We Will Not Bow This Old, Grey Head
Aug 20, 2009 Political
I have heard that the best way to stir up a hornet’s nest is to walk up, thrust a stick into the entrance, and stir it around vigorously. You will get a result.
You will note I did not say this was a smart thing to do. And yet that seems to be the result of this Healthscare legislation that the Resident is flinging on the walls. He has targeted senior citizens, what with the 500 billion dollars he wants to cut from Medicare (don’t worry- this is money you won’t need), and the talk, however incendiary, of “death panels” whose purpose is to deny care.
The two groups you don’t want to piss off are seniors and veterans, and yet the Resident, like some little kid whose mind aint right, continues to stir with the stick. He seems surprised at the reaction.
If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
online.wsj.com
Health-care rationing. End-of-life counseling. There it is again, inconveniently popping up like some bizarre whack-a-mole game. The Resident says it aint so, but here it is again. That surely must chafe his nether regions- wow- an “Inconvenient Truth”! See, it can bite him on the butt, again and again.
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
online.wsj.com
Really! Gee Mr. Resident, can you explain that one in your dulcet tones and excess verbiage? I do not truly believe you can, because here’s the truth: Seniors are tough- they have lived through a process called life, where the weak are naturally winnowed out of the population, and old people have survived. That word means something special, because not everyone makes it this far, so seniors are tough.
In addition, these seniors are the parents of the baby boomers, who, while having supported you in your quest for the ultimate power, are beginning to have their doubts, because these seniors are their parents, and they quite naturally don’t want to hear that their mom or dad will just have to live diminished lives because you are too niggardly with the choices available for their health.
No, they want their parents to have the best, and you sir, are not providing the best- not even close.
And they (baby boomers, seniors, and veterans) are figuring this out.
If I were you , I would watch your step- the footing gets tricky from here.
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Tags: baby boomers, death panels, lies, rationing, seniors
We’re Not Done Yet
Aug 19, 2009 Political
King Hussein is waffling, HHC jester Sebelius is making comments she has to walk back, and the appearance of disarray and smell of failure is distinct. Do not let your guard down– the fight is not over, indeed, like the Hydra, when you cut off one head, two more take its place. Now, like a possum playing dead, they have floated the trial balloon of “Co- ops”- instead of the government single payer plan that has had people up in arms.
The thing is, there is just sooooooo much to dislike in this FUBAR of a bill, that even if single payer option was out (it isn’t), the “death panel” question is still a valid one, as Andrew McCarthy points out in a National Review Online posting:
In suggesting it’s hyperbole to say death panels are — or were — in the bill, the editors engage in a little hysteria of their own, describing the function of such panels as “deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved.” But few people worried about death panels think the process will be anything so crude. It will be what Mark Steyn described in his column this weekend: the bureaucrats won’t pull the plug on you; they will gradually restrict your access to various forms of treatment while you wither away prematurely. Maybe if Palin had called them “Dying on the Vine Panels” our opinion elites would have been more understanding — though I doubt it, Palin derangement syndrome having proved itself more infectious than Bush derangement syndrome.
corner.nationalreview.com
Yea, you see, that is the problem here, it is not the message, but the messenger that gets mocked. You can’t mock the message, because it is true in an omissive sense- so if you don’t like the message, but cannot effectively refute it, you minimize and mock the person who said it.
In British Columbia, a part of Canada, and a part of the Vaunted Canadian Healthcare system, they have cut “elective” surgeries by at least 15% for the rest of this year, because they haven’t the money to pay for them. That would mean that Barry’s granny wouldn’t get her hip replacement, because she wouldn’t qualify for anything but the pain pills if she lived there.
This is called rationing, people- when you can’t get the surgery you want, when you want it, then a form of rationing exists, no matter how you wish to parse the words, the facts are plain. The whole system becomes, in effect, a “death panel”, simply by denying the care that is needed.
Many people have touted the number 46 million people who do not have health insurance, but these same people are adding in the illegal aliens (12- 20 million), and young people who are healthy and opt out of health insurance because they want to spend their money doing other things, like paying bills, or having fun. That is a part of living in the U.S.- you have the choice to do this.
At least for now-if Hussein has his way, call it single payer, or Co-op, or whatever you wish, that choice will be smaller, and our participation will be compulsory. I do not know about you, but I hate compulsory things- oh, some things I know are “for the public good”, such as no racing in the school zones, or driving on the sidewalks- you know, things like that. But I bridle at the thought that my government has the gall to think that it knows better than I what is good and proper for me.
This government thinking has extended to Cap and Trade, and every other bill they have been trying to pass before we the people can read it, and that is not right. Just by trying to fool us, these alleged representatives have become traitors, plain and simple.
Heck, one, Rep. Massa, of New York, has stated plainly that he will go against the wishes of his constituents and vote the way that he sees fit. Rather arrogant of him, and if I was one of his constituents, I would want a one- on- one conference with him and persuade him to see things my way.
Other Dems, like Peter Schiff, say that if single payer option isn’t in the bill, there might be a hundred reps who would not vote for it- good. Don’t vote for it.
A bad bill should die an ugly death- that’s right and proper.
After that is dead and buried, then perhaps we can actually get something substantial and positive done.
Sarah Palin, in her own way, took the talking points away from Hussein, and did this country a service- for that, we (all of us, Republicans AND Democrats) should thank her. Her words might have been incendiary, but in essence they were spot on.
Hussein got FaceBook’d.
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Tags: Co-ops, death panels, illusion, lies