Sunday, August 2, 2009

Obamacare: A Poison Pill

The President is bound and determined to destroy the best healthcare system in the world and to replace it with bad medicine for all and rationing of care, in other words socialized medicine. While the bill has cleared the House in the form of committee, it was a minor victory that passage was delayed until after the August recess. This is no time to rejoice however. We must all unite this month to stop this monstrosity as if our lives depended upon it, because they do.

The President is very adept at sleight of hand, saying one thing and doing another. In this case it's very important to take a hard look at the President's medical advisers. Namely, Dr.Ezekial Emanual, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual. Dr. Emanual has been appointed health care advisor at the Office of Management and Budget.

The "good doctor" has been quoted as saying that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the costs or effects on others". In other words screw the patient, we've got to control costs. Although, that is a fallacy in itself as costs under this debacle will skyrocket as per the cost projections of the non-partisan OMB. According to Emanual, doctors must look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. Understandably, most physicians are horrified by this notion. They believe, rightly, that it is a doctor's job to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanual however is of the belief that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. In his warped vision medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those " who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens..." In other words, so sorry grandma and little Jimmy with cerebral palsy. You are not productive, therefore you will be denied care.I have not heard such frightening words from a physician since the days of Dr. Josef Mengele of the Third Reich.

It's incredible that the federal government which already decides who gets to be born, will now decide who gets medical care and who gets to die. Unbelievably Emanual attempts to defend his discrimination against older patients 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."

It is unbelievable to me that a physician with such a warped philsophy could practice medicine in the United States, yet alone be one of the President's chief medical advisers. Yet this is where we are with this so-called reform bill. This is what it is at its very core. Ignore the flowery prose of the President as well as the slobbering dinosaur media, and look at the details of bill.

This bill must be stopped at all costs. Don't be passive. Take action. Call your Congressman and Senator and attend every town hall meeting you can this month. Your life and our country depend on it.

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