Sen. Tom Coburn Says "There is No Legitimate Role for Government" in End of Life Decisions

Here is video of GOP Sen. Tom Coburn saying on Meet the Press today that "there is no legitimate role for Government" in end-of-life decision making for people. Coburn, a still practicing Medical Doctor, said the personal wishes of people about "end of life" situations are often disregarded because of the frivolous lawsuits doctors face. Often family members will demand of doctors to put family on life support, etc., and doctors often comply out of fear of lawsuits. Coburn believes those are the kinds of issues that need to be focused on. Coburn said Republicans want "change" in the Health Care System, but want to get there a different way. . . . . (Watch Video)

Those who engage with these politicians must elevate the debate to the point where the media cannot distort it as being just "ignorance" (as Katie Couric claimed yesterday). The Gibbs and Axelrod talking points cannot trump the forcefulness and truth of the words of America's Founders on liberty vs. tyranny. And Republicans cannot translate the messages they are receiving as permission to agree to a compromise of "the People's" liberty.

Edmund Burke, before the British Parliament way back in March 1775, observed the colonists' fierce "spirit of liberty." He said:

"In other countries the people . . . judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle." He said Americans could detect "misgovernment at a distance and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."

James Madison put it this way, "The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soo to forget it."

Any Republicans or Democrats who "compromise" for the sake of popularity now on this important principle involving future generations should be recalled at the next election cycle!

This is not about a frivolous question of which provisions are acceptable and which are unacceptable. This is about a power struggle between the principles the founding generation were willing to stake their "lives, property, and sacred honor" for, and those who, throughout the history of civilization have arrogated unto themselves power over other people's lives.

The current "issue" called "health care reform," or its equally obnoxious semantic twin "health insurance reform," is just the invasion of liberty by arrogant elected officials which has finally aroused citizens who, heretofore, ignored the decades-long power grab by those who were supposed to protect "We, the People's" constitutional principles.

Now, citizens are seeing that it is a matter of "principle," not an issue of semantics over wording.

They should not allow their elected representatives to be coopted by "blue dogs" or any other "wolf in sheep's clothing" that would allow what may turn out to be the most important watershed moment in the history of American liberty to be further threatened. Now, Conrad and Sebelius, and others, sensing the voter mood are throwing out "compromise" talk this weekend, all to punt for better position down the road. Seize the moment for the sake of posterity and just say, "no"!

A word from the author of our Declaration of Independence regarding citizens and oppressive government might give some backbone to today's citizens:

"The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate . . . the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that they may. . . know ambition under all its shapes, and . . . exert their natural power to defeat its purposes." - Thomas Jefferson

And, for more wisdom from the same source:

" . . . this is a tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers. . . have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follws that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."- Thomas Jefferson

That was a great post lovelibery2 and I made of copy. Here is part of my take on the issue.

Peter Singer (Princeton bioethics professor) had an excellent piece in the New York Times about why we must ration health care. He explained the part played by Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), and the concept of quality-adjusted life-year. He said “Rationing health care means getting value for the billions spent by setting limits on which treatments should be paid from the public purse ….The task of health care bureaucrats is then to get the best value for resources they have been allocated….If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving that life gains 70 life-years, whereas a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds”. A few current, high profile denials of “rationing” will not overcome for me decades of promoting these principles.

Peter Singer’s rational, scientific approach reminds me of what I find in the Geneva Conventions which attempts to find some rational, moral threads to hang onto in the barbarity of war. For my experience blowing up an enemy base camp in Vietnam, I especially like the clear and obvious reading of Articles 28 and 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says the VC were responsible for any civilian deaths in that base. Those civilians qualified as Protected Persons within the enemy's physical control, and could not be used to render certain points and areas immune from military operations. Those passages then formed a basis for the rules of engagement we followed in attacking a legitimate military target. I was also blessed by not having to clean up after-wards the mess I helped make. Guys who have to achieve similar results with rifles and grenades are not quite as lucky.

I really wonder if WE THE PEOPLE are ready to embrace such ideas in order to secure the BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY.

So, there is a role for government, then, in day-to-day health care decisions?

One of the things bothering many Americans is that the congressional critics of the health care scam is that they take too narrow an issue as the focus of their criticism. For example, some say HR 3200 is no good because it will cost too much. The implication is that, if we can just knock off a billion or two, the critic is just fine with the destruction of choice and personal liberty the bill represents. And, although Coburn’s criticism is welcome, it focuses on too narrow a portion of the bill. Again, the implication is that if we just ditch the death panel, we’re just fine with the bill.

Simply put, the entire proposed health care plan stinks and should be destroyed completely with one final stake through its heart, not piecemeal. In such surgical critiques, the potential for compromise is too great. No government health care plan of the type proposed in 3200 is any good.

Rant over. You may return to original programming.

Once done, it may be fair to address the subjects of those people unable to buy insurance, or who are unfairly denied, or portability, or any of the few criticisms that formed the basis of the plan to explode an entire system and replace it with the Barney Frank/Zeke Emanuel death squads.

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