National Health Perils - HillaryCare Preview

We've decided to let you go.

National Health nurses in the UK are getting the power of life and death over their charges. Thats right, if your free National Health nurse thinks keeping you alive won't pay off, they can decide to snuff you out. I thought this euthanasia business was limited to places inhabited by self-loathing idiots like Holland.

The Democrats and their presidential candidates think your relationship with your medical doctor ought to be the business of the nanny state. Conservatives point out that any form of national health scheme the liberals posit will be nothing more than socialized medicine. Nobody wants socialized medicine, of course. At least not overtly, (with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton's Marxist health care plans.)

Sure, health care will be free. But it is inevitable that the quality and availability of health care will suffer in proportion to the amount of government involvement. Look at Cuba, Canada, Venezuela, and the UK. If you fall ill in any of these places, you will get a bureaucracy instead of real health care. With free medical care for all, we abrogate our responsibility for our own well-being. John Edwards wants mandatory physical checkups. Eventually they will come to your house to ensure that you floss, eat 'right' and don't smoke.

Lousy health care, inadequate facilities, long waiting lists and uninspired doctors aren't all we will get with HillaryCare or any of its ugly sisters. If we go the socialist route in health care, ultimately we will be letting the state decide who lives and dies. The results are horrifying.
---
Mr. Gustan, we don't think we can cure you enough to get you back paying taxes again, so...
---
Seriously, I don't think my health care is properly within the purvey of government at all. Not for any reason. There needn't be a "health care system" at all as far as I'm concerned. Sadly, that train left the station long ago, so if you like more analysis and less rant see: Sicko in Europe at Another Rovian Conspiracy, and Michelle Malkin's treatment of the same gneral topic. Warning: both these links could cause you to form a mental image of Michael Moore.

Be careful where you fall ill or become incapacitated

Propaganda Poster for Aktion T4 - Click

Doctors and other health care professionals in Louisiana are now free to put patients to sleep like a dog or a convict if the weather is too nasty. Dr. Anna Pou, accused of murder for euthanizing patients under her care during the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina so she and her helpers could go home has been cleared for now. A Grand Jury failed to return an indictment against her, but you'd think she had been acquitted to read the MSM.

You can read the wah-wah sympathetic AP story here, or read the Plains Feeder's earlier posts about the Katrina grandma murders:
October 15, 2005: Get that Living Will signed
October 21, 2005: Arrests Likely in Katrina 'Mercy Killings'
July 18, 2006: Euthanasia in Louisiana - 2nd Degree Murder
---
These are the same murderous liberal monsters who think poison shots are a good way to ease the cost to society of sick folks. If it doesn't pay society to treat you, then you get no treatment. If your maintenance costs are too high, then active euthanasia is the solution. Like Action T4.

This nasty business always gains traction with the introduction of any form of socialism. No wonder it is popular in the European countries. When the state pays the state gets the say. Think Hillarycare.

These dangerous hypocrites howl about lethal injections being too inhumane and painful to use on condemned criminals. Go figure.

We give the directions around here

You seem confused. You must see Doktor.

The future is euthanasia and assisted suicide for the Euro-wingnut regional socialists in Switzerland. Now they are considering conning troublesome cats they determine to be mentally ill to take a prescription for suicide pills. All it takes is that you have some kind of mental problem "making life appear unbearable to the patient in the long term."

I ask, to whom must one's life appear to be unbearable to trigger this cleverly disguised euthanasia law. The local authorities? Some busybody bureaucrat with a clipboard? A magistrate of some sort? Some kind of guardian ad suicidum? Maybe my neighbors could get up a petition to have me put to sleep. Why would anyone ask me? I'm mentally ill, remember.

Be careful if you take your vacation in Europe. Try not to appear upset, unhappy or confused at any time. Never ask the cops for directions.
---
Note that I refer to the Swiss as regional socialists. This is to distinguish them from the international socialists, like Bolsheviks and Maoists, and from the national socialists, like the Nazis and Phalangists. Other examples of regional socialists are Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. I like the moniker; we could call regional socialists Reggies for short.

Is Ray Nagin in Lebanon?

The Blame Bush for Everything crowd is now saying that the Bush administration has bungled the evacuation of US citizens from the war zone in Lebanon. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out on his radio show today, someone must have passed out a talking points paper telling the Bush Bashers to compare the evacuation to the hyped up horrors of hurricane Katrina.

These hateful cats who would harm America to regain political power must have noted the dip in Bush's poll numbers following the big Gulf Coast disaster. I'm surprised they aren't comparing it to Viet-Nam. At least Viet-Nam was a war.

I wonder where these goofballs get the notion that Americans who get caught in foreign wars or terrorist actions, far-away natural disasters, or get jammed up in other countries by incomprehensible laws or official corruption have a free ticket home coming to them from Uncle Sugar? The US government's consular presence abroad isn't American Express.

The old feeder has been jammed up as a civilian overseas in all of the above mentioned scenarios, once I even went to a US Embassy in the middle east to get help. I couldn't get past the Marines and all I wanted to do was use their Autovon phone to tell the folks at the office what I was up to. I had two US passports at the time. I knew I was going to have to get my own sorry butt out of Dodge. You travel in foreign countries at your own risk and at your own expense.
---
If this effort to connect Katrina to Lebanon grows legs, I wonder if we will see stories of poor, (probably black) US expats and 'tourists' in Lebanon being euthanized Katrina-style by George Bush's desperately unprepared functionaries.
---
Update: State 29 tells of an Iowa family who actually their vacation in Beirut, which came to a "shocking end" when the current war started. Read about it here; National lampoon's Beirut Vacation, with State 29's observation on the Des Moines Register's editorial position prohibiting mention of how gosh-awful stupid these tourists were to travel to lebanon in spite of ample warning.

Lethal injections: Good enough for grandma; too painful for murderers

Medical Professionals?

Remember the ugly stories of hospitals euthanizing instead of evacuating their helpless patients during the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina? The Feeder blogged them here and here. well, it appears that there might have been some truth to the stories of doctors and other care-givers putting their own patients to death with hot shots. These cats are accused of killing those under their care that were too old or sick to be moved easily. So they could skedaddle out of harm's way without having to say they abandoned their charges.

These same doctors and nurses, who were allegedly overheard telling their doomed patients, "I'm going to give you something to make you feel better" as they administered the deadly injections would probably agree with the anti death penalty 'medical professionals' in California pictured above. The ones who worry that there might be some actual suffering involved in dying from a shot of poison. They took the same oath, no?

Let me sum up; lethal injections cause too much pain for a wretched condemned murderer, but the same shots are OK when called euthanasia or 'mercy killing' and administered to someone's hospitalized grandma. At least such killings are OK if there is a storm approaching and the 'medical professionals' need to get home. No contradiction here?
---
See also: Lost Budgie's Report, and BayouBob's What if one of these patients were your Mother or Father? and

Arrests Likely in Katrina 'Mercy Killings'

Update: 7/18/06 - Doctor and nurses arrested, charged with 2nd degree murder
---
Perhaps the stories of panicky doctors and other care-givers having killed patients and other helpless folk during the hurricane Katrina disaster in New Oleans and other affected areas are true. The Washington Post reports that Louisiana Attorney General Charles 'Hummer' Foti says his office will likely be filing charges.

Six hospitals and 13 nursing homes in Louisiana are under investigation. The investigations were wide-ranging, looking into whether patients were abandoned, evacuated improperly, or euthanized to spare them further suffering, said attorney general's spokeswoman Kris Wartelle.

If these charges are true, I hope they don't get off with some theory of justification. Euthanasia, last I heard, was still a crime here in America. I can already hear the apellate courts citing Dutch law.

For some laughs, read more news stories about the antics of Louisiana AG Charles Foti, courtesy GoogleNews and what the blogs are saying, from Technorati.

Get that Living Will signed

Get that Living Will signed, then pray you don't become incapacitated or fall mortally ill in Louisiana, especially if the weather looks bad. Or in Holland. They'll euthanize you if saving you is to much of a problem.

Found with Google News.

Write to Life

Right to Life?

Life isn't so bad. Its a matter of degree that depends on your outlook. The emphasis here is important. Your outlook - not someone else's. Some folks would drink poison before they would live in an iron lung. Others figure they can squeeze enough joy, or at least enough moral consistency out of iron lung living to make the indignity of it all worth while. It is a choice. Such are the natural trials and tribulations of life that some of us will be faced with making a real time live or die choice for ourselves.

The Doc tells you news of your impending, painful slide into a permanent vegetative state. You stop off on your way home and visit with your lawyer. Back home, you write a few notes and call the cops before going into the back yard to eat your pistol. I think this is a reasonable reaction. It might not be a good reaction, in the eyes of God and everyone else. But it is your reaction, your plan, and you effectuate it. You don't want to live with the tubes, maybe only half there. It is your choice.

I think any person, even if they aren't in their right mind, has a God given right to make that choice, and if it be in their power, to give effect to their decision. If you find yourself not in your right mind, as Ms. Schiavo finds herself now, you face an ugly problem. You must depend upon either having communicated your wishes effectively beforehand, or upon your ability to blink and wink and gurgle your desires to whomever is at hand. And they might not be friends. They might want you to suffer when you would rather be dead or, vice-versa, to finish you off just when you were getting used to it.

If this prospect concerns you, by all means join the Write to Life movement and get yourself a living will or durable power of attorney or whatever it takes in your state to give effect to your wishes after you are incapacitated. If you don't have a lawyer, go ask your state bar association for help. Get their advice and take it! Then, hope and pray and live your life so that you don't fall helpless in a strange land or among enemies. Or in Florida.
---
What happens if you change your mind? Say you become a vegetable and find out it really suits you. You didn't think you'd like being vegetative when your signed that living will. But now that you've tried it you are thinking, "Life isn't so bad. Its a matter of degree. Now, where's my feeding tube?" Wink Wink

I thought the left coast liked "Assisted Suicides"

Looking for a laugh on an otherwise slow Saturday at the Feedlot, I naturally turned to the Associated Press. These cats at the AP are always right on top of news that isn't quite, well, news. Terence Chea reports that the time has come to put up a railing to stop people from jumping to their deaths. In the story, Eve Meyer, executive director of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, whines that, "The longer we delay, the more lives it's going to cost, the more money it's going to cost and the more we lose focus."

Honestly, I thought the left coast loonies all were in favor of assisted self-termination, or ethical suicide. Maybe they don't like their bridge being used as a jumping off point to the hereafter because there are no bureaucrats involved, no licensing requirements, and no paperwork involved. It would be easier to solve these problems than to build a jump fence. Set up an office where suicides could consult with a doctor or psychologist who could then prescribe a jump off the bridge. Still more bureaucrats could make suitable arrangements, like transportation to the bridge, disposition of the corpse, etc. Fees levied on the jumpers or collected from selling TV and concession rights could cover the costs.

Maybe Omaha could do something similar with their imaginary footbridge across the Missouri River. Those distraught by the ugly fact that Omaha will never annex itself into being a San Francisco or New York or even a Kansas City can leap into the mud (or onto the ice).