|
August 15, 2009
'Death panel' is not in the
bill... it already exists
By Joseph Ashby
Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire
for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the
Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the
health care bill. The Associated Press recently ran a
‘Fact Check' article rebutting Palin's claim.
AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling
provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia
and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many
other conservatives is false and misleading.
The New York Times has joined in the death panel
bashing. Jim Rutenburg and Jackie Calmes assert the
following:
There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals
that would call for the creation of death panels or any
other governmental body that would cut off care for the
critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.
The AP is technically correct in stating that
end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel.
The New York Times is also correct to point out that the
health care bill contains no provision setting up such a
panel.
What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel
already exists.
H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the
Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill)
contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal
Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness
Research. The Council is the brain child of former
Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle.
Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former
Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about
the Council's purpose.
Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President
Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower
an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions
about health care rationing that elected politicians are
politically unable to make. The end result is to slow
costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle
argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans
who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."
McCaughey goes on to explain:
Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free."
Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that
come with age instead of treating them.
Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members
is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel.
Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should
frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He
explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on
elderly care as follows:
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.
On average 25-year-olds require very few medical
services. If they are to get the lion's share of the
treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little
care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical
care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The
loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his
Council increasing power to push such recommendations.
Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the
health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health
care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of
pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will
give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its
provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein
will play a major role in defining the government's role
in controlling medical care.
How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he
wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for
Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in
value. Specifically he champions statistical methods
that give preference to what the government rates as
"quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government
decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the
government decides the life is not worth living, it is
the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments
for the young and productive.
Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question
on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment
determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit
and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council
for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors
know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help.
Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but
taking the painkiller."
Maybe we should ask the Associated Press and New York
Times if they still think we shouldn't be concerned
about a federal "death panel." |
American Gun Shows Copyright © February 2007 All Rights Reserved.
sales@americangunshows.com |
