A Slow, Painful Death

Health care reform “will not be pain free.” So says would-be HHS Secretary Tom Daschle in his dandy new book, “Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis.” Doctor Tom says that unfortunately the elderly must suffer for the good of society. They must endure their medical conditions rather than burden the federal government with the cost of treating them. They must be willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forego experimental treatments”, ostensibly because the elderly are worth less to the State than young, healthy taxpayers. However, pesky old folks are tending to hang around longer and longer due to extended life expectancies. That means that under the progressive Democrat government-run healthcare system, we are all sentenced to slow, painful deaths. Everyone, that is, except Daschle and his pals in Congress who get “Rolls Royce” health care plans for life.

We will never let that happen, you may say. Guess again, fellow sufferers. It has already begun with the newly-passed “Stimulus Bill”, as detailed in an article by Betsy McCaughey. An obscure provision is hidden in the package establishes the “National Coordinator of Health Information Technology” and the “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research”. These Orwellian big brother bureaucracies will have unlimited and unregulated power to develop and enforce government healthcare regulations. They will be established to restrict the development of new experimental treatments and drugs, monitor hospitals and doctors, and administer penalties to anyone who disobeys. This ultimate power over our lives is exactly what Obama and Daschle had in mind in their grand, Machiavellian plan. I believe this is why the Stimulus package was pushed through Congress as quickly as possible with Obama’s frantic exhortations. Not to avert an economic “catastrophe”, but to sneak through this specific provision to effectively control the populace. As it states in the bill, the new health care rules will affect “every individual in the United States”.

The only solace I can take from this “stealth” legislation is that if new treatments and drugs are prevented by government fiat from ever seeing the light of day, Obama, Daschle, and his congressional co-conspirators will never benefit from them, either. I wish the same slow, painful deaths on them as they are granting to us.

Angel