it’s about $3,300, less than half, their life expectancy 2-3 years greater. In New York City in all fairness, life expectancy is now a year better than the country as a whole and it’s up a year and seven months in the last nine years. It’s because of reduced smoking makes a big difference, lower crime rate makes a big difference, faster response time fire engines, better traffic signs, closing Broadway saves a lot of lives, it’s one of the highest pedestrian fatality neighborhoods in the city.”

PERSON IN ROOM: “So what is the solution to the emergency rooms at the end of the day?”

BLOOMBERG: “We have to put some more money into emergency rooms, but you have to fix, there’s two solutions for that, but for most of the medical things, both cost and why we don’t live longer. One is, fix the immigration laws because we have doctors, they train here and then we don’t give them green cards. It’s easy here, in the middle of the country you can drive two hours to get to a doctor because all those doctors who are willing to go there, you know, a young Pakistani doctor probably not going to make a living here, he’d be welcomed in the community because they need a doctor and eventually they’ll accept him. You know, they’ll invite him to dinner because he saved their lives and then he’ll meet other people and then he becomes part of the community. They’re not there, so if you have a stroke, the next five minutes is critical, two hours, forget about it. I mean if you have a broken arm, it doesn’t make any difference. So, one thing is fixing immigration, and the–”

…

BLOOMBERG: “And the other thing is tort law. First thing you should ask your doctor is: do you give every test known to man? If the guy says no, say, ‘you’re stupid because your whole livelihood, the ability to support your family, some stupid jury is going to take away everything, you gotta be crazy. Just do it.’ And that balloons the cost and ties up emergency rooms, so you want to know two things to do, concrete things you can do. Are we going to do either one of them? Kind of hard to see guys.”