Tag Archives: Death Panel

News

Obama advisor Robert Reich explains how government-run health care will let you die

10/14/2009 Wintery Knight Leave a comment

Who is Robert Reich and what is he up to? Verum Serum explains:

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and more recently an Obama economic adviser, has been all over the media lately shilling for ObamaCare. The public option is no more dangerous than a box of puppies according to this professionally produced video featuring Reich. (I won’t embed it but it’s worth a quick watch.) The real injustice, according to Reich, is that political operatives like us are trying to “confuse and scare” people about change.

But what was Robert Reich saying in 2007? Well he was explaining what a candidate for president would say if he wanted to tell the truth about health care. And what is the truth about health care, according to Robert Reich, who now works for Barack Obama?

Listen:

Say what? (H/T Newsbusters)

Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you. And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

“Also, I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid—we already have a lot of bargaining leverage—to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you.”

So let’s see. Young, healthy people (like me) will pay more. Old, retired people like my parents will be murdered by death panels. And health care innovators and insurance providers will be run out of business, which reduces quality and raises costs. Well, OK, then. So now we understand what Obama’s socialized takeover of health care would really accomplish from the mouth of his own advisor.

I note that Hot Air has a video of Reich explaining all his previous opinions away.

News

NHS starves 80-year-old woman but offers taxpayer-funded breast enlargements

10/12/2009 Wintery Knight Leave a comment

First, consider this story from the Telegraph. (H/T Powerline Blog via ECM)

A British transsexual is suing for the right to breast enlargement surgery. (The British socialist health care system pays for breast enlargements)

Excerpt:

The legally aided gender dysphoria sufferer, who has been living as a woman for over 10 years, says breast augmentation is essential to her female identity and emotional well-being and the refusal to give her the op amounts to sex discrimination.

Her unique test case against the West Berkire Primary Care Trust (PCT), in which the the Equality and Human Rights Commission will also be playing a part, is now set for hearing at the High Court on October 20.

[…]Her barrister, Stephanie Harrison, said it amounted to sex discrimination that she had been treated in exactly the same way as a “natal female”, not suffering from gender dysphoria, applying for cosmetic breast enlargment on the NHS.

Arguing that C would “derive psychological benefit” from breast enhancement, Miss Harrison said the PCT’s refusal “leaves a treatable condition and untreated” and exposed her to “significant suffering”.

Breast augmentation would be “an appropriate and cost-effective treatment” that would enable C to achieve “a congruent physical, psychological and social identity”.

But the PCT’s policy that breast augmentation will only be funded in “exceptional” cases is so tight as to amount almost to a blanket ban, the barrister added.

In socialist Canada, drug needles, sex changes and in vitro fertilization are rights, paid for by taxpayers.

Now consider this story of death panels in socialist Britain.

Story from the London Times. (H/T Confederate Yankee via ECM)

Excerpt:

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

This is what happens when the government runs health care. When health care is “free”, demand skyrockets. Patients requiring breast implants are viewed as more deserving of a higher “quality of life” than 80-year-old women who no longer pay taxes. Meanwhile, the most productive workers have to pay into the system based on their income, not based on their risk. This is what the left means by equality. Hard workers are punished, while risky/frivolous behaviors are rewarded.