The above title was on the cover of a National Review magazine a while back, and it has stuck in my mind as overly appropriate. Because euthanasia does creep, very quietly and behind the scenes. It isn't just for the National Socialists of Germany in the 1940s. It's not just for patients who are terminal and in pain. It's not just for the future when the "death panels" of Obamacare are fully implemented. It's here and it's now, and has been for a while.
As our cultural norms are "progressing" so also is our expectation of end of life care. There are plenty of "death with dignity" folks out there working to legalize euthanasia--even infant euthanasia, which is now legal in several European countries. And you don't have to have a terminal condition: 1% of all deaths in Belgium are now due to euthanasia. Voluntary suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and Montana. But laws are not necessary--euthanasia happens all the time in hospitals. One by one, "progressive" healthcare practitioners have been changing the landscape of medical treatment with end-of-life decision making. At least 30% of total healthcare dollars spent on a person during his lifetime are during his last year. So if you shorten the life by one year, you can save a whole lot of $. Liberals operate on that principle all the time. How do I know this? I've seen it.
I have worked in six different ICUs in three different states over 20 years, but the first place I worked was a Medical unit. This was the mid-80s, and it was just becoming commonplace for a physician to order "Do Not Resuscitate" status for patients who were very old and sick or who had a terminal illness. One physician infuriated us by admitting terminal, dying patients to the hospital but refusing to write DNRs. So we'd end up doing CPR on them when they died: a futile and violent nonsense.
But the culture changed, and end-of-life discussions and plans now commonly go along with terminal diagnoses, which is good. But in emergency situations there is often no opportunity to consult the patient about his wishes, and the family is guided by the physician. I noticed a direct correlation between the treatment decisions of doctors and nurses that I knew to be more liberal, and a haste in withdrawing or minimizing treatments for their elderly patients. One very liberal nurse (that I had many arguments with at 3 a.m. when things were quiet in the unit) even went so far as to say that "It's a waste of resources to admit old people to the ICU." Not "Old people shouldn't be admitted because it doesn't do them any good--poor outcomes and suffering--quality of life--etc." but "It's bad for society."
One of my co-workers was actually caught attempting to "euthanize" a patient by administering massive doses of IV morphine--this was in the news, and she did get in big trouble. Yes, the patient would have died anyway--probably within the next week. But it's a very short trip in the mind of a progressive from letting someone die, to helping someone die more quickly to save resources. And she was the most liberal of anyone I've ever worked with--she told me that her teenage daughter's form of rebellion was to stop having sex with her boyfriend and "find Jesus"--she was very disturbed about that. Just a window into her mind.
On one occasion (I can't give too many details because of confidentiality) I took care of an active older man (driving, golfing) who'd had a small heart attack and developed pneumonia and was put on a ventilator. He did great during the night and his chest X-ray looked better in the morning. I was shocked when I came back the next night to find that he was dead--they'd put him on a morphine drip and taken him off the ventilator and let him go. I'd stop breathing too if I had pneumonia (which I did a few years ago) and was put on a morphine drip! But his doctor was one of the liberal ones and had told his family that he would probably not recover--he'd only been in the ICU for 2 days--so they consented.
And patients are also quietly euthanized outside of the ICU. I took care of a young-ish woman who had brain damage from an accident, but who was stable and off all treatments. She had decent reflexes but would probably never recover much brain function. The doctor and family decided that she wouldn't want to live that way, so they stopped her tube feedings and she died of dehydration. This was a Terri Schiavo case that never made it to the Supreme Court, not even to the hospital's Ethics Committee--it was just done. And it's done all the time.
To be clear, I am not in favor of administering every treatment to every patient all the time--comfort, yes, life-sustaining drugs, no. But withholding food and liquids is murder in my mind. What usually happens in these cases is that before too long the patient contracts pneumonia or a UTI, then gets septic, and, without antibiotics, passes away. And that's OK in many cases where there clearly is no hope of a meaningful recovery. But it takes too long for many of my liberal colleagues, who are in such a hurry to have a tidy, inexpensive death.
And that takes us back to the main point here. When we have "socialized medicine" we are all pulling from the same bank account for our treatments. Rationing becomes the name of the game, since healthcare is an unlimited demand on a limited pool of resources. So if Patient A gets a treatment, Patient B will not get it, because the "powers that be" decide how many doses of each drug to purchase, how many salaries to pay, how many hospitals to build and equip, etc. and it will never be enough. So if you receive a diagnosis of cancer and think you'll probably not make the five year survivor mark, you may, in the depression of the first stages of post-diagnosis grief, make the "heroic" decision that it's simpler and more altruistic to die rather than to fight for your life. What a good socialist you are! Bring on the suicide cocktail!
Cultures are changed by many forces and incentives. But one undeniable one that is on our horizon is the pressure that "rationed medicine" puts on individuals and their life-or-death decisions. Euthanasia goes from unthinkable, to a repulsive option only to be used in a few selected circumstances, to an acceptable option for many circumstances, to the desired "final solution" to the problems of having an aging population and not enough money or personnel to care for them. Socialized medicine definitely weighs in on the euthanasia balance scale, tipping it toward death.
When I was a missionary/nurse in Peru we would avoid taking sick missionaries to the "free" (government) hospitals, because people would DIE while standing in the long lines there; we would use the for-profit hospitals instead. But I went to one once, and the level of grunge and despair shook me to my soul, and I remember thinking "Thank God we don't have socialized medicine in America." .......... :-(
So what the heck does this have to do with my starting point--Ken Cuccinelli? In my fantasy world it goes:
Elect Conservative Leaders at the State Level>
The Conservative State Legislatures call a Convention (following Article 5 of the Constitution) to Propose Amendments to Strip the Federal Government of much of it's Ill-Gotten Power>
The States Repeal the 17th Amendment and Roll Back the Powers of the "Federal" (National) Government, including Obamacare>
Sensible Legislature is Proposed to Reduce Healthcare Costs, mainly based on Deregulation and increasing Competition
I know it would be an uphill battle, but following the events of the last three years (Obamacare passed over the objections of the majority, Obamacare challenge defeated in the Supreme Court, attempt to defund Obamacare defeated in Congress) I don't see an alternative. A quote for you:
"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have." -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
Sunday, October 27, 2013
And If We Fail? The Future of Healthcare--Part 3
If nothing changes--if we continue down the road to a national consolidation of power--there will be many unforeseen changes to our country: God still has a plan for us, so the power-hungry won't have it all their way. But one thing I believe will happen like night following day is that within ten years or so we will have a "national" healthcare plan. Obamacare is flawed from the start–who knows–maybe that was intentional. So as soon as it is in full swing messing people up, they will cry for change. And the Statists will be there with a beautiful, simple, attractive "single payer" system of government healthcare. And we will love it.
At least the majority will love it, and that's all that matters in a democracy, right? Specifically, following the clear patterns of the Canadian and British healthcare plans, the majority of people in their 20s through 50s will be enamored of it--after a few years we won't know what we did without it. So easy! You just show your card when you go to the doctor or hospital and they take care of you. We also won't remember paying less than 50% of our income in taxes of one form or another (we're not that far away from that now) but at least we don't have to worry about paperwork or changing policies with changing jobs.
So about 75% of us will be happy with it. And who won't? Those who actually use the services to a significant extent--the old and the ill--the weakest members of society. Lest you think I'm just shooting from the hip here, I'll provide you with some hard data and some sad stories.
Currently in the U.S.A. our organ transplantation rates are TWICE those of Europe. Why is that significant? Organ transplant is something that is very expensive to do, and the person is frequently not able to return to an active, productive life but always has some limitations including being on costly medicine for the rest of her life. From a Social Darwinist viewpoint (like is prominent in atheistic Europe), it's not good for society: we can't spend a lot of our communal resources (money) on any one person, especially if that person is not able to re-enter the workforce. So we ration. Instead of calling it "socialized medicine" we should call it "rationed medicine" because that is what happens in every country that it is tried in. Organ transplants are already rationed by the nature of them, since there are only so many spare organs to go around. So to have this procedure be twice as common in the US is a solid indicator of the fact that we value human life in this country and try to preserve it at least twice as much as folks across the pond.
My friend Cheri Thiriot lived in England for 20+ years, and she's not happy to see Obamacare being rolled out (who cares about how rocky the rollout is--it's coming). She said that in Britain if you get cancer and try to get treated, you may be told "Sorry, the drug that you need is not available in this district--our quota has been used up." Rationing! Despite the propaganda-fest at the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympics (I thought it was so creepy--didn't you?) Britains don't trust the NHS.
"A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as 'a lottery.' A new study this year by GP magazine...found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care."
And Canada is no better: it is common to wait a year for a knee replacement. My brother-in-law is married to a Canadian, and when we went up to Toronto for the wedding we chatted with her grandmother . She told us that her son was diagnosed with Marfan's syndrome after his heart stopped one day and he was resuscitated. After being stabilized he was SENT HOME--there was no availability for a date with the cardiac surgeon for the next six months. So he waited, knowing each moment that his heart could stop again and next time he might not be so lucky. In the US he'd have been in the OR by the next day!
And what about here? In the US there are laws in place that mandate that people can get treatment for medical emergencies regardless of ability to pay–yes, they’ll bill you later and try to get you on Medicaid, etc. but that can’t hold up your ability to access treatment. My cousin is an anesthesiologist in a Texas hospital close to the border of Mexico. He says that every day the ER is packed with Mexicans who have crossed illegally to try to obtain medical care. So they treat them, but it is such an overwhelming problem that the treatment is often along the lines of "Oh, your arm is off? Here’s a band-aid." There are certainly no heart valve replacements (like the Canadian waited six months for) or long-term dialysis. Maybe they’ll take out an appendix, or stitch you up a bit, or give you some pills. And send you on your way. This is what rationing looks like here–insufficient funds or will to treat all the demand, so you just pretend to treat it. And that is very easy to do in medicine, since few people have a good grasp on pathophysiology, pharmacology, and all their treatment options (the internet is helping with that). More on this in Part 4 "The Creeping Culture of Euthanasia"
At least the majority will love it, and that's all that matters in a democracy, right? Specifically, following the clear patterns of the Canadian and British healthcare plans, the majority of people in their 20s through 50s will be enamored of it--after a few years we won't know what we did without it. So easy! You just show your card when you go to the doctor or hospital and they take care of you. We also won't remember paying less than 50% of our income in taxes of one form or another (we're not that far away from that now) but at least we don't have to worry about paperwork or changing policies with changing jobs.
So about 75% of us will be happy with it. And who won't? Those who actually use the services to a significant extent--the old and the ill--the weakest members of society. Lest you think I'm just shooting from the hip here, I'll provide you with some hard data and some sad stories.
Currently in the U.S.A. our organ transplantation rates are TWICE those of Europe. Why is that significant? Organ transplant is something that is very expensive to do, and the person is frequently not able to return to an active, productive life but always has some limitations including being on costly medicine for the rest of her life. From a Social Darwinist viewpoint (like is prominent in atheistic Europe), it's not good for society: we can't spend a lot of our communal resources (money) on any one person, especially if that person is not able to re-enter the workforce. So we ration. Instead of calling it "socialized medicine" we should call it "rationed medicine" because that is what happens in every country that it is tried in. Organ transplants are already rationed by the nature of them, since there are only so many spare organs to go around. So to have this procedure be twice as common in the US is a solid indicator of the fact that we value human life in this country and try to preserve it at least twice as much as folks across the pond.
My friend Cheri Thiriot lived in England for 20+ years, and she's not happy to see Obamacare being rolled out (who cares about how rocky the rollout is--it's coming). She said that in Britain if you get cancer and try to get treated, you may be told "Sorry, the drug that you need is not available in this district--our quota has been used up." Rationing! Despite the propaganda-fest at the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympics (I thought it was so creepy--didn't you?) Britains don't trust the NHS.
"A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as 'a lottery.' A new study this year by GP magazine...found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care."
And Canada is no better: it is common to wait a year for a knee replacement. My brother-in-law is married to a Canadian, and when we went up to Toronto for the wedding we chatted with her grandmother . She told us that her son was diagnosed with Marfan's syndrome after his heart stopped one day and he was resuscitated. After being stabilized he was SENT HOME--there was no availability for a date with the cardiac surgeon for the next six months. So he waited, knowing each moment that his heart could stop again and next time he might not be so lucky. In the US he'd have been in the OR by the next day!
And what about here? In the US there are laws in place that mandate that people can get treatment for medical emergencies regardless of ability to pay–yes, they’ll bill you later and try to get you on Medicaid, etc. but that can’t hold up your ability to access treatment. My cousin is an anesthesiologist in a Texas hospital close to the border of Mexico. He says that every day the ER is packed with Mexicans who have crossed illegally to try to obtain medical care. So they treat them, but it is such an overwhelming problem that the treatment is often along the lines of "Oh, your arm is off? Here’s a band-aid." There are certainly no heart valve replacements (like the Canadian waited six months for) or long-term dialysis. Maybe they’ll take out an appendix, or stitch you up a bit, or give you some pills. And send you on your way. This is what rationing looks like here–insufficient funds or will to treat all the demand, so you just pretend to treat it. And that is very easy to do in medicine, since few people have a good grasp on pathophysiology, pharmacology, and all their treatment options (the internet is helping with that). More on this in Part 4 "The Creeping Culture of Euthanasia"
Saturday, October 26, 2013
100 Years of the 17th Amendment--is ENOUGH!--Part 2
The Progressive Era gave us, in 1913, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which calls for the direct election of U.S. Senators by the people of each state. No big deal right? More democracy is a good thing, right? But this single piece of legislature has altered the political landscape so much that after 100 years the Founders wouldn't recognize this as the system they set up, and Obamacare has put the nails in the coffin of the Constitution.
At the Constitutional Convention there was lots of debate regarding how the bodies of Congress were going to be chosen. The Virginia Plan, created by James Madison, called for a large "first" House directly elected by the people, and a smaller "second" house (Senate) elected by the first. The governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph stated that the second house "ought to be much smaller than that of the first; so small as to be exempt from the passionate proceedings to which numerous assemblies are liable...(secure from) the turbulence and follies of democracy." These men knew that if democracy (the House) were to have no balanced counterpart in the Senate, the various states would gradually lose power to an encroaching national entity. In truth, we no longer have a "federal government" in which the states have significant power, but a national one, and that was exactly what the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention feared.
But why does that matter today? Surely it's OK if each state has the same laws--better even, since it makes it easier to move around and do business in the USA? What has happened since 1913 is that the Senators have become, not agents and representatives of their states, but representatives of their political party. So any special interest need only woo (read $$$) one party, and they have the vote of not only all the Congressmen of that party but all the Senators. THIS was how we got Obamacare and many many other destructive programs. A Senate elected by their own state legislatures, as the original Constitution had set forth, would be much harder to sway to a position that would centralize power in Washington.
Back to the point about democracy: Bryan Caplan, Paul's Econ professor at GMU, wrote a book called The Myth of the Rational Voter (video of him discussing it here), which dismantles the idea that democracies choose good policies. In fact, democracies always tend toward socialism--this has been known for a long time. And socialism comes armed with a flood of busybodies telling you how to live your life. And these are not just suggestions, being backed up by the police power of the State. Thus, Statists love democracy.
The hand-wringing surrounding the potential repeal of the 17th Amendment goes like this: "The Tea Party wants to strip from voters the power to elect their own Senators!" Actually, each person has a much greater chance of influencing an election in their own district as they choose state legislators. If you elect legislators that are in line with your own views of the proper role of government, then they can represent you as the debates surrounding the choice of Senators are on the table. And those Senators would really listen to their state constituency, instead of just voting along party lines.
Why does this matter? If we don't repeal Obamacare quickly the pain of extraction will be that much greater. More on that in Part 3--the only part I have any real specialized knowledge in because of my 20 years as a Critical Care nurse--why socialized medicine is a disaster in every country it is tried in.
At the Constitutional Convention there was lots of debate regarding how the bodies of Congress were going to be chosen. The Virginia Plan, created by James Madison, called for a large "first" House directly elected by the people, and a smaller "second" house (Senate) elected by the first. The governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph stated that the second house "ought to be much smaller than that of the first; so small as to be exempt from the passionate proceedings to which numerous assemblies are liable...(secure from) the turbulence and follies of democracy." These men knew that if democracy (the House) were to have no balanced counterpart in the Senate, the various states would gradually lose power to an encroaching national entity. In truth, we no longer have a "federal government" in which the states have significant power, but a national one, and that was exactly what the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention feared.
But why does that matter today? Surely it's OK if each state has the same laws--better even, since it makes it easier to move around and do business in the USA? What has happened since 1913 is that the Senators have become, not agents and representatives of their states, but representatives of their political party. So any special interest need only woo (read $$$) one party, and they have the vote of not only all the Congressmen of that party but all the Senators. THIS was how we got Obamacare and many many other destructive programs. A Senate elected by their own state legislatures, as the original Constitution had set forth, would be much harder to sway to a position that would centralize power in Washington.
Back to the point about democracy: Bryan Caplan, Paul's Econ professor at GMU, wrote a book called The Myth of the Rational Voter (video of him discussing it here), which dismantles the idea that democracies choose good policies. In fact, democracies always tend toward socialism--this has been known for a long time. And socialism comes armed with a flood of busybodies telling you how to live your life. And these are not just suggestions, being backed up by the police power of the State. Thus, Statists love democracy.
The hand-wringing surrounding the potential repeal of the 17th Amendment goes like this: "The Tea Party wants to strip from voters the power to elect their own Senators!" Actually, each person has a much greater chance of influencing an election in their own district as they choose state legislators. If you elect legislators that are in line with your own views of the proper role of government, then they can represent you as the debates surrounding the choice of Senators are on the table. And those Senators would really listen to their state constituency, instead of just voting along party lines.
Why does this matter? If we don't repeal Obamacare quickly the pain of extraction will be that much greater. More on that in Part 3--the only part I have any real specialized knowledge in because of my 20 years as a Critical Care nurse--why socialized medicine is a disaster in every country it is tried in.
Why Virginians Must Elect Ken Cuccinelli--Part 1
The Virginia gubernatorial election is a week and a half away, and the liberal media is telling us that it's all over for Ken--the polls show him down 7 to 10 points. His campaign has been outspent 2 to 1 by Terry McAuliffe; no surprise there, since $ has been McAuliffe's strong suit for years as a political fundraiser and DNC chairman under Bill Clinton.
This cannot happen. We cannot elect Clinton's lapdog who has been involved in all kinds of shadiness over the years. Ken Cuccinelli has been a principled leader as a State Senator and Attorney General, fighting for things I and other Mormons believe in: life, family and freedom.
I have been gloomy for a while now about the future of this country, as the federal government continues to ingest larger and larger chunks of American property (command and control of land, money, and everything down to what light bulbs you can use), American jobs, and American decision-making. Obamacare represents a take-over of 1/5th of the American economy, and that's not the worst of it (see Part 3 on the future of healthcare--coming soon).
But there is still a "chance and hope of escaping (that) fate" (Dickens' Christmas Carol): the federal government can be rolled back if we get enough freedom-loving leaders in positions of power at the state level. I have been reading the new book by Mark Levin (I hate his personal attacks, but I love his political wisdom) The Liberty Amendments. In it he calls for a Constitutional Convention following Article 5 of the Constitution: "...on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution." The book addresses the history of the Constitution--why the various parts were put into place and how they have been mangled in the interim. It also discusses the history of the efforts to amend the Constitution through various means. This would be an uphill battle, but now is the time to engage in it--so many people are angry about Obamacare that there is some momentum that way. And Ken is just the man to take it on--he's the first of several state Attorneys General who sued the federal government over the individual mandate to buy health insurance--and were told by a Supreme Court (stacked immorally by Obama with Obamacare-involved Elena Kagan) that the states were essentially just arms of the federal government now. Which we'll get to next in "100 Years of the 17th Amendment."
This cannot happen. We cannot elect Clinton's lapdog who has been involved in all kinds of shadiness over the years. Ken Cuccinelli has been a principled leader as a State Senator and Attorney General, fighting for things I and other Mormons believe in: life, family and freedom.
I have been gloomy for a while now about the future of this country, as the federal government continues to ingest larger and larger chunks of American property (command and control of land, money, and everything down to what light bulbs you can use), American jobs, and American decision-making. Obamacare represents a take-over of 1/5th of the American economy, and that's not the worst of it (see Part 3 on the future of healthcare--coming soon).
But there is still a "chance and hope of escaping (that) fate" (Dickens' Christmas Carol): the federal government can be rolled back if we get enough freedom-loving leaders in positions of power at the state level. I have been reading the new book by Mark Levin (I hate his personal attacks, but I love his political wisdom) The Liberty Amendments. In it he calls for a Constitutional Convention following Article 5 of the Constitution: "...on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution." The book addresses the history of the Constitution--why the various parts were put into place and how they have been mangled in the interim. It also discusses the history of the efforts to amend the Constitution through various means. This would be an uphill battle, but now is the time to engage in it--so many people are angry about Obamacare that there is some momentum that way. And Ken is just the man to take it on--he's the first of several state Attorneys General who sued the federal government over the individual mandate to buy health insurance--and were told by a Supreme Court (stacked immorally by Obama with Obamacare-involved Elena Kagan) that the states were essentially just arms of the federal government now. Which we'll get to next in "100 Years of the 17th Amendment."
Resurrection!
This blog was created when I was the Relief Society President of the Gainesville ward, and we had an ongoing book club that focused on reading books on history, politics, and economics. I "needed" a place to write some observations and thoughts about the current state of the country, so this works.
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