Posted on 08/03/2009 9:50:26 AM PDT by freespirited
My post last week criticizing Princeton ethics professor Peter Singer received a storm of protest, including comments from a much more respectable ethicist professor as well as email that I am fairly confident came from one of Singer’s own adoring graduate students. The primary charge from these defenders of Singer was that I was being unfair to the great man by calling his ethical views morally reprehensible.
Almost on cue, however, a story has emerged that provides a concrete illustration of what health care reform using Singer’s principles would look like. Recall that Singer was suggesting that $50,000 was far too much to pay for a cancer treatment that merely extended life rather than actually curing the cancer. Singer argued quite bluntly that some lives are not worth the cost of extension. Well, it appears that the state of Oregon agrees, denying coverage for a chemotherapy treatment that would extend life for up to several years at the cost of $4000 a month ($48,000 for a year). Oregon was quite willing to pay for the much more cost-effective option of assisted suicide, however. In short, this story reports on a real-world case that mirrors Singer’s analysis almost exactly.
Bottom line: The state is willing to pay the bill to kill the patient, but not to extend the patient’s life. And even the defending interpretation of Peter Singer’s “ethical” mandate would appear to endorse this kind of analysis.
Beyond merely our natural shock at such a callous attitude towards a human life, the relevant question is how this attitude from Oregon’s state-run health care system might be extended to a federal health care system that many pro-reform advocates are insisting is the only socially justifiable way to honor human life. We are owed direct answers to questions about what criteria their government system would use to determine which lives were worth extending and what the exact dollars-per-month they would be willing to authorize spending to extend those lives. Darker questions also come up here, such as concerns about whether the criteria used to measure the cost-benefit ratios in the government’s health care bureaucracy might be manipulated to reward some groups while reducing coverage to those less politically well-connected to either the bureaucracy or whatever party was currently in power.
Are some lives more valuable to extend than others? If so, which lives and by how much more are those lives to be valued by the state?
Isn’t the fact that we even have to ask such questions scary? What this reveals is that so-called “single-payer” health care means not only granting the government ownership of up to 1/5 of the entire U.S. economy, but it means granting the government unaccountable ownership of its citizens lives, with the value of those lives being determined on criteria that many single-payer advocates won’t even disclose or talk about. In fact, they are insisting that the health care reform bill needs to be passed before in can even be read, let alone analyzed and debated.
And that’s just Orwellian.
http://www.recessrally.com
And that’s just Orwellian.
NOO...It’s right out of the National Socialist Workers Party...AKA Nazi Germany.
And that’s just Orwellian.
NOO...It’s right out of the National Socialist Workers Party...AKA Nazi Germany.
Peter Singer’s viewpoint is fairly mainstream in the leftist/medical ethicist community and when/if Obamacare is instituted, you will be very fearful of medical appointments because doctors perform euthanasia with or without the patients approval in “enlightened” places like the Netherlands. It’s coming here with BHO.
“...doctors perform euthanasia with or without the patients approval in “enlightened” places like the Netherlands.”
Please expand on this. Where have you heard this?
The latest issue of Time Magazine has an article by Nancy Gibbs where she extols the virtue of euthanasia referring to that sad and lonely Brit couple who paid $14000 in Switzerland for death with dignity. She referred to 1 in 4 Dutch doctors performing euthanasia without patient consent and, I kid you not, she seemed to think it was a good idea.
If they really believe this then immediately and completely cut off the killer whale’s treatment for brain cancer and let him die.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005200
Here read it yourself. NAZI F-ing GERMANY.
AND THIS
Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act took effect on April 1, 2002. It legalizes euthanasia and physician assisted suicide in very specific cases, under very specific circumstances. The law was proposed by Els Borst, the D66 minister of Health. The procedures codified in the law had been a convention of the medical community for over twenty years.
The law allows medical review board to suspend prosecution of doctors who performed euthanasia when each of the following conditions is fulfilled:
the patient’s suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement
the patient’s request for euthanasia must be voluntary and persist over time (the request cannot be granted when under the influence of others, psychological illness or drugs)
the patient must be fully aware of his/her condition, prospects and options
there must be consultation with at least one other independent doctor who needs to confirm the conditions mentioned above
the death must be carried out in a medically appropriate fashion by the doctor or patient, in which case the doctor must be present
the patient is at least 12 years old (patients between 12 and 16 years of age require the consent of their parents)
What about patients under 12....or dare I ask?
I’ll read your links. Thanks!
Good question will have to go back and finish reading that piece of garbage. Was to angry to keep reading. Sounded to much like the Obama Care Bill.
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