Useless Eaters
By John Griffing
While Americans worry over government insurance plans, longer waits for treatment, and "healthcare rationing," a more sinister agenda lurks in the shadows of the healthcare bill now before the House of Representatives. Today's Medicare recipients could be the first to experience our government's new solution to America's "useless eaters."
Section 1233 of HR 3200, the healthcare reform measure under consideration, mandates "Advance Care Planning Consultation." Under the proposal, all senior citizens receiving government medical care would be required to undergo these counseling sessions every five years. Further reading of the law reveals that these sessions are nothing more than a not-so-veiled attempt to convince the elderly to forego treatment. HR 3200 calls outright for these compulsory consultations to recommend "palliative care and hospice." These are typically administered in the place of treatment intended to prolong life, and instead focus on pain relief until death. These are, of course, reasonable and beneficial options for terminally ill patients and their families.
But this legislation doesn't stop there. Section 1233 requires "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title." But, under the terms of the section, the federal government can compel more frequent end-of-life sessions if it declares a "significant change" in the health of the Medicare recipient, a change that the bill does not confine to fatal illness, but which encompasses broad and abstract conditions described as "chronic," "progressive," or "life-limiting." The bill even empowers physicians to make an "actionable medical order" to "limit some or all specified interventions..." In effect, the government can determine that a "life-limiting" condition demands the withholding of treatment.
The bill puts the Secretary of Health in charge of life and death decisions coming out of these sessions. Under the heading, "QUALITY REPORTING INITIATIVE," the bill says, "For purposes of reporting data on quality measures for covered professional services furnished during 2011 and any subsequent year, to the extent that measures are available, the Secretary shall include quality measures on end of life care and advanced care planning that have been adopted or endorsed by a consensus-based organization, if appropriate. Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment."
These measures are merely an extension of the healthcare provisions hidden in the stimulus bill, which contained alarming new guidelines that required medical practitioners to judge whether or not treating certain patients was "comparatively effective." These decisions were to be based on the findings of a presidential advisory council on the costs of varying treatments. As a result of these changes, treatment is now a question of "cost" and humans are viewed as potential "liabilities" instead of patients.
Doctors up in arms over these radical changes have been attacked with the worst kind of demagoguery imaginable. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) lacks any shame, saying that doctors who oppose this legislation have "lost sight of the common good and the pledge they took in the Hippocratic oath." Last time I checked, the Hippocratic oath didn't say anything about refusing to treat patients on the basis of cost. And somehow, whenever the words "common good" are thrown around, individuals are about to be hurt. McDermott even went on to accuse anti-reform doctors of "practicing fear without a license," saying that "they should be subject to a malpractice suit."
Opposing the administration's proposal is MALPRACTICE? Yes, a real member of Congress said this. McDermott (Stalinist-WA).
President Obama has even been so disingenuous as to accuse Republicans of denying medical treatment to people that need it, saying, "The opponents of health insurance reform would have us do nothing. But think about what doing nothing, in the face of ever increasing costs, will do to you and your family." This is a classic false choice scenario. Either we pass Obama's legislation, or people will die. In fact, doing nothing is infinitely preferable to doing the wrong thing, especially when we're being pushed to move too quickly.
It was the same with the stimulus package. And we all know how that turned out: 9.4 percent unemployment and a budget deficit four times larger than when President Bush was in office. Obama has become a master at using false urgency to achieve hidden goals completely unrelated to the issue at hand.
The real concern is not the imaginary people who might die without this legislation, but rather those real people who might die because of it. Never before have we been this close to making federal law that formalizes procedures for limiting the care we will provide to certain categories of citizens.
Never before have we been this close to adopting a system that will tell certain citizens to forego treatment for the good of their country.
Totalitarian regimes approach matters of human worth in this way. But this is America, and our Constitution says that, "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process."
But if HR 3200 becomes law, "due process" regarding someone's life will become a question for bureaucrats. When all is said and done, the ultimate result of the proposed bill is to transfer to government the unprecedented power of determining who lives and who dies.
Once a government adopts this utilitarian stance toward human life, anything becomes possible. Suspend for a moment your jaded response to Hitler references, and note that in Germany, Order T4 required physicians to kill 70,273 people "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"[ii] or those "unworthy of life."[iii] 5,000 of these victims were children. The elderly, the mentally infirmed, the deformed, and the racially impure, were put to death by teams of "medical experts." Thousands were sterilized. By 1939, 360,000 people had been sterilized to prevent the reproduction of the socially "unfit."
Although the methods have grown more subtle and the language more libertarian, our attitudes are not so very different in America today. We casually discuss whether people with certain afflictions merit the costs necessary to keep them alive. Quality of life trumps sanctity of life in most quarters. Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicide methodology, once unthinkable, is now an acceptable topic for polite conversation.
In America, a rising number of parents abort children on the basis of tests indicating imperfections or disorders, the effective slaughter of the mentally ill. In fact, over 80 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.
Once a nation that cherished the right to life, America is now a nation that cherishes the right to death. 50 million dead unborn children testify to this fact. Prior to the ban in 2003, partial birth abortion-effective infanticide-claimed the lives of 5,000 children every year.
The language of Obama's healthcare reform bill should be a warning to us. This is only the first step in a process that spells death to our way of life. This bill is a test to see what the American people will allow. If you treasure the elderly and the wisdom of previous generations, if you value human worth and care about equality for all Americans, oppose this bill.
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Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis, (Harvard 1988), 191.
[ii] Ibid., 177.
[iii] Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by (holocaust-history.org)
americanthinker.com
Posted by: Carla
Jul 26, 12:43 AM Report Abuse
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If this legislation is allowed to pass it will mean the death of millions of Americans. Obama stresses that if you already have insurance, you will be allowed to keep it. If you currently have a doctor, you will be allowed to keep that doctor. He states that he wants real competition among the insurance companies. Riiiiggght. For one thing, let's take your current insurance. What Obama does not say is that if you lose that insurance, say by a transfer of jobs, your company drops that insurance, etc., etc., you will not be allowed to go into another private insurance plan but will have to go to Obama's gov't policy. Now why is that? Why can't you go into another policy at another company or spend your own money to buy a private policy? Most people do not stay at one job all of their lives. Just doesn't happen. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do these things, it is positive proof that they want the private companies to be gradually run out of business so that all we will be left with will be the public plan. Proof positive that this is a major power grab to control us through our health and finances. Also, we will not be able to switch doctors and choose our own. Sure you can keep your present doctor. However, what do you think happens if that doctor moves, retires, or the gov't tweeks the rules a bit to interfere with your keeping your present doctor. The doctor/patient relationship is the most important relationship you will have besides that with your family. Just wait until those great people from ACORN have access to YOUR psychiatric records. I'm sure everyone who has had sexually transmitted diseases will love discussing it with their friendly ACORN representative.
Here's three other things that are in the legislation:
1. As for as this counseling goes, you aren't even counseled by a doctor. Nope - it's an ACORN or Americorp jerk for you. I'm sure they'll be compassionate. Riiiggght. The possibilities for abuse here is limitless. For instance, ACORN people will surely be puffed up with their own power, and I have absolutely no problem seeing them as using their powerful positions in gov't to throw their weight around ,and, most importantly, use their positions to retaliate and/or get even with people who for whatever reason may offend them. During the Salem Witch Hunt trials how many feuding neighbors and townspeople accused others of witchcraft and had them tried and hung? Some did it to get their property, others did it for their own purposes. The point being, it is completely insane to put our very lives in the hands of anyone other than a doctor.
2. The gov't will have access to all financial records and bank accounts. Money will be withdrawn from your account for your "free" insurance. Just think about this for a minute. ACORN employees, with ACORN known to be involved in major fraud and only God knows what else, will have knowledge about your finances and bank account. Color me paranoid, but with the feds running a gargantuan national debt some might just find that you are more useful dead and your money or what little you have of it would help out. You know, they just might want you to be more patriotic and do what's right for the good of all. How selfish can you get, wanting to live, indeed!!!
3. Some people on the public plan will be dealt with by telephone. That's right. No reason for a pesky and time consuming visit to the doctor's office. I'm sure an ACORN or Americorp employee will be more than happy to diagnose and treat you over the phone thus preventing that time-consuming office visit. Maybe they can chant an incantation in Latin (I know what you're thinking, but in their elevated positions as health care professionals I'm sure their brains will also be elevated , er.. enlarged, so they can recite Latin) thereby alleviating the need for a costly prescription drug. After all, you would be selfish to want to spend the money you yourself earned to buy something that might make you well. Your money could be used "for the greater good" to buy prescriptions for your illegal immigrant neighbors!
The above are just three things in a proposed bill over 1,000 pages long. There are so many more it will boggle your mind. In all seriousness, this is the most dangerous legislation the United States Government has ever proposed. The time is past when we can naively take the word of our politicians. Ninety-nine percent of them will look straight into the camera and lie. Remember Bill Clinton's denial straight to our faces about Monica Lewinski? How about Obama's seemingly fond recollections as he visited with NASA's Appollo people , telling them that he remembered watching from his grandfather's shoulders in Hawaii as the astronauts splashed down? The man lived in Indonesia with his mother and step-father from ages 6-12. The timeline made it IMPOSSIBLE! He also lied about an uncle visiting a concentration camp in Germany in WWII and about his father coming to America because of JFK. These were lies about simple things. He is lying straight in our faces about his health care plan and he has said HE WILL NOT BE DENIED. Anyone who thinks he cares about our health and continues to support this madness should be at the head of the line to be euthanized.
One last thing: Obama keeps telling us that this proposed plan will give us insurance as wonderful as the Congressional insurance he and other legislators have. They have a CHOICE OF 10-12 private policies. If they don't like what they have, they can change it every December. AARRGGHH! We won't be able to change. We will be stuck with the same crummy insurance until we die. But don't worry, if it's left up to them, and it will be, we won't have to wait long. If I thought they would let me keep my money or my life, I would go ahead right now and invest in cemetaries and funeral homes. Business will be booming.
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Posted by: Jack Kemp
Jul 26, 02:08 AM Report Abuse
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A good article, yet I wish to make the point by taking the accusation one step further.
Obama ElderCare is really Dr. MengeleCare.
Since the proposed ObamaCare system will significantly take advanced age into consideration in terms of rationing healthcare treatments to people who are no longer useful to The State as workers, with a cold rational computer program making decisions on this matter (conveniently allowing bureaucrats to "blame the computer"), a historical example is in order.
At Auschwitz, newly arriving inmates were evaluated for life or death based on their age and their ability to work. The infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele stood out front and sent the elderly (along with women with small children and infants) to the left to be gassed to death immediately and others to the right to work in the camp and adjacent industrial factories. ObamaCare doesn't have the gassing option, but there is legally paid for assisted suicide in a few select states: Oregon, Washington and Montana. [en.wikipedia.org]
As World War II took its' toll on German industry, the age standards were relaxed a bit and people in their mid forties were allowed to live because their labor was needed by the State. This is documented in the video "Liberation 1945: Testimony" (by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) at the 54:10 minute mark in the film, where a book called Sharit Ha Platah Bavaria (Buchenwald and Others, Vol. II 1945) is shown with the ages of concentration camp survivors having birth dates stretching back to 1895. Still, Dr. Mengele took the place of a computer, calculating who could pay their labor to the National Socialist State and thus be of use vs. who was worthless to the National Socialist State because they were too old to work and receive health benefits, such as they existed, in the concentration camp.
I realize to some of you this may seem like an outrageous analogy on my part, but if you or an aged parent or grandparent are refused treatment under an Obama universal healthcare because of a short life expectancy, you may come to have your mind concentrated and modify your assumptions about social "fairness" in medical treatments.
As Anthony Ughetti stated in his American Thinker article "In Defense of the Frail Elderly: "http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/in_defense_of_the_frail_elderl.html
'The frail elderly and their families deserve love, support and care from a compassionate society. If we allow willy-nilly healthcare reform, the frail elderly will undoubtedly be targeted, with such rationalizations as "Why devote resources (the liberal euphemism for money) to a hopeless cause such as this?" A physician at our local Tea Party stated one platform of healthcare reform is to withhold vital treatment in the last 6 months of the patient's life.
Do we really want our government deciding when our last 6 months have arrived? They have not done such a good job predicting unemployment or economic recovery: why should we assume they'd be any better at predicting when we are in the last six months of our life?'
END OF QUOTE
The thing is, if one is refused medical treatment in what appears to be their last six months of life, it quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, much like someone saying an elderly person is too frail to live and then denies that elderly person food, water, medicine and heat in the winter.
Perhaps I am too cynical. Or perhaps I am too realistic and see things without their vernier of social niceness and pretty words. But there are some things I will conclude here. I want to be wrong in my suspicions. But a rationed healthcare system with no competition or quick appeal for the decisions of a Big Government computer and bureaucracy is a recipe for not-so-benign neglect.
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