Both the House and Senate are putting on their best Sunday-go-to-meetin’ faces and telling the media that work on “health care reform” is 80% complete. This means that 80% of the endless laundry list of economic and personal-rights negatives in the bills in both House and Senate are in place and they’re not going to go anywhere.
This means that it is a sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of the American people as the Obama administration prepares for a complete government takeover of the practice of medicine in the United States.
If that doesn’t frighten you to death, rest assured that with their kind of government “help”, you’ll be dead soon enough. Especially if you look at who’s going to be making decisions about what kind of care the government is going to allow you.
One of them is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. His biography shows him to be a “bioethicist” and a fellow at the right-to-die Hastings Center. Here are some of his views about modern medicine.
“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.” (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008)
(It’s more efficient to start with the root cause: reduce the number of people alive and needing treatment?)
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)
(Remind that cancer patient whose treatment allowed them be around just long enough to see their son or daughter take their first steps, or graduate from college and their family about this, ok?)
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)
(But it’s all right with the Obama administration if dead people vote.)
“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.” (Lancet, Jan. 31)
(You’re already 52, Dr. Emanuel. Ready to start moving to the back of the line?)
“Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms” (JAMA, June 18, 2008)
(Heaven forbid that people who are sick might find some modicum of comfort in the place they receive treatment.)
“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.” (Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch)
(So that explains why the UAW retirees now have to pay for their own Viagra!)
Maybe this is why Ted Kennedy has been keeping such a low profile.