Death Panels

It's hyperbole, but not as far-fetched as you might think. I first saw the term attributed to Sarah Palin. Although the White House and members of the mainstream media rushed to dismiss Palin's statement as "nuts," the threat of the government plan becoming a "death panel" for the weakest members of society may not be far off the mark. ABC News recently reported that the Oregon Health Plan refused to cover cancer drugs that cost $4000 per month for Barbara Wagner, a 64 year-old terminally ill patient with lung cancer. Instead they offered to give her a one-time prescription for lethal drugs to end her life, which would cost the state health provider only $50.

I can offer you this excerpt from Camille Paglia's essay on Salon.com (hardly a right-wing rag), posted today:

"I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

"Surely, the basic rule in comprehensive legislation should be: First, do no harm. The present proposals are full of noble aims, but the biggest danger always comes from unforeseen and unintended consequences.

"What was needed for reform was an in-depth analysis, buttressed by documentary evidence, of waste, fraud and profiteering in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Instead what we've gotten is a series of facile, vulgar innuendos about how doctors conduct their practice, as if their primary motive is money. Quite frankly, the president gives little sense of direct knowledge of medical protocols; it's as if his views are a tissue of hearsay and scattershot worst-case scenarios."

This all comes from the proposed Health Benefits Advisory Committee, and relevant sections of the proposed bill: The "advance care planning consultation" provisions featured on pages 424 - 443 of HR 3200, "the American Affordable Health Choices Act."

A main feature of the legislation is a proposed "Health Benefits Advisory Committee" under the Executive Branch, which would be charged with determining "essential benefits" for all health-insurance plans and formulate standards for treatment that incorporate cost-cutting strategies. The federal health board would be comprised of a panel of medical experts, half of which would be nominated by the President. Under the current proposal, the HBAC would be independent of Congress, and its rules and recommendations guiding doctor treatments and insurance companies could only be overturned if Congress, the Executive Branch, and ordinary citizens through the judiciary act within 30 days. Even then, the actions of the Committee would have to be accepted or rejected in toto, with no exceptions.

But Palin pointed out the enormous danger for federal health boards becoming "death panels" through a policy of rationing, especially by following the policy proposed by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an issue first raised by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

Emanuel is a key advisor of Obama's health care reform as health-policy adviser at the White House's Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. A member of the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Bioethics Council and brother to Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, he advocates "The Complete Lives System," which as he described in a Jan. 31, 2009 article, "prioritizes younger people who have not yet lived a complete life."

Emanuel's approach has five principles which he lays out in "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" published on January 31, 2009: "youngest first, prognosis, save most lives, lottery, instrumental value."

"When the worst-off can benefit only slightly, while the better-off could benefit greatly, allocating to the better off is often justifiable," wrote Emanuel.

He continued that the CLS discrimination based on age is not "invidious discrimination" because "everyone who is 65 years now was once 25 years." But in the CLS, care would also be rationed away from young people with a "poor prognoses" because they lack "the potential to live a complete life." (Read here)

Emanuel has also stated that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, and stated that "Savings [in the medical industry] will require changing how doctors think about their patients" in a 2008 article written for the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a separate 1996 article for the Hastings Center Report, Emanuel spoke about rationing care away from those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens" to the non-disabled, adding "An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

Approximately 33 percent of medical spending occurs in the final year of a patient's life, and throughout the legislation (HR 3200), enormous pressures are put upon on physicians and medical professionals to incentivize them to cut costs.

Hyperbole? Yes... but, according to the legislation, not as far off the mark as you might think at first glance.

Protest is Un-American?

In an Op-Ed today in USA Today, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) jointly wrote a piece aimed at two main points: Trying to sell national health care, and deriding those who oppose it.

Op-Ed Here

My question, regardless of where you fall on the issue of health care, is this:
Why is protest against it now called un-American?

After we, as a nation, endured 8 years of some of the most vile name-calling and protesting since the Vietnam era, in protest of a Republican president, we were told that protest is an American tradition. We were told that not only were the protesters correct in their opinions, but that they were not 'traitors' for holding them - indeed, they were patriotic for standing up and standing against that which they believed was wrong.

So why are other Americans now wrong to do so? Why are the Americans who are now protesting waging 'an ugly campaign' and 'disrupting private meetings' and, in general, behaving badly? The Op-Ed's authors would have us believe that: "These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." That's a quote from the piece.

Regardless of the specific tactics being employed (and seriously, today's health care protestors have nothing on the "BusHitler" crowd when it comes to disrupting speakers on campuses, burning American flags, etc.), when did protesting become un-American? Further - do you find it disturbing that the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader are, together, basically telling the protestors to 'sit down and shut up'?

Term Limits

Speaking in this post about Congress...

Some people think that term limits for politicians occur every 2 or 6 years -- calling them "elections". If the American public was at all educated, these might suffice.

I have heard the argument that "experience counts" as regards politicians. That explains why so many scoundrels are re-elected so many times, spending decades in their positions. No wonder it feels as though we have a ruling class in America.

What 'experience' is required to be a politician...? In a representative republic, we are supposed to be represented by those who are like ourselves, be they farmers, mechanics, lawyers, shopkeepers, etc.

I would absolutely impose term limits on every elected federal office of no more than TWO terms for every elected official serving in every elected office (if it's good enough for the office of the President, it's good enough for a Senator and Representative - this is America, we're not supposed to have a ruling class.. see the 22nd Amendment).

It's not rocket science to be a legislator. There's no great body of knowledge that needs to be digested, no minimum educational requirements to be met, no special training needed. The job requires honesty, thoughtfulness, and the knowledge that you will be sent home at the end of your (maximum) two terms, where you will have to earn a living just as do your constituents - and where you will be bound by the legislation you helped to create or pass during your time in office.

Applying Empathy in the SCOTUS

What is wrong with applying "empathy" to decisions rendered in the Supreme Court of the United States?

Empathy in a Supreme Court Justice -- who, by applying such empathy in their decision-making process -- is part of parcel of the Liberal doctrine of equal outcomes versus equal opportunities.

My question for such a Justice is: Empathy for whom...? The plaintiff or the defendant? How does this apply to Supreme Court rulings, anyway? What has empathy to do with the Constitution?

Diversity on the bench is simply more worthless Liberal tripe, and takes us back down exactly the wrong path. A qualified person for a job is qualified in spite of the color of their skin, their socio-economic background, their shoe size, their hair color, and their religion. If one of these criteria (or myriad others) needs to be applied to the person in order to explain their qualifications for the position, then they don't deserve it.

The shame of the whole issue is that Liberal identity politics will prevent any meaningful questioning of Judge Sotomayor's judicial qualifications, as anyone questioning her fitness for the bench will be immediately labeled 'racist' (or 'sexist'), and thus marginalized.

THAT'S WHY justice must be BLIND.

America on Her Birthday

America on her birthday... is on the wrong track.

"And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

Where are these people today?
Where is this spirit today?

We're a nation of cry-babies, sniveling and whining, begging the government to please share just a few more morsels given by others... creating little, accomplishing less, leading not at all.

This birthday seems like the last one Grandpa would enjoy in his home, surrounded by his family and friends -- for next year he will be placed in a nursing home, there to be mistreated and forgotten.

Until he passes.

Limited Government

Proponents of limited government, like myself, are too often misunderstood. I speak in this post only of the Federal government, so I'll limit my remarks to that august body.

We believe that the Federal government should be limited to those powers directly granted it by the Constitution of the United States. No more, no less. Nearly every single issue which arises between Left and Right, at the national level, would be put to bed if that pesky ol' Constitution were simply followed.

It's not a matter of limiting government for specific causes, or to only a politically-expedient list of certain responsibilities (e.g., food safety, roads/infrastructure, education). We want government limited to what it's allowed by law.

Recall the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."


So, the limited government view holds that the Constitution does not grant the Federal government any power that it does not expressly mention.

The contrary view holds that the Constitution grants the Federal government the authority to do anything that is not explicitly prohibited by the first eight amendments.

Regardless of the issue at hand, be it food safety or infrastructure, the limited government proponents have a simple solution: Amend the Constitution to allow government to do that which it wishes. Absent an amendment, it's illegal.

Socialized Medicine

Government-run health care will look a lot like other government-run entities.

So... the emergency room at your local hospital will be run like the Department of Motor Vehicles office where you live.

Inefficiently.

And that leaves aside, for the short-term, the lack of invention - and incentive - of which the United States currently enjoys an abundance. Who will want to be a doctor, for example, when a government panel decides that doctors should only earn X dollars per year? Who will want to attend medical school, endure residency, and - most important - accrue the massive debt associated with them - just to make a maximum of X dollars per year?

What's the incentive?

That's the part that liberals consistently miss... it's as though they cannot conceive of 'incentive', what it means and how it benefits our society. Did you know that England has been operating with such a shortage of doctors for the last several years, that they IMPORT doctors from other countries? Naturally, they doctors who emigrate to England do not have the education or skills required of doctors who learned their trade in England; so the quality of medical care suffers as a result.

This incentive applies to all fields, all areas. Medical devices, pharmaceutical drugs, patient care - everything. Some people complain that the cost of prescription drugs is too high; let's hear them complain when the supply of those drugs dries up, because government has forced price caps on the drug companies, thereby curtailing research and development - by curtailing incentive.

It's a liberal tenet to hate 'the rich', be they people or corporations - unless those people and corporations reside in Hollywood, of course. It's perfectly fine for Susan Sarandon to be paid $10 million to appear in a film, but the CEO of Pfizer only deserves $100k per year.

I don't begrudge a Hollywood celebrity, or a Fortune 500 CEO, or a doctor, whatever money they can make. We should ALL want to emulate them, not disparage them.