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The Nation's Pulse
Reich Stuff
From central planning — “We’re going to let you die.”
I saw two stories last week that had diametrically opposed messages.
The first was pro-life in the broadest sense of the word, a breakthrough against cancer via a new tumor-targeted genetic medicine, Rexin-G, that produced clinical remissions in late-stage cases of three chemotherapy-resistant, otherwise intractable cancers — prostate cancer, metastatic osteosarcoma, and pancreas cancer.
The second, fundamentally anti-life, was a video of a speech delivered by Robert B. Reich on health care reform at the University of California at Berkeley on September 26, 2007.
Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and more recently a member of President-elect Obama’s transition advisory board and an economic adviser to President Obama, told the Berkeley audience what a candidate for President of the United States would say if he was honest about health care reform.
“This is what the truth is,” explained former Harvard professor Reich, “what candidates should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship, and they were educated in terms of what the issues were, and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what a candidate was telling them.”
Reich then plays the role of that straight-talking presidential candidate:
Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president … Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true, and what I’m going to do is I am going to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people.
But that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people, you’re going to have to pay more (scattered applause). Thank you, and by the way, we are going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of weeks. It’s too expensive, so we’re going to let you die (heavier applause).
Also, I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid — we already have a lot of bargaining leverage — to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. But that means less innovation, and less products and less new drugs on the market, which means you are probably going to live not much longer than your parents (scattered applause). Thank you.
California Newswire provided a profile of one of the aforementioned cancer cases:
Remarkably, a Catholic priest who was previously bedridden and in withering pain, suffering from end-stage prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, received successive courses of Rexin-G, during which time the bone pain was relieved, the PSA tumor markers fell, the bone tumors stopped growing, and even the previously inoperable primary tumor disappeared on follow-up CT scans. As the priest’s bones began to heal and strengthen, he arose from his bed and is currently saying daily Mass and delivering lectures in the seminary. What is even more remarkable is that this revered man of the cloth was over 90-years-old at the time of his treatment and remission.
For guys like Reich, that sounds like a bad outcome — too budget-busting, too innovative. Too much life.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment
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Rick Hall | 10.27.09 @ 12:18PM
From "A Desperado's Daily Bread" by Konrad Ventana:
"You feel that you have lost so very much--that your soul is burdened with a creeping torment and a sadness that you can no longer bear. Do not despair, for these are the sufferings of the whold world you feel in your heart; the sadness is the grief of interminable illness that longs for creative remedy. You know that you cannot return home, nor to a state of unknowing innocence; you can only carry forth on this road that is yours and yours alone to travel. Your role as an outlaw desperado is to minister the sacrament of one more blessed day to the lives of men and women who live with affliction and to the faintly falling flower children of this otherwise graceless age."
And then, Wade realized that he was wide awake--agape, as before.
Appleby| 10.27.09 @ 7:12AM
It is not as easy to fool Americans as the Obamacrats seemed to think...especially those of us old enough to have suffered through the Sixties the first time around.
You have given the kids the keys to the candy store, and now you are shocked that they stuff themselves with the merchandise, loot the cash register, smash the place up and burn it to the ground?
Its what kids do.
Duked| 10.27.09 @ 7:25AM
I hear ya Appleby. But they seem more like those zombies you see in those cheap horror movies. Just waddling along, destroying or devouring everything they come across. I'm a child of the sixties too and this group in DC is so far from what this country needs I can only hope that the pendulum swings so far the other way next time that things can be corrected....... I just don't know how the American people could have done this.
DLB| 10.27.09 @ 7:29AM
Reich's audience apparently did not believe that "we're going to let you die" would be applicable to them. There are always exceptions to be made for the commissars and their friends. What they were applauding was the delicious prospect that they would be the ones with the power to decide who gets to live.
Melvin| 10.27.09 @ 7:53AM
Who selected Robert Reich to play God? Is this something inherent to Harvard professors, is it in their DNA?
If Robert Reich is an indicator of what is the best and brightest that Harvard has to offer its students, then Harvard needs to reevaluate itself.
There is nothing more sickening than listening to self-important Harvard educated blow-hard who has appointed himself as God.
Harvard can burn to the ground for all I care, because if all that it can produce is Little Lord Fauntleroy's such as Reich, then we would be better off as a Nation because our government is already full of the little buggers.
Curly Smith| 10.27.09 @ 9:05AM
All Reich is saying is that if strangers (the Public) pay for your medical care then strangers get to decide whether or not you get that care. I find it to be a remarkably candid comment and I think that the vast majority understand it to be the truth of what the "Public Option" really means.
I do wonder why Reich hasn't been found floating in a pool because of his "unfortunate comments", like Madoff's investor, but maybe the news blackout on Reich explains the delay.
james| 10.27.09 @ 9:40AM
Liberalism as death, darkness and slavery: Who knew?
This is a remarkably cogent summary of what liberalism is and has always been. Better stay out of Ft Marcy Park, Robert.
Robert Rosencrans| 10.27.09 @ 9:45AM
What are you complaining about? Nowhere does Reich mention they will charge you for dying.
Tim| 10.27.09 @ 11:20AM
Excellent.
Louis Jenkins| 10.27.09 @ 3:00PM
Well,they won't charge you for dying, but they'll certainly charge your kids: inheritance taxes, and if the Obamabots have their way they'll take every nickle. They'll probably add a Value Added Tax to your funeral expenses, a ground water pollution tax if you're buried, or a carbon emissions tax if you're cremated. They'll figure out a way to post another tax on your estate because you died and quit paying taxes. There's no end to the possibilities. They lay awake at night thinking them up. "I'll get you my pretties, and your 401 K too!!"
Ampersand| 10.27.09 @ 10:21AM
Robert Reich ... I remember hearing him say that "a trained ape could run Exxon".
Wow. He has a real solid grasp our our economy.
Pingback| 10.27.09 @ 10:25AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Reich Stuff [spectator.org] on Topsy links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Al Adab| 10.27.09 @ 11:25AM
Is it really just a coincidence that his name is Reich?
When and where did central planning ever achieve desired results? Free markets solve problems, central planning is always in catch-up mode. One simply cannot foresee all the alternatives and unintended consequences.
Amanda Marsrow| 10.27.09 @ 5:37PM
It seems that Washington becomes more stymied by this process daily--Thank God. I wonder that Reich, and those who applaud him, don't assist the process in real time by listing their names and SSN's as those who are willing to live no longer than their parents and become the very living bargains for which they're so eager.
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.27.09 @ 6:37PM
Al, Amanda,
Old is before Texican, heh!
I have experienced a wonderful life. Every day is a bonus as a citizen of the US, and a Christian.
My little comments here are meant to be a guide to our younger people so that they can have a fully satisfying life like I have had here.
If God calls me home tonight...fine. New chapter.
Now!
Let's re-light the "beacon on the hill".
Screw these communists in power! They are liars, despots, and soul-killers. One day soon they will make their "putsch".
The Bobs and Toddards and Libtard Readers walk in darkness so black that they cannot even see daylight...they walk in death, so what the heck do they care. Black is black to them. They have turned their backs on the Light of God, just like the idiots that applauded Mr. Reich.
There are a LOT of innocent children out there in the world, though. Let's keep working for them to have a life as wonderful as ours.
Al Adab| 10.27.09 @ 7:45PM
Don't check out tonight Ken (although a better world awaits). We need the vote.
Notary Sojac| 10.27.09 @ 8:16PM
Actually I find Reich's views at least forthright. He's not taking the free-lunch-for-everyone position of Obama.
Richard Baker| 10.28.09 @ 8:59AM
Seig Heil, Gauleiter Reich! This guy is intelligent?
Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 9:36PM
SEMA Preview: Street Concepts to create custom painted Hyundai … | Manufacturers Auto links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
danfromatlanta| 10.29.09 @ 5:25PM
I have to assume that Reich's audience was very young and very liberal. My proof? They must have been young, because they applauded the idea that we would just let old people, not them, die. They must have been liberals, because they were obviously too stupid to realize that they too will probably grow old some day.
Richard Baker| 10.29.09 @ 7:11PM
Sieg heil, not seig heil.
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