By Dr. Tom Snyder, Editor
Date: August 14, 2009
Former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin has accused Obama of “misleading” the public, especially senior citizens, about the provisions in the Democratic healthcare bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would establish “death panels” run by federal bureaucrats, who might encourage or try to convince terminally ill, seriously ill and disabled senior citizens to forego expensive healthcare treatment near the end of their lives.
Her accusation came in response to Obama’s response to her recent comments about the provisions. Obama had said that this kind of forced or proposed euthanasia was not the intent of the bill’s provisions.
Palin pointed out, however, that the “end-of-life” provisions in Section 1233 of HR3200 kick in when senior citizens go on the government’s financially shaky Medicare program.
Also, the “death panel” consultations with the federal healthcare bureaucrats become even more frequent when the senior citizen enters a nursing home, becomes “terminally ill” or suffers “a significant change” in their health condition.
“Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce healthcare costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?” Palin asks in a comment she wrote on Facebook.
Palin noted that Charles Lane wrote in the Washington Post that the consultations with senior citizens permit a “plug-pulling order right then and there.”
As euthanasia scholars and moral philosophers and theologians have noted often, it’s only a small step from such forced “passive euthanasia” of senior citizens (or the handicapped), to the forced “active euthanasia” and outright murder of Adolph Hitler’s bureaucratic machine during the evil reign of the National Socialist Party in Germany before and during World War II.
Also, Christian philosophers like Dr. Francis J. Beckwith (author of POLITICALLY CORRECT DEATH) and Gretchen Passantino, director of Answers in Action in Southern California, say it’s one thing for a terminally ill, very sick patient to decide, on their own, to forego extreme medical care that might only extend their life two weeks or so, but no patient should be able to decide to forego basic medical care or food and water.
Palin noted that one of Obama’s key health policy advisors, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of Obama’s leading White House henchman, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has advocated denial of some healthcare to the youngest and oldest citizens and to “patients with dementia.”
Obama recently made another factual error publicly when he falsely reported that the AARP, the nation’s largest retirement group, has endorsed the House bill.
Is President Obama trying to pull the wool over the eyes of America’s older people? Just asking.
– The Drudge Report and Facebook, 08/12/09.
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