Update: I want welcome NY Times readers from Tobin Harshaw’s The Opinionator blog. I would like to give some context to my concern over the answers President Obama gave on his health care plans. I have medical power of attorney over my mid-to-late 80’s parents and frequent many kinds of medical facilities with them (from emergency rooms to out patient care).

We are the educated consumers and can make decisions and have discussions with the doctors  – which is tough enough when it is just us and the doctors. One problem my mother has is her reaction to narcotic medicines – she goes from lucid to late stage Alzheimer’s symptoms in just a 24-48 hours. We try very hard to make sure no one prescribes these without a serious reason.

However they are also the low cost first option many doctors use to see if they can avoid more drastic measures. If decisions are determined by bureaucrats with no idea of medical history and individual and unique physiology, then people will get the wrong care because it is cheaper. The number of times I have seen lucid seniors drugged into long term or hospice care why I know that cookbook, one size fits all solutions many times simply put people out to pasture to pass on, than deal with the individual patient.

As more people deal with aging parents (that would be those numerous Boomers out there) or are becoming the senior citizen patients, I think more people will reject the government run plans. Because the government deals with numbers and IDs, it does not deal with individuals. – end update

I had better things to do last night than watch the Obama-ABC infomercial. But from what I am seeing today it sounds like it was a bomb. First off, when the President says those dying should not be given care to save money, everyone can see that we are well onto the slippery slope that began with abortion for convenience and went viral with the idea of factories of young humans being set up to make a profit in the marketing of human spare parts. Spare parts harvested from the core of human embryos.

Obama, Mr Slick messenger, let slip how little he and the liberals deem human life, when he claimed saving money was more important that trying to save lives:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.

And who will decide who shall live and who shall die? Will it be the family? No, it will be some unaccountable bean counter in Washington DC who does not have to face the human crisis up close. Will it be the doctors? No, the bean counter will decide who is worthy. And don’t kid yourself, the rich will be able to pay for whatever measures are available – this is  an attack on the middle and lower classes who have to work through government dominated health care.

We have seen this before in Canada and the UK, where people can wait months for an appointment with a specialist, wait months for surgery to correct a problem, and who too often die of complications as they wait. The deal with many tough medical conditions is early action increases the odds of recovery immensely. But if cost is the driver, if rationing is the priority, then getting the best help as soon as possible falls to the wayside.

Ed Morrissey did watch the Obama-ABC News informercial debacle, and points out why this was a stupid PR stunt:

Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push.  Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. 

…

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.[“]

The fact is the government wants to do for healthcare what they have done to the economy and the jobs market. And that should frighten everyone but the most naive and ignorant liberal dreamers.

Tags: Health Care