Making the Case for Killing Grandma

Evan Thomas at Newsweek talks about rationing health care and why it's necessary. He says, "The idea that we might ration health care to seniors (or anyone else) is political anathema. Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma...Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable." In other words, it's not necessarily a bad idea to kill off the sick, infirm and undesirables to save a buck.

He goes on to talk about high spending on Medicare: "As President Obama said, most of the uncontrolled growth in federal spending and the deficit comes from Medicare; nothing else comes close." He links it to end-of-life issues. To me, this just makes a greater case to keep the government away from health care. The government doesn't care about spending and has no incentive to keep it down.

At least he admits one of the problems of high cost in our current system: malpractice lawsuits. "There's no question that reining in the lawyers would help cut costs. Fearing medical-malpractice suits, doctors engage in defensive medicine, ordering procedures that may not be strictly necessary—but why take the risk?" He hits on the reason this has not been tackled nationally and why it is not an option to the Democrats: "But the trial lawyers—big donors to the Democratic Party—have stopped Congress from even considering reforms."

But in the end, the article is about killing off people in the name of "dignity."

The original article is found here.