Pulling The Plug On Grandma

President Obama has recently been on a public relations blitz for his health care reform push.  He has claimed repeatedly that “no one wants to pull the plug on grandma.”  But is he being truthful?

Sarah Palin made the headlines by saying she didn’t want her parents or Down’s Syndrome son Trig to have to face Obama’s “death panels” and the liberals went nuts, but she was effective.  In the Senate we learned that the so called “end of life counseling” had already been removed from consideration.  Score one for Sarah Palin but that is not really the problem.

The real problem comes with the federal board to monitor procedures and “advise” doctors on “appropriate” procedures.  On the face of it this would be to make sure the most effective treatments are being used, but where else would it lead?  The highest medical costs are incurred in the last year of a patient’s life.  How much money could be saved by government if that last year of life was cut short by deeming many treatments “inappropriate” given the patient’s age.

Does this sound too conspiratorial?  Consider this.  President Obama’s first choice for Health and Human Services Secretary was former Senator Tom Daschle.  Senator Daschle is a proponent of the government take over of health care and has even written a book, Critical:  What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crises, about health care reform.  Sen. Daschle had to withdraw when it came to light he was another in President Obama’s endless line of nominees that didn’t know how to pay their taxes.  What Sen. Daschle thinks about health care is important since he is still an unofficial advisor to the Democrats on this subject.

Daschle believes the government should set up a national database to gather all information on patients, doctors and procedures in one place.  This could, according to him, allow the government to track outcomes and determine best practices.  Government would then use this information, at least on government paid programs, to determine and enforce the “best practices” it approved of.  This idea coupled with Daschle’s own view that seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them, implies a rationing of expensive, procedures to extend life or improve quality of life for the elderly.  If this doen’t sound like a “death panel”  I don’t know what does.

This Health Information IT program does not need to be passed.  It was already rushed through as part of the $787 Billion stimulus bill that was passed in February without anyone reading it.  It is now the law of the land and was funded to the tune of $19 Billion.  This is the kind of law that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was talking about when he commented about not wasting a good crisis.  This does nothing for unemployment but it does allow them to pursue, under the cover of a crisis, the holy grail of liberals, government controlled socialized medicine.  And this came right out to Daschle’s playbook.

On page 196 of his book:

The next president should act immediately to capitalize on the goodwill that greets any incoming administration.  If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it.  This issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.

Now comes word that a publication the Veteran’s Administration has been working on since the Clinton years, the so called “Death Book”, a publication George Bush had killed, has been resurrected by the Obama Administration.  Chris Wallace reported on it on Fox News Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on it.

Why is the VA so eager to have veterans consider “end of life” issues?  Because government needs to save money on health care and the only way their bureaucratic minds can see to do it is provide less, ration it, deny it to people, or have people deny it to themselves by dying.

President Obama has insisted repeatedly that his take over of health care will save money.  But how can adding millions of people to insurance rolls “save money”?  Those people will cost money.  Normally competition in the free market provides the most efficient way to deliver any service, but we don’t have a free market in health care.  The government pays for 47% of health care in this country and most of the rest is paid for by insurance companies that operate in a protected market with very little in free market competition.

Nothing in the Democrat proposals will increase competition, in fact most items will eliminate competition by doing away with health savings accounts, and destroying the private health insurance providers by forcing them to compete against a government subsidized public option.  So where will the savings come from?

End of life.  Rationing health care to the elderly.  Rationing health care to premature babies.  Forcing abortions on women like Sarah Palin rather than allowing her to give birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome.  There is no alternative.  The President can deny it all he wants but it is the logical, inevitable, irrestable conclusion to his choice of policy.

We see examples of it in Europe where babies born prematurely die at much higher rates than in the U. S. where we spend vast sums of money and effort to give these kids a chance at life.  In Europe they don’t even count them in the infant mortality rates.

In Oregon, which has a government paid health care system, a woman with advanced cancer is told by the government they will not pay for her cancer drugs, but they will pay for the drugs for her assisted suicide, which is legal in Oregon.

Does anyone doubt that a State Senator who voted three times in the Illinois Senate to deny medical attention to babies born alive as the result of failed abortions would be heartless enough to deny medical treatments to someone in the last year of life fighting cancer.  They should accept their fate, take some pain killers, and go quietly.  Here is some end of life counseling.

This is why the President’s words ring false.  His history, the history of those around him, and the inevitable, logical result of his policies all point to the truth.  The Democrat plan to take over health care will pull the plug on grandma.