Comments on: “I, too, had caught myself wishing that she would die.”

By: john

john — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:20:07 +0000

we need a posting on facebook of all of the proud congress folks that vote for this health care debocale so that we can have them join the ranks of the unemployed. need folks in congress that truely work for the people and not for there own best interests. hard times require hard decisions. the current healthcare bill is too flawed to be passed. can we really expect congress to fix the parts they got wrong in their rush for something is better than nothig bill? just remember the problems that need fixing in social security and medicare that they are all side stepping. can we really afford to wait for congress to fix it? congress has got to get this right NOW not later. send them back to do the job that they were elected to do. if they cant get it right lets find some folks that can. There is no excuse for a congress with ratings as low as these jokers have. what it should be telling the american voters is that we need to wake up and overhaul the leadership that is currently guiding this country. Obama is mighty anxious to make these wonderful congress folks look bad, I think maybe he needs to remember he is the big cheese here it is his job to make sure we get good legislation, i ask him where is his leadership in all of this ? if its wrong send them back to get it right, do not push thru something that is so flawed that they really dont want to vote on it. push the reset button. i guess what i am saying is that we need to remember that ultimately Obama is the one that is going to have to take full responsability for how this turns out because its under his leadership that we are getting a flawed law.

By: Eric Branch

Eric Branch — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:13:54 +0000

I’ve read Rand,,unfortunately the world you describe where, In the old days, we used to celebrate if somebody had a baby, we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills, if he happened to be hard-pressed for the moment.” No longer exists,if it ever did in anything but the idealised world of novels.No one cares for anyone that isn’t part of their class,creed or religion in the here and now.This world is the ultimate triumph of individualism, each to their own and devil take the hinmdmost.

By: wes

wes — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:19:33 +0000

obama holds a grudge against american doctors and insurance companies and cigaret companies because his mom died of lung cancer

it is a personal grudge

ironicaly ayn rand died of lung cancer too – she was a puffer

so is obama

By: Colin Fraizer

Colin Fraizer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:49:31 +0000

I hope we don’t have to recite our medical needs in person to Ivy Starnes. Her fishy eyes freak me out!

Sadly, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between Atlas Shrugged and the newspapers.

Keep up the good work!

Best regards,
–Colin

By: John W. Beason, DDS

John W. Beason, DDS — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:44:39 +0000

During the 1960’s, when the delivery of medical care had almost no coercive government intrusion, my father had two major surgeries in the space of three years. Through his employer, he had what was called a Major Medical policy from Blue Cross & Blue Shield. I never heard him squawk about the cost. He received high quality care and returned home and to work in a matter of weeks. My mother had a similar surgical experience in 1959. She nearly died from a hospital-generated infection. A specialist in treating such infections visited her on a consult and saved her life with another surgery and appropriate antibiotics. Without the government meddling, people had the freedom to act on their own behalf. This will not be the case with more government coercion, i.e. at the point of a bayonet. The right to act on your own behalf will cease.

Government legislation for coerced medical care first surfaced in the early 1960’s as the proposed widespread intrusion under the King-Anderson Bill. Many physicians opposed this intrusion. One brave physician in particular, Dr. J. Bruce Hendrickson proposed a strike by New Jersey physicians by refusing to accept any coerced government money. Instead he offered what all well-meaning rational physicians offered. If the patient could not afford the medical care then payment could be reduced or the doctor could voluntarily donate the services. Many physicians engaged in this practice because free men are more likely to be magnanimous. Harry S. Truman, who first proposed the idea of government-coerced medical care, when asked what he thought of the potential physician strike in New Jersey on May 10, 1962, in the NYT responded in this way: “I think that they should be hit over the head with a club.” This represents the ugly face of medical care offered at the point of a bayonet, or in Truman’s case, a club.

Today, Truman’s heirs will offer us one payer and hence one provider medical care or Livestock Medical care to declare us equal with the animals. It is no accident that Peter Singer, bio-ethicist, and animalist (someone who thinks animals & humans have equal moral standing), popped his head out of his burrow in the Ivy League, after conferring with his team of badgers to snarl in favor of healthcare rationing.

Animalists believe in the moral equality of humans and animals. The present occupant in the White House, given Singer’s moral sanction, will offer no attempts at rational persuasion. Reason according to the Animalists is an irrelevant characteristic. Instead, we will get the same quality of meidcal care as livestock–down on all fours and collars around our collective necks. Perhaps this represents a more efficient way to deliver medications or maybe that bayonet. If you are a favorite, in the now politicized medical care by bayonet, and your position in the livestock herd improves you become a pet and receive favored care. If you cause trouble, your status drops to pest with all the consequences that will follow from that designation.

The proposed programs represent an attempt by the Congress and the current occupant in the White House, to experiment on the total American patient population without informed consent. The CDC, under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration initiated such research, which produced such atrocities as the Tuskegee Institute syphilis study on black adults. In the 1940’s the remedy for this disease consisted of a penicillin injection, which physicians participating in this study denied to the patients, rationalizing that penicillin was an unproven remedy. Sounds like a rationalization the current crowd might use to “cut costs.” The infamy of that led to legislation, producing such laws as in the 45 CFR 46

§ 46.116 General requirements for informed consent. Except as provided elsewhere in this policy, no investigator may involve a human being as a subject in research covered by this policy unless the investigator has obtained the legally effective informed consent of the subject or the subject’s legally authorized representative. An investigator shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence. The information that is given to the subject or the representative shall be in language understandable to the subject or the representative. No informed consent, whether oral or written, may include any exculpatory language through which the subject or the representative is made to waive or appear to waive any of the subject’s legal rights, or releases or appears to release the investigator, the sponsor, the institution or its agents from liability for negligence.
Since the Congress has loudly proclaimed with arrogance not to have read their own proposed legislation, how can they give us informed consent on this critical attempt at experimentation?

By: Sandra

Sandra — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:40:42 +0000

Please refer to me anonymously should you comment publicly on this. In Australia the Medicare Levy – currently 1% of taxable income – is paid by all taxpayers (i.e. producers). (It’s not that simple though – see the following website for some idea of the complexity of the scheme http://www.iselect.com.au/private-health-insurance/info/tax/medicare-levy-surcharge/.) I wonder if a ‘Death Panel’ would take into account the money contributed over a person’s working lifetime in their decision making?

By: Randy Ayn

Randy Ayn — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:41:29 +0000

I had forgotten that passage. Thanks for reminding me.

By: A 52-Year Old Glimpse At the Near Future — The New Clarion

A 52-Year Old Glimpse At the Near Future — The New Clarion — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:39:25 +0000

[...] Tom Bowden posts a passage from Atlas Shrugged that I had forgotten about. As Mr. Bowden sets it up, “one of the characters recalls what happened after his company medical plan started allocating medical care on the basis of collective need:” “In the old days, we used to celebrate if somebody had a baby, we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills, if he happened to be hard-pressed for the moment. Now, if a baby was born, we didn’t speak to the parents for weeks. Babies, to us, had become what locusts were to farmers. In the old days, we used to help a man if he had a bad illness in the family. Now—well, I’ll tell you about just one case. It was the mother of a man who had been with us for fifteen years. She was a kindly old lady, cheerful and wise, she knew us all by our first names and we all liked her—we used to like her. One day, she slipped on the cellar stairs and fell and broke her hip. We knew what that meant at her age. The staff doctor said that she’d have to be sent to a hospital in town, for expensive treatments that would take a long time. The old lady died the night before she was to leave for town. They never established the cause of death. No, I don’t know whether she was murdered. Nobody said that. Nobody would talk about it at all. All I know is that I—and that’s what I can’t forget!—I, too, had caught myself wishing that she would die. This—may God forgive us!—was the brotherhood, the security, the abundance that the plan was supposed to achieve for us!” [...]

By: Joseph Kellard

Joseph Kellard — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:14:45 +0000

“In recent weeks, we have heard strident rhetoric about the prospect of ‘death panels’ voting to pull the plug on Aunt Minnie’s respirator—but no such dramatic scenes are likely, at least not anytime soon.”

As John Lewis pointed out in a recent post on HBL, death panels already exist in the form of the FDA denying potentially life-saving drugs to terminally ill patients. While that may not capture the drama of pulling the plug on such a patient in a hospital because he has become to expensive to care for further, it is nevertheless a real-life illustration of the power government holds over us when it seizes control of our medical care.