Death by Obamacare

It occurs to me that someone else might be writing my column - more appropriately my obituary,- if Obamacare were in effect now instead of four years hence.

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Last Wednesday night I had a heart attack. 911 responded promptly and summoned an ambulance to transport me to the hospital emergency room. I was quickly admitted, had a bunch of costly diagnostic tests and was assigned to a room. I was given the best, up-to-date care available, including chelation therapy which does a roto-rooter procedure on the blocked artery, clearing it out and buttressing it with a stent to prevent it from closing down. I was there for three days, carefully monitored, well-treated by the staff, and fed surprisingly good chow. Whatever was called for in my case was done, well and promptly and I shudder to think of what all this excellent care by skilled physicians and RNs providing the best care and medical procedures would cost me if it weren't for my insurance coverage part of which included government funded Medicare. And there's the rub. The Obama acolytes vehemently deny that the health care reform bill Congress shoved down our throats included what Sarah Palin called "death panels" but she was right. Under the new law, hordes of bureaucrats will be monitoring patients and dictating the extent of care that will be provided. And that, in effect means deciding who lives and who doesn't. As Adam Walker Cleaveland put on his website Blatherings

"The truth is that under Obamacare, government will be involved in end-of-life decisions. Keep this in mind: the goal of government-run health care aka ‘obamacare’ is to provide insurance to everyone while simultaneously holding down medical costs - which is utterly laughable coming from this bloated administration! A huge program like obamacare like this doesn't’ just happen on its own. Decisions on how it will run will have to be made. So who will be making those decisions about us and our healthcare? Well, the ones paying the bills of course — obama’s handpicked bureaucratic panel of appointees. Keep in mind, this is already happening in Oregon where I live, called The Oregon Health Plan. And the results? Controversial and frankly horrible."

He goes on to note the formula Obamacare will employ: "The necessity of a procedure x the longevity of the person x the cost = a decision made by the government appointees. It really is a ‘death panel’ of sorts, because if the goal is to cut costs, death is cheaper than life." Given the power to decide the extent of care that may be made available to a patient of a certain age along with the rationing of health care that is inevitable in a government run medical system, an 83-year-old patient such as me with an extraordinary four-generation family history of male cardiac problems, just how much expensive therapy would be justified? Damn little, if any. The inevitable bureaucratic response would be based on the law of averages which in my case would be pretty much of a death sentence. Don't get me wrong. I am more than willing to get an honorable discharge from this outfit - my enlistment in this unit called humanity has lasted a long time and as an inquisitive journalist I'm very interested in knowing where I'll be heading next. I won't of course be able to write about it but I doubt that I'd want to under any circumstances. I'll be more interested in getting reacquainted with my beloved late wife and a whole raft of friends and acquaintances who got out of here long ago. And of course doing guard duty on the streets of Heaven along with my fellow United States Marines. Semper Fi