Posted by
Saltwater on Friday, July 24, 2009 1:25:08 PM
I posted the essay So, America, What Is Next? barely a month after Barack Obama took office. In it, I offered a prediction he would oversee some type of Logan's Run play to whack old people in order to save money. I concluded that essay with the sincere hope that I was incorrect in my assessment. Sadly, I was all too correct.
The House of Representatives, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is currently working on H.R. 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” [PDF]. This is a monster bill over 1000 pages long and growing. The “Obamacare” bill also has a price tag to match, costing about $1 Billion a page, but that is the least of its problems. Something that big is sure to hide all sorts of nasty surprises within the mountain of paper.
There is a real doozy buried about a half-trillion dollars worth into it. Starting about page 424, Section 1233 “ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION” is Obama’s answer to rising costs for the elderly, very ill, or critically injured using government sponsored health care.
Section 1233 amends the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395x) regarding Medicare recipients. It mandates that healthcare workers provide “end-of-life” counseling for all Medicare patients at a minimum of every five years, less if their health changes. Basically, Section 1233 is ordering doctors to encourage the old and infirmed to hurry up and die.
There is even a part describing the preferred method for culling those annoying patients who refuse to cooperatively expire:
‘‘(B) The level of treatment indicated under subparagraph (A)(ii) may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all or specified interventions. Such indicated levels of treatment may include indications respecting, among other items… (iv) the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.’’
There it is. When 70-year-old Aunt Edna falls and breaks her hip, yet has the temerity to continue clinging to life, Aunt Edna gets the Terri Schiavo treatment courtesy of the U.S. Government.
Write your Representatives and Senators today. Express your outrage at the entire health care takeover plan, but especially the heinous Section 1233. If not for your own sake, then do it for Aunt Edna.
Dennis P. O’Neil