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Obamacare and Soft Tyranny [Reader Post]

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

-C.S.Lewis

To great derision, Sarah Palin was critical of Obamacare in August of 2009 in Facebook.

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

The choice of who would be allowed to receive care and when was interesting:

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 furor over “death panels” caused it to be dropped from the Obamacare legislation, but Barack Obama is not one to allow America to get in the way of his desires. Obama is re-instituting the death panels through regulation- through executive fiat. This is a harbinger of other things to come. We will see the language of bipartisanship spoken while we live under the soft tyranny of Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON — When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Now doctors will be incentivized to advise patients to end their lives.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

But whereas the previous proposal stated that this end of life planning would occur every five years the new regulations make end of life incentivization yearly.

The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.

If there was any doubt about these being death panels we’ll let Don Surber emphasize the importance of Dr. Donald Berwick, referred to by some as a one man death panel.

From the London Daily Telegraph: “Hundreds of thousands of NHS patients are being denied routine procedures as dozens of trusts cut back on surgery, scans and other treatments in order to save money, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found… The situation is predicted to get worse as the NHS struggles to save £20bn over the next four years.”

From Dr. Donald Berwick, the Obama administration’s head of the Medicare/Medicaid programs: “The only thing that exceeds my admiration for the NHS is my hope for the NHS. I hope that you will never, never give up on what you have begun. I hope that you realize and reaffirm how badly you need, how badly the world needs, an example at scale of a health system that is universal, accessible, excellent, and free at the point of care – a health system that is, at its core, like the world that we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just. Happy birthday!”

It’s important to put into perspective how insidious this effort has been:

The e-mail continued: “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

So much for transparency.

Now here’s where this really starts to get rotten.

Dr. Donald Berwick:

“Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,” Dr. Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques, including advance directives and involvement of patients and families in decision-making, have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading to both lower cost and more humane care.”

Keep this in mind.

And then keep this in mind:

“…what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that is not making anybody’s Mom better….that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not gonna necessarily improve care…maybe you’re better off taking the painkiller.”

Which brings me to Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro.

When he signed Obamacare, Barack Obama claimed that it was for his Mother.

“I am signing this reform bill into law on behalf of my mother, who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days,” Mr Obama said.

Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro was living in Indonesia in 1994 when she exhibited stomach pain which was dismissed as indigestion by a local doctor. That pain was later shown to be advanced ovarian cancer.

Obama spoke of her illness in 2007:

I remember my mother. She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it’s like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a people.

The question I have is- why didn’t she procure health insurance prior to her illness? Dunham has been described in glowing terms as being quite accomplished:

Dunham then had a career in rural development championing women’s work and microcredit for the world’s poor, with Indonesia’s oldest bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women’s World Banking, and as a consultant in Lahore, Pakistan. While at the Ford Foundation she developed a model of microfinance which is now the standard in Indonesia, a country that is a world leader in micro-credit systems.[41] Peter Geithner, father of Tim Geithner (who later became United States Secretary of the Treasury in her son’s administration), was head of the foundation’s Asia grant-making at that time.[42]Dunham also worked with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women’s rights, and grass-roots development.[32]

So why did she not have health insurance? She apparently care a great deal for Indonesia but sought health care here in the US and then apparently wanted health coverage AFTER she became ill.

Barack Obama holds the health insurance industry at fault instead of recognizing his mother’s irresponsibility. The needs and demands of the irresponsible need to be subsidized by the responsible.

And that is why I despise Barack Obama and liberals in general.

But what I would like to know from Obama is this:

If your mother became ill under Obamacare would you, knowing that further efforts at terminal ovarian cancer are futile (or a waste, as Obama put it), tell your Mom to simply take the painkiller?

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