ChronWatch – June 23, 2009
People Who Have Nothing to Contribute Anymore
By Lee Duigon
I heard something on the radio the other night that I never thought I’d hear – an American public figure complaining that too many of his fellow citizens were living too long.
Last year Baroness Warnock – Britain’s high panjandrum of medical ethics and “Britain’s leading moral philosopher,” according to imbeciles who wouldn’t know a moral principle if it bit them in the kiester – made news by publicly stating that old, broken-down Brits were “wasting the resources of the National Health Service.” These patients, according to the former headmistress (aren’t you glad you didn’t send your child to her school?), have a duty to die. And if they’re too out of touch to realize that, she said, others should be “licensed to put people down.”
Which leads us to Bob Beckle, Clinton apologist and manager of the Walter Mondale presidential campaign, which carried one state out of 50. Talking about the crying need for a massive government health care system, Beckle remarked that too much time and money is being spent keeping alive those persons whose best years are behind them and who have nothing to contribute anymore. The talk show’s host, self-identified “Catholic” Bill Cunningham, didn’t disagree with him. I think we may take his silence as consent.
But they aren’t alone anymore. Various health care “reformers” are questioning the wisdom and cost-effectiveness of providing extended care for Alzheimer’s patients. The poor old things cost a lot of money and they’re no good for anything, so why keep them alive? Think of all the money that could be saved by snuffing them out.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. Universal government health care – formerly known as “socialized medicine” until it failed abysmally in one country after another – is an absurd and impossible scheme. There isn’t enough money in America to pay for it – not unless you start crossing off the list millions of people who would otherwise receive its benefits.
Americans have to work to earn all that other people’s money that’s going to pay for “universal” health care. The problem with the elderly and the infirm is that they won’t be paying into the system. At the same time, they require more medical care than people who are young and fit. The more people you have retiring, and ceasing to pay into the system, the more you burden the system; and the longer those persons live after they retire, the heavier the burden.
The only way to keep the system viable is to get rid of the dead wood – which is you, kimosabe, as soon as you get too old to work full-time. Unless you happen to be a rich and powerful congressman, movie star, or medical ethicist, you’re going to be in Bob Beckle’s crosshairs. Better hurry up and die!
As we have seen from experience in Britain, National Health will encourage you to die. Got a toothache? They’ll put you on a six-month grin-and-bear-it list. Is that tumor getting bigger and bigger? Hang in there for another year or so, and maybe they’ll get to it. Broken ankle? Oops, you smoke – so no care at all for you.
Beyond the indisputably large issue of government health care as a per se exercise in futility looms a larger issue the sheer ungodliness of it all.
Do these elitist cannibals, who speak so lightly of terminating anyone whose quality of life isn’t up to their elitist standards, really believe that God does not see what they do, does not hear what they say? “They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless,” observes Psalm 94 (v. 6). Will God stand by while they frame mischief by a law? (v. 20)
Once they start killing off Alzheimer’s patients, who’ll be next? People with Down’s Syndrome? Cerebral palsy patients? They’ve already killed off tens of millions of babies in the womb, but why stop there? Why not terminate children who don’t do well in school, and look like they’ll grow up to be a burden to society?
The only citizens who won’t be failed by universal health care will be those who don’t need any health care!
But God does see, and God does hear, and He will avenge the powerless. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, or anytime this century – but He will.
Try not to be on the wrong side of righteousness, when that happens. The elitists will need more than sun block, where they’re going.
Lee Duigon is a Christian freelance writer whose work can be seen at: www.chalcedon.edu.
Copyright 2009 ChronWatch – All rights reserved.
Public date: June 24th, 2009
