Recently in Futile Care Category

Guess it isn't just right-wing vast-conspirators, white racists, or nutjobs, after all:

"My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President's chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which "produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated."

"Dr. Emanuel is a special adviser to the budget director, Peter R. Orszag. He is also the older brother of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff."

The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9661, Pages 423 - 431, 31 January 2009, Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions. Govind Persad BS a, Alan Wertheimer PhD a, Ezekiel J Emanuel MD:

"Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system--the complete lives system--which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles." (emphasis this author)

Lottery systems, folks. Like they're already having to do in Canada, where there is already "universal" healthcare.

Pick a number, any number, take a number and wait. Like at the deli counter at your local grocer, only add months to wait, not minutes.

Controversy: Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an article for The Hastings Center Report in 1996, in which he proposed that health care services should not be guaranteed for "individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens."

Still don't want to read what Palin says because you're convinced she's an idiot? (even though you're rather the idiot if you believe what the pro-Obama media have only allowed you to learn)...

Then read these Obama-supporters and Obama-liberal newspaper pundits:

1. THE WASHINGTON POST, Charles Lane:

   Section 1233 "addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to 'bend the curve' on health-care costs?"

   "Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite 'purely voluntary,' as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, 'purely voluntary' means 'not unless the patient requests one.' Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist.

   "Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they're in the meeting, the bill does permit 'formulation' of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would 'place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,' I don't think he's being realistic.

2. WASHINGTON POST Columnist Eugene Robinson ("a self-described 'true believer' who 'will almost certainly support' 'whatever reform package finally emerges'):

   "If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending."

3. Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee:

   "Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign."

"The goal is to reduce end-of-life spending."

Sounds great, doesn't it.

Except when some government insurance clerk(s) and/or the doctor(s) getting pressured by that clerk or committee of clerks to "reduce end-of-life spending" decide that you're near the "end" of your life and they say "No more healthcare for you."

But by then, it'll be too late. You'll have the government against you, then. And you'll die before you can fight to reverse this havoc that you've allowed Obama and the Democrats to wreak.

Don't the Pro-O liberals find it interesting that Congress won't hold itself to this same "standard of care" that they think all other Americans should accept meekly, silently and blindly?

If it was such a great system, they'd be trampling us to get it for themselves first.

They're not. They never will.

POSTSCRIPT: Palin echoes today what I and others also already know, but sadly the vast majority of Obama-ites refuse to learn:

"I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee's decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200). It's gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress; however, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones.

"...nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time. The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama's key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I'm speaking of the "Complete Lives System" advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president's chief of staff. President Obama has not yet stated any opposition to the "Complete Lives System," a system which, if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential. [1] Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the "Complete Lives System"? If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on? I just learned that Dr. Emanuel is now distancing himself from his own work and claiming that his "thinking has evolved" on the question of rationing care to benefit the strong and deny the weak. [2] How convenient that he disavowed his own work only after the nature of his scholarship was revealed to the public at large."