I am finally scared of a White House administration

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

The members of that ultimate federal board will themselves not have examined or seen the patient in question. For another example of the growing, tumultuous resistance to "Dr. Obama," particularly among seniors, there is a July 29 Washington Times editorial citing a line from a report written by a key adviser to Obama on cost-efficient health care, prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

Emanuel writes about rationing health care for older Americans that "allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination." (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing — which is fundamental to Obamacare goals — "the complete lives system." You see, at 65 or older, you've had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.

It's not just about rationing, Nat. It's about the end of all individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist basic human right to health care spreads throughout the system like a virus.

Congressman Weiner says that health care is not a commodity. If health care is not a commodity then doctors and nurses are not free and sovereign citizens. If health care is a right then health care workers are slaves who must serve that right for the sick and injured. If health care is a basic human right, as Weiner says, then no health care worker can refuse to provide it, for any reason, because that would violate the patient's rights.

That means that the health care providers have no individual rights. The collective right of the people to get health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set their fees, their hours or change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it supersedes the individual rights of others.

It may not be stated in any of the bills that patient's rights to care supersede a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights are always adjudicated in the courts. The legislation simply establishes the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the patient's collective right to care.

Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. His view is the underlying philosophy of the entire Health Care Reform legislation the House and Senate have put forth. Consider the setting up of community watch dogs to monitor various health parameters of citizens in the Senate version of the bill. Look at pages 382 - 393.

TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS

Even the citizens themselves will be subject to state set regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the human right of universal health care. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights?

It's not just about rationing, Nat. It's about the end of all individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist basic human right to health care spreads throughout the system like a virus.

I don't understand how the fringe argues for health care as a right - we just do not have a right to the services and expertise of another person. In the absence of a doctor, how is one to exercise their "right" to health care?

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