#35- Killing Grandma

- by Eric Erickson, Macon City Councilman, Macon , Georgia

[Note: (1) This year, with the inauguration of our new President, I have read about a dozen books on public policy issues - whether about the environment, the War on Terror, the economy, healthcare, etc. And, I've read several books about the policies promoted by our President that didn't get much media coverage during the last election campaign. The more I’ve read about the direction the Democratic Party led national leadership is taking us, the more frightened I've become. In fact, when I tried to read a book of fantasy stories and a novel about a murder mystery, I had to put them away because I decided that they were not near as scary as the REAL LIFE things that are being promoted in this country! By the way, I get all my books (and most of them have been written within the past year or so) from my public library and so I encourage you to check out what YOUR library has available. Ones I’ve read recently include “Catastrophe!” that analyzes every major domestic and foreign policy emphasis of the Obama administration – yikes! The book “America Alone” looks closely at what the state is of countries in Europe (that many liberals want us to model ourselves after) as well as Asia, and to read of the trouble even China and Japan are in is alarming. The book I am reading now, “Meltdown” talks about the national policies that have brought about the present economic crash, and the explanation is not what you are used to hearing. (This book makes me wonder why the subject of economics is not required of every person graduating high school.) And if you want to understand the values behind the policies that our President is promoting, I encourage you to read “The Audacity of Deceit.” So forget that scary mystery you might be reading. There are any number of books about what is happening in our country and the world that will scare you a whole lot more. (2) The following article I found online presents several quotes by the President and other Democrats in Washington as well as a description of the nature of “end of life: patients in Oregon that will give you an idea of why so many seniors are so afraid of Obamacare.]
ABC News reporter Jake Tapper summed up the situation best when he said, “[I]f the president finds himself at a town hall meeting telling the American people that he does not want to set up a panel to kill their grandparents … perhaps, at some point, the president has lost control of the message.” Sarah Palin won the health-care debate with her use of the phrase “death panels.” The national press corps, never having rushed to defend Republicans routinely accused of wanting to cut Medicare, starve children and jail people because of their skin color, raced to defend Democrats against Palin’s charge. Democrats ran away from their “end of life” solution just as quickly.

No one thinks Democrats want to “pull the plug on grandma,” as President Obama put it. The Democrats’ health-care proposals do not mention “euthanasia,” “assisted suicide” or “death panels.” Nonetheless, many seniors are worried, not because of “Republican scare tactics,” but because of the Democrats’ own rhetoric regarding “end of life” planning. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat-W. Va., said in March that as part of responsible healthcare reform people must recognize they would not be able to get every treatment they wanted. The government would use a cost-benefit analysis to determine treatment options. Noted liberal writer Ezra Klein wrote that health-care reform would save money by making tough decisions about a person’s life. “We’re profoundly uncomfortable saying that a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure,” he wrote, alluding to the need for panels of experts to make those decisions.

Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and one of Obama’s health-care advisors, wrote in a January 2009 white paper that health care should be rationed in a way that “promot[es] and reward[s] social usefulness.” He said age could play a factor in determining who can and cannot access health-care resources. Emanuel also wrote, “[S]ervices provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens [in the body politic] are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Obama addressed this too, saying, “Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. ... And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

We see where this road we are now traveling goes out in the real world. Reporter Dan Springer reported in 2008, “Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon’s state-run health plan for help.” Oregon denied Mr. Stroup’s request and referred him to an assisted suicide specialist. We will spend money we don’t have to pay for health care, or we will prioritize who gets treatment. It is an inevitable fact of life that the more the government outlays to keep you alive, the more your life becomes subject to a cost/benefit analysis. The Democrats’ proposal would not require doctors or families pull the plug on grandma. The proposal would require that grandma, and others who bureaucrats deem have limited social utility, wither and die while people with greater social utility get treatment first. If the empowered bureaucrats are generous, they might throw in a one way ticket to Oregon to visit an assisted suicide specialist.