In recent weeks one of the many problems Americans have had with plans for the federal government to take over the health care industry has had to do with life and death issues such as rationing, euthanasia and “death panels.”
The socialists pushing government health care have tried very hard to whitewash these concerns, but to little avail. Even the elderly (who are often solid Democrat supporters because of their addiction to the government largess they already enjoy in programs like Social Security and Medicare) are deserting the Temple of Government in droves; apparently the thought of euthanasia and rationing scares them more than the blessings of the Government god draws them.
Despite those attempts to whitewash this very real concern, the information continues to come in to substantiate those fears.
Consider the latest from the British Telegraph about patients under Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) wrongly determined to be close to death…and thus prime candidates to be written off by the government health care system:
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across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.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.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.
“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”
The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.
The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.
Dr Hargreaves elaborates further:
He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.
He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.
“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”
This perfectly illustrates one of the many fears people have about this aspect of government health care systems.
Whether the doctors and “death panels” and others involved in life and death decisions really do buy into the “death culture” mentality or not, government bureaucracy and inefficiency has a way of doing essentially the same thing as an intentional decision.
But then, we know from experience and their own statements that there are many out there–even so-called “ethicists”–who have no reservations about shoving the elderly, disabled and others they deem “nonproductive” out of the way.
Many of us also remember that it wasn’t too terribly long ago that government actively gave hearty approval to the murder of a disabled woman whose disconnected “husband” considered inconvenient.
Government health care? Not on your life!
