Cal Thomas: Death panels are just the first step

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "death panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed. Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers -- the New York Times -- that she was right. Under a new policy not included in the law for fear the administration's real end-of-life game would be exposed, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls for the government to pay doctors to advise patients on options for ending their lives.

These could include directives to forgo aggressive treatment that could extend their lives.

This rule will inevitably lead to bureaucrats deciding who is "fit" to live and who is not. The effect this might have on public opinion, which by a solid majority opposes Obamacare, is clear from an e-mail obtained by the Times. It is from Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who sent it to people working with him on the issue.

Oregon and Washington are the only states with assisted-suicide laws, a preview of what is to come at the federal level if this new regulation is allowed to stand. Blumenauer wrote in his November e-mail:

"While we are very happy with the result, we won't be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren't out of the woods yet. This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the 'death panel' myth."

Ah, but it's not a myth, and that's where Palin nailed it. All inhumanities begin with small steps; otherwise the public might rebel against a policy that went straight to the "final solution."

All human life was once regarded as having value, because even government saw it as "endowed by our Creator." This doctrine separates us from plants, microorganisms and animals.

Doctors once swore an oath, which reads in part: "I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion."

Did Dr. Berwick, a fan of rationed care and the British National Health Service, ever take that oath? If he did, it appears he no longer believes it.

Do you see where this leads? First the prohibition against abortion is removed and "doctors" now perform them. Then the assault on the infirm and elderly begins.

Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don't measure up to constantly "evolving" government standards.

It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public as the ultimate benefit.

The killings, uh, terminations, will take place out of sight so as not to disturb the masses who might have a few embers of a past morality still burning in their souls. People will sign documents testifying to their desire to die, and the government will see it as a means of "reducing the surplus population," to quote Charles Dickens.

When life is seen as having ultimate value, individuals and their doctors can make decisions about treatment that are in the best interests of patients. But when government is looking to cut costs as the highest good and offers to pay doctors to tell patients during their annual visits that they can choose to end their lives rather than continue treatment, that is more than the proverbial camel's nose under the tent.

That is the next step on the way to physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.

Yes it can happen in America, and it will if the new Republican class in Congress doesn't stop it.

That is the next step on the way to physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.

And worse. Far, far worse. But that's precisely the intent of this so-called "Obamacare" legislation. Because at the end of the day, it is neither about health nor care. It is about control, the exercise of power. "Progressives' above all desire to wield the power to decide who lives and who dies. Murder of the unborn is the prime sacrament in progressives’ church of death. At-will, on-demand abortion is their holy writ.

'Progressives' refusal to acknowledge the value of individual human life is one of the principal reasons why no peace, no accommodation, no compromise can ever be made with them. Theirs is a reckless, willful and evil disregard for the most fundamental of all of our rights: the right to live.

The foundational premise of leftism is this: people are things. This premise is and has been central to the justification of the slaughter of millions - and the enslavement and impoverishment of hundreds of millions more. Once again, I refer you to the idea of killers without conscience and the pedigree of their ideas. They are on display in the details of 0bamacare. It is the deliberate and willful devaluation of human life - the reduction of people to mere objects. This is precisely the road down which that Marxist meat puppet, this Soros lawn jockey of a President and his owners are taking us.

Why else would the modern American Left seek to 'move the goalposts' that define life? And further, to define the value of individual life by its utility? "Utility" - to whom or for what? We have moved from questioning whether any sane human being should be allowed to make such decisions to dithering over who will decide. This is monstrous. And if any of you feel that this is hyperbole or tinfoil hattery, consider this:

We have the likes of Dr. Peter Singer speaking blithely of extending that 'right to choose' to children as old as 28 months! Why? Because Singer argues that at that age, well... they're not fully conscious and capable of reason!

Why else would we hear of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel - Rahm Emanuels brother - also an 'advisor' to 0bama, advocating the assessment of the relative 'quality of life' under the aegis of his innocuous-sounding “Complete Lives” program? Emanuel’s guidelines are strictly utilitarian, and are based in part upon the notion of an individual’s ‘value to society’.

What happens when:
1. The goalposts converge?
2. The decision as to who lives and who dies eventually passes to the state - as it most surely will?

If that seems a tad, well, extreme to some of you, consider this: there are those who believe that Dr. Emanuel deserves a medal for his fearless and 'enlightened' rationality. What will they - and you - think when a government panel decides that their premature newborn infant will receive only palliative care because 'society' has nothing 'invested' in the baby and the cost-benefit analysis indicates that the care will cost too much and have too uncertain an outcome. Or, when they find out that the cancer that their father had, and survived, in his seventies is no longer being treated because, after all, it is surely not in the interest of the common good to spend so much on the elderly in the last few months of their life. But surely our enlightened progressives will feel good about that fearless rationality, won't they, as their doctor offers the palliative care instead of the expensive treatment that saved their father? Won't you?

When our proud progressive's next visit to McDonald's is met by scorn from the protestors outside the restaurant because their unwise food choices are threatening to cost 'society' extra money for your treatment later in your life, is this still going to feel like the land of the free and the home of the brave to them, do you suppose?

When unemployment goes through the roof after all of those bad processed foods like salami, soda pop, and sugary cereals become illegal because they are empty calories that lead to obesity, will they still have a job? And once the perception spreads that my healthcare comes at the expense of your healthcare, what will remain of my privacy? My right to make my own decisions based solely on what I believe and understand is best for me?

This, folks, is the road to nightamre and slaughter. The nudge, the gradual squeeze - and then the shove. This is the foundation and the prerequisite for a world with neither love, nor mercy, nor hope. It is a world where all of your hopes, aspirations and dreams, all of your love of country and family not only count for naught, they will be extinguished as if they never had existed. Because they surely must be if these will-to-power driven monsters are to rule without fear of opposition.

Pope John Paul II in his 1995 The Gospel of Life made this observation:

This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable "culture of death". This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favored tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of "conspiracy against life" is unleashed. This conspiracy involves not only individuals in their personal, family or group relationships, but goes far beyond, to the point of damaging and distorting, at the international level, relations between peoples and States.

There is only one way we can stop the monsters who seek to impose such a hellish existence on this world.

BTW, what you just read is some of the material from my book. I'm just getting warmed up.

First of all I want to thank GailA for the links, and Para-Ord.45 I am afraid I have never been the same since shooting my son’s Glock .45.

I must be doing something right with this essay. The last time I posted an update to an editorial in the Eugene Register Guard the only comments I got were that I was a moron and that I would face a terrible retribution before God for all the innocent civilians I killed in Vietnam.

Remember the U.K. Telegraph and others awarded Sarah Palin a prize for telling the greatest political lie of 2009. In fact her actual statement disclosed one of many deceits within health care legislation. Next follows an explanation of how this outcome will be realized.

“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Of course no one will go to the 14th floor of the federal building in Boston and look for room 1486 labeled DEATH PANEL. Instead her anxiety arises from seeing hordes of new bureaucracies provide the framework for boundless regulatory masterpieces metastasizing throughout the government to erode human freedoms.

The stimulus bill created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Health Information Technology Research Centers. These bureaucracies duplicated private sector information bases, utilizing computer technology for coordination and flow of recommendations and policies for medical knowledge. The federal standard became appropriate and cost effective, and no longer safe and medically effective. Doctors now have decisions guided by, and face penalties for not being undefined “meaningful users” of electronically delivered protocols.

Now passage of HR 3962 and Senate legislation adds over 100 new boards, commissions and programs. For example a new Medicare Commission, exempt from judicial review, will unilaterally write rules about utilization and pricing of medical devices and drugs often needed by surgeons. Many regulatory bodies will be overarching in their abilities to select and direct medical subjects concerning Tri-Care, employer group policies, Veteran’s Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

The HHS Secretary will use these bureaucracies to reflect Congressional intent; not the will of the people. Regulations 30 or more times the bill’s 2,700 pages will utilize disquieting legislative provisions, selected legislator speeches, and selected expert testimony. Regulations will incorporate ideas politicians consider too sensitive for public debate. Medical professionals will join other private sector professionals such as education financial aid directors and CPA’s I know, who often serve as federal agents instead of client advocates.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother), Barack Obama, Tom Daschle, and other have presented the case in part. However, Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer recently presented in the New York Times 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-olds”.

Peter Singer’s scientific approach reminds me of the Geneva Conventions, which attempt rational, moral threads to grasp during wars’ barbarity. For my Navy experience pulverizing a major enemy base in Vietnam, I especially liked the clear and obvious reading of Articles 28 and 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The VC were responsible for any civilian deaths. 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.

The passages furnished the basis for rules of engagement we followed when attacking a legitimate military target. Distance provided me the blessing of avoiding clean up after-wards for the mess I helped create. However, I am certain our task force was an effective “death panel”. We permanently shattered that VC main force unit, forcing it to surrender the region to South Vietnamese control.

Government bureaucrats will apply similar detached patterns of analysis to those which enabled our ship to apply over 400 rounds of naval artillery to a VC base camp. Politicians will use the implementation process to disconnect totally from consequences of their actions. The resulting health care regulations will place everyone on pathways to federally defined, cost effective, approved treatments. Seniors and the disabled will hold second class citizenship, because popular philosophies, as discussed above, find these people deficient in societal contributions compared to active workers and youth.

When Sarah Palin speaks of an “America I know and love” she understands that federal administrative laws and regulations are the soft underbelly of our Constitution. Under English common law, which serves as the basis for our Constitution, a person is innocent and not subject to the penalties of the law until proved guilty. Under administrative law like Roman civil law a person is subject to its penalties and restrictions until they discover a way to legally extricate themselves.

Pursuit of happiness means spiritual prosperity within the hazards and uncertainties of personal freedoms. Once again politicians offered enchanting material security, while obscuring subservience to rules vastly increasing their power. This legislation attacks our Bill of Rights by confiscating speech and religious freedoms, personal life without access to courts and trial, and Ninth Amendment personal freedoms guaranteed, but not enumerated by our Constitution.

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