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.

America Really Doesn't Have Health Insurance

America really doesn't have health insurance. The definition of insurance is as follows (here):

Insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer, or insurance carrier, is a company selling the insurance; the insured, or policyholder, is the person or entity buying the insurance policy. The amount to be charged for a certain amount of insurance coverage is called the premium. Risk management, the practice of appraising and controlling risk, has evolved as a discrete field of study and practice.

The transaction involves the insured assuming a guaranteed and known relatively small loss in the form of payment to the insurer in exchange for the insurer's promise to compensate (indemnify) the insured in the case of a financial (personal) loss. The insured receives a contract, called the insurance policy, which details the conditions and circumstances under which the insured will be financially compensated.

By definition, insurance is a voluntary contract and coercion should never a factor, otherwise it's not insurance but government force and taxation. Folks voluntarily choose to purchase insurance for various purposes to mitigate against unforseeable catastrophic events like an automobile accident or the house burning down. Decades ago before government intervened in the healthcare business, America had a low cost world class medical system because folks only bought medical insurance for catastrophic medical events such as a major illness requiring large but unexpected medical expenses. All other routine medical expenses, such as doctor visits and perscriptions, were paid for out of pocket.

But along comes government to destroy a perfectly functional and cost effective and voluntary  healthcare system.  Courtesy of the government, America now has a taxpayer subsidized healthcare system that costs over $1 trillion dollars a year and that's  just for those on government healthcare.

The Old, The Poor, and U.S. Health Care Explained

Medicare and Medicaid combined cost over $1 trillion last year, and health care costs are spiraling....

In 1969, government plus private health spending per capita in America was just 8.2 percent of median income, but that has now risen to over 30 percent, according to a National Institute for Health Care Management analysis of government data.

According to USA Today, 2011 Medicare and Medicaid spending was $554 billion and $438 billion, respectively, here.  Total US healthcare costs are staggering.  A healthcare think tank, Kaiseredu.org, reported that America spent $2.6 trillion on healthcare in 2010, here.  Bloomberg reported that US healthcare spending will top $3 trillion in 2014 and that government funded healthcare accounts for 46% of all healthcare spending, here.

Forbes reported in June 2012 that Medicare premiums collected in the form of payroll tax deductions to fund the Medicare program only covers about a third of the actual cost of Medicare.

The Truth About Medicare Costs: Payroll Taxes Cover Just About a Third

Medicaid recipients don't pay a cent for their benefits.  So here we sit with these 2 monster trillion dollar government healthcare programs and the taxes collected to fund them only total about $185 billion (a third of Medicare spending).  That's a whopper of a gap as well as a cash shortfall of over $800 billion annually.

As Americans are about to learn, nothing is free.  Obamacare was designed accomplish 3 things.

1.  Force folks to pay for mandated healthcare services that they wouldn't voluntarily choose to pay for in a free market if they actually had the option to buy  REAL insurance at free market prices.

2. Create a healthcare system so expensive that more folks will be forced into government run healthcare programs.  It's nothing more a backdoor single payer government run healthcare system.

3. Mandate a slew of new taxes, here, to fund the programs.

Obamacare will hit the poor and middle class the hardest.  The middle class who can afford healthcare will be paying higher healthcare costs in the way of taxes and government mandated insurance costs to subsidize the socialized healthcare system and the poor will be paying taxes to cover at least a portion of all their free healthcare.

More Middle-Class Americans Hit by Obamacare Tax

Of the 30 million Americans whom Obamacare leaves uninsured and without affordable insurance options, 6 million will have to pay the penalty, an increased estimate from 2010.....

Despite claims made by Obamacare’s advocates that the law will help middle- and low-income Americans, CBO’s table reveals that the distribution of the tax falls heavily on those making less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL)—meaning the majority of this new tax falls on the very people the law was supposed to help. For instance, a family of four making about $24,600 per year, the projected FPL in 2016, could be subject to this egregious tax penalty.

Regardless of whether or not these 6 million Americans want health coverage, they are going to pay a hefty tax and still won’t have it. Moreover, the individual mandate tax is only one of Obamacare’s 18 new or increased taxes and penalties that will cost Americans $836 billion over the next 10 years.

According to website of the White House, here, federal revenues and expenditures are as follows but the government doesn't even seem to know how much it collects and spends as evidenced by the figures being estimates.

Year      Receipts     Spending
2011     $2,174        $3,819   Estimated
2012     $2,626          3,729   Estimated
2013     $3,033          3,771   Estimated
2014     $3,333          3,977   Estimated

It's clearly evident that the government government is anticipating a windfall in Obamacare tax receipts and collections.  Meanwhile, the IRS is beefing up its staff to collect all these new taxes.

NOT A TAX: IRS TO HIRE THOUSANDS OF NEW AGENTS TO ENFORCE OBAMACARE

How many, exactly? Numbers range from 2,700 to 16,500:

The IRS says it is well on its way to gearing up for the new law but has offered little information about its long-term budget and staffing needs, generating complaints from Republican lawmakers and concern from government watchdogs.

The IRS is expected to spend $881 million on the law from 2010 through 2013, hiring more than 2,700 new workers and upgrading its computer systems. But the IRS has not made public information about its spending plans in the following years, when the bulk of the health care law takes effect.

Not surprisingly, the US has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and by a wide margin. Moreover, the US healthcare system ranks 37th in performance and quality.

U.S. health care: Highest in the world in cost, 37th in performance. This system has already been declared guilty.

The health care system in the U.S. is 40% more expensive per capita than the next most expensive OECD developed countries

As a country, approximately 18.2% of our GDP is devoted to healthcare spending. Switzerland and France (#2 and #3) spend respectively 12.3% of 12.0% of their GDP for health care. The U.S. spends the second greatest amount of GDP for health care among all members of the United Nations, topped only by East Timor.

For its money, the U.S. obtains health outcomes that are near the bottom of the OECD rankings, and, in fact, rival some of the outcomes of Third World countries.

Americans seem to overpay for everything because our entire economic system is based on corporatism, oligarchy, fascism, statism, socialism, political corruption and rent seeking cronyism.   Meanwhile, Americans will happily cling to their delusion that healthcare is free.

Indeed.

What the hell are we paying for?  God only knows but whatever it is, it's hugely expensive and there is definitely no bang for the buck.  The health of the American people are the first victims.