A Civil Libertarian Speaks Out Against Obama Care

Waiting for Obama Care

Nat Hentoff's credentials as a free speech advocate and civil libertarian are well established.

I am finally scared of a White House administration

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

Given Mr. Hentoff's history of plain speaking and "speaking truth to power", I don't think his "fear" is mere hyperbole. I think his fear is real!

No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama's eventual master health care plan. Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a "very difficult democratic conversation" about how "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care" costs.

This end-of-life consultation has been stripped from the Senate Finance Committee bill because of democracy-in-action town-hall outcries but remains in three House bills.

The biggest savings that could be realized in a government run program, would be to ration or deny care to those at the stage of life that typically costs the most in health care and actuarially speaking, will live comparatively shorter lives than anyone receiving comparable medical treatment. In a simple cost/benefit analysis, senior citizens end up on the ice floe!

Hentoff is concerned about "voluntary" end of life counseling that may be coercive in requiring that doctors "shall" recommend it. He quotes Charles Lane of the Washington Post:

"Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.

"This is where the real mischief could be done because most regulatory actions are effectuated beneath the public radar. It is thus essential, as just one example, that any end-of-life counseling provision in the final bill be specified to be purely voluntary … and that the counseling be required by law to be neutral as to outcome. Otherwise, even if the legislation doesn't push in a specific direction — for instance, THE GOVERNMENT REFUSING TREATMENT — the regulations could." (Emphasis added.)

Maybe the people who aren't scared just aren't paying close enough attention?

Cross Posted at Say Anything