Forget It, Mom. You Die.

Charlotte Allen, writing in the LA Times, on the ugly downside of ObamaCare. Allen sees the same ObamaCare “solution” to the problem of escalating costs as I do: Rationing and the cutoff of care for older Americans.

Here’s a way for America to cut its spiraling healthcare costs: ice floes.

This idea isn’t mine. It’s President Obama’s. Or rather, it’s where we’re likely to end up if the president prevails on Congress to pass the adventurous healthcare reform proposal currently being discussed, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s on top of Medicare’s annual $327-billion budget, whose massive deficits, if they continue at the same rate, are predicted to bankrupt the Medicare system by the end of the next decade.

In looking for a way to fund healthcare, Obama has set his eye on the oldest and sickest. You see, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, about 30% of Medicare spending — nearly $100 billion annually — goes to care for patients during their last year of life. What if there were no “last year of life,” the president seems to be asking. The Eskimos used to set their elderly and sickly adrift on the ice or otherwise abandon them during times of scarcity, and that, metaphorically speaking, is what Obama would like us all to start doing.

The scarcity of resources to pay for expensive medical procedures will only increase under a plan to extend medical benefits at federal expense to the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance. So why not save billions of dollars by killing off our own unproductive oldsters and terminal patients, or — since we aren’t likely to do that outright in this, the 21st century — why not simply ensure that they die faster by denying them costly medical care? The savings could then subsidize care for the younger and healthier.

All of you older Americans who voted for Obama – this is the change you hoped for, apparently. To be denied treatments based on bureaucratic, one size fits all whim. All of you younger people who voted for Obama – a reminder – everyone grows old if they live long enough. This is what you have to look forward to.

A decision by a Federal bureaucrat will simply send the old out onto the figurative ice floes.  

And remember: Congress is exempting itself and all Federal employees from ObamaCare. That should tell you everything you need to know about the merits of this plan to “improve” health care.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are failing outright right now. You know that these programs are predicted – by the programs themselves – to run out of money in the near future. And you expect a different outcome if the government is running your health care?

Time to get rational, folks. Because you are going to lose the health care you like and be forced to take what the government decides you should be allowed to have.

And it will be a lot less than what the government gives itself.

Lunacy

Jack Kelly on the Marxman-Wacky bill to prevent a phony catastrophe:

An unusually cold winter (it snowed in Saudi Arabia and Iraq; temperatures fell to minus 80 degrees in Siberia) was followed by an unusually cool spring (it snowed in North Dakota in June for the first time in 60 years).

This may be why only 42 percent of respondents in a Rasmussen poll published June 18 think human activity is causing global warming, and many of those who do don’t see it as a serious problem. (In a Gallup poll in March, warming ranked last among eight environmental concerns.)

“Global temperatures have declined — extending the current downtrend to 11 years with a particularly rapid decline in 2007-2008,” said a draft report written in March by an expert at the Environmental Protection Agency.

You haven’t heard much about this report because the Obama administration is blocking its disclosure. The Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained a copy and put it on its Web site June 25.

Believers in anthroprogenic (man-made) global warming are relying on outdated research and are ignoring major new developments, the report said. Natural factors — chiefly ocean and sun cycles — are the principal causes of global temperature fluctuations.

To combat a problem that probably doesn’t exist, the House narrowly passed a bill to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide (to 83 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and to 17 percent by 2050). If the Waxman-Markey bill, named after its Democratic sponsors, Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, were to work exactly as its sponsors claim (and what bill ever has?), global temperatures 100 years from now are projected to be one-tenth of a degree Celsius cooler than they otherwise would have been.

Do read the whole thing. Especially the fun little factoid at the end of the piece:

Waxman-Markey contains unpleasant surprises for Americans, including a provision which could prevent homeowners from selling their homes if they aren’t retrofitted to meet federal “green” guidelines.

Not only does this bill act to raise energy prices – to make them skyrocket as Obama admitted – they will also increase the cost of everything that uses energy. Those costs will be passed on to consumers. And it makes the vast majority of American homes unsalable to boot.

The lunatics really are running the asylum at this point. This is shooting the American economy in the head.

Better think about calling you Senators and making it very, very clear that you want this monstrosity stopped.