Euthanasia & Abortion – Expanded Government Control
The Health Care debate has focused my thought on issues that extend beyond the arguments we hear being shouted about in the Town Hall type meetings. The creeping growth of government over the years has seldom received the attention that the Health Care issues have stimulated.
Government has been involved with abortion issues for years and abortion rights have been argued on street corners for decades. The Federal Government has been in the middle of the issue promoting abortion with legislation and funding on many levels.
The abortion issue seems to not satisfy the Statist need to control individual life and death issues. Obama has now thrust upon us a massive new attempt to control the end of our lives under the guise of improving out Health Care opportunities. Part of the Obama Health Care plan is to deny care to the elderly to help pay for his plan. The elderly will have a new opportunity to plan life ending issues with a government representative when a certain age is reached. The fact that Obama would promote a plan with such Orwellian overtones gives a clearer vision of how little he understands Americans.
I don’t think that many of my friends need or want an Obama representative advising how their life should end. A life end discussion is not something that I need a government employee coming into my old age home telling me about options for ending my life. I further am very sure that I am not looking forward to a value estimate being made by a government employee, concerning the cost of treatment as it relates to the prospective years I have left to live.
The Obama plan to interject and possibly encourage life ending options into a Health Plan is simply unacceptable. It is a blatant attempt for government to expand involvement in both ends of life. Government involvement into whether a fetus lives or when an old person needs to die, are about to come into the new American Health Plan that Obama is promoting.
Euthanasia is not the wrong term to use for the Obama life shortening strategy. Members of and advisors to this administration have clearly indicated that they think it is waste of money to be giving expensive medical help to citizen retired and no longer contributing the taxes paid when they were still “gainfully employed”. in thinly disguised comments Obama has said it, Daschel has said it and Rahm Emanuel’s prominent physician brother Zeke stated his belief, in some detail, about withholding medical treatment for economic reasons.
The cost of the plan is another issue. One trillion six hundred million dollars is a recent estimate ($1,000,600,000,000) I think I got the right number of zeros. I know that there is absolutely no capability on the part of the government to accurately estimate the cost of this proposal. I am sure of this statement because the government has never accurately estimated a program cost on anything. There is a further estimate that to enter an individual into the public side of the program will cost $62,000. I don’t understand that figure at all. I could buy a great private policy for a lot less that that amount.
The government control of the beginning of life and the ending of life and determining the level of treatment during that life seems to be well down the road to a picture painted by George Orwell.
I have decided not to buy this picture.
Buck It is my understanding that 80% of the health care budget is being spent on the elderly. I would like to learn of a Republican plan to lower costs. Lets fix the system we currently have so that when the 77 million baby boomers enter the system we don’t spend 50% of our budget on health care. I have never heard of a government program that works. I do know that it is urgent that we change what we presently have.
I haven’t seen anyone seriously address the first big cost saving possibility. That would come from Tort reform. I have no figures but know from personal experience that my Doc insists on tests from time to time that both he and I know he is covering his, you know what, against malpractice actions. The Trial lawyers are important supporters of this current administration. Congress has a lot of lawyers and perhaps they don’t have the will to address this issue vigorously. It is not in any way the whole answer but Tort Reform would be a start to reducing the cost of caring for older Americans.
“It is a blatant attempt for government to expand involvement in both ends of life.”
LMAO
You mean like Georgie Bush and poor Terri Schiavo?
Rightwingnut hypocrites.
diogenes,
There you go again! Did you know that George Bush has not been President for a while? Schiavo was a sad case with little relationship to the issue now being debated. You may recall (or look it up) that Terri’s continued life support was a dispute between parents and husband. The decision, as I recall, was not about pulling a plug from a respirator, it was about stopping nourishment and letting her die from starvation.
I think you couldn’t recognize an honest man even if your light was turned up brightly.
It was clearly about the (then) majority party of our federal government — the ultrarightwingnuts — interfering with the end of life decisions that these same ultrarightwingnuts now claim government has no business getting involved with. Removing (or not removing) nutrition is one of those end-of-life conversatiohs that should be hade.
diogenes
At last some progress. You have indicated that there might be a difference between rightwingnuts and ultrarightwingnuts.
I’m not sure where I fit in this conversation. I don’t want any government wingnut of the right or left involved with my end of life decisions or discussions.
You may be right, “at last some progress”. So Bush and the GOP nuts who intervened in the Schiavio case were wrong to do so?
Why do you assume that it would be a “government wingnut” who would assist in the “end-of-life consultation”? The proposed policy merely says that that type of expense would be covered under Medicare. It still has to be done by a physician or a certified health care professional… not a back-room bureaucrat. If somebody has expertise that I don’t have, I don’t have any problem taking advantage of their expertise, do you?
Dear Buck,
On the news last week a couple from Norfolk, VA, was sentenced for starving their tiny twins to death. The good news was one child survived this horrific treatment. How sad that you would have a woman bear children she could neither want or love, let alone torture with a long slow death.
Secondly, I cared for my beloved Mother who had acute myeloid leukemia. It is a dreadful disease and the kindest folks we had to deal with were those hospice people who come into your life at that time when there is no one to guide you through the “Valley of the Shadows”. There is a need for proper medical guidance when getting well is no longer and option. Face it: doctors are human beings who can’t always make you well again. Hope you are never confronted with such problems.
This ugly picture isn’t something you can choose to buy into!
Doris,
I understand what you went through caring for your mother.
My Mom died after suffering with the same dreadful disease. My wife and I know very well the ugly picture you describe since we cared for Mom throughout the last months of her life. The hospice people are very special and the sincere concern of her medical team was heart warning.
We didn’t choose to buy into it either but dealt with it without government appointed help. My mother died surrounded by caring family who stood by her side throughout this sad end of life experience which you and I share.
Buck