By Lawrence A. Hunter on 6.29.09 @ 6:07AM
He tells seniors, take a pain pill and don't bother to call in
the morning. But is that the bureaucrat speaking, or the man?
At a town hall meeting in the White House last week, a woman told
President Obama about her 105-year-old mother Hazel Homer who had
a pacemaker implanted five years ago after first being denied the
procedure because she was "too old." When the heart specialist
was shown how vibrant and active this Centenarian was, that
decision was reversed, and the woman is still alive today because
she received her pacemaker, something that never would have
happened under the kind of government-run healthcare President
Obama envisions for America.
The daughter had a very simple question for the president: Under
whatever new healthcare system he and the Congress might devise,
will there be room in it for the kinds of medical decisions that
saved her mother's life -- idiosyncratic decisions based on a
person's "spirit" and vitality rather than decisions made by rote
and formula, which in this case would have determined her mother
was "too old" to treat?
Sensing a trap that would put him in a political bind, the
president tap-danced around for a few minutes and then blurted
out something about sometimes people will just have to forego a
medical procedure and take a pain pill instead -- all for the
"greater good," one presumes.
You can imagine the fun talk radio had with that one. But I have
watched the video, and I
have watched President Obama, and frankly I do not believe had he
been in the room when that woman's mother's case was decided that
he would have objected. In other words, had the president -- the
man, not the politician, not the bureaucrat -- been placed in the
role that a doctor should be in -- which is precisely to
act as a man, not a bureaucrat, and make these kinds of
idiosyncratic decisions if the situation demands it -- he too
would probably have thrown all the rules of thumb, rote
procedures and comparative cost effectiveness criteria out the
window and given her the pacemaker.
But that is the problem with bureaucratic medicine, that's what
happens when the hospital morphs into the DMV, which is precisely
what the president is trying to foist on the American public in
the name of cost control and equal access to equal care for all.
Once the government takes over medicine and hands it over to the
bureaucrats to run, there is no humanity, only bureaucrats. There
is no room for "gut decisions" based on experience and informed
intuition, no latitude for evaluations that cannot be fit neatly
into a formula or an algorithm and justified by checking off
boxes on a form. When bureaucrats practice medicine, they are no
more compassionate than an IRS agent or a DMV drone.
The human notions of spirit and vitality are the very antithesis
of bureaucratic thinking. For the bureaucrat there are only
statistical aggregates, speculative averages and abstract
projections. And, oh yes, there are budgets, which means one size
must fit all. And ultimately, that means there will be rationing,
delay, denial and deterioration of care.
There is a segment of voters that so dislikes Barack Obama they
fight every political battle with him on personal terms, as if he
-- the man -- is the issue rather than the policies he promotes.
These voters will constantly be frustrated in their inability to
carry the day against him, and they will lose the fight against
government-run healthcare unless they change strategies.
There simply are not enough Obama haters to defeat his policies.
In order to protect American citizens against such crazy policies
as government-run, bureaucratic medicine, it will be necessary to
raise the level of discourse, not out of a fastidious sense of
fair play, but out of strategic necessity. In order to defeat
Obama's crazy policies, the battle must be elevated above the
likable, popular man. That means it is necessary to inform and
convince people that while Obama the man might be a great and
likable guy, his ideas and policies are misguided, ill conceived
and dangerous, especially for older people.
As the 105-year-old mother of the president's questioner
demonstrates, it's not venal politicians who do the most harm but
politicians of good intentions, good men who have too many bad
ideas and too much power to force them on everyone else who put
us all in jeopardy. Good men with good intentions possessing too
much power and too little knowledge about the way the world
works, that is how "policy" becomes just another word for
"atrocity." That is how government-run healthcare could kill
grandma. That is why Americans of good sense and good will demand
to Opt Out of
ObamaCare.
topics:
Health Care
