Posts Tagged ‘Death Panels
Did Dick Cheney “Deserve” a Heart Transplant?
The hypocrisy of the elite media is not news. Nor is their total ignorance of their own hypocrisy, or their smugness in the belief that they are smarter and more evolved than those with whom they disagree. Their use of innuendo and euphemism is transparent.
In a clip from NBC Today, http://nation.foxnews.com/nbc/2012/03/26/nbc-did-cheney-really-deserve-heart-transplant?intcmp=fly Matt Lauer opens the discussion about Vice President Dick Cheney’s heart transplant by saying “His case has re-opened debate over whether rules should be changed to favor younger patients”. His guest, medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman chimed in with “…this has raised a lot of ethical questions, moral questions, about whether the Vice President, in fact, should have received his heart against — ahead of other people. And, raises the question, how old is too old to receive such a precious transplant?”
Really? “re-opened debate”? “raised a lot of ethical, moral questions”? To whom? By whom? Ethical questions? Moral questions? What questions? What is “a lot of questions”? Pulling back the curtain behind which these cowards are hiding, that of proclaiming that “others” are asking these questions, we see exactly what they are saying. There is just ONE question, and the ones asking that question are Matt Lauer and Nancy Snyderman. That question is “Did Dick Cheney deserve to have a heart transplant?” This is the typical tactic used by leftist tv news show personalities (I cannot, with a clear conscience, call these people “journalists”), to express their own opinion without owning up to it. They proclaim that “there are those who ask….” or “some would say …”, or in the case of this despicable piece of slime, “his case has re-opened debate over whether rules should be changed”. What they are really saying is that THEY question or dispute the “ethics” or “morality” in the light of their own personal, biased feelings. They are saying that in this one case, THEY want the rules to be changed.
I was a transplant nurse for 15 years in the very early stage of the science of organ transplantation. Since that time, transplantation has evolved rapidly from an experimental, last-ditch effort to save the life of someone in end-stage organ failure, to what it is today, a fairly common procedure with a relatively high success rate. In those early years, criteria for receiving a transplant organ were much more strict than they are today. These criteria ranged from age and medical status of the patient, to geographic location and ability of the patient to travel to the Transplant Center within a relatively short amount of time. The life span of organs, once they have been removed from the donor, is measured in hours before the organ ceases to be viable.
Vice President Cheney is 71 years of age. His doctors decided more than 20 months ago that he would be a reasonable candidate for a heart transplant, and placed his name on the national waiting list. (Note that this decision was reached between Mr. Cheney’s doctors and their patient, without consulting with Matt Lauer and Dr. Snyderman — clearly an unpardonable sin.) As this NBC report points out, to its credit, his 20-month wait is longer than most patients wait for a heart. Dr. Snyderman tosses out the innuendo of whether the Vice President “should have received his heart….ahead of other people”. Unless the transplant wait list only had one person’s name on it (that of Vice President Cheney), he would have been given the heart ahead of other people. Names are added to the wait list daily. I ask Dr. Snyderman how she feels about the fact that for the past 20 months, hundreds of “other people” have received their heart transplant ahead of Vice President Cheney.
And I ask Matt Lauer and Dr. Snyderman, and any of the other Cheney haters out there, how they would feel had that heart transplant been performed on George Soros (age 81), or Noam Chompsky (age 83 ) or Jimmy Carter (age 87) or Nancy Pelosi (age 72 ) or Marian Robinson (Michelle Obama’s mother, age 71)? Of course this is rhetorical. Because had any one of those people been transplanted, Matt Lauer and Dr. Syderman would have been singing the praises of the availability of a medical procedure that was able to save the life of this most revered patient. Not one of the so-called “elite” media would have mentioned “ethics” or “morality” with respect to the age of the recipient of the heart. That question only applies to a hated conservative, and in this case, Vice President Dick Cheney.
Leaving aside any discussion of the role that Vice President Dick Cheney has played in our history, can we at least agree that he is a decent man, a tax-paying American citizen, a husband, father, and grandfather, and public servant. He has served his country when called, despite having suffered five heart attacks (the first when he was 37 years of age) and numerous medical and surgical procedures for his heart condition. What more needs to be said. His life is of value. Had he been a homeless 71-year-old man living on a park bench, I think we can pretty well imagine the righteous indignation and outrage that the media would be screaming if he had been denied a heart transplant.
In raising the question of whether Mr. Cheney “deserved” this transplant, NBC has sunk to a new low. Matt Lauer asks Dr. Snyderman in a very smarmy, smug manner, “Is there indication he was given priority?” to which Dr. Snyderman, to her own personal disappointment, is forced to answer that in fact no, he actually waited longer than most. One doesn’t have to be especially perceptive to understand that her implication here was that he should have waited forever. To have these ignorant, out-of-touch “television personalities” insinuate that they know enough to comment on whether this medical procedure was “deserved”, brings up the question of Obamacare and the death panels (that the left has denied exist within that bill). Is this not the classic example of a “death panel” — two arrogant television commentators giving the public a wink-wink about whether or not the hated Dick Cheney deserved to have a medical procedure to save his life? To these opinionated, biased, overpaid television personalities, a decision reached by Mr. Cheney’s physicians and their patient is invalid. They would prefer that the question of “deserving” be part of that equation. And of course, neither the Cheneys nor their physicians are qualified to determine if the transplant was deserved. That decision should be left to the more qualified people in the media.
Wake up, America. Obamacare mandates just exactly this type of process, and the people who will actually make the life and death decisions for us, whether or not our life is of value, whether or not we “deserve” a particular procedure, will be no more medically qualified than Matt Lauer or Dr. Snyderman. They will most likely not be doctors at all, but bureaucrats. You can hate Dick Cheney. You can hate all conservatives and want us all to die in a horrible fire or accident (this was actually “tweeted” this weekend, in a touching get-well wish for Dick Cheney from someone from the “tolerant left”), but this won’t apply just to us hated conservatives. Insert the name of a relative of yours in that equation (or your own name). You will not be exempt from this just because you support Obamacare. No one will be exempt, except the truly elite — congress and Obama’s cronies. The rest of us will be subject to the decisions of unqualified, disinterested bureaucrats who will just look in their manual for specific codes that indicate acceptance criteria for nameless, faceless patients. They will have no involvement in the actual human patient, his or her circumstances, social status, need, want or any human consideration. Just a bunch of check boxes.
Welcome to the “fundamental transformation of America”, Obama style.
Socialized medicine? The fight for Baby Joseph.
Moe Maraachi and Baby Joseph
This is a story about baby Joseph Maraachi. He is a 13 month old Canadian boy who was born with a life threatening genetic disorder. He has been fighting for his life in a hospital in Ontario but the doctors have given him no chance to live so they want to remove his breathing tube so he can die. His parents are requesting that the doctors perform a tracheotomy so they can take him home to die. The hospital refused so the issue went to the courts and they ruled in the hospitals favor. Still…the parents refused to sign the consent to remove the breathing tube so they’re at a stand-off.
Here’s more of the story…
LONDON, Ontario, February 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One-year-old Joseph Maraachli of Windsor, Ontario will have his life support removed Monday at 10 am. after the Ontario Superior Court today rejected an appeal by the parents to bring him home where he can die under their care.
A leading anti-euthanasia advocate says the decision facilitates a system where doctors are authorized to force life and death decisions on patients, warning that this is, in fact, far worse than the “death panels” recently debated in the U.S. as part of the federal health care law.
“Monday at 10 am they will kill my baby,” Moe Maraachli, Joseph’s father, told LifeSiteNews shortly after the ruling. “There’s no more humanity. There’s no more chance. I’ve tried everything for him. No more appeals, nothing.”
“I asked them: why not send him to Windsor and let him die at home?” he continued. “They said they will give him injection, but I don’t want to.”
“I ask God, and maybe he breathe,” he added.
Joseph was taken to Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario in October where he was diagnosed with severe neurological issues. Doctors gave him no chance of recovery. Moe and his wife Sana have asked doctors to perform a tracheotomy so that they could take Joseph home, but the doctors refused, saying the procedure was too risky.
The Maraachlis’ daughter died from similar complications eight years ago, but in that case doctors performed a tracheotomy and she was able to die at home. Joseph’s parents want the same for him.
But in January, the Consent and Capacity Board of Ontario sided with the hospital, and a date for removing Joseph’s respirator was set. The family was able to hold it off by filing an appeal with the Superior Court.
Today, Superior Court Justice Helen Rady also sided with the hospital, saying that Joseph is in a permanent vegetative state with no brain stem reflex. She called it “a sad and difficult case,” according to the London Free Press, and ordered the hospital to allow the parents until Monday at 10 am. “to afford the family adequate time to say their goodbyes.”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, who has been communicating with the parents, emphasized that they aren’t pushing for extraordinary treatment, just asking to care for their dying child at home. “They’re arguing that the best way to do that is by doing a tracheotomy so the child can somewhat breathe on his own and care for him while he’s dying,” he explained.
“I don’t get it. There’s nothing here that I get. It makes no sense,” he said. “What is in this for the hospital and the doctor? Why would they bother doing this?”
“Is it that they want to simply say, we have control?” he asked. “If it’s about their control, then we’re in serious trouble. They now control when someone lives and when someone dies, and who makes those decisions, and how those decisions are made.”
Schadenberg said the court appears to be saying that hospitals and doctors can make decisions for patients whether they like it or not. “It’s worse than the death panel concept that’s being debated in the US. It really is, it’s much worse,” he said. “They’re saying ‘we will decide’, they’re not even going to converse with you. ‘We have the weight of the Court, we have the financial bearing of a massive government institution to be able to force this on you.’”
“That has serious repercussions, because you simply cannot trust the moral authority of the health care institution or the doctors,” he added.
“It’s the hospitals and the doctors once again usurping their power over the people,” he said. “That’s what’s happening. And they have significant power – they have the money and the courts behind them. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s leading pro-life organization, called the situation “appalling.” “I don’t understand it. Do doctors’ rights now trump parental rights?” he asked. “And what about the right of the child to die in the loving arms of his parents at home?”
Is this what is known as a “death panel”?
Why wouldn’t the hospital let the parents take him home to die?
Question: How can the White House and Democrats at large manage and dictate your healthcare if they can't come up with an effective strategy for handling an oil spill?
Here’s something we are wondering and thinking about today.
Dr. Utopia, our current president, spent much of 2008 high up on stages that put many of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s spectacles to shame.
He nanced, and he pranced, and he razzle-dazzled the same sorts of fools who, back when we were in grade school, were razzle-dazzled by Milli Vanilli — like Obama, these were charming, effeminate, foreign, light-skinned black men without substance (but knew how to put on a show in a big stadium).
We clearly remember “The Lightbringer” announcing the end to all human problems, effective immediately upon his inauguration. He was going to heal the world, he said, lower the oceans, repair the hole in the ozone, eliminate all diseases, and usher in a Golden Age of Hope and Change upon this Earth. The audacity of his personality and the superhuman capabilities of his own personal charisma would convince hurricanes to bedraggle us no more, and tornadoes to “chill out”.
The current First Lady, Mrs. Utopia, hectored non-believers, admonishing them that not only was she proud of her country for the first time now that her husband was winning elections on the national stage, but that soon he’d set about work “fixing your broken souls”.
Please.
Mary sure hasn’t been able to fix the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Miss Thang doesn’t even seem all that concerned about it, if he had time enough last night to yuck it up with Jay Leno in his tux, with Michelle squeezed into a red velvet sausage casing.
So, we wonder, with all the powers of the most powerful country to ever exist on this Earth, with all of the umpteen government departments and the entire reach of Washington — as Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military, including the greatest navy to ever sail the seas — why hasn’t the Lightbringer averted disaster and saved the Gulf coast states from the oil spill?
Obama said he could do anything.
He promised he had the leadership and the know-how to usher in a utopia of his own making.
Where are our unicorns?
Aren’t they good at soaking up spilled oil?
Better question: if Obama and Democrats can’t handle an oil spill — something that government agencies should have been prepared for since the Exxon Valdez spill in the late 80s — then how on Earth are these same slow-moving, myopic, delusional buffoons going to handle the myriad of unanticipated and unpredictable disasters that await in the government takeover of 1/16th of the economy.
If the Gulf states are waiting for Washington to decide what to do with a black pool of disaster headed towards shore any day, how are you going to feel waiting by the phone under a black could of uncertainty as an Obama-created Death Panel decides whether or not you’re going to get the cancer treatment you need when you get sick and Washington starts overruling doctors as it rations our healthcare?
Obama promised miracles.
Instead, he’s thrown a great many parties, had plenty of laughs, and his wife has scowled an awful lot — like, Guinness Book of Records-winning in terms of clocking in those scowls — but we’ve yet to see any miracles.
Considering how much Democrats are supposed to love the environment, and how effective and dynamic Obama is supposed to be as a leader, then we wonder how on Earth a disaster like this oil spill can be explained, in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change.
AND we also have to stop and think about whether or not the people behind this failure of basic competence and resource utilization can be trusted with managing the nation’s healthcare resources.
If Obama can’t stop an oil spill from spreading and killing everything in its path, should he and his death panels be trusted with treating your cancer and saving your life?
What think you?
AMERICA NEEDS SARAH PALIN MORE THAN EVER
Sarah Palin, from her base in the Arctic, has launched some new devastating red and green Christmas ninja throwing stars at the White House. May Santa bring her enormous bags full of these things for 2010 and beyond. Each one’s better than the one before it. America needs Sarah Palin, and it sure looks like she’s ready to step up and provide the leadership we need to take back this country and drive Liberals from Congress next year…and from the White House two years after that.
Here’s her latest on Facebook:
Midnight Votes, Backroom Deals, and a Death PanelLast weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Senator DeMint said:“This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law. I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates. I mean, we want to bind future congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses.”
In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?
The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:
“It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.”
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.
This health care bill is one of the most far-reaching and expensive expansions of the role of government into our lives. We’re talking about putting one-seventh of our economy under the government’s thumb. We’re also talking about something as intimate to our personal well-being as medical care.
This bill is so unpopular that people on the right and the left hate it. So why go through with it? The Senate is planning to vote on this on Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Though we will begin paying for this bill immediately, we will see no benefits for years. (That’s the trick that allowed the CBO to state that the bill won’t grow the deficit for the next ten years.)
The administration’s promises of transparency and bipartisanship have been broken one by one. This entire process has been defined by midnight votes on weekends, closed-door meetings with industry lobbyists, and payoffs to politicians willing to sell their principles for sweetheart deals. Is it any wonder that Americans are so disillusioned with their leaders in Washington?
This is about politics, not health care. Americans don’t want this bill. Americans don’t like this bill. Washington has stopped listening to us. But we’re paying attention, and 2010 is coming.
- Sarah Palin
