(Ed. Note: People are still interested, so up this one goes)
What happens when you mix tax and spend liberalism with the Culture of Death:
Rep. Paul Tonko is a freshman Democrat from Albany, NY. He’s a typical non-descript eastern machine politician whose a robot for Obama and Pelosi and doesn’t have too many original thoughts. Earlier this week one of his top aides was flying to Washington from the district. She was accompanied by what appeared to be a special interest Washington DC lobbyist, who probably came to Albany to attend some type of big money golf, gambling, and cigars fundraiser for Tonko.
Anyway, unbeknownst to them, a hero of the conservative movement sat quietly behind them. It was impossible to avoid listening to their boisterous conversation, and Tonko’s aide didn’t disappoint.
Naturally, most of the banter dealt with the health care bill, and here are a few of the gems:
The two were talking about whether Tonko would even be given time to read the bill. She told the lobbyist, “well he pays me to read it for him”.
“[The] costliest part [of the Obama healthcare bill] will be the physician’s rate cut,” she said. Lots of political capital is going to be spent to get that through.
And, for the crowning glory, the aide feels that “probably the best part of the bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.”
Having recently gone through the deaths of my mother-in-law and father, I can advise the unwary of what hospice care is – “keep them comfortable until they die”. In my Dad’s case, this was easy – a chocolate shake and having cigarette in the afternoon. In my mother-in-laws case it was harder – she required morphine to keep the pain down as she passed away. The main thing to remember, though, is that not a single effort will be made to prolong life – hospice is where you go to die.
Now, don’t get me wrong – the people at Nathan Adelson hospice were spectacular. Sensitive, caring, helpful and clearly devoted to their profession. But they are not health care providers, even though some of them are doctors and nurses – they are “death care” providers. It is a given that if Obamacare once gets its claws in to us, the bureaucrats who run the thing will be eager to shove people off to hospice, as a bit of morphine is cheaper than a bypass surgery. It won’t be a matter of only sending the hopeless cases there (as it is now), but any case the system chooses not to pay for…and that decision will not be made by the patient or the doctor.
Outside the intrinsic injustice of single-payer (it is essentially the conscription of all health care professionals in to national service), the practical problem with it is that it is simply will not work. Human nature ensures that it will be a massive failure, even if it has a temporary benefit. The problem comes down to the fact that the people who run the system will not have any contact with the system’s customers (ie, the patients). They’ll be office-bound bureaucrats who will have a lot of calls upon their time and budgetary authority – and the least noisy call will be that of the patients. When it comes time for said bureaucrats to work out the budget, they have a choice such as: buy a new ultra-sound, or provide a pay raise to the administrative staff? Which do you think they’ll choose? In single-payer, the patient will always come dead last (unless you are juiced-in with the elite, then the model Michelle Obama helped create in Chicago will ensure there are facilities for the elite, while those bothersome poor people are shunted aside to other, substandard clinics).
It is an anti-human disaster in the making. To be generous to Obama and Co, let’s say they sincerely want to provide health care to everyone…but the way they are going about it ensures that the care will be expensive to the nation, sub-standard for the majority and anti-life in its overall effect. This must be stopped, period.
UPDATE: Texas may make a constitutional fight of it, if Obamacare is enacted.
