HEALTH CARE THAT WILL KILL US

[Harconen]

LaRouche:Obama Is Now Impeachable' For His T4 Plan

by Nancy Spannaus


July 24—When President Barack Obama delivered his nationally televised press conference on July 22, in which he pressed for legislation that called for an "independent board of doctors and health-care experts" to be established as a means of cutting health-care costs, he crossed the line. Lyndon LaRouche, America's leading economist and statesman, who has been warning of the dangers of the President's Nero complex with ever-greater urgency since his April 11 webcast, responded immediately, with the following statement:

President Obama is now impeachable, because he has, in effect, proposed legislation which is an exact copy of the legislation for which the Hitler regime was condemned in the post-World War II trials. It is an impeachable offense to propose such a thing in this time. With this statement from him, the President now deserves impeachment.

What the President, and his cost-accounting henchmen, like budget chief Peter Orszag, are now insisting on, as the centerpiece of their health-care "reform," is precisely what LaRouche had identified weeks before. Having adopted the view of the British financier oligarchy, that society cannot afford to put its resources into maintaining what Nuremberg Trial veteran Dr. Leo Alexander called the "non-rehabilitatable sick," the Obama Administration has concluded that there are some (i.e., many) lives "not worthy to be lived." They have thus fixed on a mechanism to make the decisions as to who will get the scarce resources. Not surprisingly, they came up with the same approach that Hitler did in 1939—setting up a board of experts to determine who shall live, and who shall die. The program, which killed hundreds of thousands of Germans even before the mass killing of Jews began, was called T4.

Starting on July 16, when they saw their bill was in trouble, the White House has made such an "independent" board the centerpiece of their demands for action. But don't believe for a second, that this proposal is the result of pressure from Congress to cut costs. Such a dictatorial agency is what Obama's closest advisors, including Ezekiel Emanuel and Tom Daschell, have wanted all along.

But, the all-out attempt to ram the reform through has run into a huge roadblock. Many Congressional offices who previously told LaRouche PAC organizers that they thought the Nazi comparison was "over the top," are now stunned to find that the President is openly pushing such a Hitlerite program. Others in Congress, and in the health-care profession, are reacting instinctively against what they smell as a fascist cost-cutting regime against the poor and the sick, a regime totally antithetical to the principles upon which the American system of government is based.

Their instincts are right. As LaRouche has emphasized, the President's proposal spits on the General Welfare clause of the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the Declaration of Independence's commitment to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the President were to be successful in ramming through his dictatorial board, it would be the equivalent of a Reichstag Fire coup against the Constitution, and lead to crimes against humanity in the form of avoidable deaths of millions of Americans.

For this reason, LaRouche PAC has escalated its battle to crush Obama's health-care "reform," and replace it with the program of FDR-style public-health measures, which LaRouche outlined in his LPAC video reply http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=11055 to Obama on July 17 (transcript of Larouche's reply). http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2009/a3629lar_health_alternative.html

A Nazi Mentality

Before looking at the battle, as it has emerged over the past week, let us focus, once again, on the glaring Nazi mentality which characterizes the Obama Administration's approach to health care.

It begins with the rejection of the sacredness of every human life, substituting for that, an idea of how "useful" a life is, generally measured in how much money should be spent to save it. The Nazis were relentless in pressing this point, beginning early in their reign, when they complained vigorously about spending money to save "cripples," when it should be spent on vigorous young workers instead. Money spent on the chronically ill—and obviously on the elderly, as well—was considered "wasteful," because the individual could not be expected to contribute to the economy, in the way they wanted.

Contrast this anti-human approach with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, a "cripple" himself. Roosevelt waged a vigorous campaign in favor of research to cure diseases (e.g., the March of Dimes), and to help those who were limited by physical incapacities to overcome them, and play a role in society. Rather than seeing the expenditure as a drain on society's resources, he saw it in terms of what the individual who was helped could contribute to society, which perhaps could be measured financially, but not necessarily.

The Nazi mentality, however, takes the Social Darwinist approach, and deplores spending money on the weak. It's not "cost-effective," they say today.

This outlook was on exhibit at the Obama press conference July 22, when the President lied that the major cause of the fiscal problems of the United States was spending on Medicare and Medicaid (the old and the poor). Even the President's perverted economists have to know that this is a lie: The rampant speculation and looting of the casino economy of the past 40 years makes a mockery of the statement. Yet, Obama chose to scapegoat the old and the poor, and target them for massive cuts, in his alleged attempt to solve the health-care crisis.

Another hallmark of the Nazi mentality, of course, which maps onto the President's own Neronic egomania, is the propensity to use force, not reason, to work one's will. This approach shows up in the Obama health-care "reform," in its drive to set up a council to circumvent Congress, imposing the cuts in health-care spending, in combination with the financier sponsors of the Administration's program. Like Hitler, Obama seeks to set up an executive agency which will wield power without being subjected to challenge—the Constitutional provisions for Congressional responsibility be damned.

One major difference, of course, between the Obama approach and that of Hitler, is that Obama is pursuing his fascist assault on the elderly and the sick in public. Hitler, when he issued his infamous 1939 order setting up Dr. Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to decide who should live, and who should die, felt compelled to act in secret, because he feared opposition from the German people.

The Death Bill

As we reported last week, the President launched his public campaign, on July 16, for an independent commission to exercise life-or-death power over medical care. Taking a leading role was Peter Orszag, the "behavioral economist" and soulless accountant who heads Obama's Office of Management and Budget. Orzag sent a letter to Congressional leaders, to which he appended a piece of draft legislation called the "Independent Medicare Advisory Council Act of 2009," a law which he repeatedly has characterized as "the most significant aspect" of the pending legislation. Its transparent intent is to cut care for those on Medicare.

Orszag's bill would set up a council (IPAC) of five physicians, who, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPac) established in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, would issue two rulings a year on reimbursement rates for various medical procedures. But that's not all.

First, the bill specifies, under the title "No Increase in Aggregate Medicare Expenditures," that the rulings could only freeze or lower total Medicare/Medicaid spending, not increase it.

Second, once the rates are sent to the President and approved, they could only be voted up or down in toto within 30 days by the Congress. Should this not happen, they would go directly into effect.

But there's another telltale aspect. The proposed legislation says that "the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)" would get the final review of each of the commission's detailed regulations, after the President and Congress signed off. This appointed bean-counter, if deciding that any of the regulations would overpay for medical treatments, could simply "declare them null and void," and tell the "commission of doctors" to start over, and cut deeper.

In fact, the CMS is, right now, about to issue a ruling that Medicare and Medicaid will issue "bundled payments for kidney dialysis" from January 2011 onward. Reuters notes correctly, in reporting the ruling: "Under the bundled system, dialysis providers will receive a fixed payment [per patient] for all services and drugs. The dialysis center would effectively profit by spending less money on each patient."

The President Goes Ape

Following the release of Orszag's proposed bill, Obama went into a non-stop campaign on its behalf. His Saturday radio address July 18, his press appearances in New Jersey and in the Rose Garden, and his public meetings, all featured the call for the "independent" commission to cut costs.

In an interview with the Washington Post published on July 23, the President elaborated on the policy under the heading of "delivery system reforms." He wrote:

"At this point, I am confident that both the House and the Senate bills will contain what we've been calling 'MedPAC on steriods,' the idea that you continually present new ideas to change incentives, change the delivery system, understanding that, because this is such a complex system, we're not always going to get it exactly right the first time, and that there have to be a series of modifications over the course of a series of years, and we have to take that out of politics and make sure than an independent board of medical experts and health economists are providing packages that are continually improving the system. So I think there's general consensus that that is one of two very powerful levers to bend the cost curve...."

Obama repeated this concept July 23 at his town hall meeting in Shaker Heights, Ohio, saying that an empowered MedPAC would "eliminate waste and save money."

The point of the President's remarks was crystal clear: Health-care decisions should be made by technocrats who are not responsible to the political process—just as they were under Hitler's T4 Program. Orszag was even more explicit at a Nw York Council on Foreign Relations event July 23 when he said: "But moving more decisions into the hands of medical professionals and out of the political process will enable us to continually update the system to reflect new information and changed circumstances...."

Among those "changed circumstances," of course, is the reduction of monies being allocated to health care for those whom the "professionals" believe are not "helped" by the care—the old and the chronically ill.

The Revolt Mounts

As of this writing, Obama's steamroller has run out of steam, and a brawl has broken out in Congress over health-care "reform." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has declared that the Senate will not vote on Obama's bill until the Fall—although the President had insisted it go through before the August recess. And a large number of House Members, Democrat and Republican alike, are in revolt against the House leadership's attempt to ram through the bill there.

On July 22, top members of the House Ways and Means Committee objected to the Obama IMAC policy, warning that it would shift too much power away from lawmakers, and give the White House the power to make decisions reserved to Congress, under the Constitution. "You're outsourcing Congressional responsibility," said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) called the idea "unworkable" and "stupid, at best."

According to Politico, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, "We should resist that," referring to Obama's program. "They're the imperial Presidency, just like Bush.... You have this appointed body, with no essential accountability to anyone, making these very important decisions. We should make the decisions. Essentially what they're saying is, the Congress is either incompetent or corrupt. In fact, we are competent, we are honest, and we know more, because we get input from the public."

LaRouche said that the Congressmen are right, that the transfer of decision-making to the White House, in this case, is "just like Hitler." There would be "no accountability to anyone, but to a mentally and morally defective President."

In addition to the Congressional uproar against the imperial council idea, some Republicans are raising the substantive issue of Obama's intent to slash care for the poor. Most notable, was a press statement issued by House Republican Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), which blasted a provision in the House bill that attempts to mandate counseling on "end-of-life" care options for senior citizens, a transparent attempt to pressure older people to refuse treatment. They wrote of Provision 1233:

"This provision of the legislation is a throwback to 1977, when the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare proposed federal promotion of living wills for cost-savings purposes described as 'enormous.' At that time, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago decried this effort by saying: 'The message is clear: government can save money by encouraging old people to die a little sooner than they otherwise would. Instead of being regarded with reverence, and cherished, human life is subject in this view to a utilitarian cost-benefit calculus and can be sacrificed to serve fiscal policy and the sacred imperative of trimming a budget.'

"With three states having legalized physician-assisted suicide, this provision could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself.

"Health care reform that fails to protect the sanctity and dignity of all human life is not reform at all."

Exploding the Fraud

The reason the President's backers, especially among the British, were insisting he ram the reform through before August is clear: The more the people know about it, the less chance it has of going through. This has been demonstrated with a vengeance.

The same is true of the lies that have been used to sell the Obama health-care fraud, especially those generated by the Dartmouth Institute, one of the prime "authorities" for those who argue that 30% of U.S. health-care expenditures are "waste," and can be cut. The Dartmouth studies use comparisons between expenditures in one part of the country, against another, to argue that areas of high cost are just ripping off the system, and should be forced to lower them. The methodology of these studies, especially those which compare end-of-life care, perpetrates a hoax, simply by deliberately eliminating from the studies those who are successfully treated.

We include below a thorough refutation of the Dartmouth fraud http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3629expose_wennberg_hoax.html , whose premises mirror those of Orszag and Obama: namely, the less you spend, the more efficient you are—even if the patient dies!

nancyspannaus@larouchepub.com

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3629obama_impeachable.html

[Bianca]

                         How the White House’s Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy







By Robert Reich
|Aug 9, 2009, 5:30 PM

I’m a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I’m appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying arm to buy their support.

Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even larger bonanza, given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might be included. (We don’t know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare because its details haven’t been made public.)

Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher health-care costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs. To be sure, as part of its deal with the White House, Big Pharma apparently has promised to cut future drug costs by $80 billion. But neither the industry nor the White House nor any congressional committee has announced exactly where the $80 billion in savings will show up nor how this portion of the deal will be enforced. In any event, you can bet that the bonanza Big Pharma will reap far exceeds $80 billion. Otherwise, why would it have agreed?

In return, Big Pharma isn’t just supporting universal health care. It’s also spending a lots of money on TV and radio advertising in support. Sunday’s New York Times reports that Big Pharma has budgeted $150 million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance, starting this August (that’s more money than John McCain spent on TV advertising in last year’s presidential campaign), after having already spent a bundle through advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA.

I want universal health insurance. And having had a front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against it, I can tell you first hand how big and effective the onslaught can be. So I appreciate Big Pharma’s support this time around, and I like it that the industry is doing the reverse of what it did last time, and airing ads to persuade the public of the rightness of the White House’s effort.

But I also care about democracy, and the deal between Big Pharma and the White House frankly worries me. It’s bad enough when industry lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens all the time. But when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry’s support to a key piece of legislation, we’re in big trouble. That’s called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it’s doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the President.

When the industry support comes with an industry-sponsored ad campaign in favor of that legislation, the threat to democracy is even greater. Citizens end up paying for advertisements designed to persuade them that the legislation is in their interest. In this case, those payments come in the form of drug prices that will be higher than otherwise, stretching years into the future.

I don’t want to be puritanical about all this. Politics is a rough game in which means and ends often get mixed and melded. Perhaps the White House deal with Big Pharma is a necessary step to get anything resembling universal health insurance. But if that’s the case, our democracy is in terrible shape. How soon until big industries and their Washington lobbyists have become so politically powerful that secret WhiteHouse-industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important legislation? When will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV advertising designed to persuade the public that the legislation is in the public’s interest? (Any Democrats and progressives who might be reading this should ask themselves how they’ll feel when a Republican White House cuts such deals to advance its own legislative priorities.)

We’re on a precarious road — and wherever it leads, it’s not toward democracy.



http://wallstreetpit.com/9303-the-deal-between-big-pharma-and-the-white-house

[Krista Davenport]

PhRMA Walks Back Claim Of White House Deal

First Posted: 08-10-09 08:32 PM   |   Updated: 08-11-09 12:44 AM


In yet another in a series of evolving statements and backtracks, an official with the country's major pharmaceutical lobby said on Monday that it never struck a "quote, unquote secret deal with the White House" that would have prohibited the government from negotiating lower drug prices for Medicare.

"It was never brought up at the meeting," said Ken Johnson the senior vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, just days after his boss told the New York Times that the White House's commitment to not support price controls was, as far as he was concerned, "a done deal."

Johnson was referencing reports that the White House had agreed to not allow the government to use its purchasing power to lower drug prices in exchange for $80 billion in promised cost savings from Big Pharma over the course of ten years. The White House, on Monday, denied that such a deal was ever discussed.

All of which didn't mean that an arrangement of sorts wasn't implicit in separate discussions. Johnson told the Huffington Post that during negotiations with the Senate Finance Committee PhRMA had made it crystal clear that there were certain provisions it would never support.

"In the beginning, when God created earth, we said we will help pass comprehensive health care reform but we cannot support price controls," he said.

Johnson said that PhRMA negotiated around this understanding with the Senate Finance Committee and its chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, (D-Mont.) and that the White House "blessed" that policy agreement. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has also said the administration supported the deal.

"As our contribution to health care reform, we agreed to reduce costs by $80 billion," Johnson concluded.

But what kind of arrangement was made between Finance and PhRMA remains vague. The White House has referred reporters to the statement on the Committee's website. But that statement, issued on June 20, 2009, includes no information beyond the $80 billion promised by PhRMA.

On June 22, the President hailed the "deal" as a win-win-win for the pharmaceutical company, American public and the government. "Drug and insurance companies stand to benefit when tens of millions more Americans have coverage," he said. "So we're asking them, in exchange, to make essential concessions to reform the system and help reduce costs. It's only fair."

But industry observers were already raising red flags, predicting that this was an attempt by PhRMA to head off more costly legislation down the road.

"Our initial take is that this is a win for the industry because it appears to short-circuit the prospect of direct government price negotiation," read an analysis by Leerink Swann and Company, a health care equity research company.

Last week, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both reported that Leerink Swann's prediction was correct - the White House had "embraced" a package that would limit the government's ability to negotiate lower drug prices. In a subsequent piece by the Huffington Post, administration officials said that any measures that would pursue cuts to prescription drug prices should be considered outside the health-care overhaul legislation.

In the end, both Johnson and the White House may be trying to draw a distinction without a difference. Both PhRMA and the administration are on record saying that $80 billion worth in concessions is an appropriate amount. "We feel comfortable with the amount of money that has been talked about at this point," Gibbs said in response to a question from the Huffington Post last week.

PhRMA is on record saying it would oppose health care legislation that contained "price controls." The White House, meanwhile, said on Monday that it was committed not to include one measure that could achieve those controls: rebates which would have bridged the prescription drug prices between Medicaid and Medicare.

The questions that still need to be answered are: Will PhRMA renege on its $80 billion pledge if Congress passes health care reform that allows the government to negotiate for lower drug prices? And will it abandon its pledge to run $150 million worth of television ads in favor of the president's agenda if it believes price controls are still on the table?

[Krista Davenport]

LaRouche:Obama Is Now Impeachable' For His T4 Plan

by Nancy Spannaus

There's reputable source for you, seven time Presidential candidate (and nutjob) Lyndon LaRouche, who served SIX YEARS IN PRISON FOR MAIL FRAUD AND TAX CODE VIOLATIONS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_Larouche

[Harconen]

'Evil and Orwellian' – America's right turns its fire on NHS

Andrew Clark in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 August 2009 21.00 BST
Article history

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for "rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

Having seen his approval ratings drop, Obama is seeking to counter this conservative onslaught by taking his message to the public, with a "town hall" meeting today at a school in New Hampshire.

Last week, the most senior Republican on the Senate finance committee, Chuck Grassley, took NHS-baiting to a newly emotive level by claiming that his ailing Democratic colleague, Edward Kennedy, would be left to die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain on the grounds that he would be considered too old to deserve treatment.


Republican Chuck Grassley claimed that Ted Kennedy (above) would be left to die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain. Photograph: Steve Connolly/Rex Features


"I don't know for sure," said Grassley. "But I've heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems."

The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended to the NHS."

Others in the US have accused Obama of trying to set up "death panels" to decide who should live and who should die, along the lines of Nice, which determines the cost-effectiveness of NHS drugs.

One right-leaning group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, lists horror stories about British care on its website. An email widely circulated among US voters, of uncertain origin, claims that anyone over 59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.

The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter inaccuracies. A spokesman said: "We're keeping a close eye on things and where there's a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity to correct people in private. That said, we don't want to get involved in a domestic debate."

A $1.2m television advertising campaign bankrolled by the conservative Club for Growth displays images of the union flag and Big Ben while intoning a figure of $22,750. A voiceover says: "In England, government health officials have decided that's how much six months of life is worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck."

The number is based on a ratio of £30,000 a year used by Nice in its assessment of whether drugs provide value for money. Dillon said this was one of many variables in determining cost-effectiveness of medicines. He said of his body's portrayal in the US: "It's very disappointing and it's not, obviously, the way in which Nice describes itself or the way in which we're perceived in the UK even among those who are disappointed or upset by our decisions."

On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your superglue ready."

The broader tone of the US healthcare debate has become increasingly bitter. The former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin last week described president Obama's proposals as "evil", while the radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has compared a logo used for the White House's reform plans to a Nazi swastika. Hecklers have disrupted town hall meetings called to discuss the health reform plans.

David Levinthal, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Centre for Responsive Politics, said the sheer scale of the issue, which will affect the entire trajectory of US medical care, was arousing passions: "It's no surprise you have factions from every political stripe attempting to influence the debate and some of those groups are certainly playing to the deepest fears of Americans. There's been a great deal of documented disinformation propagated throughout the country." Defenders of Britain's system point out that the UK spends less per head on healthcare but has a higher life expectancy than the US. The World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place. The British Medical Association said a majority of Britain's doctors have consistently supported public provision of healthcare. A spokeswoman said the association's 140,000 members were sceptical about the US approach to medicine: "Doctors and the public here are appalled that there are so many people on the US who don't have proper access to healthcare. It's something we would find very, very shocking."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/11/nhs-united-states-republican-health

[Bianca]

The thing about the “end of life” counseling is not the counseling itself. Doctors and families have these conversations all the time. The problem is taking it out of a doctor’s sphere of influence, advising patients and families alike, and putting it into the hands of government panels. Who will be sitting on these panels? Who will be doing the advising? The reason families are willing to discuss these life and death decisions with a doctor is because they trust their medical advice. Then, you take that advice and make the informed but difficult decision in terms of what you think is best, what your loved one would want and what allows you to sleep at night.

It is not easy. I’ve been there.

But what would make it impossible is a governmental proxy pushing a family one way or another. Yes, end-of-life medical care is expensive. And sometimes we go the wrong way. But when it’s your child, your parent, your spouse, the math is not your primary consideration.

I dare anyone with a desperately sick or impaired loved one to stick to “The Principles” [ref. Ezekiel Emmanuel, who advises the WH] when that time comes. It goes against human nature, which is the flaw in all these Utopian ideas. It’s the rule of unintended consqeuences that worries most people. And without a clear message and details on this and other questions [like how the hell we'll pay for this], those worries and the opposition will continue. And the opportunity for “real” reform will be lost.

Dropping “end of life” into a spreadsheet somehow changes the whole meaning of it. It is because we like to believe we are above everything being about the money. In the end most things are actually about money, but we should strive to be better than that when we can.

[Harconen]

Amen to that.

[Harconen]

Obama DeathCare, a copy of
Nazi Euthanasia- The Reich Health Ministry

Nice and legal by Hitler's decree of October, 1939


http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-euthanasia.htm

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.

Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.

Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation.

The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.

The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationary, enlarged "the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death."

Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill.

Patients had to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington's chorea and other neurological conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at least 5 years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies.

A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname 'the savage Christian.'

At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first Nazi experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Patients were generally drugged before being led naked into the gas chamber. Each killing center included a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.

But the huge increase in the death rate for the disabled combined with the very obvious plumes of odorous smoke over the killing centers aroused suspicion and fear. At Hadamar, for example, local children even taunted arriving busloads of patients by saying "here comes some more to be gassed."

On August 3, 1941, a Catholic Bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Münster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder." The sermon sent a shockwave through the Nazi leadership by publicly condemning the program and urged German Catholics to "withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and their ungodly behavior."

As a result, on August 23, Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time.

The Nazis retaliated against the Bishop by beheading three parish priests who had distributed his sermon, but left the Bishop unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.

However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever euthanasia was being considered.

The use of gas chambers at the euthanasia killing centers ultimately served as training centers for the SS. They used the technical knowledge and experience gained during the euthanasia program to construct huge killing centers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. SS personnel from the euthanasia killing centers, notably Wirth, Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl later commanded extermination camps.

Copyright © 1997 The History Place All Rights Reserved

[Harconen]

The aim of totalitarian regimes has always been to keep the 'workers' just well enough, long enough to perform their slave labor to 'retirement' age ... that is per the actuarial tables ... but no longer. A serviceable body and a weak mind is the perfect vehicle to serve the agenda, as far as they are concerned.

What does "Universal Healthcare" mean to the NWO?

It means, "... keep them young bucks strappin' strong ... got to get as much work out of 'em as possible!"

"But them youguns ... no siree! And them old farts too damaged by fluoride and aspartame and vaccines to get the job done ... to hell with 'em!"

Our Moms and Dads ... the Useless Eaters ... do not apply.

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Ezekiel Emanuel: Death to Those With Dementia, as Useless Eaters

July 21, 2009 (LPAC)-- Ezekiel Emanuel, the top healthcare adviser at Obama's Budget Office and brother of his chief of staff, believes it is "obvious" that people with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia (estimated as one of three people who live beyond the age of 65) should be denied health-care, since they are "irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." An essay published in the Hastings Center Report (Nov-Dec 1996) by Emanuel, Norman Daniels and Bruce Jennings, says in part:

"This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity - those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberation - are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=2&subcatid=30&threadid=2724097

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Ezekiel Emanuel ... brother of Rahm Emanuel

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/02/dr_ezekiel_emanuel_rahms_broth.html

http://www.slu.edu/x26866.xml

http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/07/26/ezekiel-emanuel-deny-coverage-to-elderly-and-disabled-for-the-greater-good.php

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More:
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Obama advisor would ration medical care to seniors, young children, the demented

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-advisor-would-deny-medical-care-to-seniors-demented-51414342.html

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
07/22/09 2:57 PM EDT

No wonder President Obama is in such a rush to get his health care reform package through Congress before the August recess. And before the public finds out about Ezekiel Emanuel, special advisor to Peter Orzag, Obama's director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel has written in medical journals of how health care should be rationed, with priority given to younger people over seniors and over those suffering from dementia, according to John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Ezekiel also believes that very young children should be lower on the priority list than younger people who have received public educations.

Goodman cites an article Ezekiel co-authored with two other men that appeared in the January 31, 2009, edition of the British medical journal, The Lancet. Goodman also cites a 1996 article by Ezekiel that appeared in The Hastings Report. In the latter, which was titled "Where civic republicanism and deliberative democracy meet," Ezekiel argued for limiting health care for “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.”  He cited "not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” as an example.

Goodman offers additional analysis on his blog of Ezekiel's presence among Obama's health care advisors. Goodman notes that the health care reform legislation now being crafted in Congress includes a provision designed to ration the availability of MRI, CT and other advanced technology scans that often are critical to identifying dangerous diseases at a sufficiently early stage to enable life-extending treatment:

“An example of what can be done is actually in legislation being written on Capitol Hill. Buried somewhere in the 1,000 plus pages is a provision to severely limit what Medicare pays for CT and MRI scans performed in doctors' offices. This would force elderly patients, for example, to go to the hospital for their radiology — where there are often lengthy waits. Patients in rural areas who must travel long distances to get to hospital-based testing facilities may be discouraged from getting the tests done at all.”

“individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.”  Emanuel wrote, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Goodman notes that the World Health Organization estimates that 25,000 cancer patients die in Britain annually as a result of such restrictions on medical scans