Health Wars (9/3/09)

Another sneak preview of the wonders and delights of BarryCare:

In a letter to the [London] Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr. Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

It is, of course, a "national" crisis because British health care is "nationally" run.  And when they say "national" crisis, the latter term is as functional as the first:

According to a study quoted in the Telegraph, 16.5% of all deaths in Britain came after continuous deep sedation, more than twice the rate of Belgium and the Netherlands, the latter of which has euthanasia as part of its policy.  Given the financial difficulties of the NHS and the need to stretch resources, it seems unlikely that expediency has nothing to do with the sudden popularity of the “death pathway”.

Once again, BarryCare doesn't have to have "death panels" specifically stipulated in the text of its legislation.  The very structure and incentives built into the state-run system will guarantee it.  What else can you conclude from a death rate of one out of every six and twice "by accident" the rate of countries that actively practice snuffing as official government "health" policy?

Of course, didn't we make our own downpayment on this sort of thing just a few short years ago?  Do more Americans now understand the full scope of what was at stake in Terry Schiavo's murder?  Hearteningly, it seems so.  Hopefully, it hasn't come too little, too late.

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Ah, there's nothing like "bipartisanship" and "civility," is there?

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How will Red Barry force the millions of Americans who do not wish to buy health insurance in order to help subsidize the coverage of their fellow uninsured who can't afford it?  Oh, my, if you thought you hated "change you can believe in" before, you're gonna LOVE this:

But if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats’ health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have access to confidential IRS information about millions of individual taxpayers.

In short, health care reform, as currently envisioned by Democratic leaders, would be built on the foundation of an expanded and more intrusive IRS.

Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an “acceptable” health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don’t have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot help but wonder what qualifies the federal loan sharks to determine whether my health care coverage is "acceptable," and just how politicized that definition is going to be.

Hey, I've referred to that agency as the Internal Revenue Police for years.  What, did you think it was just hyperbole?

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Is BarryCare too far gone for even a RINO rescue?  Karl seems to think so:

This tactic carries its own measure of risks for the administration. The first risk is that the progressives continue to balk and refuse to vote for a final bill with a trigger. This seems unlikely, but most of them are from safe seats and plan to hold those seats long after the Obama presidency, so there could be some rebellion at the margin.

The second (and larger) risk is that a proposal designed to grab the center holds only a handful of votes. That is what happened in the dying days of HillaryCare in 1994. Those proposals never made it to any sort of vote.

The third risk is that whatever momentum is left for ObamaCare rests on the notion that politically, failure is not an option on healthcare reform. The theory that Democrats in swing districts are better off voting for an unpopular takeover of one-sixth of the economy has always seemed counter-intuitve. Now, Sean Trende has done a regression analysis of the 1994 midterm election showing that holding all other things equal, had Democrats gone ahead and passed HillaryCare, their losses likely would have been even greater than they were.

The psychology works like this: Dems in GOP districts know in their heads that the combination of the Hogzilla failure, for which all Blue Dogs voted, the House jamdown of cap & tax, for which a handful of Blue Dogs voted but most did not, and the health care Hindenburg regardless of how they vote has pretty much rendered most or all of them un-re-electable next November.  In that mindset they'd have nothing to lose by going alone with Godbama in the hopes that at least they'd still have access to The One's fundraising machine.

But in their hearts they just can't be sure that by voting with their constituents and opposing BarryCare, they might not yet be able to somehow survive with their seats intact a year from now.  History shows they're toast either way, but hope springs eternal.  When it comes right down to where the cheese binds, how many are willing to take that chance?  Particularly when whatever was passed out of the House would most likely did in the Senate right alongside cap & tax, making their "grand sacrifice" even more pointless and moot?