By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--June 11, 2010
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“Now you say, well, that’s a ‘death panel.’ Well, you know what, when you get to be 85 or 90 years old, you’re going to die. And I’m sorry, you call it, Sarah Palin, what you want, but the fact is that it is absurd for us to be spending the types of money we’re spending to extend life three months.”And Ferré is not an outlier in the Democrat Party. Even President Obama’s own healthcare czar, Donald Berwick, has been quoted as a big proponent of the rationing of government healthcare services taking them away from the sick and elderly in order to save money. “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care,” Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare, “the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” But even if we didn’t have such ghoulish Democrats wandering our political and healthcare systems, we’d have those feared government “death panels” forced upon us regardless as government will certainly be forced sooner rather than later to cut skyrocketing costs and to make the final decision of which citizens are worthy of care and which aren’t. We have but to look at any other country to see governments foolishly entrusted with the lives of their citizen patients and killing them without remorse. Just this month euthanasia nurses in Belgium’s government run healthcare system have been found to have wielded death dealing drugs without the consent of patients and families, killing tax paying citizens without medical need or approval. That is government “care” writ large. Dealing death under color of authority. At least with the system as it is in America today people have some scattered options with which to successfully obtain health saving care. Once government eliminates private enterprise, we will only have government deciding who will live and who will die. Is it perfect? No. Could it use some common sense reforms? Of course. Still, here’s the thing, do you want politicians of the party to which you are opposed making the decision of life or death over you and your loved ones? Can you trust a government employee to deal with you without bringing politics into the decision. And, worse, taking man’s nature into account, can we trust ourselves to make a system that won’t act so callously? We likely won’t because that is the sort of capriciousness we will have when we leave medical decisions up to politicians as Obamacare does. I don’t trust members of the Democrat Party to decide if I should live or die. I don’t even trust them to levy a tax without screwing it up. How could I trust my life to them?
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.