Alarming
0 comment Saturday, May 17, 2014 |
It's becoming more and more open and brazen.
THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare. Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power. 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.
[...]
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).''
This bill is not getting the attention it deserves. Many of the op-eds that are appearing are more focused on the costs of this monstrosity, not the alarming ideas about the (non)-value of human life that are becoming more and more explicit as we find out more about this thing.This should concern all of us; it does not matter if you are young, or relatively young. Even the young and fit might at any time be in a disabling accident or be diagnosed with a serious illness which these leftist social engineers deem too 'costly', especially if treatment will only sustain the life of someone who would no longer be 'productive' or of any use to the State.
So this is not just something that will affect older people, who are unfortunately regarded as useless by many people in this callous age. It might affect people of any age, and even if it does not affect you personally now, it will at some point.
It's ironic in the extreme that the very people (leftists and pseudo-compassionate liberals) who pose as ''caring'' people, and who constantly call those to the right of them ''Nazis'', are willing to support a plan like this, with its totalitarian priorities.
Back during Ronald Reagan's terms of office, the news media constantly featured stories about Republican cold-heartedness. Those of you who remember that era will remember the stories about how the evil Republican budget cuts meant that children were given ketchup in their school lunches in place of a vegetable. Then there were the cries that poor elderly people were going to be out on the street under the budget cuts, and that many old folks were forced to eat cat food because they could not afford real food under the harsh Republican administration.
Obviously that was all hyperbole, but now these same tender-hearted people are nonchalantly proposing that we write off many old and disabled people because it is too costly and 'unfair' to keep them alive.
I plan to send this article to some of the liberals I know; I would bet that many of them, being rather ill-informed except for what they hear on NPR, are not aware of the provisions in this health care bill. This needs to be discussed.

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