Hey Ed! This one’s for you!

Gentlemanly sidewalk debate

Over the weekend there was a TEA Party micro-demonstration at the Belknap County Democrat picnic in Laconia, NH.  One of the gentlemen, Ed Allard (as outspoken Liberal Democrat as I am a Conservative) came out and we talked about healthcare.  I wish I had recorded it so as to get it right, but hey, that’s life.

Among his assertions that the healthcare does not work in a free marketplace (he didn’t like my examples of LASIK and elective (not to be confused with reconstructive) plastic surgery – cases where neither insurance or the government pays or plays)).  A topic for another time for another time, as he maintained the healthcare is too complicated for the average person (my retort was, with a smile, "so, you think people are too stupid?" – he quickly backed away from that).  Anyways, he tried to sweep away the fact that Obama is in favor of reducing money for the elderly (he tried to brush aside the $500 Billion that Obama believes can be "savings")

He also took umbrage when I said that Obama’s counselors want to withdraw healthcare for the elderly and infirm.  Well, here’s the back up info (emphasis mine):

DEADLY DOCTORS
O ADVISERS WANT TO RATION CARE

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They’d decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama’s top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Money spent on somebody else.  Already, the grand philosophical notion that Government, that society, is preeminent comes out loud and strong.  If Government controls the money, if it decides who lives and dies, who is in charge?  Yes, a rhetorical question, but one that gets to the heart of the matter (and outlines the current political tension).

• Does Government "own" its citizens, or do the citizens have a Government?

How you answer that places you either in the Statist category or the Freedom category.  

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ’96).

Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public.

In other words "vote for this for political cover….that way, NO one is accountable!"  Which is precisely one of the things that drives the trust factor for politicians below that of used car salesmen and lawyers (which most of them are the latter anyways, so not that much further to fall).

Conversely, it gives a power to the State the will be extremely hard to wrest away – and will severely  and adversely impact individual liberty.

Americans want their Government to be accountable to THEM and not, as Orszag (and by implication, Obama) is offering.  That’s what Statists want – not to be bothered by mere taxpayers and voters! 

Will Congress effectively "NEVER read the bill" by abdicating its authority to the Executive Branch in this matter?  Unaccountable – this is Open and Transparent Government (remember, Obama promised much for Open and Transparent – has basically withdrawn this campaign promise as well as many others

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors’ lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re "associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it "debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically delivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist "embedded clinical decision support" — a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do

He who has the Gold makes the rules.  I told Ed that HSA’s with catastrophic insurance, removal of the State / Federal healthcare mandates (like that stupid bariatric surgery forced upon NH residents by Bob Clegg – a Republican) that only raise costs and put in place free marketplace structures, would significantly lower costs and let ordinary citizens "KEEP THEIR GOLD".

Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms" (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. 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."

Do we want a "reform" that empowers people like this to decide for us?

Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor.

So Ed, what’s your response?