Obamacare: Not a Slipper Slope but a Cliff. A Response to USA Today.

Obamacare: Not a Slippery Slope, But a Cliff

By Phill Kline

“Authority (is hereby given for) certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.”[i]

This September 1, 1939 order by Adolph Hitler was followed up by the establishment of vast network of doctors and professionals dedicated to providing “mercy” to those who were a burden on the state. Hundreds of thousands of “useless eaters” were euthanized. For this and other crimes, seven high ranking Nazi officials, including doctors, were executed after being convicted at Nuremberg.

In an effort to explain how the medical profession participated in such atrocities, prosecution expert witness Werner Leibbrandt, Professor of History of Medicine at Erlangen University testified “the concept of humanity is a very dangerous concept…it is most dangerous of all for the physician…for the physician, the individual stands above all humanity and the individual unfortunately has sunk very low in these last few years.”

Prof. Leibbrandt recognized that “humanity” substituted for God gives birth to inhumanity.

And thus is the problem with Obamacare – the individual sinks very low indeed.

America has incrementally removed the individual from medical decisions over a period of decades. Today, 46 cents of the health care dollar is spent by government, 42 cents by insurance carriers and only 12 cents by the individual.[ii]

Any time you remove the responsibility of payment from a person who receives services you diminish that person’s authority and introduce false and corruptive influences in the market. All of this increases inefficiency and eventually leads to inevitable corruption and distortion of the market. This leads to increased costs for demand is artificially inflated when people don’t believe they foot the bill.

And now a government which overpromised must reduce costs by rationing.

Typically, when the consumer pays the bill, such rationing occurs in the exercise of liberty. I decide whether to seek a large deductible and lower premium or get a top of the line health plan. When government pays the bill, such rationing takes the form of coercion through the force of law and therein is the rub. The “humanity” of the state replaces the humane physician.

And now, in an Orwellian twist, leading bioethicists label such coercion as a moral imperative. Bioethicist Peter Singer states that we must answer the question of how many lives of 85 year-olds are worth saving the life of one teenager.[iii] This formulary worked into a national health care plan is the only way to appropriately ration scarce health care dollars, he posits.[iv]

This “dangerous humanity” is increasingly expressed by bioethicists around the globe who now call health care a “global human right.” Yet, every right has a corresponding duty – on those who have the right to exercise the right wisely; and on everyone else to recognize the right.

The only entity available to force us to recognize the right of another to have health care is government. Further, only government has the power to coerce the individual to be wise with the right – to eat vegetables rather than candy bars.

This is what is ignored by USA Today and the left leaning US media who believe that all problems lend themselves to a government solution – government solutions don’t extend liberty, they limit liberty.

Leftist academia recognizes this. Writing in the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, Maria Merritt, Ph.D. core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, states “the recognition of any right as a human right thus carries grave political consequences…because it clears a space for the principled moral justification of external intervention (political, economic, if not military) in the domestic affairs of sovereign states.”[v] A global police force for health care, much like our new Science Czar supports such a force for the distribution of global natural resources.[vi]

This diminishes the individual, destroys liberty, thwarts the incentive for innovation and advancement and almost always ends in violence: by forcing the unwanted or burdensome to die or in revolution. The human spirit does not suffer bondage well or long.

President Obama’s incremental step towards national health care is the same in a small and concealed dose. It provides “a government option” - further entrenching government as the payer and the party most interested in “saving costs” which means rationing.

Such an approach again receives the support of academia through Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the President’s Chief of Staff. Dr. Emanuel proposes a “complete life system” of rationing.[vii] Dr. Emanuel’s plan provides a priority for adolescents over infants (because society has not invested much in infants through education, etc.) and over the elderly because they have already lived a “complete life.”[viii]

The Obama plan pays for end of life consultation sessions with government recognized experts when a patient has a “chronic” (not terminal) condition.[ix] These experts will know what procedures government is willing to pay for when Singer’s hypothetical patient is 85 years old and what is deemed too costly. In fact, Obamacare, goes much younger, forcing the 55 year-old to engage in such discussions. Further, government will prohibit the 85 year-old from seeking the unreimbursed treatment outside the government system because allowing that private option undermines financial support for the government option and also defeats one of the “moral” objectives of the left – equality in fact rather than equal opportunity. In other words, it will be illegal to pay for it yourself.[x]

Further, these consultations include “counseling” on “artificial nutrition and hydration,” a.k.a. food and water. There was a day this was humane care which could not be denied.[xi] Today, it is considered “medical care” which can be withheld.

Counseling on food and water by government reimbursed experts is not needed – if you have it you live, if not you die, painfully – just ask Bobby Schindler who was forced to watch his sister die of thirst.

And the purpose of these government funded consultations with experts will be to save costs and reduce burdens but will innocently be called “public education.” This is not a slippery slope but a cliff; and the path is straight down.