The Clampdown

So it turns out that the ABC Barack Obama special was an infomercial after all. In it, he admitted that costs can be controlled by just letting old, sick people die. From the LA Times:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.

Translation: If Dad is critically ill and elderly, but you want him to be around for a few more months, maybe long enough to see his first grandchild born, or perhaps long enough to watch you get married, a crack panel of government experts will look at an actuarial chart, determine that the surgery or medicine that could extend his life may not be worth it, and withhold care.

Quoth Obama:

“Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

Obama said he has personal familiarity with such a dilemma. His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live, he said.

She fell and broke her hip, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”

That may have been the question, but he didn’t tell the audience the answer.

Glad to see that the President is willing to let people die, or maybe just suffer in pain as resistance is built up to painkillers, just because they may be old and sick even though life-extending or life-enhancing procedures are available.

There’s no word from the Administration yet on whether the starving masses of people in the world will be fed with Soylent Green.