Electing God

Pajamas Media: Belmont Club ^ | July 6th, 2009 | Richard Fernandez

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Ezekiel Emmanuel MD, Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, who is Barack Obama’s “Special Advisor for Health Policy”, is described by the [1] Huffington Post article as engaged in a very important mission: redesigning the US health care system.

Emanuel and the White House are attempting to reorganize the delivery and reimbursement systems of health care, changing what the types of procedures doctors rely on, making people more aware of disease prevention, encouraging insurance companies to expand coverage, and so on. It is a process rife with sensitivities, trickeries and, of course, the potential for failure. It is not, he insists, impossible.

“It is a complicated process and we have to try and make the choices clear and give people good reasons for making them,” Emanuel explains. “I don’t think that’s an impossible task and thankfully we have one of the great communicators, Barack Obama, at the helm of this ship of state.”

Emmanuel recently authored an article in the Lancet describing the various models of non-market health care rationing. Titled [2] “Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions”, its is co-authored with Govind Persad and Alan Wertheimer. In it the authors simply review the pros and cons of the various ways of deciding who gets treated and who doesn’t. The allocation mechanisms they discuss are divided into strategies and substrategies. The pros and cons of each are laid out.

Treating People Equally

1. Lottery
2. First-come, first served

Prioritarianism

1. Sickest first
2. Youngest first

Utilitarianism

1. Saving the most lives

2. Saving the most life-years
3. Saving the most socially useful
4. Reciprocity (paying back people who have ‘contributed’, such as organ donors)

The authors are not very satisfied with the current metrics used for making medical decisions based on saving the most life-years. Both the “Quality-adjusted life-years” model and the “Disability-adjusted life-years” have shortcomings which they believe can be addressed by another model of their own: “The complete lives system”, which takes all the factors into account. They write:

Because none of the currently used systems satisfy all ethical requirements for just allocation, we propose an alternative: the complete lives system. This system incorporates five principles: youngest-first, prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value. … When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated … the complete lives system is least vulnerable to corruption. Age can be established quickly and accurately from identity documents. Prognosis allocation encourages physicians to improve patients’ health, unlike the perverse incentives to sicken patients or misrepresent health that the sickest-first allocation creates.

Under this system, patients would receive scarce care according to the graph shown below.

The paper concludes: “the complete lives system combines four morally relevant principles: youngest-first, prognosis, lottery, and saving the most lives. In pandemic situations, it also allocates scarce interventions to people instrumental in realising these four principles. Importantly, it is not an algorithm, but a framework that expresses widely affirmed values: priority to the worst-off, maximising benefits, and treating people equally. To achieve a just allocation of scarce medical interventions, society must embrace the challenge of implementing a coherent multiprinciple framework rather than relying on simple principles or retreating to the status quo.”

What’s not mentioned anywhere in the discussion, except by implication is the identity of the narrator. Who is the “we” in “Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions” that decides who gets scarce medical care? The answer is tangentially provided in the paper itself, which writes that “the complete lives system is least vulnerable to corruption”.The “we” is a system; a system that can possibly be corrupted; hence Dr. Emmanuel’s efforts to design one in which such distortions will be held to a minimum.

Ultimately health care reform is as much about politics as it is about medicine. The discussion in Dr. Emmanuel’s paper is incomplete if limited to pure public health considerations. Politics is central to the whole issue. Whatever “guidelines” are chosen, however rational, however humane, can never implement themselves. Human beings in positions of power are required to do that. And while it is important to note that even under the current system these decisions are being made by someone or by some consensus, it is also vital to realize that in any “health care reform” effort, one of the principal outcomes is to shift the power to make those decisions to someone else. That may not be a fit subject for the Lancet, but it is the elephant in the operating room in the national health care debate.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This story finally breaks the preferred illusion that fears of radical human population control is nothing more than the product of a fevered imagination.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Prognosis allocation encourages physicians to improve patients’ health, unlike the perverse incentives to sicken patients or misrepresent health that the sickest-first allocation creates.

I read this as a metric of the increase of prognosis expected from medical care. Otherwise we'd be flooding the system with first aid cases. That is only little less tempting for doctors to overrate sickness than a sickest-first metric. I mean if the doctors say you have a broken arm but will be all well by next week, that looks better than saying you have a sprained wrist but will be all well by next week.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This story finally breaks the preferred illusion that fears of radical human population control is nothing more than the product of a fevered imagination.

There are also Biblical connotations to this story other than the title “Electing God.” This is not the first time men have tried to play God.

Zero’s healthcare geniuses think that the term “useful individuals” is speakable — out in an open paper, the Lancet — for the first time since the Third Reich.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There has always been such a thing as triage in a limited care situation (such as a battlefield). We have to understand the base assumption behind all these scenarios, which is that a free market must by all means be shunned.

[HiTech RedNeck]

In the Lancet??? This should induce forced emesis in a lot of medicos....

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

That was a lovely pastoral scene that Sol (Edward G. Robinson) viewed while being turned to soylent green. I expect to be seeing it soon!

[Jess Kitting]

This is what Obamacare is all about.

They (government bureaucrats) get to play God: With health care rationing, they decide who gets health care and who doesn't. They decide who lives and who dies.

[DoughtyOne]

Chilling...

[nathanbedford]

Deciding who lives and who dies: the liberals ultimate wet dream.

God players all, liberals now get to officially do what they have always dreamed of doing, controlling individuals down to the very end of life, in fact, granting or withholding life itself.

Once one accepts the initial premise advanced for the government providing universal healthcare, all this becomes inevitable. No matter that the participation of government itself creates shortages which justify granting or denying life-saving ministrations. To justify their God-playing, liberals presume that shortages will become evident in privately provided healthcare to the point where the market decides that some people might die earlier and some people might die later. Whether that choice is made by people acting prudently or imprudently in a free market, or by Almighty God himself, liberals cannot tolerate such power in the hands of others.

I accuse liberals of seeking control over health care because, just as environmentalism means control over the economy, controlling healthcare gains control over life. This is the ultimate game for liberals.

The ironies abound. Liberals demand universal health care controlled by the government to make it "fairer" and eliminate "shortages." Yet, even as they plan the takeover, they plan for the inevitable shortages. They want health care to be "fairer," so they say that they have to decide what is fair and what is unfair. If I am a prudent man, and provide for the exigencies of expensive healthcare in my old age by sacrificing financially and exercising and dieting while younger, why is it "fair" for the government to consign me to death only because my prudence has kept me alive so long?

Liberals delight in setting up categories describing the characteristics which will prompt them to decide who lives and who dies: Are you old? Are you politically correct? Are you expensive? It really does not matter what the litmus tests are, it only matters that liberals get to lay them down.

Do not believe that once these categories are laid down by liberals they will be carved in stone. Not at all, exceptions will have to be recognized, modifications to the exceptions, new rules will be engrafted, the process will be endless and liberals will be able to play God with your lives until they die themselves for lack of available health care-unless they can try to fall within one of their own "exceptions".

[wastoute]

Notice how their "plan" contains an element of "value to society". Who gets to decide that? Liberals, of course and you can bet your a$$ that their value to society will be inestimable. This is going to be too easy. If you think Hillarycare went down in smoking flames once folks hear this "plan" I predict serious Hell to pay.

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[nathanbedford]

Can you imagine how the life-saving care will be allocated?

Lupus afflicts Jews and requires dialysis. Sickle cell anemia afflicts African Americans. AIDS disproportionately afflicts the bugerers. Can you imagine the government making a statistical finding that it is uneconomical to treat these diseases in Jews, Blacks and Queers so the three groups must be left to their fate?

By the very politically correct choices the government makes in treating diseases which are the flavor of the month, the government creates incentives to invent the machines and the drugs for that treatment, thus making the treatment more costly. As the philosopher said, one cannot observe or report history without distorting it. How much more is the distortion created by financing the system!

Are women going to suffer the diversion of money from the treatment of breast cancer to the treatment of lupus, sickle cell anemia, or AIDS? That is the inevitable result after all. Inevitably, the government must choose whether to kill Jews or blacks so that the other group can live.

But there is a happy ending, every distortion will require a liberal to fix it. They're just ate no end to doing good.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

bookmark

[wastoute]

In the final analysis the concept of "healthcare as a right" is very unamerican. Healthcare is actually the product of an interaction between two private parties, the patient and the physician. Physicians provide a service. Since when does our gummint have the authority to tell one citizen they have the right to the services of another citizen? In which other relationship does this occur? I can't think of one.

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[wolfcreek]

RED ALERT!

http://dotsub.com/view/d195a883-247a-482d-84f4-32b67084ba71

[ripley]

“Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, Rahm Emanuel’s brother, who is
Barack Obama’s “Special Advisor for Health Policy”, is described by the Huffington Post article as engaged in a very important mission: redesigning the US healthcare system.”

What absolutely brilliant people. They must be many times higher on the evolutionary scale than the rest of us. They have to be beyond brilliant; they have to be shining stars of tremendous thinking ability. One wonders if these “Special Advisors” can make a diagnosis without the aid of any silly machines that this current, flawed, unjust health-care system has at its disposal.

This world must be on the verge of being delivered to the most knowledgeable, the most brilliant, the most loving, compassionate and magnanimous people who ever walked the earth. What an amazing time to be alive; to be nurtured by brilliant, all-knowing, smart, intelligent, holier-than-the-rest-of-us individuals who know so much more than anyone else. Absolutely amazing.

/S/

IMHO

[EternalVigilance]

Zero’s healthcare geniuses think that the term “useful individuals” is speakable — out in an open paper, the Lancet — for the first time since the Third Reich.

Yep. And words mean things.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This video is a great find, wolfcreek. How did you come by it? It deserves a thread of its own.

http://dotsub.com/view/d195a883-247a-482d-84f4-32b67084ba71

The video is of a panel discussion where Ezekiel Emanuel faces the charges briefly. Then he denies the meaning we all can see.
The importance of the obvious conclusions that had been made by historian Anton Chaitkin, he summarizes as: “My reputation has been besmirched here.”
He thanks the panel and commentators, and then storms out.

[~Kim4VRWC's~]

Avoid caffeine while you read ping..

[hoosiermama]

Ping to ya and bk mk 4 later

[EternalVigilance]

http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=6057&posts=2#M17783

[LucyT]

This story finally breaks the preferred illusion that fears of radical human population control is nothing more than the product of a fevered imagination.

— out in an open paper, the Lancet — for the first time since the Third Reich.

Thanks ~Kim4VRWC's~

[FlashBack]

Thanks for the ping....
abigail2...you see the graph???? Pass along to Jesse!!

[ExTexasRedhead]

These Liberal ghouls plans will include (this time) Christians, gun owners, Conservatives, extremists (to be determined by those in power), anyone over 50 and the list goes on. Welcome to the new version of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

[wolfcreek]

Here’s more:

The Nazi Euthanasia Program: Forerunner of Obama’s Death Council
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 - by Terry Melanson
by Anton Chaitkin

At his trial in front of the American National Military Tribunal in 1947, Karl Brandt, Hitler’s escort physician and later a leading euthanasia operative, testified that, sometime in 1935, Hitler had informed Reich Health Leader Gerhard Wagner of his intention to implement euthanasia of the mentally disabled once war had begun. According to Brandt, Hitler believed the opposition to euthanasia from church circles would be less pronounced during war than in peacetime.

—Michael S. Bryant, Confronting the Good Death: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005)

The world economy is teetering … With trillions of dollars evaporating in this crisis, millions of middle-class Americans face the prospect of losing their homes and jobs, and witnessing a dramatic contraction of their retirement savings. In response, the public will desperately want financial security…. [B]ailing out bankers and other gamblers [and the] huge increase in the federal debt that these bailouts will entail intensifies the pressure to rein in health-care costs….The dean of health-care economists, Victor Fuchs of Stanford, has long maintained that we will get health-care reform only when there is a war, a depression or some other major civil unrest. It’s beginning to look like we might just have all three….

—Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, “The Financial Crisis and Health Care,” the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 12, 2008

[Avoiding_Sulla]

I have since looked up Anton Chaitkin. Wiki gives this:

Anton “Tony” Chaitkin is an author, historian and political activist with the LaRouche movement. He serves as History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review.

Why did it fall to a LaRouchian to make the charges against Emanuel and his obamacare? MSM is already writing off opponents as loony, so this just seems to fit the Establishment’s agenda too well.

[MestaMachine]

The most famous last words in history: “It can’t happen here.”

[wolfcreek]

I know. That's why I didn't post it as a thread. (too much grief)

See post #20 and there's a disclaimer in the link.

Our side is apparently *chicken* when it comes to Obama and his minions.

[SierraWasp]

"Lupus afflicts Jews and requires dialysis. Sickle cell anemia afflicts African Americans. AIDS disproportionately afflicts the bugerers. Can you imagine the government making a statistical finding that it is uneconomical to treat these diseases in Jews, Blacks and Queers so the three groups must be left to their fate?"

This is precisely how the latest incarnation of "National(ized) Healthcare" must be presented!!! Until people fear their personal ox getting gored, they're gonna play along with our new "we shall overcome" el Presidente/Commandante!!!

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Here's another way to exploit this story to favor the protection of innocent human life whatever its "value" is deemed to be by those who think their god is elected.

Ask those you know on the web and in meat space, as many as you dare, some version of this question And So, What’s the Consequence of Being Deemed Unuseful?
Such a question, presented with enough of this story to set off alarms, has the potential to spur a grassroots revolt against the schemers in Washington unlike anything seen in America in a very long time.

[editor-surveyor]

"Zero’s healthcare geniuses think that the term 'useful individuals' is speakable — out in an open paper, the Lancet — for the first time since the Third Reich."

Their gauge of useful is likely the projected future tax payments to be made by the individual.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Their gauge of useful is likely the projected future tax payments to be made by the individual.

That makes sense. This is worse than slavery. Non productive slaves were sold to someone else, rarely killed. But this is the nature of statism, isn't it? Human life reduced to a commodity: produce or "be processed."

I'm sure you hear echoes of CSLewis' warning.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

I say kill the conservatives first. Who needs their taxes, we'll tax their estates.

[SJackson]

Here's another way to exploit this story to favor the protection of innocent human life whatever its "value" is deemed to be by those who think their god is elected.

You're right, you'll never convince followers of the One as to the error of his ways, but point out to them they'll be unuseful ones, it'll wake a few up.

[SJackson]

There has always been such a thing as triage in a limited care situation (such as a battlefield). We have to understand the base assumption behind all these scenarios, which is that a free market must by all means be shunned.

Your reference to triage only relevant in the context of a true shortage of care. The One and his brother wish to establish an artificial shortage, quite different.

[HiTech RedNeck]

‘swhat I was getting at. If a free market reigns, shortages are unlikely.

[Borax Queen]

These Liberal ghouls plans will include (this time) Christians, gun owners, Conservatives, extremists (to be determined by those in power), anyone over 50 and the list goes on.

A lot of those groups are the ones that the Communists went after in the 1930s and 40s (basically, ordinary and upper-middle class, successful types like my grandparents). Of course the leftists, including Communist-sympathizer FDR, did everything they could to hide what they did and enabled.

And since they "won" and wrote the history, of course most of us never heard much about it.

We escaped from one Communist country only to land in another.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Hmmm. Have you ever read this warning about the inherent conflict between those who think like Emanuel and people who retain some vestiges of faith?

There was a time when people thought that warning was too pessimistic if not paranoid. But maybe it was simply written before its warning became obvious.

[Jewbacca]

The whole set up is a scam to make their personal decisions look reasoned.

For example, if they really wanted to maximize “life years,” the first thing to stop would be abortion, since babies, by definition, have the most life in them.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Your observation is excellent. Reread it often so readily it comes to mind when you need it in the coming debate that doesn’t want to hear you.

Our side will be limited to soundbites, so they must be vibrant and piercingly to the point.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Given reports from China, I'm not sure that Sol's vision will be yours. Note this exchange from over at the Belmont Club thread from which this thread was created:

191. Artofnoise:
Soylent Green seems apropos for some reason.
Even the name is apropos.
The ultimate recycling event.
I would guess 15% of Americans and Europeans would endorse it.

Jul 9, 2009 - 7:35 am

192. Pascal:

Art, Organ harvesting made it passé.

“Progressive” thought has moved on from “Soylent Green” to “Coma” to “Death Becomes Her.” All that advanced under the influence of “Night of the Living Dead.”

As to 15% of Americans and Europeans endorsing it, I pray it is that small, but there’s cause to doubt it. Recipients of “donated” organs may be too ready to accept a conscience numbing story as to the origin of their new body part. A scraping of the organ and DNA test could verify the story’s veracity. Could their life extension be the product of far Eastern notoriety? Uh, STFU.

Bottom line: “Soylent Green seems apropos for some reason” because cannibalism is not strictly a gastronomic experience any more.

Jul 9, 2009 - 8:49 am

So here's your soundbite General Sulla.

As events unfold, and "Soylent Green" pops to mind, recognize that cannibalism now implies more than strictly a gastronomic experience.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

True! There is an old SF theme that as organ transplants grew more common it will be accepted that executed criminals will have their organs ‘donated’ to ill folks, and that this will lead to the death penalty becoming more common, extending even to traffic violations.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

I know. That's why I didn't post it as a thread. (too much grief)

Well, here's a blunting of the guilt by association ploy.

By showing why and how Emanuel made use of Chaitkin, it answers the question "Why did it fall to a LaRouchian to level charges against a position that is easily recognized as indefensible?"

[wolfcreek]

Making any opposition appear to be kooks or conspiracy nuts has been a favorite ploy of this admin. (such as their placing returning military, anti-abortion activist, gun owners, tea party participants, etc. on the DHS watch lists)

Their use to these town hall meetings and other staged events is masterful to the point of being obvious.