By Don Feder
The left has always wanted to exercise absolute control over the lives of the American people – mind you, for our own good.
It wants to control what we think, through public education, Hollywood and its trained-poodle news media. It wants to dispose of our property, through confiscatory taxation. It wants to raise our children, run our businesses, and plan our retirement.
But now, with Obama-care, it’s reaching for the gold ring – the power to decide who lives and dies, the power to play God.
If you’re elderly and ailing, if you’re young and disabled, if you require special treatment, if it deems your quality of life low or your social utility wanting, the left is dying to kill you. If Congress and this administration have their way, it will have that power very soon.
I’m talking about the rationing of medical services – the inevitable consequence of Obama-care. It’s not just that the politicians will be driven to it. If our health care system is nationalized, they will welcome it.
I’m not going to raise the specter of death panels, or speak to you about “comparative effectiveness,” or Section 1232 of the House health-care bill, which requires “end-of-life counseling” for Medicare patients every five years – and more often if they’re terminally ill.
I will not describe how socialized medicine has worked in the United Kingdom or Canada. In Britain, beyond a certain age, if you need a hip-replacement or cataract surgery – tough. The Canadians already have what Obama wants for America. So why are they coming here for life-saving operations? Why aren’t we going there?
No one knows the contours of the final abomination the House and Senate will vote on – perhaps in a matter of days. And the Democrats won’t let us see it in advance.
You know what? It doesn’t matter. If you want to see the shape of things to come, listen to the voices emanating from the shriveled heart of the Party of Plunder.
The Democrat Party increasingly resembles a wholly-owned subsidiary of billionaire George Soros, who funneled $25 million into its coffers in the 2003/2004 election cycle alone.
In a 1994 speech, America’s most prominent proponent of doctor-assisted suicide rhetorically asked: “Can we really afford to care for the dying properly? The number of people dying in the United States currently stands at 2.2 million annually. Increases in cancer and AIDS and the aging of the Baby-Boomers will cause this figure to climb faster than the population… (But) aggressive, life-prolonging interventions, which may at times go against the patient’s wishes, are much more expensive than proper care for the dying.” Well, beat me with a euphemism!
What’s “proper care for the dying”? Certainly, nothing that costs much – as far as the architects of Obama-care are concerned. Not a ventilator, not a feeding tube, not CPR – just enough drugs to keep them quiet.
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel is health-policy advisor to the Office of Budget and Management, and brother to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, who once disclosed, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
Dr. Emmanuel says that in health-care reform (so-called), “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control for show and public relations than for true change.” At last, an honest Democrat.
The good doctor believes medical care should not be wasted on those who are “irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” As an example, he cites patients with dementia. Well, they could always run for Congress in Massachusetts.
What about patients with terminal cancer or the 66-year-old who’s suffered a massive stroke or a severe heart-attack? On the other end of the life spectrum, what about severely disabled children or those with Downs syndrome? Will they be judged incapable of becoming “participating citizens” and assigned to an institution, there to receive minimal care till they die?
By the way, among the things Dr. Emanuel cites as medical luxuries are private rooms in hospitals, physicians offices “conveniently located” with nearby parking, and “attractive waiting rooms.” What about Band-Aids, aspirin and eye-drops?
Then there’s Robert Reich, Clinton’s Labor Secretary. In a 2007 speech at the University of California at Berkeley, Reich told his audience he would speak to them as if he was an honest candidate who “did not care about becoming president.”
Regarding health care reform, his message would be, “particularly to you young, healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more. And by the way, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life…It’s too expensive… so we’re going to let you die.” Here’s a really honest Democrat.
Reich continued: “Also, I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government… to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents.” How about as long as your parents – or grandparents?
And now for a word – or two – from a really, really honest Democrat.
Writing in The Huffington Post (The Daily Worker was less dogmatic), on September 24, former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, a senior statesman of the Democratic Party, patiently explained to dolts like you and me: “No modern society can afford to give each of its citizens all the health care that is ‘beneficial.’ The health care system can no more afford to do everything ‘beneficial’ for every patient than the education system (BTW, another government-run disaster) can do everything ‘beneficial’ for every student.... We are delivering and the public is expecting more medicine than we can possibly afford to maintain.”
We can’t afford to give citizens? We are delivering more medicine than we can possibly afford? We’re not going to give you? Reserved for “participating citizens”?
We used to live in a country called “America.” It was a place where politicians and bureaucrats didn’t tell us what we could and couldn’t have when it came to medical care. If we could afford it, we paid for it. If we couldn’t, there was always welfare or charity to help out.
Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, just down the road in Concord, “their flags to April’s breeze unfurled,” once “the embattled farmers stood: And fired the shot heard round the world.” If they were alive today, you can probably guess where they’d be pointing their muskets.
In 1984, Lamm gave an unexpurgated version of his Huffington Post column, when he told the Colorado Health Lawyers Association: “Like leaves falling off a tree forming the humus in which other plants can grow, we’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts, so that our kids can build a better life” – or, in the words of another Democratic theorist, let them die and “decrease the surplus population” I think Obama has found his first health insurance czar.
Here’s the bottom-line of Obama-care. Take an 85-year-old man who fought for his country in World War II or Korea, who paid taxes and obeyed the law all of his life, who built a home and raised children who in turn grew up to become productive citizens, and who started a business that eventually employed dozens or even thousands of people.
He doesn’t get end-of-life treatment, so those resources can be redirected to illegal aliens and taxpayer-funded abortion. He’s given a few drugs to die on quickly and quietly, so Nancy Pelosi can have her Botox treatments and Rosie O’Donnell will get liposuction.
If you’re a liberal (excuse me, a “progressive”) rationing is the answer to your prayers. Not only will it save money on end-of-life care by letting the elderly die quickly, it will also avert a coming demographic crisis for Social Security and Medicare, with the worker/beneficiary ratio constantly shrinking and the proverbial trust fund a myth.
Do you think that those who are pushing the Freedom of Choice Act – who want to eliminate any restrains on abortion – and who let Terri Schiavo die of dehydration – do you think they will really have any qualms about pulling the plug on Granny?
What then must we do? What is our assignment?
You who have gathered here today are the Minutemen. You are the soldiers of the Continental Army leaving bloody footprints in the snow during Washington’s retreat across New Jersey in December of 1776. You are the 5th Corps of the 20th Maine Infantry charging the Confederate lines at Gettysburg. You are the Doughboys of the Argonne. You are the boys of Easy Company dropping behind enemy lines on D-Day.
But what can we do, you ask? The party of death controls the White House, has super-majorities in Congress and owns the media (news and entertainment).
I’ll tell you what you can do: You can take to heart the words of Winston Churchill to the students of Harrow School in 1941: “Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty… . Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
And you can draw strength from the last stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner: “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free (Do you hear that, Mr. Obama, ‘the land of the free’?) and the home of the brave!”
Thank you and God bless you.
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
