Latest ObamaCare ‘Oopsie’: HealthCare Destruction Act Already Killing People

“It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.” – Robert Reich, lifelong Democrat “expert”

“A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people” – Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.” – The Hussein himself, informing a woman that it’s basically time to let her mother die.

“ObamaCare Factoid: Access To Health Care Doesn’t Mean Squat When Hospitals, Doctors And Pharmacists Bail” – Title of article by Michael Eden now factually demonstrated to have been completely right.

Before I provide the article of the day, allow me to show you some things that I posted/wrote nearly a year ago:

This is nothing compared to what might happen under Democratic health overhaul plans, which would slash Medicare spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years. As Medicare actuaries recently pointed out in understated fashion, such cuts “may be unrealistic.” But, if Congress actually carried them out, about one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies could lose money, they warned in their report. As a result, such providers could drop Medicare, leaving seniors with less access.

[…]

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t directly related to the disaster known as ObamaCare.  Democrats are gutting Medicare reimbursements and blocking the essential “doctor fix” from their bill to create the contrived and bogus illusion that their boondoggle will provide “deficit neutrality.”  They are playing all kinds of games and gimmicks, such as taxing for ten years and only providing benefits for five, to support that illusion. It will fail, and a lot of people will die.

[…]

And so, what do you think will happen when Democrats cut the reimbursement rates?  People who have commons sense know: hospitals and doctors will begin to see fewer and fewer Medicare patients, as a matter of simple economic necessity.   That isn’t a “reform,” but a disaster.

And this stuff is why the dean of the Harvard Medical School gave ObamaCare a failing grade.  It’s why the California Medical Association recently came out strongly against the bill.  It’s why more and more state governors – Democrats as well as Republicans – are beginning to scream that ObamaCare merely turns Medicaid into a giant deficit-creating unfunded mandate on the states (again, to create the illusion of being “deficit neutral”).

And, now, without further delay, the article of the day’s latest demonstration that the Democrat Party is the political arm of the devil and Barack Obama is leading America into ruin not seen since the last time socialism devastated Europe when our grandparents were young kids…

It is somehow ironically fitting that this destruction of our health care system would be described in Obama’s hometown.

Medicaid cuts: teeth pulled, transplant called off
By The Associated Press
Posted Dec 15, 2010

CHICAGO —

In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father’s liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won’t pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn’t pay for root canals.

Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some states have cut payments to doctors, paid bills late and trimmed benefits such as insulin pumps, obesity surgery and hospice care.

Lawmakers are bracing for more work when they reconvene in January. Some states face multibillion-dollar deficits. Federal stimulus money for Medicaid is soon to evaporate. And Medicaid enrollment has never been higher because of job losses.

In the view of some lawmakers, Medicaid has become a monster, and it’s eating the budget. In Illinois, Medicaid sucks up more money than elementary, secondary and higher education combined.

“Medicaid is such a large, complicated part of our budget problem, that to get our hands around it is very difficult. It’s that big. It’s that bad,” said Illinois Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and co-chairman of a bipartisan panel to reform Medicaid in Illinois, where nearly 30 percent of total spending goes to the program.

Medicaid costs are shared by the federal and state governments. It’s not just the poor and disabled who benefit. Wealthier people do, too, such as when middle-class families with elderly parents in nursing homes are relieved of financial pressure after Medicaid starts picking up the bills.

Contrary to stereotype, it’s the elderly and disabled who cost nearly 70 cents of every Medicaid dollar, not the single mother and her children.

In California, Medicaid no longer pays for many adult dental services. But it still pays for extractions, that is, tooth-pulling. The unintended consequence: Medicaid patients tell dentists to pull teeth that could be saved.

“The roots are fine. The tooth could be saved with a root canal,” said Dr. Nagaraj Murthy, who practices in Compton, Calif. “I had a patient yesterday. I said we could do a root canal. He said, ‘No, it’s hurting. Go ahead and pull it. I don’t have the money.”’

Murthy recently pulled an elderly woman’s last tooth, but Medicaid no longer pays for dentures.

“Elderly patients suffer the most,” Murthy said. “They’re walking around with no teeth.”

States can decide which optional services Medicaid covers, and dental care is among cutbacks in some places. Last year’s economic stimulus package increased the federal share of Medicaid money temporarily. But that money runs out at the end of June, when the federal government will go back to paying half the costs rather than 60 to 70 percent. So more cuts could be ahead.

During the Great Recession, millions of people relied on the Medicaid safety net. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of uninsured Americans grew by more than 5 million as workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance. Another 7 million signed up for Medicaid.

Just when caseloads hit their highest point, the nation’s new health care law required states not to change the rules on who’s eligible for Medicaid. That means states can’t roll up the welcome mat by tightening Medicaid’s income requirements.

So states have resorted to a variety of painful options.

In Arizona, lawmakers stopped paying for some kinds of transplants, including livers for people with hepatitis C. When the cuts took effect Oct. 1, Medicaid patient Francisco Felix, who needs a liver, suddenly had to raise $500,000 to get a transplant.

The 32-year-old’s case took a dramatic turn in November when a friend’s wife died, and her liver became available. Felix was prepped for surgery in hopes financial donations would come in. When the money didn’t materialize, the liver went to someone else, and Felix went home. His doctor told him he has a year before he’ll be too sick for a transplant.

“They are taking away his opportunity to live,” said his wife, Flor Felix. “It’s impossible for us or any family to get that much money.” The family is collecting donations through a website and plans a yard sale this weekend, she said.

The choices are difficult for states that have already cut payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone.

“If we don’t see an economic recovery where state revenues rebound, they’re really going to be very strained on how they can make ends meet,” said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

States may consider lowering payment rates to nursing homes or home health agencies or further reducing payments to doctors, Rowland said.

“The problem here is the program is pretty lean, and payment rates are pretty low,” she said. Patients can’t find care because fewer doctors accept the low payments.

Prescription drug coverage in states is an optional benefit, another possible place to cut, Rowland said. “But if you cut back on people’s psychotropic drugs, is that penny-wise and pound-foolish? Do they end up in institutions where Medicaid pays more for their care?”

In Illinois, late payments became the rule.

Tom Miller closed his pharmacy in rural southern Illinois this summer and is going through bankruptcy, largely because the state was chronically late making Medicaid payments to him. Most of his former customers are in the program.

With the state sometimes months behind in payments, he couldn’t pay his suppliers. Five workers lost their jobs when his business closed.

“You can only fight it for so long,” said Miller, 54. He now works as a pharmacist in a hospital. He misses his old clients, the families he grew to know.

“I was in my third generation. I’ve had moms who had kids. I saw the kids raised, and they had their own children,” he said. As a neighborhood pharmacist, “you’re their friend. You’re family.”

The death panels are right around the corner.  To the extent that they’re not already here right now, as with the case of Francisco Felix, who is being denied life by being denied a liver by Medicaid.

Francisco Felix never stood in front of a death panel; but bureaucrats don’t need you wasting their time with bothersome questions when they decide to let you die a slow and agonizing death due to medical neglect (or maybe you’re fortunate enough to get that pain pill from Obama?).

We told you so.  We told you so.  We told you so.  WE TOLD YOU SO.

As one speaking from the lofty vantage point of one having a one-thousand percent batting average, let me forewarn you Democrats yet again: Someday, when you’re burning in hell for all eternity for your direct participation in the murder of 52 million innocent human beings in America alone through abortion, realize that God is going to turn up the fires a few billion extra degrees for the coming horror that is going to come to this country as a result of your ObamaCare disaster.

ObamaCare Will Bring Abortion Mindset To Treatment Of Elderly

D. James Kennedy prophetically said years back, “Watch out, Grandpa!  Because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after you!”

And coming they are.  And coming after Grandma, too, of course.

One of the morally depraved assumptions of abortion is that the baby has a duty to die for the convenience of his or her mother.

And guess what, Grandma and Grandpa?  It’s getting to be YOUR turn to quit burdening us with your useless lives.  It’s getting to be time that you shoved off and “died with dignity.”

May 11, 2010 12:00 A.M.
A ‘Duty to Die’?
Thomas Sowell

There was a time when some desperately poor societies had to abandon the elderly to their fate, but is that where we are today?

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die” rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.

There was a time — fortunately, now long past — when some desperately poor societies had to abandon old people to their fate, because there was just not enough margin for everyone to survive. Sometimes the elderly themselves would simply go off from their families and communities to face their fate alone.

But is that where we are today?

Talk about “a duty to die” made me think back to my early childhood in the South, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One day, I was told that an older lady — a relative of ours — was going to come and stay with us for a while, and I was told how to be polite and considerate towards her.

She was called “Aunt Nance Ann,” but I don’t know what her official name was or what her actual biological relationship to us was. Aunt Nance Ann had no home of her own. But she moved around from relative to relative, not spending enough time in any one home to be a real burden.

At that time, we didn’t have things like electricity or central heating or hot running water. But we had a roof over our heads and food on the table — and Aunt Nance Ann was welcome to both.

Poor as we were, I never heard anybody say, or even intimate, that Aunt Nance Ann had “a duty to die.”

I only began to hear that kind of talk decades later, from highly educated people in an affluent age, when even most families living below the official poverty level owned a car or truck and had air conditioning.

It is today, in an age when homes have flat-paneled TVs and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites — rather than the masses — have begun talking about “a duty to die.”

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently, you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about “a duty to die.”

Many years later, while going through a divorce, I told a friend that I was considering contesting child custody. She immediately urged me not to do it. Why? Because raising a child would interfere with my career.

But my son didn’t have a career. He was just a child who needed someone who understood him. I ended up with custody of my son and, although he was not a demanding child, raising him could not help impeding my career a little. But do you just abandon a child when it is inconvenient to raise him?

The lady who gave me this advice had a degree from Harvard Law School. She had more years of education than my whole family had, back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann.

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which “a duty to die” is just one.

These efforts at changing values used to be called “values clarification,” though the name has had to be changed repeatedly over the years, as more and more parents caught on to what was going on and objected. The values that supposedly needed “clarification” had been clear enough to last for generations, and nobody asked the schools and colleges for this “clarification.”

Nor are we better people because of it.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Don’t think Sowell knows what he’s talking about?

How about lifelong Democrat talking head and economist Robert Reich?

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you,  particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you.  And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

That’s right, young folk.  You get to pay more to have the privilege of one day being euthanized like an unwanted dog at the county animal shelter.  I know I’D certainly happily pay more for a privilege like that.  Pay more for my health care?  And then get to die a slow, painful death of medical neglect because I’ve been considered to be a useless burden like all those millions of babies Democrats have murdered?  Where can I sign?

Oh, I’m ALREADY signed up for it?  Coool.  I just can’t wait until that cancer starts eating holes in my body, and my government health plan offers me suicide in lieu of any actual care.  Or maybe I’ll get REALLY lucky and simply be left to die in my own filth.

Robert “Third” Reich isn’t the only one pointing out this actually quite obvious central tenet of the Democrats’ health plan.  Obama has appointed at least two other “experts” to advise him on medical issues.  Here’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.”  Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care.  Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Then there’s Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

There’s a great deal more about Obama’s own advisers’ plans here.

Which very much jives with what Obama himself told a woman concerning her mother:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

We can sum it up quite nicely with the words of Obama’s former senior economic adviser: “So we’re going to let you die.”

Die with dignity.  Or die without it.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters in the brave new world of ObamaCare is that liberals have finally succeeded in turning health care into a socialist boondoggle.  And it will one day be your duty to die in order to sustain that boondoggle.

The Proof Of Planned Health Care Rationing And Denial Of Care To Senior Citizens

People are being told that the crowds of people who are going to town halls to angrily protest the Democrat health care plan are “un-American” as well as being swastika-carrying fascists.  It is terribly malicious and hateful demagoguery.  It is amazing that Democrats demonize tactics that they themselves are pursuing and have been pursuing for YEARS.  And then we come to learn that not only are Democrats organizing, but they are in fact literally PAYING people to show up and fight for the Democrat health care plan.  Talk about “manufactured outrage“!!!

The Speaker of the House decided to make this a debate about who is more Nazi.  I welcome that argument.  Just look at the Democrats’ own tactics!

But there is a far deeper issue at stake when we talk about “Nazism” than mere political rhetoric.  There is a very real issue of life and death at stake.

Mike Sola angrily confronted his Congressman over his fear that the Democrat system would not cover his son, who is in a wheelchair suffering from cerebral palsy.  He has since received death threats and vandalism at his home from Democrat supporters.

Should people fear for their lives under ObamaCare?  Should people like Mike Sola fear for their loved ones’ lives?

Let’s get away from the rhetoric, and reflect on the words of key Obama health care architects.

Consider a New York Post article:

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ’96).

Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.

So, yeah.  Mike Sola has every right to be fearful of what will happen to his son.  Just as I have every reason to be afraid of what will happen to my parents.

When Dr. Emanuel says “communitarianism,” it is impossible for me – given the man’s writings – not to think “communist” plus “totalitarianism.”

And Obama appointed this man.  How can he distance himself from a guy who he himself appointed?  As Glenn Beck put it, “I wouldn’t let these people bring me a can of Coke, much less allow them to write a national health care plan.”

In January of THIS YEAR, Dr. Emanuel – who is a principal architect of the Democrat’s health care plan – wrote:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.”  Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care.  Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Take Cass Sunstein, Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

Which very much jives with what Obama told a woman concerning her mother:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

As I wrote in my last article, “Don’t let the coffin lid hit your face on the way out, Grandma and Grandpa.”

Incredibly, that’s not all.  There are other writings that President Obama’s appointed architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel have said.  I thank Jeff Head for bringing his own blog citing other statements by Emanuel to my attention:

Is the “Final Solution” wording that was added to this revamped Obama Health Care graphic warranted? Some might see it as a simple play on words.

But before you decide how to consider that wording, please read the following shocking quotes from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief health-care policy adviser to President Barack Hussein Obama, and (not coincidentally) the brother of Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

From: Principles of allocation of scarce medical interventions, January 31, 2009
Also see: Deadly Doctors, New York Post, June 24, 2009

“Strict youngest-first allocation directs scarce resources predominantly to infants. This approach seems incorrect. The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects…. Adolescents have received substantial substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments…. It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does.”

“Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. Treating 65-year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.”

“Ultimately, the complete lives system does not create ‘classes of Untermenschen whose lives and well being are deemed not worth spending money on,’ but rather empowers us to decide fairly whom to save when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.”

“When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated”

“Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration’s health-reform effort.”

From: Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008

“Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others”

From: Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008

“Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,”

From: What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide? New England Journal of Medicine, July 1998

(These quotes add new context to the “End-of-Life” Counseling sessions required every 5 years for all seniors over 65 in Obama Care.)

“There is a widespread perception that the United States spends an excessive amount on high-technology health care for dying patients. Many commentators note that 27 to 30 percent of the Medicare budget is spent on the 5 percent of Medicare patients who die each year. They also note that the expenditures increase exponentially as death approaches, so that the last month of life accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the medical care expenditures in the last year of life. To many, savings from reduced use of expensive technological interventions at the end of life are both necessary and desirable.”

“Many have linked the effort to reduce the high cost of death with the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. One commentator observed: “Managed care and managed death [through physician-assisted suicide] are less expensive than fee-for-service care and extended survival. Less expensive is better.” Some of the amicus curiae briefs submitted to the Supreme Court expressed the same logic: “Decreasing availability and increasing expense in health care and the uncertain impact of managed care may intensify pressure to choose physician-assisted suicide” and “the cost effectiveness of hastened death is as undeniable as gravity. The earlier a patient dies, the less costly is his or her care.”

“Although the cost savings to the United States and most managed-care plans are likely to be small, it is important to recognize that the savings to specific terminally ill patients and their families could be substantial. For many patients and their families, especially but not exclusively those without health insurance, the costs of terminal care may result in large out-of-pocket expenses. Nevertheless, as compared with the average American, the terminally ill are less likely to be uninsured, since more than two thirds of decedents are Medicare beneficiaries over 65 years of age. The poorest dying patients are likely to be Medicaid beneficiaries. Extrapolating from the Medicare data, one can calculate that a typical uninsured patient, by dying one month earlier by means of physician-assisted suicide, might save his or her family $10,000 in health care costs, having already spent as much as $20,000 in that year.”

“Drawing on data from the Netherlands on the use of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide and on available U.S. data on costs at the end of life, this analysis explores the degree to which the legalization of physician-assisted suicide might reduce health care costs. The most reasonable estimate is a savings of $627 million, less than 0.07 percent of total health care expenditures.”

From: Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet, Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec.1996

“This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

[….]

Do not fall for the platitudes and the revisionism or assurances of the people pushing this plan.  It is a radical plan and it will lead to single payer, complete governmental control of health care.  A command economy of health care much more akin to what someone like Karl Marx would implement to go hand and hand with his political philosophies.

The president, in a less-guarded moment before running for the Presidency outlined his true goals with respect to Health Care, and now he has the congress and the advisers he thinks will lead him there.

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.”

When you see “angry mobs” of Democrat health care plan opponents, realize that they aren’t angry because of “disinformation” or “fishy” emails; they are angry because of what they KNOW.  They are angry because of what Obama’s own architects have STATED.

Some of what we have seen here has far more in common with Dr. Mengele than with medicine.

The Nazis had a term, Lebensunwertes Leben, that meant “a life unworthy to be lived.”  The Nazi agenda was not about goose-stepping soldiers; it was about a complex of ideas that de-valued individual human life and exalted the power of the state to control the lives of the people.  And those who were deemed unable to produce sufficient societal benefit were deemed unworthy of life.  And the men who created this system did not regard themselves as evil men; they regarded themselves as doing what was necessary to implement their vision for their country.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel would never agree that he is a Nazi.  He would point out that he is Jewish; how on earth could he be a Nazi?  But his plan comes right out of the heart of Nazi ideology; it is Lebensunwertes Leben rearing its ugly head all over again.  Does he want 6 million Jews to die?  Of course he doesn’t.  But my question is, “Does he not want 60 million senior citizens to die?” And the only difference is that he would prefer to kill them by neglect due to rationed medical care, or due to a more humane but every bit as evil death by suicide.

The Nazis’ “final solution” was to eliminate an alleged crisis by eliminating the Jews; Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s “final solution” is to eliminate an alleged crisis by eliminating unhealthy children and senior citizens.

And, again, if Barack Obama doesn’t want this vision himself, then why on earth did he appoint Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel – who has been arguing for this “Complete Lives program” for YEARS, and who has an article urging for it as late as January of THIS YEAR – to write large swaths of the health care bill?  And any of Obama’s protestations to the contrary only fly in the face of what he himself has said and what he himself has done.  Don’t trust him.

A video montage explains precisely how the Democrats have organized behind the scenes to use the currently-proposed plan to necessarily lead into the kind of system that will produce the kind of “care” outlined by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel above.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein tell us what government health care will ultimately look like; and the video explains in Democrat health care strategists’ own words how they propose to get us to that point.

Watch it – and then join the fight against this monstrosity.

Obama Loses On ‘Don’t Think, Just Vote’ Health Care: Grandma Gets A Reprieve

Barack Obama gave a national presidential news conference on July 22.  And he did such a great job selling his Obamacare that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put the kibosh on Obama’s imperious August deadline the very next day.

Even the New York Times turned on Obama’s presentation and faulted his “facts.”  And in the lexicon of liberal heresies and heretics, that’s almost like the Apostles turning on Jesus.  The Associated Press also found plenty of Obama’s “facts” to be somewhat deficient of truth content.  The biggest gripe of all about Obama’s news conference is that he didn’t actually tell us anything.  When you’re talking about taking over 1/5th of the US economy, a few details would have been nice.

That said, it would have helped Mr. Obama if he had bothered to actually bother to read the legislation before calling a national infomercial to sell it.  Eventually Democrats are going to have to actually read the provisions of the major legislation they ram down the country’s collective throat, after all.

But no, it was a lot easier to just go out and demonize the Republicans as being the fearmongering forces opposing reform instead.  Campaigning on vague notions of “hope” and “change,” without ever bothering to really describe what “hope” and “change” actually meant – and at the same time demagoguing against those opposing said amorphous “hope” and “change” – has worked wonderfully for Obama thus far.  So it’s really no surprise that he would go back to that same magician’s hat again.

The good news, though, is that the Frankenstein monster of health care has been driven back into the castle for at least the time being.  Grandma and grandpa have a reprieve.

Obama’s answer to a question that a woman asked about her mother’s health care is incredibly illustrative as to the bullet the elderly dodged today:

Member of the audience. Jane Sturm: “My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, ‘I can’t do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.’ I said, ‘Go for it.’ She said, ‘Go for it.’ But the specialist said, ‘No, she’s too old.’ But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, ‘I’m going for it.’ That was over five years ago. My question to you is:  Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?”

Obama: “I don’t think that we can make judgments based on people’s ’spirit.’ Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we’re going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they’re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they’re being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

You can watch the exchange for yourself:

What is remarkable is the fact that this woman Jane Sturm was seeking reassurance that Obama would clearly and unequivocally affirm the elderly mother’s right to life, and Obama responded by telling her that maybe mom should just take a painkiller and die as a drugged-out zombie-veg due to government-sanctioned medical neglect.

This is nothing new: Democrats have been pursuing rationing as an antidote to the costs of their government system all along.

It is simply a fact that the vast majority of health care resources are consumed at the end of life.  And as costs explode – and the CBO director has already told us the ugly truth that the cost of the Democrats’ plan WILL EXPLODE – it’s going to be the “resource-hogging” and “unproductive” senior citizens who are going to start seeing the short end of the health care stick.