(CLICK HERE if you missed part one of this article)

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (Photo: newsinfo.iu.edu)

Our health care system is irretrievably broken. It’s been said that in a country where 45 million or more need but go without health insurance, that is tantamount to human rights violations on a massive scale. Those who will die soon and cannot function without extensive medical care or those at any age who demand intensive care in order to be able to get up and move away from their hospital beds eat up a tremendous amount of money.

It is understandable that they would want to fight for whatever the system would give them, and their families would want the same. However, if a youngster in an animal family is less able to hunt to run to escape predators or hunt for food, does the mother make the whole brood stop in order to save the one? No. That one gets left behind so that the many can survive. Do educated people think this means that nature is cruel and animals need sensitivity training? Is nature wrong? Absolutely not. And from a human perspective, the needs of the few should not prevent 45.7 people in need from obtaining public health care.

The old method

Traditionally, doctors felt they could achieve social justice one patient at a time. However, America’s current circumstances had not been foreseen. It’s time for a paradigm shift. Emanuel spoke out in the Hastings Center Report that medical care “should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Sounds draconian, and it is draconian. But serious decisions have to be made. In order for a democracy to function properly, we need educated, participating citizens. If people are uneducated and are either not willing or unable to participate, they should not reap the lions’ share of benefits provided by taxpayer dollars.

McCaughey completely misses out on that last all-important point when she says that Emanuel is suggesting that we “don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.” He is, but you are ignoring the larger context. Your portrayal is hence irresponsible to thinking readers, Ms. McCaughey.

Here come the cuts

The current health care bill calls for $100 to $500 billion to be cut from Medicare over the next 10 years (depending upon the source consulted). Since the war hawks will not stand for defense spending to be cut and too many uneducated “citizens” refuse to accept tax increases but want the world on a string anyway, where’s the money going to come from for general universal healthcare and prevention? Medicare is a good place to cut, or at least the way it is structured should be changed so that artificially prolonging life does not rob those in need of care in order to remain productive citizens. That’s what Dr. Emanuel thinks, and so does Dr. David Blumenthal.

Blumenthal argues that it is “debatable” in most cases whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. What do you want, America: get it fast like an order of fries, but the cost is too high and the quality of the care is empty calories? Obamacare aims to combat the cost and quality issues. As HealthCareReform.gov puts it, the president wants to control rising costs, guarantee doctor choice and assure high-quality care “for all Americans.” You won’t be excluded, but there will have to be limits. No more dangerous excursions like the out-of-control spending bus that is Medicare. Hospitals that practice upcoding will have to be held responsible.

Obamacare’s promise

• Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
• Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
• Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
• Invest in prevention and wellness
• Improve patient safety and quality of care
• Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
• Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
• End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

Doctors and hospitals

Do they need to do what they’re told? Clearly the idea of the government being able to tell doctors what level of care they can provide patients rankles many. But what if the government team itself is populated by doctors? And considering how often hospitals intentionally over bill Medicare programs, might it not be time to start cracking down on corruption in the places the general public hasn’t been pointing fingers? Perhaps Rick Scott and his hospital group’s $1.7 billion fine for cheating taxpayers (which the company copped to) should be a sign to the people that medical administrators and the doctors who work for them may not be very innocent. The reckless flow of money has to stop or America will go down in flames in a few more generations.

That’s what Obama is fighting against: the death of the American empire

McCaughey considers these to be “dangerous views.” But I say its dangerous for things to remain as they are. The overall health of the nation will continue to decline for as long as massive amounts of money are funneled out of Medicare due to cheating hospital executives and the artificial prolonging of life when clearly no healthy life is possible outside of the safety net of intensive medical care. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, said one Vulcan who was frequently reminded by a bellicose medical officer that he wasn’t human. I say that keeping universal health care with a public option away from the masses who cannot afford insurance but are otherwise productive citizens… is inhuman.

Legislators who would block a taxpayer’s access to payday loans and cash advances are also taking part in an inhuman act: stifling individual liberty and a person’s ability to decide for themselves. Apply here.

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(a dissenting voice, for comic relief)

Rahm and Ezekiel Emanuel (Photo: exposeobama.com)

The battle over health care reform is making monkeys out of people on both sides of the political fence. There are thugs who make it their business to scream, bluster and whine in the most bellicose way possible so that people interested in intelligent debate are drowned out. There are others (even those in support of change) who resort to physical violence in order to make sure that opposing ideas are suppressed. There is no debate here; there is no practice of democracy. It does not embrace the ideals that America was founded upon.

I am not in the minority of Americans when I say that America should welcome change in the health care system; however, the minority of belligerents who scream at town hall meetings just happen to be the squeaky wheels. And you know what they say about squeaky wheels. Perhaps they’ll drown in the grease. Or at least use payday loans and cash advances to buy a boat to float above the muck.

Yes, it’s time to get tough

I will pay higher taxes if it means a public option for healthcare. I will also pay higher taxes to cover college education the way Scandinavian countries do it, but that’s another story for another time. The point I would impress upon your minds here is that the current system isn’t working, and little changes here or there won’t bridge the massive divide. Difficult changes must be made.

Betsy McCaughey writes in an op-ed piece for the New York Post entitled “Deadly Doctors: O Advisers Want to Ration Care” that the decisions about who will receive care would be placed “in the hands of presidential appointees” under Obamacare. They would be in charge of determining what individual plans cover, what your doctor can decide and what seniors will get from Medicare.

Medicare… part of the problem?

The last point regarding Medicare seems to have riled the most people. I’ll discuss McCaughey’s position on that more in a moment, but I have to say that America is facing a real problem. The Baby Boomer generation is living longer because of advances in health care. We now have more people aged 55 and up than ever before in the history of this nation, and that number only increases. If we aren’t already there, the time will come soon when there are more over-55s in America than there are those under 30 or 35. In some cases, it’s true that wisdom comes with age, but it’s also true that from an evolutionary standpoint, the glut of those middle-aged and older create a possible ticking time bomb.

Time bomb?

Clearly, it is a biological imperative that if a species is to survive, it must reproduce. People with a lessened ability to perform sexually – generally those of age – decrease the odds that the human species will survive. Furthermore, for those women who do become pregnant over the age of 40, the known risk of children being born with birth defects also increases. For instance, take a look here and you’ll notice an interesting chart that illustrates just how much the odds of Downs Syndrome or chromosomal abnormality increase the older the birth mother is. And offspring who are born with such birth defects require more resources from either the individual or the state (frequently the latter, in terms of disability money). Thus, a system is created where it is much more difficult for the biologically vigorous to ensure the biodiversity of the human race.

Yes, the aged and those with birth defects are people. Yes, they deserve to live with dignity. Yet are they a drain on a system that is overtaxed unless serious change is enacted? Yes.

Hippocratic Oath? Outdated.

McCaughey expresses fear that people like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother)  and Dr. David Blumenthal are going to slay old people and those with mental illness or birth defects while they sleep. This is ridiculous, of course. These two key health advisers for the Obama administration recognize that we aren’t going to get through health care reform without getting our hair mussed, but they aren’t Nazi murderers the way the uneducated would have you believe. Emanuel put it succinctly when he told Health Affairs that

Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely “lipstick” cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change…

Savings on health care, writes Emanuel in the AMA Journal, will require that doctors begin to view their patients in a different light. That Hippocratic Oath has been taken “too seriously, as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.”

CLICK HERE for a taste of real social justice. And if you need payday loans or cash advances, apply here.

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