Death Panels, Obamacare’s Ideological Framework, The Complete Lives System

The ideological framework of Obamacare that was laid out by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and Obama’s former Chief of Staff) is horrifyingly reminiscent of a Nazi Germany styled social order that assigns value to human life based on its utilitarian value. It’s what Dr. Emanuel calls the “complete lives system”.

Principles of Allocation for Scarce Medical Interventions

Source: http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2010/03/obamacare-ezekiel-emanuel-and-complete.html

The Reaper Curve: Ezekiel Emanuel used the above chart in a Lancet article to illustrate the ages on which health spending should be focused.

Dr. Emanuel’s “complete lives system” is a healthcare model based upon the allocation of resources depending on where one falls within the bell curve of maximum societal usefulness. Right off the bat, the worth of the young and the old are marginalized. The complete live system is defined by Dr. Emanuel in the context that the young and the old are expendable and not worthy of resources because "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments”. He advocates for what he calls "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care." Defining medical care as an “intervention”, the elitist Dr. Emanuel doesn’t believe that the young are worthy of medical care, or the aging or old.

The quotes below come from an article penned by Betsy McCaughey, a former Lt. Governor of New York who goes on to say:

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007)….

…. Dr. Emanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line….

Dr. Emanuel argues that to make such decisions, the focus cannot be only on the worth of the individual. He proposes adding the communitarian perspective to ensure that medical resources will be allocated in a way that keeps society going…

….But Dr. Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care."

Dr. Emanuel has fought for a government takeover of health care for over a decade. In 1993, he urged that President Bill Clinton impose a wage and price freeze on health care to force parties to the table. "The desire to be rid of the freeze will do much to concentrate the mind," he wrote with another author in a Feb. 8, 1993, Washington Post op-ed. Now he recommends arm-twisting Chicago style. "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda," he wrote last Nov. 16 in the Health Care Watch Blog. "If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Interestingly, nowhere does Dr. Emanuel even suggest or discuss the possibility that citizens should be free to pursue and fund their own healthcare option. The implication is that the entire healthcare apparatus in America will absolutely be seized by the federal government and services disbursed according to the state’s desires. Those deemed no longer useful because of their advancing age, infant status or illness will be expendable and deemed not worthy of medical resources. The last nation that seriously attempted this type of the “culling of the masses” was Nazi Germany.

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) is the father of the ideological movement to “cull the population”. He advanced the theory that the planet can only sustain 1-2 billion folks at best and it’s this theory that has been front and center of a movement to massively reduce the planetary human hoards. Not that long ago it was disease and famine that guaranteed population control but with the advent of modern medicine and the rise of a middle class that is living longer, the so called population bomb is the obsession of government planners, the UN and global governance aficionados everywhere. These modern day Malthusians understand that reducing the once thriving middle class to subsistence level and seizing control of healthcare will advance their goal of more expeditious human exits.

The folks who are deluded into supporting the takeover of healthcare by government fail to recognize that such powers should never be granted to any government. Of course, many like Dr. Emanuel understand precisely what is being done and why.

The late Sen. Edward Kennedy was used as as a poster child for Obamacare. Considering that the 77 year old Sen. Kennedy had a long history of obesity, alcohol abuse and a recently diagnosed late stage terminal brain cancer, he would be considered expendable under a government healthcare system as outlined by Dr. Emanuel. But Obamacare will exempt Congress from the healthcare system from hell.

More alarming is the brutal reality that government planners and statisticians only think in terms of the collective, never the individual, and they are perennially focused on their desired goal which is strict cost controls and Malthusian population reductions. Dr. Emanuel “chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs.” Well, what the heck is the patient-doctor relationship all about if it’s not about the patient’s own needs? Are we supposed to visit government doctors and bureaucrats to get an official determination relative to whether or not a government intervention is warranted as it relates to whether we are deemed fit to live according to the “complete lives system”?

I fear so.

If the American people decide turn their lives, liberty and health over to government, they are effectively consenting to being put into the great vat of the collective wherein the value of their life is purely utilitarian, arbitrary, subject to bureaucratic whim and on target with the totalitarian master plan. If we consent to such a horror, we forsake the essence of our humanity.

Is There a Dr. House in the house?

Americans are fascinated with the very successful TV show 'House' that is a show about a Dr. House at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital (PPH) in Princeton, NJ.  Although Dr. House is a drug addict and an incorrigible nut job, he's a lovable nutjob and is revered for his non-conventional brilliance.  The show is hilarious, exceptionally well scripted and the cast of supporting characters is equally loony and eminently entertaining.  That said, the dark side of House is that it's morally reprehensible because it is nothing more than a monstrous propaganda machine for Big Pharm and socialized medicine.  PPH is a free government funded hospital that leaves folks with the distinct impression that if America had socialized medical care, everybody with a real or perceived ailment could just stroll into any hospital or medical facility and immediately have a team of the top docs fawning all over them with deep concern.  House and his team also pump patients full of dangerous pharmaceuticals and frequently without even a verifiable diagnosis.  In that respect, the show is also a powerful lobby for Big Pharm as patients are routinely churned into guinea pigs.

While government and the media are indeed propaganda masters when it comes to blurring facts from fiction, fiction tends to prevail because it's a high dose of reliable utopian 'feel good' delusions.

What is the reality about socialized medical care? Dan Mitchell at International Liberty reported on some real facts about the British socialized healthcare system and quotes several reliable sources.

More Stomach-Turning Horror Stories from the UK Government-Run Healthcare System

Hundreds of hospital patients died needlessly. In the wards, people lay starving, thirsty and in soiled bedclothes, buzzers droning hopelessly as their cries for help went ignored. Some received the wrong medication; some, none at all.Over 139 days, the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital scandal has heard testimony from scores of witnesses about how an institution which was supposed to care for the most vulnerable instead became a place of danger. Decisions about which patients to treat were left to receptionists…and nurses switched off equipment because they did not know how to use it. …patients were left so dehydrated that some began drinking from flower vases. By the time the hospital’s failings were exposed by regulators, in 2009, up to 1,200 patients had died needlessly between 2005 and 2008. …on the wards, patients – most of them elderly – were left in agony and screaming for pain relief, as their loved ones desperately begged for help. The human toll was dreadful. In the course of 18 months, one family lost four members, including a newborn baby girl, after a catalogue of failings by the hospital. …Patients were left without medication, food and drink, and left on commodes. Basic hygiene was neglected: a woman was left unwashed for the last four weeks of her life. Relatives tried to keep their loved ones clean, scrubbing down beds and furniture and even bringing in clean linen. One consultant described how amid the chaos, it seemed at though nurses became “immune to the sound of pain”.

Of course, the above horrifyingly inhumane account that was documented by the UK based Telegraph is a far cry from the warm and fuzzy House depiction of socialized government run medical care.  Trusting the government with your life and the lives of your loved ones is simply foolish but once the government legislates a legalized monopoly on healthcare, the quality goes down, rationing kicks in and arrogant public sector employees are immune to human suffering.