Why We Must Ration Health Care (You Must Die for the Greater Good- Peter Singer/NYT)

New York Times ^ | July 19, 2009 | PETER SINGER

[Redleg Duke]

This bastard would have had my son euthenized at birth. My son's crime? Hemophilia!

Peter Singer should take his own advice. He has nothing to offer society.

[rbg81]

Yet these are the same people who want to give a blank check for care of illegals in this country.

[tcrlaf]

“This bastard would have had my son euthenized at birth. My son’s crime? Hemophilia!”

Welcome to Eugenics, a key point of Socialist ideologies since it’s inception.

[KarlInOhio]

Government rationing by deciding that it won't pay for your treatment is almost invariably paired with a decision to not allow you to pay for that same treatment with your own money. After all, if government has decided that your life isn't worth saving how can you disagree and act on your own to save it? Allowing that would be the road to a two tiered* system the Dems don't want, where people in government hospitals are dying or allowed to remain crippled from conditions which are cured in private hospitals. People begin to doubt their government and think about voting for real change (not just hopey-change) and that must not be allowed.

* - please do not pay attention to the two tiered system of government official, their families and others with political pull getting treatment you aren't allowed to have.

[colorado tanker]

One thing I'll say for Singer is he's brutally honest in applying his utilitarianism to human life issues. He doesn't hide behind euphemisms. I wish more people would listen to him and understand where the left really is coming from on issues of abortion and health care.

[swain_forkbeard]

“If there is any point at which you say, ‘No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,’ then you think that health care should be rationed.”

That is non-sequitur. It can only makes sense if one assumes there to be a collective responsibility for paying and a collective authority for deciding.

[hometoroost]

I agree with you, I’ve long thought that Peter should put himself out of our misery.

[OldMissileer]

We get rationing while he and his friends get anything they need, paid by our labor.

[listenhillary]

RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING, RATIONING

Your Senators are waiting to hear this from each of us.

[Williams]

What they completely miss: If you remove the funds that led to that extra 6 months breakthrough, you will destroy the incremental medical breakthroughs that lead to 6 months, 6 years, and ultimately a cure.

If they had their way in 1950, we’d still have 1950’s medicine and everyone would just die from cancer.

And all these advances were built on private profit and the treatments help poor as well as rich.

[a fool in paradise]

Soylent Green is People Feeding People.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

First they came for the unborn, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t unborn...

I think most of us know where this is headed. We let the evil geenie out of the bottle when we started offing our young.

Where it’s going is hell on earth.

[a fool in paradise]

According to Pete, you no longer have a right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. I question his patriotism.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

They will ration healthcare, but not to save money. The reason is that they hate the idea that someone can afford care and another person can’t. They want equal outcome - so what if people have to die to achieve it.

Oh, and the liberal elite won’t have to face such awful things. Their healthcare system is free and platinum plated.

[cyborg]

Wow I’m glad he’s not in charge. My mother would have been dead by now!

[dforest]

This POS would have made Hitler proud.

[MadelineZapeezda]

Obama just said on TV that we have ‘to buck up’.....he’s already bucked up, BIG TIME!!!!!

[californianmom]

People want to decide for themselves whether to spend money to extend their lives. They don’t want some government bureuacrat deciding for them.

There is no way a government can balance things. Is it better to treat a drugged-up, shot-up gangbanger with a fourth grade education who has been in and out of prison, but who is 21 versus a 70 year old who has worked hard all her life and wants to live to see her grandchildren.

You cannot make these determinations based on age alone. The gangbanger has already made his decision for himself that he doesn’t value his life very much by the life choices he has made.

[LongElegantLegs]

But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care.

And that's where the trouble started...