Free Republic

Gimmie Five!! In his new book, Liberty and Tyranny, the Great One, Mark Levin sites as an example of the heartlessness of government-run health care the plight of Barbara Wagner, a women from Oregon diagnosed with lung cancer (see pages 109-110) who was denied medical coverage for this illness by the state health plan but informed that the state of Oregon would pay for the drugs necessary for her to kill herself. For you conservatives out there who desire a more detailed account of this women’s story, here’s a link to an ABC News story. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=5517492&page=1 For you liberals out...

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care. The President made light of these concerns. He said: “Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the...

Health Care: There might not be a "death panel," as Sarah Palin described it, but federal bureaucrats will be making end-of-life decisions. That's why state-run medicine is a leading cause of death in Britain and Canada.A post on the former Alaska governor's Facebook page has caused a stir by discussing openly what many privately fear and something we have written about. End-of-life counseling and efforts to measure cost-effectiveness of treatment will combine in a perfect storm to ration care in a way that lets the government decide who lives and who dies. "The America I know and love is not...

If you haven’t, read Erick’s post about an Oregon public health plan (”public option”) administrator responding to a cancer patient’s request for subsidized chemotherapy with a denial of treatment but an offer to fund a physician-assisted suicide. Now, know this: over the course of this decade, the state of Oregon has put in place a formal procedure for rationing care to patients whose health coverage is subsidized by government (i.e., who are enrolled in some form of the state’s “public option”). To date, they are the only government in the world to have formally done this, though many — from...

We knew it would come to this when Oregon insisted on passing its assisted-suicide laws. It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state pays for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear, when in the same letter rejecting her request for life-extending chemotherapy, Oregon offered her “physician-aid-in-dying”. In other words, Oregon offered their customer a heapin’ helping of death: http://www.katu.com/news/26119539.html The doctor interviewed by the news station seems offended at the suggestion that Oregon would decide to save...

The news from Barbara Wagner's doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing. The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay. What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50. "It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want...

Barbara Wagner’s doctor hoped a new chemotherapy drug would help her, but the Oregon Health Plan told her the treatment was not approved. On the bright side, they offered to have her killed.