By: Phill Kline
Bioethicists, many with newly constructed abbreviations after their name, need to meet my mother. If the cut wasn’t gushing like Mount Vesuvius or a bone wasn’t visible, the emergency room was out of the question. Nothing like a little peroxide and a band-aid. Health care rationing by a financially struggling single mother of five leads to better results than a government funded panel of bioethicists. And by the way, my mother just recently passed 70 and I want to keep her alive, something ObamaCare places in jeopardy.
To understand the current health care debate you must recognize two things: 1) America long ago set the stage for a government takeover of health care; and 2)the left (mainstream media included) begins the discussion without any respect for the concept of liberty.
America has removed the patient from health care and replaced him with payment formularies primarily based on government reimbursement rates. Government already comprises 46 cents of the health care dollar through Medicaid and Medicare. (Insurance companies spend 42 cents and individuals spend 12 cents of every dollar). Physicians groups are increasingly tempted to jettison autonomy and free market ideas for higher government reimbursement rates.
Government already rations health care through these payment schemes, determining what devices and procedures to cover. We have been incrementally moving towards universal health care for decades. As soon as the patient was removed from the payment system, health care became an issue for either bureaucrats or actuaries.
And so what is the problem?
The loss of liberty and the inevitable corruption and exploitation of government run health care is a cost we must avoid.
Don’t be fooled – the death panels are already out there advocating a utilitarian view of human life. Bioethicists, void of any understanding or training in economics and without a religious framework, are coming to the only conclusion left on the table: health care is a world human rights issue demanding that limited resources must be allocated and rationed in a moral framework as determined by our humanistic secular culture and enforced by a government with a global reach.
Voila, death panels are really Human Rights Panels and formulas will be devised for government experts to determine whose life makes the grade and who has the duty to die. In the Dingell/Rangel bill, the panels provide “Advance Care Planning Consultation” and a funded government study will provide “patient decision aids” of which cost to government is a consideration.
After all, it makes so much sense. Not enough to go around, so who must make sure we distribute wisely – government. Marx in the operating room.
And the private option will be prohibited for allowing people to opt out undermines the financial support for government health care and defeats the perceived moral objective of the left.
Prof. Peter Singer of Princeton University put in bluntly in the Sunday Magazine of the NY Times. Prof. Singer states that the life of an elderly American is not worth the life of a young American.
And all of this will be done in the name of “fiscal conservatism” and human rights. Let’s make health care less costly by letting the costly folks die. “Every child a wanted child.” The abortion justification on the back end. This is why we can call a “reform” bill that increases government spending and encourages death “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act.”
And all of this debate ignores the value of human liberty. When individuals are free to make these decisions and live with the results: it is amazing what humans accomplish.
My mother rationed our health care. She replaced inordinate emergency room visits with peanut butter and jelly to keep us fed. And she raised 5 kids on her own without government panels, government money or government prohibitions. I’ll choose my mother over Marx any day.