Obamakare and Sarah Palin: Who's the Ignoramus?
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Harrison
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ezekiel emanuel healthcare rationing life years obakakare palin rahm emanuel rationing care salon.com sarah palin socialized medicine William JacobsonSay goodbye granny!
The Wall Street Journal contrasts an Obama healthcare advisor with Sarah Palin’s comments on Obamakare. Palin was mocked (surprise!) in the “media” for her statements about her son with Down Syndrome maybe getting the thumbs down from some government evaluation board. Could it happen? Maybe… but check out this:
It’s not unreasonable to worry that increased government control over health care–especially in an age of out-of-control spending–would be a camel’s nose. Blogger William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell, notes that one cutting-edge thinker in this area is Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician, Obama adviser, and brother of the White House chief of staff.
Dr. Emanuel advocates something called the Complete Lives System. The CLS, he has written, “considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives”:
A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable. . . .
When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.
The Associated Press quotes one ObamaCare critic, Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor, who is troubled by this prospect:
”The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.
What a rube, what an ignoramus! Sarah Palin doesn’t know enough to call the Life Completion Commission by its right name.
So who is Doktor Ezekiel Emanuel anyway? Well, for starters, he’s the brother of the White House Cheif of Staff Rahm Emanuel (who has the president’s ear on everything). He is also one of the few advisors to President Obama on Obamakare.
There is an article on Salon.com trying to show how Ezekiel Emanuel is not really advocating what is written above by stating:
This passage of McCaughey’s has been picked up by people like Palin, who apparently saw it as evidence for her claim that her son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, would have to face a “death panel.” But Emanuel’s past writing makes it very clear he would vociferously oppose such an idea.
Plenty of life-years left!
So was he misquoted? Sort of but not really… Salon.com continues with this nice little explaination tucked away deep in the article:
The context in which he espoused this view: A situation in which rationing is already happening because supply simply can’t keep up with demand. The U.S. has already laid out guidelines that specify who would get precious flu shots in case of a pandemic, with the elderly given a high priority because of their vulnerability to the virus.
So we are then left to believe that Emanuel is not advocating helping the younger and letting the older twist in the wind unless the situation is already happening! So the rationing of healthcare goes from saving money to this nice little trick:
Instead of prioritizing the number of lives saved, the researchers said that “life-years“ should take precedence.
Emanuel says:
“Just because we are spending a lot of money on patients who die does not mean that we can save a lot of money on end of life care.”
No but if granny has enjoyed her “life-years” and the treatments might be too costly why not let her go out in a blaze of glory and save some bucks while you’re at it?
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7:13 AM
EJ Emanuel has known since at least 1988 that Advance Directives give ending life decisions to doctors. Without an Advance Directive, the doctor is morally obligated to treat the patient as a patient until death. The following article published in 2003 explains it:
Gregory W. Rutecki, M.D.
http://bmei.org/jbem/volume8/num3/rutecki_an_evangelical_critique_of_advance_directives.php
“Emanuel 29 followed nursing home patients for two years after the completion of an advance directive. After medical record review and physician interview, the authors concluded that in many cases the patient’s choices were overridden because their physician disagreed with the wisdom of their choice. On occasion, the override represented the withholding of treatment because the physician decided it would not benefit the patient. End-of-life choices through vaguely worded advance directives may be primarily relegated to physicians who lack a consensus about what it means to be human”. “With increasing governmental and third party intrusion into the contemporary contract model of medical care, will advance directives become a coercive tool that rations end-of-life care by offering euthanasia as a cheaper alternative to life?”
29. op. cit., Emanuel, E.J., et al., 1988.
8:02 AM
A charge by Sarah Palin that “my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” We know who’s talking…
In fact, the cited provision of the bill merely authorizes Medicare reimbursement for physicians who provide voluntary counseling about such subjects as living wills. The provision is based on a separate bill that was cosponsored by a Republican, Charles Boustany of Louisiana. His Democratic cosponsor, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, has called this attack on the bill “an all-time low”.
The “death panel” argument was endorsed by the Investor’s Business Daily, which analogized the bill to the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom and editorialized: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Hawking, however, who has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom, responded, “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
Good to know this America!!!!
.-= Hans´s last blog ..The case Tariq Ramadan =-.
9:45 AM
I had a post within the last few days, I’m sure you saw it Harrison, where I was contrasting many of the ideas Palin has put forward in regards to Death Panels and Birthers. I’m not exactly a big fan of hers, but I can see where she and other Death Panel people are coming from. Government decides what to pay for, thus people with government health insurance wont get treated, thus death.
We also knew the day Obama came into office that Rahm Emmanuel was a fierce partisan and would not stick to the moderate ideas that were passed during campaign season.
Scary times we live in, scary times.
11:32 PM
Palin could say it’s cold in the winter and she’d be called a global warming denier. Anything she says will always find people to say she’s wrong. But I think she had a point because the language was quietly dropped by the Dems.
9:58 AM
I think there has been a degree of demagouging the “death panel” issue by critics of ObamaCare. I do not believe there will be a “death panel”, per se. However, because of the loose and vague wording contained in Section 1233, the results my indeed be the same.
For crafters of this legislation whose ideology is informed by opposing the death penalty but defending tooth and nail a woman’s unfettered right to abortion, they cannot be trusted to put something together that is in the patients’ best interests.
What is the Government’s incentive to keep you healthy/alive? There isn’t any.
Keep your politics off my body.
.-= Dean´s last blog ..The dangers of the statists’ new god: controlling costs =-.
11:33 PM
I think you’re right in that initially there may be no death panel but government programs have a way of growing and special interests have a way of getting language slipped into bills that change things radically.
11:47 AM
WHO IS THE IGNORAMOUS?
Apparantly the author of this article is…for asking such a painfully obvious question.
Why dont we ask Tonya Harding to weigh in on the subject, it would hold about as much weight as the FACEBOOK blurbs Palin had someone author for her.
DEATH PANELS…gee, Palin wasn´t trying to SENSELESSLY AGRIVATE once again was she? This tapdancing vaudeville act will say anything to stay in the media she claims to despise…but that´s not a tip off for ya,huh?
12:17 PM
Since I am the author and am apparently an ignoramous and you replied what does that make you? Or what does it make the Democrats who dropped the language in the bill?
12:48 PM
Dear author and wordsmith,
Ignoramous is YOUR word. You were calling SOMEONE an ignoramous. YOUR WORD. YOUR INSULT.
My reply makes me the bearer of the obvious.
Don´t shoot the messenger or bandy insults about, they often come back to bite you in the ignorant butt. Sorry.
Sarah Palin-Tonya Harding 2012 !
12:57 PM
I’m afraid your record of merely being the “messenger” doesn’t ring true. In your previous comment you had a few insults yourself, namely comparing Palin to Tonya Harding and saying Palin has someone to write on Facebook for her. To me, those are insults. And looking at the title of the article I used the word “ignoramous” to pose a question which I then attempted to answer, using examples and facts while you did neither.
So, again, we need to look at what you wrote:
“Don´t shoot the messenger or bandy insults about, they often come back to bite you in the ignorant butt.”
I think, when we look at both the tone and the language you have used that, clearly, you are not applying the same standard to yourself as you apply to others which, factually, makes you hypocritical.
And in response to your question about Palin wanting to stay in the media that she “despises” I’d say that your use of “media” is plural and therefore implies ALL media whereas Palin herself has not indicted the ENTIRE media establishment, only those whom she feels have not been fair to her.
1:16 PM
Oh jesus christ, don´t over analyze this. You posed a question, which one is an ignoranmous. Since this is a slanted piece I guess you mean President Obama is, because certainly the slippery barracuda isn´t.
You are calling one person of two an ignoramous and it´s NOT SARAH PALIN , so that leaves, let me see, 1 minus 1, carry the 2, multiply by naught…….Oh, It´s Obama. You are calling Obama an ignoramous. I had to think about it, but oh yes, I get it now…Two people , and ONE of them , guess whiuich one but it´s not dimwit Sarah, is ignorant…
VERY SUBTLE.
As for Ms. Palin not indicting the entire media establishment, well, YES WE KNOW…Greta and Hannity are fine by her, it´s the others. BWAHHHH
1:33 PM
Actually I did not call Obamakare anything the article explores the fact that the media is making Palin out to be an ignoramous because of her “death panels” assertion but, really, I think it is the Palin-hating media that are the ignoramouses. Obamakare is merely illustrative point.
And, lastly, the Democrats dropped the language in the bill which Palin was pointing to so obviously she wasn’t totally incorrect.