Medicare
You’ve been hearing
all the flap about Medicare, I’m sure. How it’s been
cutting back on payments to hospitals, how 98,000 some odd people are dying each
year due to malpractice since Medicare, how you’re being treated like a product
instead of a human being who has had money taken from you by coercive force to
pay for this lousy medical plan. How HMO’s are cutting back because they can’t
afford to pick up the balance after Medicare pays what ever they want (of your
money) toward your bill.
Well, let me fill you in on the
realities of Socialized Medicine. For one thing; think
about where you stand in this type of program. If you make your own
arrangements with a doctor and/or hospital, you are an ASSET. They must give you
the best service and price to get your business,
otherwise, you will look elsewhere. If you have a private insurance plan to
cover the cost of medical treatment, you now become both an ASSET and a
LIABILITY. On one hand the insurance company has to compete with other insurance
companies for your $1.00’s while on the other hand, when they have to pay out
the cost of your care, you cost them $1.00’s. You still have an edge because you
can take your business elsewhere. Now comes the sinister part. Under government
insurance “Medicare” when you get sick and go to a doctor or hospital, YOU ARE A
100% LIABILITY. You can’t go elsewhere because the government arrived at your
door with a promise of fines and/or imprisonment if you didn’t pay your premium.
ASSETS to the government consist of all those healthy people lining up on April
15th to pay the premiums. From your experience, does the government
scramble to be sure you get the best of care or do you have to fight, and get an
anxiety attack, wondering if they will pay and how much. I know, every year
POLITICIANS like Lieberman, Dodd, Nancy Johnson the Contemptible Liar Clinton,
Al Gory and now George W. Bush and John Kerry etc.; they give their glowing
speeches about how they want to be a “loving” parent to you. They will take care
of you. Next election you hear about the lousy job “government” did and how (now
that they’re on the scene) everything’s going to get better for their
“children”. They endorse killing babies in the in the womb; what makes you think
they want to contend with you as a LIABILITY to their lust for power and profit?
Besides that, they’re the lousy “parents” who perpetrated this sick care program
on you in the first place. Lieberman’s been their twelve years Nancy Johnson
over 20. What have any of them done to make things
better aside from offering some lofty speeches and voting 100% with Clinton,
Bush, Kerry, Johnson etc. in support of the programs they authored creating the
mess you’re ticked off about? Bush has picked up where they left off and lied
big time about how many tax dollars it is going to cost you, with the
endorsement of Nancy Johnson of course. The Republican president said Four
Hundred Billion ($400,000,000,000) while he knew as boss the cost would exceed
Five Hundred Billion ($550,000,000,000). Think about it. There are roughly
275,000,000 of us not counting the illegals on the
dole. Two hundred and seventy five million divided into five hundred and fifty
billion amounts to $2,000.00 cost for every man woman and child. Divide that by
how many actually work to pay the “premium” and then tell me it’s a good deal.
Aside from that; if programs like
this and Unsociable Insecurity are so good, why don’t they jump on the band
wagon and dump the “lousy” programs they have adopted for themselves at your
expense? If I’m elected, I’ll do just that. What’s good for the Goose is good
for the Gander. They can retroactively return the money they have taken and pay
up their SS and Medicare.
Let’s look at a case history.
Medicare and SS are more sinister than you think and
this case history is being played out as we speak in Canada,
England the U.S., etc. etc.. The following is from
Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D., the Physician and
Anthropoligist who directs the National Museum of
Health and Medicine in Washington D. C., which brought from Berlin to the
exhibition, “The Value of the Human Being: Medicine in Germany 1918 – 1945,”
curated by Christian Pros &
Gotz Aly.
“Today we are concerned about
issues such as doctor assisted suicide, the use of fetal tissue, genetic
screening, birth control and sterilization, health care rationing and the ethics
of medical research on animals and human beings. These subjects are major
challenges in both ethics and economics at the end of the 20th
Century. But at the beginning of the 20th Century the desire to
create a more scientific medical practice and research had already raised the
issue of euthanasia, eugenics and medical experimentation on human subjects. In
addition, the increasing involvement of the German government in medical care
and funding medical research established the government medical complex that the
National Socialist later used to execute their extermination practices.
The German social insurance and
health care system began in the 1880’s under Bismarck. By the time
of
Weimar,
German doctors had become accustomed to cooperating with the government in the
provision of health care.
The reforms of the Weimar Republic following the
medical crisis of World War 1 included government policies to provide health
care services to citizens. Socially minded physicians placed great hope in the
new health care system, calling for a single state agency to overcome the
fragmentation and lack of influence of individual practitioners and local
services. The focus of medicine shifted from private practice to public health
care. During the German “economic consolidation” of 1924 – 1928, public health
improved under new laws against tuberculosis, venereal disease, and alcoholism,
with new advisory centers for chemical dependency
and counseling bureaus for marriage and sexual problems.
Medical concerns which had largely
been in the private domain in the 19th Century increasingly became a
concern of the state .THE PHYSICIANS BEGAN TO BE TRANSFORMED INTO A FUNCTIONARY
OF THE STATE INITIATED LAWS AND POLICIES. DOCTORS SLOWLY BEGAN TO SEE THEMSELVES
AS MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE NATION THAN FOR THE
INDIVIDUAL HEALTH OF THE PATIENT. It is one thing to
see oneself as responsible for the “nations health” and quite another to be
responsible for an individual patient’s health. It is one thing to be employed
by an individual, another to be employed by the government
Under the Weimar Republic these
reforms resulted in clearly improved public health. However the creativity,
energy and fundamental reforms found in social medicine
during the Weimar Republic seem in retrospect a short and deceptive
illusion. Medical reformers had wanted to counter the misery inherited from the
1st World War and the 2nd Empire on the basis of comprehensive
disease prevention programs. In the few years available to the social reformers,
the doctors role changed from that of advocate,
advisor and partner of the patient to a partner of the state.
Where traditional individual
ethics and Christian charity once stood, the reformers posted a collective ethic
for the benefit of the general population. Private charity and welfare were
nationalized. The mentally ill, for example, having been literally released from
their chains in the 19th Century and placed in local communities and
boarding houses in regular contact with others (the so called “moral therapy”),
were returned to state institutions to become the ultimate victims of state
“solutions.”
With the world economic crisis of
1929, welfare state expenditures had to be reduced for housing, nutrition,
support payments, recreation and rehabilitation, and maternal and child health.
What remained of the humanistic goals of reform were state mechanisms for
inspection and regulation of public health and medical practice. Economic
efficiency became primarily a question of cost benefit analysis. Under the
socialist policies of the period, this analysis was necessarily applied to the
selection of strong persons, deemed worthy of support, and the elimination of
weak “unproductive” people. The scientific underpinning of cost-benefit analysis
to political medical care was provided by the fields of genetics and eugenics.
The term eugenics means to establish connection between the
results of the studies in human genetics and practical measures in
population policy.
Under the new “scientific
understanding “ of human biology provided by genetics
and its implementation under eugenics, poverty, for example, would become merely
an _expression of degeneracy (Entartung) and genetic
inferiority. “Inferior” and “Superior” became natural terms used by persons of
nearly all political persuasions, as readily as the terms handicapped, impaired,
socially dependent, or disadvantaged are used today.
LIFE UNWORHTY OF LIVING
Following World War 1, there had
been concern among some in Germany that the war had decimated the ranks of the
qualified and strong while weak, unqualified, and inferior people had been
spared. Many felt that scant resources should not be wasted on the sick and
suffering. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN FAVOR OF THE
PEOPLE (das volk) led to
the belief that individuals who had become “worthless defective parts had to be
sacrificed or discarded.”
Alfred Hoche,
a neuropathologist (as Freud had been) and Karl
Binding, a lawyer, published a pamphlet in 1922, THE SANCTIONING OF THE
DESTRUCTION OF LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIVING. Binding relativized
the legal and moral prohibition, “Thou Shalt Not
Kill,” and Hoche alternated between economic and
medical arguments. Neurologist in Saxony formally discussed the topic’ “Are
Doctors allowed to kill?” A physician in Dresden pointed out “The contradiction
that many persons (reformers) demand an end to the death penalty for crimes,
but the same people are for putting imbeciles (sic) to death. By the time the
National Socialist (NAZI) Party came to power in Germany, the mentally ill and
mentally retarded had begun to be sterilized and to be
subjected to euthanasia in large numbers in German government
institutions.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE
NATION’S HEALTH
No profession in Germany
became so numerically attached to NATIONAL SOCIALISM
in both its leadership and membership as was the medical profession. Because of
their philosophical orientation toward finding a more scientific basis for
medical research and practice, government funding for research, and the
practical benefits of acquiring university positions
and medical practices from the many banned and exiled German Jewish Doctors,
many physicians supported NAZI policies. One of the first NAZI laws, passed July
14, 1933, was the “LAW FOR THE PREVENTION OF PROGENY (OFF SPRING) OF HEREDITARY
DISEASE”, intended to “consolidate” social and health policies in the German
population and prohibit the right of reproduction for persons defined as
“genetically inferior”. After 1933, the connection between the theory and
practice of politicized medicine advocated by many in Weimar Germany became
actual in Nazi Germany.
A “Genetic Health Court”
consisting of judges and doctors made decisions about forcible sterilization. As
“Advocates of the State,” doctors prosecuted those charged with being
“Genetically ill” in sessions lasting generally no more than ten minutes and
from which the public was bared. In 1935, an adjunct law allowed forcible
abortions in such cases up to the 6th
month of pregnancy.. A total of 300,000 to 400,000 were sterilized and
approximately 5,000 (nearly all women) died as a result of these operations.
After 1945, it was argued to the Restitution Claims Commission of the German
Bundestag that the “Law for the prevention of
Progeny of Hereditary Disease” was not to be considered in the same abuses. The
sterilization law had been drafted earlier under the Weimar Republic a part of
progressive health reform, and as late as 1961 was defended by an expert at Max
Planck Institute on the basis that “every cultured nation needs eugenics, and in
the atomic age, more so than ever before.”
GERMAN YOUTH AND EUTHANASIA
Following the sterilization laws,
the National Socialist next implemented a strategy of euthanasia to solve the
remaining problem of those whose conception and birth had preceded these laws.
The Pediatrition Ernst Wentzler,
while developing plans to improve care in the German Children’s Hospital in
Berlin, personally decided (as consultant to Hitler’s
Chancellory) on the deaths of thousands of
handicapped children. Hans Nachtshein placed
delivery orders for handicapped children for his pressure chamber experiments on
epilepsy. Joseph Mengele delivered genetic and
anthropological “material” from Auschwitz to the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute and conducted his famous twin experiments on
th child victims of the holocaust.
Julius
Hallervorden at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research at
Berlin-Buch carried out several research projects
based on euthanasia programs. Hallervorden and
others who systematically collected the brains of their “patients” who had been
killed’ taught the murdering “doctors” how to dissect’ and cooperated closely
with institutions where children had previously been given thorough examinations
and tests. During interrogation by an American Officer in 1945, he stated….”I
heard that they were going to do that…and told them…if you are going to kill all
those people at least take the brains …There was wonderful material among these
brains… beautiful mental defectives, malformations and early infantile disease.
I accepted these brains of course. Where they came from and how they came to me,
was really none of my business.” The collection was until recently kept by the
Max Planck Institute ( formerly the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute) in Frankfurt
and used for brain research.
In a system in which so many were
routinely condemned to die, the temptation proved strong to use human subjects
in medical experimentation prior to their tragic an horrible deaths……….Following
World War 2, much of this data was (and is) kept classified by Allied military
authorities on the basis of “National Security.” Debate continues to this day on
the ethical and moral implications of any use of such data.
THE BANALITY OF EVIL
We all know the end of this
historical horror story of massive crimes against humanity and the leader of the
“Thousand Year Reich” burning in a bunker in Berlin. BUT IT IS NOT SO EASY TO
RECOGNIZE THE STEPS ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE WHEN WE
DON’T YET KNOW THE END OF THE STORY – AS TODAY WE DO NOT KNOW WHICH NEW MEDICAL
TECHNOLOGIES HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO PLUNGE MODERN SOCIETY OVER A BRINK IN WHICH A
REPEAT DISASTER MIGHT RESULT . Is legalized abortion a new form of “medicine?”
Is doctor assisted suicide a step toward positive euthanasia?
Is modern genetic testing and the Human Genome
Project the first step to a new eugenics? Is HEALTH CARE RATIONING, WHICH IS
ALWAYS A RESULT OF GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN MEDICAL CARE, A STEP TOWARD THE NEW
DEFINITION OF “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIVING?”
Is our present “Quality of Life
Index” a new way of saying it?
National Socialist medicine was
implemented by a political – medical complex – on the basis of political health
care – a scientific and social philosophy imposed by a Totalitarian Regime. IT
SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN, BUT COULD IT EVER HAPPEN AGAIN?”
In the United States the medical
profession operates in a mixed (Free Market / Socialist) economy which DOES NOT
YET have the institutionalized mechanisms of control and regulation of Weimar
Germany and in a Democratic / Republic Political System which, thankfully, does
not have the political ideology of the Third Reich. But the “Banality of Evil”
described by Hannah Arendt in the Socialist /
Democracy Third Reich may stem largely from a government bureaucracy in which
90% of the people think 90% of the time about process not purposes. Does the
modern bureaucratization of medicine hold any real risk for a possible return,
with new “health reforms” and new medical technologies to some of the horrors of
NATIONALIST SOCIALIST medicine? Removal of personal responsibility …”I WAS ONLY
FOLLOWING ORDERS”, PERSONAL AUTHORITY and PERSONAL CHOICE in a Bureaucratized
System may leave less and less room for individual ethics in the conduct of
medical science and practice.
POLITICIZED MEDICINE IS NOT A
SUFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE MASS EXTERMINATION OF HUMAN BEINGS, BUT IT SEEMS TO BE A
NECESSARY CAUSE. The National Socialist (Nazi)
holocaust did not happen for some inexplicable cause
unique to Germans. It is not an event that we can afford to ignore because we
are not Germans or Nazis.
The history of Germany
from 1914 to 1945 is a telescoping of Modernity from Monarchy, war, and collapse
to DEMOCRACY and the welfare state, and finally to Dictatorship, war and death.
Medical ethics is the
responsibility of all members of a society, not just doctors and scientists.
Medicine and science alone do not have the answer to such questions as:
When does life begin? When should
it end? Are humans just the sum of their genetic parts to genetic programs?
While Bioethicist debate, individual medical choices
are made a million times a day among doctors,
patients, their families, and INCREASINGLY THE GOVERNMENT. The product of all
these choices ultimately constitutes the ethical, legal and social framework in
which the practice of medicine and of research are
conducted.”
How far have we come along the
road? When one considers government’s track record of lies, deceit, fiscal
irresponsibility, abuse of power and so on; how could they conclude Medicare
gives them the right to the medical care of their choice? Robert Bork speaking
as the Solicitor General of the U.S. Department of Justice, told us exactly what
Medicare really means…Medicare recipients have a right to …”WHAT EVER THE
GOVERNMENT SEES FIT TO PROVIDE.” Patients whose medical care is provided by
public funds have NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to whatever care their Physician,
using “the highest standards of medical practice” …may “judge necessary”…or to
obtain that care ”from the Physician of their
choice.”
You’ve heard the talk from the
Socialist, Biden, Kennedy,
Gephart, Dodd, Lieberman, Clinton, Bush, Kerry, Gore, Shays, Johnson etc.
etc. about how they are going to “bless us” with the same kind of health care
they have in Canada. The Canadian population is divided into three age groups,
45 and below, 46 to 65 and 66 and over, in terms of their access to health care.
Needless to say, the first group, who could be called the active taxpayers,
enjoy priority treatment. The results of this
“progressive” medical care, as far as it has gone, speak for themselves: Massive
government bureaucracies absorbing about 70% of the tax dollars earmarked for
medical treatment, job destroying mandates on employers to be able to afford
coverage for their employees, price controls which typically create shortages
and poor quality and/or service, non-price rationing ie:
political considerations, corruption, nepotism, special care for the rich and
famous etc.. The only documented beneficiaries are Politicians, Bureaucrats,
Administrators and any other power seekers politically
connected.
What about the “civilized” UK
(England). In Socialist England, the waiting list for surgery is 800,000 or more
out of a population of about 55,000,000. State of the art equipment is
non-existent in most British hospitals. Only 10% of the health care spending is
derived from private sources. Britain pioneered in the development of kidney
dialysis technology, and yet the country has one of the lowest dialysis rates in
THE WORLD. The Brookings Institution found 7,000 Britons in need of hip
replacement, about 20,000 in need of coronary bypass surgery and some 15,000 in
need of cancer chemotherapy are DENIED medical attention in
Britain each year.
In Russia, where you would expect
it, it’s about the same, patients over 60 years of age are considered worthless
parasites and those over 70 years of age are frequently denied even elementary
forms of health care. They’re practicing euthanasia in “civilized” Holland.
Remember this, the ones graduating
last from Doctor school are called Doctors and you
will be treated by them whether you like it or not. Why would anyone put in 12
years of education to work for the government unless of course, they considered
doctoring a job and not a service?
In the end it is the resurrection
of Liberty (Constitutional Government vis-à-vis “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s
God”) that will guide us to the best application of new health reforms and
technologies in the future. That is if we get off our duffs, take back our
government and start to build a meaningful future.
