Perhaps the biggest problem caused by the various noisy town hall altercations is that the media has had so much fun reporting how McCain tossed out a loudmouth, or how Barney Frank told off a Larouche supporter, that it took me a while to sift through all the articles about Town Hall Face and find out what had fueled the dittoheads and Larouche supporters so much. What was all this death panel crap? What was Hitler's T4 plan? What did the new proposed healthcare bill really say?
After some digging, I found out what they all were. There is, as you may have guessed, a difference.
T4 stood for Tiergartenstrasse 4, a Berlin address where Hitler headquartered his racial hygiene programs. (Other places, including America, used a nicer word: eugenics). It was all pretty simple, really; his obsession with the Aryan fairy tale included getting rid of people who were going to cost the Third Reich too much money. This included children born with major birth defects, chronically mentally ill, the mentally retarded, and others who were being cared for in various institutions.
The part of the pending healthcare bill that has various talk show hosts wetting themselves proved my hunch that the Palin/Limbaugh/etc contingent has never researched T4 or read HR 3200. I can see why a lot of people don't want to read proposed legislation, as stuff written in legalese takes longer to read and is damned dry reading. And we are a nation of non-readers.
If you check out Section 1233 of America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, aka HR 3200, Section 1233, you'll see that it allows doctors to bill Medicare if their patients want to make an appointment to discuss their choices and preferences if their health deteriorates. You know, like those Living Wills that some of us young folks already have.
Here's part of Section 1233 here, courtesy of the Library of Congress Web site:
(5)(A) For purposes of this section , the term `order regarding life sustaining treatment' means, with respect to an individual, an actionable medical order relating to the treatment of that individual that--
`(i) is signed and dated by a physician (as defined in subsection (r)(1)) or another health care professional (as specified by the Secretary and who is acting within the scope of the professional's authority under State law in signing such an order, including a nurse practitioner or physician assistant) and is in a form that permits it to stay with the individual and be followed by health care professionals and providers across the continuum of care;
`(ii) effectively communicates the individual's preferences regarding life sustaining treatment, including an indication of the treatment and care desired by the individual;
`(iii) is uniquely identifiable and standardized within a given locality, region, or State (as identified by the Secretary); and
`(iv) may incorporate any advance directive (as defined in section 1866(f)(3)) if executed by the individual.
If a terminally ill person wants to be medically euthanized, their choices are still DIY or a trip to Amsterdam. No death panel will do it for you.
Perhaps the death panel story pushers think that people over 64 are so brain-dead that they can't handle the concept of Do Not Resuscitate, and can't decide whether they will want the crash cart if their heart stops. It's one of the more shameful lies making the rounds as it assumes that 65+ equals stupid. My grandfather had all his marbles until the day he died at the age of 89, and worked cutting firewood and tending a 1/4 acre truck patch until the week before his death. If anyone had suggested he couldn't make decisions about whether to have DNR on his medical chart, they would have probably gotten a punch in the face. There were good reasons why everyone was frightened of my grandfather.
One factor that particularly bothers me about the Larouche followers is that they're always clutching posters depicting Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache, although others have pointed out that it's more of a Laurel and Hardy style. (You can download your own here.) Had Hitler's Third Reich persevered, Obama's parents would probably have been accused of "racial defilement" and hustled off to a death camp with or without their offspring. And gay Jews like Barney Frank would probably have already gotten the Zyklon B way before Barack Senior.
Monday, August 31, 2009 at 11:13PM 