Obama's Heath Plan-Death Plan

Barack Obama's recent statements show that he believes too many Americans are living too long. In order to save money on health care, he wants to deny it to people who, all things considered, he believes would be better off dead.

In a particularly depressed moment of his life the English poet John Keats spoke about "being half in love with easeful death." From his recent statements, Barack Obama is more than half in love with it -- especially when it comes to the chronically ailing and the terminally ill. It's not that death necessarily would be easier for the ailing, mostly elderly patients. It's that it would be easier on the Obama Administration's budget for health care. Just as dead people tell no tales, neither do they incur any health costs.

Remember when Obama told Pastor Rick Warren that determining when life began was "above [his] pay-grade?" In her recent speech to a Pro-Life group in Evansville, IN, Sarah Palin said such a determination was "not above [her pay-grade." She believes, unlike Obama, that God is the source of all life and that it begins at conception. Palin believes in what she calls "a culture of life." Obama believes that concept is nonsense.

In terms of views on life and death, the statement below (in boldface) by Obama (made to the NY Times and picked up by the Washington Times) is perhaps the most chilling one ever made by a high elected official. If you cut through his pompous rhetoric, you find an American President calling for bureaucratic control of health control, as well as rationing (particularly for older people), and, apparently, euthanasia in the name of cost-control. (I call his approach "Killing Off Grandpa and Grandma to Save Money").

President Obama admitted he wants the government to decide what health care Americans receive. "There's always going to be an asymmetry of information between patient and provider," he said. "And part of what I think government can do effectively is to be an honest broker in assessing and evaluating treatment options."

The ten-dollar word "asymmetry" means only that doctors usually know more about health care options than patients. Why didn't he say that rather than using a rhetorical smokescreen. Of most concern, why should bureaucrats ("the government") step in between doctors and patients in determining the best forms of treatment?

And, what "pay grades" (civil service levels") would such government people have when they help decide whether we live or die?

Obama paints a scary picture. He stated that "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." For them, he said, "I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/01/obamas-health-care-rationing/

Again, the soothing phrase "democratic conservation" hides the appalling implications of Obama's remarks. All those "doctors (not your doctor of course), scientists (of the "mad scientist" variety?), and ethicists (a nice term out of the secular humanist lexicon)" will be making abstract decisions on when you and other American should live or die. Obama didn't say that directly, but once you cut through the thick underbrush of his words, that's exactly what he meant.

Note: The "chronically ill" (perhaps half the adults in America) who may be denied health care under Obama include roughly half the American people, including yours truly (adult diabetes), my wife (stroke), and an adult daughter who lives with us (learning disabled). Three-out-three. What happens in Europe and to a degree in Canada is that health care for the terminally ill is delayed and they tend to die off quickly in much greater numbers than in the US.

In a scary sense, the logic is clear: dead people don't consume health care dollars. Can't argue with that, I guess.

(On my other blog, http://stevemaloneygop.blogspot.com, I'm writing a week-long series on Obama's frightening health plan, which appears largely to be a "death plan")