Quin Hillyer on DPB: Death Panels by Proxy

Quin Hillyer, senior editor of The American Spectator, writes in his column at TAS this morning that even if you make the assumption that Sarah Palin overstated the case on death panels...

"...that doesn't mean that fears of government-prompted premature deaths are unwarranted. Call it 'death by proxy,' or DBP. Obamacare encourages DBP in multiple ways -- and it's not at all unfair to suggest that President Obama himself doesn't really mind that prospect."

Hillyer continues:

"We have a president who has such extreme, sickening disregard for inconvenient life that he opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois, thus refusing to require hospitals to care for babies who survive an attempted abortion. And regarding the other end of life, this is the same president who told the New York Times' David Leonhardt that because 'the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here,' therefore 'I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance.'"

You don't have to parse Obama's words to get his drift, leading Hillyer to ask:

"Is it any wonder that some people interpreted this 'independent group' as a 'death panel'???"

Then there's Rhambo's brother, the president's chief medical policy advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who left little doubt about his Brave New World priorities as published in The Lancet:

"We recommend an alternative system -- the complete lives system -- which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life…."

Hillyer again:

"Then a president who won't save infants born alive but who does want the government to be involved (a 'democratic conversation') in deciding end-of-life treatment -- and whose medical policy adviser would 'prioritise' young people -- hires as his chief science adviser a man, John P. Holdren, who first gained notoriety pushing eugenics ideas such as coerced abortions, forced sterilizations through the water supply, and other notions so outrageous that the man should never be accepted in polite company again, much less have the ear of the President of the United States."

And that's why Section 1233, which provides for non-negotiable end-of-life counseling, prompted Sarah Palin to sound the Care Raid alarm. The provision actually calls for sanctions against those physicians who are least effective in persuading patients to choose death:

"This is precisely where the 'death by proxy' really comes in. If medical personnel are rated on how effective they are at getting patients to create living wills and the like, and if independent boards are deciding that patients will not be reimbursed for their payments for certain forms of care, then the effect is that death becomes the default option. DBP, indeed."

Quin Hillyer's full column is here.

- JP