Michael Moore was much praised and rewarded for his movie Sicko, praising medical services in Cuba, and comparing it to health care in the US  to the detriment of the latter.

A Cuban exile, George Utstet has this on his website The Real Cuba:

Those of you who saw Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” would remember the scene where Moore and his guests walked into a Cuban pharmacy and asked for an asthma medication, Salbutemol, and immediately the clerk opens a drawer and gives it to one of the guests, a woman from New York, who then begins to cry when she learns that in Cuba that medicine costs only a fraction of what it costs in New York. According to Moore, his guests received the “the same care” that any regular Cuban would receive, “no more, no less.”

But the scene at the Cuban pharmacy, as the whole portion of Sicko filmed in Cuba, was a fallacy conceived, scripted, staged and rehearsed by the Cuban regime with Moore’s acting the part of the useful idiot.

In an article titled “Catching a cold in Cuba,” Sally Melcher Jarvis, a correspondent for a Pennsylvanian newspaper who went to Cuba in November of 2007 accompanying a humanitarian mission organized by a local museum, found out about the apartheid that regular Cubans are suffering since Castro turned them into second class citizens in their own country.

Here is part of what she wrote: “It wasn’t much of a cold; just the kind that would get better by itself in a week. In the meantime it was a nuisance with a cough and stuffy nose. A little over-the-counter remedy would help…..There were no over-the-counter remedies to be had. I asked the guide what Cubans did if they had a cold. The guide said that a Cuban would go to the doctor — a visit free of charge — who would write a prescription for aspirin. However, there would be no way to fill the prescription. We visited a pharmacy later in the trip. Behind the counter five well-dressed Cuban women waited to serve, but the shelves were empty.

For more on the subject, the whole of this Townhall article by Humberto Fontova is worth reading. It convincingly dispels the myth that Cuba has a low infant mortality rate. There are links to informative video footage.

A taste of it:

The Castroite propaganda in Sicko so outraged people cursed by fate to live in Castro’s fiefdom that they risked their lives by using hidden cameras to film conditions in genuine Cuban hospitals, hoping they could alert the world to Moore’s swinishness as a propaganda operative for a Stalinist regime.

At enormous risk, two hours of shocking, often revolting, footage was obtained with tiny hidden cameras and smuggled out of Cuba to Cuban-exile George Utset, who runs the superb and revelatory website The Real Cuba. The man who assumed most of the risk during the filming and smuggling was Cuban dissident — a medical doctor himself – Dr. Darsi Ferrer, who was also willing to talk on camera, narrating much of the video’s revelations. Dr Ferrer worked in these genuinely Cuban hospitals daily, witnessing the truth. More importantly, he wasn’t cowed from revealing this truth to America and the world. (A recent samizdat reports that the black Dr. Ferrer is currently languishing in a Cuban prison cell –not far from Gitmo, by the way– undergoing frequent beatings.)

As this article declares, Obama wants to transform America into a European-style socialist state – which means he wants to destroy America as the embodiment of the idea of human liberty. He is a collectivist, and collectivism is the opposite of liberty.

Would-be leaders of collectivist states have recognized the efficacy for their purposes of indoctrinating school-children and recruiting them into government-0rganized youth movements. And that is what Obama is doing.

Phyllis Schlafly writes at Townhall:

President Barack Obama’s budget has added more than $100 billion of federal taxpayers’ money to what is called “education,” so that means it will be spent by alumni of the Saul Alinsky school of radical community organizing and/or the Chicago Democratic machine. …

Obama is using the public schools to recruit a private army of high-schoolers to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda.” We now know that Obama’s “agenda” is to move the United States into European-style socialism.

Obama’s Internet outreach during his campaign, Obama for America, has been renamed Organizing for America (OFA) in order to recruit students to join a cult of Obama and become activists for his goals. …

These interns will be given an intensive nine-week training course using comprehensive lesson plans. Assigned readings include Saul Alinsky’s notorious “Rules for Radicals,” “Stir It Up: Lessons From Community Organizing and Advocacy” by the left-wing activist Rinku Sen, and particular sections of “Dreams From My Father” dealing with Obama’s days as a community organizer in Chicago. …

The sign-up sheet for Organizing for America starts with this instruction: “Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change.” The application explains that this national internship program is “working to make the change we fought so hard for in 2008 a reality in 2010 and beyond.” …

The OFA student interns will be trained in the goals and language of the left: “antiwar agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, (Bill) Ayers, LGBT agenda promotion, global warming, soft-on-jihad and illegal immigration.”

Another item on OFA’s reading list is “The New Organizers” by Zack Exley. It brags about “an insurgent generation of organizers” inside the Obama campaign that has “almost without anyone noticing … built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people’s organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.”

The 10-page “National Intern Organizer Curriculum” is very specific in describing the tactics that interns will be taught. It includes these components: “Using Story as an Organizing Tool, Building Relationships and Building Teams, Mobilizing to Win on the Issues (issue advocacy), Health Care Service Project.”

Passage of Obamacare is one of this intern project’s major goals. The curriculum promises to provide “insight on the strategy and plan behind the health care campaign” and “further motivate them to work on the issue.”

The sign-up sheet states that the “purpose” of training these students is “to build community” among the interns and teach them “to be leaders in OFA’s organizing work.” After all, Barack Obama knows a great deal about being a community organizer — that was his only real job before he got into politics.

Job prospects may be bleak for many Americans, but they will be rosy for alumni of Obama’s intern program. After the students have been fully trained as Alinsky-style community organizers, they will be eligible for jobs in Senior Corps, AmeriCorps or Learn and Serve America.

Those three so-called “service” organizations, which annually dole out millions of dollars to left-wing groups, are overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The U.S. Senate just confirmed this Corporation’s new chief executive, Patrick Corvington, who was a senior official of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has given over a million and a half dollars to the ACORN network of organizations.

Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, law professor J. Kenneth Blackwell, and legal analyst Kenneth A. Klukowski write a clear, informative article on why the health-care bill is unconstitutional.

Read it in full here.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate…

It is one thing … for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned…

A second constitutional defect of the Reid bill passed in the Senate involves the deals he cut to secure the votes of individual senators… This selective spending targeted at certain states runs afoul of the general welfare clause.

A third constitutional defect in this ObamaCare legislation is its command that states establish such things as benefit exchanges, which will require state legislation and regulations. This is not a condition for receiving federal funds, which would still leave some kind of choice to the states. No, this legislation requires states to establish these exchanges or says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will step in and do it for them. It renders states little more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This violates the letter, the spirit, and the interpretation of our federal-state form of government… [T]he Constitution forbids the federal government from commandeering any branch of state government to administer a federal program. That is, by drafting and by deliberate design, exactly what this legislation would do…

This hardly exhausts the list of constitutional problems with this legislation, which would take the federal government into uncharted political and legal territory…

America’s founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality.

Invention depends on individuals, even if they work in teams, having new ideas and incentive to develop them.

Socialized medicine takes away incentive for innovators to advance medical research.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

There are many problems on the health care road the country is being forced to take. But one not getting as much attention as it should is the harm done to a critically important sector: medical innovation.

The high costs, restricted choices and eventual rationing that will result from the Democrats’ health care plan are being discussed to varying degrees by those who are uncomfortable with what’s being rushed through Congress. But the final legislation’s effect on medical innovation has been somewhat lost with so much attention focused elsewhere. So let us clarify:

The Democrats’ plan will slow innovation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. …

If the profit motive is removed or weakened by legislation increasing Washington’s control of health care, drug companies and medical device makers will lose the incentive to bring lifesaving and life-enhancing products to market. For now, the rest of the world follows America because the socialist health care systems abroad discourage innovation. But the U.S. will fall back to the pack under a health care regime designed by the Democrats.

One of our readers, bill, points out in a comment on A congress of whores below, that ‘the very act of government involvement in the health care industry is unconstitutional’.

Larry Elder agrees, in an article titled ObamaCare: Freedom on Life Support at Townhall:

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?…

The same people who railed against the Patriot Act, the terror surveillance program and “illegal” torture happily unleash the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth for ObamaCare … Never mind the absence of authority in the Constitution.

The left tells us that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Surely the Constitution says so. No, it does not. Article I, Section 8 details the limited power, duties and responsibilities of the federal government. Extracting money from your paycheck and giving it back to you when you retire — Social Security? Not there. Taxing workers to pay for the health care of seniors — Medicare? Not there. Mandating that employers pay workers a minimum wage? Not there.

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. …

From The Heritage Foundation:

A report released Friday by the non-partisan and independent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, blows the lid off of every one of Obama’s claims. All of the following quotes are from the report itself:

Health Care Costs Increase: “In aggregate, we estimate that for calendar years 2010 through 2019 [national health expenditures (NHE)] would increase by $289 billion, or 0.8 percent, over the updates baseline projection that was released on June 29, 2009.” In other words, Obamacare bends the cost curve up, not down.

Millions Lose Existing Private Coverage: “However, a number of workers who currently have employer coverage would likely become enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program or receive subsidized coverage through the Exchange. For example, some smaller employers would be inclined to terminate their existing coverage, and companies with low average salaries might find it to their – and their employees’ – advantage to end their plans … We estimate that such actions would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 12 million.” In other words, Obamacare will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing private coverage.

Millions Pay Fines Yet Remain Uncovered: “18 million are estimated to choose not to be insured and to pay the penalty associated with the individual mandate. For the most part, these would be individuals with relatively low health care expenses for whom the individual or family insurance premium would be significantly in excess of the penalty and their anticipated health benefit value.” In other words, 18 million Americans will either face jail time or be forced to pay a new tax they will receive no benefit from.

Millions Lose Medicare Advantage: “Section 1161 of Division B of H.R. 3962 would set Medicare Advantage capitation benchmarks … We estimate that in 2014 when the MA provisions would be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans would decreased by 64 percent (from its projected level of 13.2 million under current law to 4.7 million under the proposal).” In other words, 8.5 million seniors who currently get such services as coor dinated care for chronic conditions, routine eye and hearing examinations, and preventive-care services would lose their existing private coverage.

Millions Placed on Welfare: “Of the additional 34 million who are estimated to be insured in 2019 as a result of H.R. 3962, about three-fifths (21 million) would receive Medicaid coverage due to the expansion of eligibility to those adults under 150 percent of the FPL.” In other words, more than half the people who gain health insurance will receive it through the welfare program Medicaid. 

Seniors Access to Care Jeopardized: “H.R. 3962 would introduce permanent annual productivity adjustments to price updates for institutional providers… Over time, a sustained reduction in payment updates, based on productivity expectations that are difficult to attain, would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers’ costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries. Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).” In other words, the Medicare cuts in the House bill are so out of touch with reality that hospitals currently serving Medicare patients might be forced to stop doing so. Thus making it much more difficult for seniors to get health care.

Poor’s Access Problems Exacerbated: “In practice, supply constraints might interfere with providing the services by the additional 34 million insured persons. …providers might tend to accept more patients who have private insurance (with relatively attractive payment rates) and fewer Medicaid patients, exacerbating existing access problems for the latter group.” In other words, those 21 million people who are gaining health insurance through Medicaid are going to have a very tough time finding a doctor who will treat them.

Mark Steyn said on the Hugh Hewitt Show:

MS: What was interesting to me in the account that I heard on Rush’s show earlier today, we had the guy who actually found the finger call in. And he said that this pro-Obamacare protestor had deliberately selected the oldest fellow in the counter-demonstration. In other words, he picked an elderly man, gray hair, bespectacled, stooped, much smaller than him. The pro-Obamacare protestor, when he was looking for some guy’s finger to bite off, didn’t go for any of the big guys, didn’t go for the guys his own age or his own size. And it was an interesting account. This senior is very lucky to have his finger restored to him, because the guy bit it off and then just basically spat it into traffic. So Rush’s listener happened to find it, and took it to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the hospital that this guy had been taken to.

HH: This is pregnant with symbolism. If he attacked the oldest person there, that’s rationing carried to an extreme and immediate step.

MS: Yeah, this is basically, we’re seeing freelance death paneling going on now. I mean, if you’re going to have death panels, then this is one of those situations where you’ve got to have it under government regulation, obviously. It’s like everything else in the new utopia. It’s got to be government regulated. If people are going to go around doing their own freelance death panels, the whole thing’ll go to hell.

HH: Well, you pointed out California can ill afford an outbreak of finger munching out here, because this is, reattachment surgery is not inexpensive.

MS: No, it’s not inexpensive, but on the other hand, it’s cheaper than finger reconstruction surgery, which is what the guy might have been in for if they hadn’t found the finger. I mean, the reality is, this is a very good example. When an old guy loses his finger, who cares? He’s not using it, he’s not contributing to society with his finger, what does it matter if his finger gets chewed off and tossed into traffic. It is interesting to me that when we hear these stories about how nutty the anti-health care, anti-Obamacare protestors are, that in fact all the individual explicit acts of totally insane violence, like the guy being beaten up in St. Louis, or this finger munching, are actually being presented by the nice, reasonable, moderate, liberal protestors. Make of that what you will.

Chuck Norris writes:

Obama is not the leader of Obamacare. And neither is Congress. The one who has been spearheading the initiative behind the scenes is one who goes under the misnomer “adviser” to the Obama administration, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and breast oncologist and brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. And his bible for health care reform is his book “Healthcare, Guaranteed.”

Dr. Emanuel has served as special adviser to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy as far back as February, when he confessed to the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times that he was “working on (the) health care reform effort.” The first draft of Obamacare?

If you want to know the future of America’s universal health care, then you must understand the health care principles and plans of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. I find it far more than a coincidence how much Emanuel’s book parallels Obamacare’s philosophy, strategy and proposed legislation.

First, Emanuel rejects any attempts at incremental change or reform to our health care system (Page 185). What’s needed, he concludes in his book (Page 171), is an immediate and totally comprehensive reconstruction of health care as we know it. That, of course, describes the vision of Obamacare to a T.

Second, in the chapter “Opening the Door to Comprehensive Change,” starting on Page 171 (which reads more like a political and mass-manipulating strategy than a health care manual), Emanuel drives home “a key political lesson: the need to rush the legislation through.” (Seen this methodology being used lately?!)

Third, as Obama crusades around the country pitching Obamacare, he continues to avoid giving virtually any specific details of the program. That, too, is a strategy of Emanuel’s: “Americans need to avoid the policy weeds. Focusing on details will only distract and create tangles and traps (Page 183).” So “details” of health care reform are “weeds”? That is why we continue to hear only warm and fuzzy generalities from Obama, such as,”If you’ve already got health care, the only thing we’re going to do for you is we’re going to reform the insurance companies so that they can’t cheat you.”

Fourth, Emanuel describes a comprehensive government health care program that is run completely by a national health board and 12 regional health boards (“modeled on the Federal Reserve System” — Page 83). Critics would say, “But that is not the national board as described in Obamacare or H.R. 3200.” Not yet, anyway. Does anyone doubt that the duties and power of the national “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” will morph and grow over time? And what power will it wield when it is like the Federal Reserve?

Fifth, Emanuel believes in the “phasing out of Medicare (and) Medicaid (pages 88-89 and 94-95).” Could their eventual termination be the reason Obama’s administration won’t merely reform those programs to accommodate its universal health care desires?

Sixth, Emanuel believes in ending employer-based health care (pages 109-112). As any businessman knows, why would a company pay the exorbitant costs for employees’ private health insurance when it can benefit big-time from a free ticket for government health care coverage? Some have even proposed that provisions in the House’s health care legislation, under the titles “Limitation on new enrollment” and “Limitation on changes in terms or conditions” (Page 16 of H.R. 3200), could essentially make individual private medical insurance illegal.

Seventh, Emanuel believes a universal health care program could be paid for by phasing out Medicare and Medicaid, adopting a value-added tax of at least 10 percent, etc., and then allowing Americans themselves to “pay extra with after-tax dollars” (Page 100) for additional medical benefits (beyond the government program). The truth is that whether the money comes from higher corporate taxes, taxing employer-provided health insurance, eliminating health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts, limiting the deductibility of medical expenses, increasing taxes on selective consumptives or the middle class, etc., or all the above, trust me; sooner or later, we all will pay.

Eighth, enough has been written lately about Emanuel’s end-of-life counsel and consultation, including withholding his advice from The Hastings Center Report (in 1996) that medical care should be withheld from those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. … An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

I find it striking that Obama’s ethics similarly have allowed him already to pass more laws increasing the terminations of life in the womb than any administration since Roe v. Wade. To add insult to injury, Congress repeatedly has rejected amendments to this universal health care bill that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortions.

In short, whether in title or not, Emanuel is Obama’s health care czar. Obamacare is a junior version of Emanuelcare. Or should I say the beginning stage of Emanuelcare? What’s almost eerie is how they both could be juxtaposed to intersect in full bloom sometime in America’s future.

Part One: The Consultation

You have a life-threatening illness, right? You are over 65 years old, right? I am a doctor and am being paid by the Government to give you counseling about your end-of-life decisions. This consultation is entirely voluntary on your part, and is merely to provide you with information to help you decide now how you will want to be treated in advanced stages of your illness. The information concerns living wills, health care proxies, hospice, and pain medication.

Do I have your attention? Then let’s proceed.

1. ‘Living wills.’ You sign a document that declares which treatments you do or do not want applied to you if you have a terminal illness or lapse into a permanent vegetative state. Be assured that your living will would only be used when recovery is impossible. Who will decide that it’s impossible? A couple of (Government paid) doctors would have to certify that you are in this hopeless condition. Trust them.

2. ‘Health care proxy.’ This is for when you cannot speak for yourself – because you become demented, for instance – while your physical condition is not so dire that it would justify immediate action on your living will. You name a person who will make decisions for you about what care you should be given – within the parameters of what the Government would let you have, that is. You will of course name someone you really trust. Someone who loves you. Someone you know will only act as you would want him or her to act. Okay? Good. Just one thing to bear in mind – if the Government considers his or her decision to be not the right one, it can overrule him or her. So you see, you have a sort of upper guardian who will keep an eye out for misunderstandings or misjudgments. It’s a fail-safe arrangement, you might say. Your son or daughter decides as long as he or she chooses sensibly for you. If he or she doesn’t, no worry, the Government will make the right and final decision.

3. ‘Hospice.’ Hospices are comfy places to die. They are very nice death houses. No one will hurry you to shuffle off your mortal coil. (Only you won’t be let in if you’re likely to take an unreasonable stretch of time about what you’re in there for.) Medical staff will be very kind to you. You can sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and you may – if your digestion allows it – eat strawberries, sugar-substitute and cream. But remember, dear, you will be there to die.

4. ‘Pain medication.’ This is what you may have instead of an operation that could save your life. No, sorry, you cannot have the operation. It is expensive and the Government cannot pay for everyone with your illness to have this surgery. Just think: say we pay for it and then you go and die of complications soon afterwards. I mean, you’re old and your powers of recovery are not what they used to be. And even if you did recover, you wouldn’t be much use to Society, now would you? Be reasonable. Be selfless. Be patriotic. The Dear Leader made it perfectly clear that this would be Government policy. He said, ‘Take the pill instead of having the operation’. You remember now? Good. That’s clear then. And by the way, it’s true that there are some drugs that might help you to recover, but they’re also very expensive and as I said we have to think about who can best use their saved life for the good of Society – you who are old, or someone else who is young and vigorous. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, when you think about it? You are – if you don’t mind my putting it this way, just for clarity’s sake – a useless old bag, and somewhere there’s a young person with the same disease as you who can still be, let’s say, a brilliant community organizer if he gets the chance to live. So the drugs are for him, not you, dear. You understand? Fine. That’s settled then.

Oh, no dear! No one’s dictating to you what to do. It’s your choice, absolutely. You don’t have to make a living will, or appoint someone to act as your proxy, or go into a hospice, or take a pill to help your pain. No one’s forcing you. All we’re saying is that we’re not going to pay for you to have surgery or expensive drugs that might cure you. But all the rest is your choice, not ours, not anybody’s but yours. Doesn’t that make you feel that you’re in control dear?

You’re really having the best of all worlds, you know. You have all this choice as a free citizen of this free country. And at the same time you can feel safe, watched over, looked after to the last breath. What more could you ask?

Who are the people who will decide whether you’re too old for the surgery or the drugs? Well, there will be general guidelines, rules.

You say some individuals are stronger and more able to work at a late age than others, so will they have their cases examined individually? Yes. By whom, do you ask? By doctors – at least two doctors who will report to the authorities that you are an exception. Or not. And yes, the authorities will make the final decision.

Yes, the very young who have disabilities and have not yet had much money spent on them would also have to forego the expensive surgery and drugs, but their parents would have the same careful consideration given to their cases by the Government-paid experts as you will have.

You ask, would they not – these doctors, these authorities, these various experts and officials – constitute a panel deciding whether you may or may not have certain life-saving treatments? Yes, in effect. You could put it that way.

Sarah Palin did? Oh, you mustn’t believe Sarah Palin. She went much too far. She actually called it a ‘DEATH PANEL’. That’s entirely wrong. That’s just hysterical. Nutty. Way out. Totally inaccurate and misleading. A wicked distortion. A dangerous lie.

Calm down, please. I’m not prepared to carry on with this argument. It’s got out of hand. You’re crazy. She’s crazy. How can you think that Barack Obama, of all people, would want to set up a ‘death panel’? Perhaps you‘re suffering from incipient dementia, dear. Would you like to have a little chat with another Government-paid doctor about preparing for when it gets worse?

Part Two: A News Item

This week, reacting to the clamor from many angry and confused people, the Senate Finance Committee dropped the idea of including ‘advance care planning consultations’ in its health care bill.

Part Three: A Democrat Meditates

Why did so many react so unreasonably to a provision that was merely designed to allow Medicare to pay doctors who counsel patients about planning for end-of-life decisions? The consultations would have been entirely voluntary and would simply provide information about living wills, health care proxies, hospice, and pain medication. It’s mystifying how such a simple service could be so misinterpreted!

Part Four: The Denial

The Obama administration has been forced to react to a ridiculous rumor launched by Sarah Palin.

It has put this up on its website (excuse the clumsy wording but the clarification had to be posted in a hurry):

It’s a malicious myth that reform would encourage or even require euthanasia for seniors. For seniors who want to consult with their family and physicians about end-of life decisions, reform will help to cover these voluntary, private consultations for those who want help with these personal and difficult family decisions.

Part Five: The Climb-down?

Associated Press report August 16 2009:

Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

Part Six: Chorus of Old People and Children

Two words have saved us – ‘DEATH PANEL’.

We need no longer fear.

The Government will not insure our care.

It cannot say ‘care granted’ or ‘denied’.

Who’ll live or die it won’t decide.

Thank you, Sarah Palin!

Jillian Becker  August 2009

Charles Krauthammer writes:

Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

That’s a hypothetical case. What’s the real-life actuality in the United States today? A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, “if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success,” the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country’s total medical bill by 162 percent. Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment — that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them — is simply nonsense.

Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That’s the whole premise of medicine: Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.

However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health care costs.

You will hear some variation of that claim a hundred times in the coming health care debate. Whenever you do, remember: It’s nonsense — empirically demonstrable and CBO-certified.