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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.