Death Panels Part II – a personal story

This is personal because this is my blog and because I can speak on this topic based on my own experience.

In October, my elderly mother was admitted to the hospital from her assisted living facility. I had been up to see her a couple days in a row and noted that she was not herself – mentally or physically. On the second day, she was most definitely  “out of it.”  My mom’s arms and abdomen were really edematous (swollen) and she was mentally out to lunch. So I called an ambulance.

After 2 days with no improvement, in fact she was worse, they did a CT scan and determined she had a small bowel obstruction. I am her medical POA (power of attorney) and she was, I thought, lucid enough to know and make the decisions regarding her care. At one point she said to me “I think I’m strong enough for this surgery, don’t you?”

I agreed.

They did surgery and she spent a couple days in ICU. By the time she was released to a med-surg floor, she was awake and alert.

She could not remember anything that had occurred or that we had spoken about since the night before her admission from assisted living. She did not know why she even had an 6 inch abdominal incision. She did not remember our discussions about the surgery or her surgeon’s visits to her room before and after the operation.

Are you following where I’m going with this in regard to death panels and end of life discussions with physicians and patients?

Now, where are the liberals who are so quick to defend Obama and defame my critical thinking skills in my previous posts?

Where are they defending him and his medical czars?

They can’t argue death panels and non-elected, appointed positions in the White House. They can only come here and accuse me of “drinking the Fox News Channel Kool-aid.”

Did the democrats really believe that they could slip this by over Christmas and no one would be the wiser? None of us would be aware of what they were doing? Their arrogance is mind-numbing.

What fools! They have to know that the clock is running and we have just about had enough of them. These corrupt politicians will be rooted out with every single election cycle if it takes us a generation to do so.

The return of Death Panels

“Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose.” Dr. Peter Singer

As the grandmother of a new baby, this kind of statement makes me physically ill.

If you do nothing else today, please, please, please read this article at the American Spectator.

None of this is news to us, who read and keep up on current events. We are all aware of the regulation that was put forth over Christmas and reported in the NYT on Christmas day.  It’s disgusting how the Obama regime is trying to make an end run around not only Congress but the American people.

Jeffery Lord at the American Spectator puts it all in order for the reader to understand, and adds some interesting twists and comments along the way.

ObamaCare picking our doctor’s pockets of life saving treatments and technology

When my tumor (post and photo below this one) was first found, I discussed the use of the CyberKnife with a radiological oncologist (dontcha love these job titles?) and it was decided that it’s use or any other radiation therapy should be left in his pocket as a last resort treatment.  (I am lucky that this machine is available in Las Vegas.) Instead, I went on chemo therapy for 18 months, with no favorable results.

Now with ObamaCare, the government will pick the pockets of my doctors and the CyberKnife will not be available to me when and if it’s use would possibly be life saving.

Please read on:

This from Warner Todd Huston/BigGovernment.com

ObamaCare Will Kill Medical Technology

In 2008 Patrick Swayze was treated with an advanced medical tool called a “CyberKnife.” It helped add months to his life as he tried to beat the cancer that was consuming him. But, Swayze wasn’t the only American with the good fortune to have this highly advanced medical technology available to him. In fact, there are 100 such machines across the United States. From California, to Minnesota, to Illinois and Washington D.C. Americans currently have the luxury of these wonderful new devices.

Sadly, Britons are not so lucky. There are two CyberKnife machines in the Britain, but they aren’t going to do anyone in the country’s socialist healthcare system any good because despite how successful these machines are British authorities won’t allow them to be used on patients.

Despite that the Mount Vernon cancer hospital in London is part of the National Health Services, despite that they spent £3m to purchase the machine, and quite despite the praise the machines receive in the U.S. and throughout the world, British NHS authorities won’t let NHS doctors use the machine on their patients.

Sadly, these heartless, uncaring socialist healthcare officials are uninterested in helping the estimated 10,000 British patients a year that could benefit from use of the CyberKnife. And why is this? Why, it’s because the treatments are expensive, of course.

You see money is far, far more important to Britain’s socialist healthcare system then patients.

As I said above, the U.S. is lucky to have many of these machines on our shores. In fact we have 100 of the 150 machines world-wide, all available for anyone that needs them. But this happy situation will not survive the implementation of America’s own socialist healthcare system when it institutes its rationing rules as the English have done. Sooner rather than later advanced tools like the CyberKnife will be eschewed as too expensive by Obamacre bean counters and such advanced technology will dwindle and wither away despite the lives it could save.

This is what is meant when it is said that Obamacare features death panels. After all, a socialist healthcare system that won’t pay for advanced technology because it’s just too darn expensive — just as is happening right now in England — is a defacto death panel.

And don’t imagine that this is just hyperbole. The same situation exists in nearly every country that has the kind of socialist healthcare that Barack Obama wants to force on the U.S.A. That’s why so many foreigners come to the U.S. for their advanced treatments. After all, one has to understand that there is a reason that America has 100 of the 150 machines that exist in the world today.

It is true that Obamacare does not provide for death panels in its legislation. But it doesn’t have to when its price control measures and rationing will eliminate the sort of life saving tools that technology will bring us, technology that Obamacare will destroy.

In celebration of the coming New Health Care

This is worth hearing again. Robert Reich at Berkley, “We’re going to let you die”:

The applause from these college students just kills me… doesn’t it you? Applauding for the death of their parents and grandparents. What a GEM!