Below is an excerpt from my essay on death panels. Studies such as this are a comfortable device for placing this approach to health care into society.
When focused on rationing, Ezekiel J. Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother), Barack Obama, Tom Daschle, and others have presented the case in part. However, Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer recently presented in the New York Times presented Congressional intent without equivocation. “Rationing health care means getting value for the billions spent by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse….There’s no doubt that it’s tough – politically, emotionally, and ethically - to make a decision that means that someone will die sooner than they would have if the decision had gone the other way….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 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-oldsâ€.
And of course, the teenager will be paying into the Healthcare system (via new taxes) for 5 decades. Never mind that WE have already been paying for our future healthcare for 50 years. This SUCKS!