Fanning the flames of hysteria: Talk of Obama's Internment Camps

Yes,  you have hit the nail on the head.  Your analysis is a shrewd one.  Well spoken. 

Thank you.

OBAMA’S CONDUCT ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

IS SCHIZOPHRENOGENIC

By Harvard Hollenberg

 

            President Barack Obama’s performance, yesterday, August 11, 2009, at a New Hampshire “town meeting” was illustrative of his state of mind on health care reform, which is, itself, schizoidal.  He seems to be saying, “I’m thinking of a word.  (A) If Congress fails to guess the word, there will be no health care reform.  (B)  Whatever  word on the subject Congress enacts (voila!), THAT will be health care reform.”

            This attitude is schizophrenogenic because it engenders fragmentation, confusion, paranoia, and rational fear.  It is the opposite of leadership.

            The President’s vagueness is becoming excruciating.  Without proposed legislation, physicians are obligated to preserve life to the uttermost.  Paying physicians to engage in required end-of-life discussions with elderly patients can therefore have only one objective, to induce fragile patients to curtail their own lives for the convenience of care givers.  Moreover, there can never be informed consent to end one’s own life, because informed consent entails complete information.  Since no one can state, as a fact, what happens after we die, informed consent to discontinue treatment is based upon the seductiveness of death as a purported surcease of suffering and the special pleading that goes along with other people’s assessment of the cost and indecorousness of prolonging life.

            Moreover, is there any rule, proposed anywhere, that would require care givers to search, with the proverbial fine-tooth comb, for every experiment, hypothesis, trial, test, article, and manuscript awaiting publication relating to possibly ameliorating a patient’s condition before advising that patient or his or her relatives of the futility of further efforts to sustain life?  The lonely survivor at sea cannot possibly know about the sail of the ship that could save him that is still beyond the horizon.  What legislation mandates that care givers search beyond the horizon?

            When asked about end-of-life physician-patient conferences and the concern that such a provision could be a precursor to euthanasia, Mr. Obama said, “I’m against it.”

Precisely which “it’ is Mr. Obama against?  Is he against the provision mandating such conferences or is he against euthanasia?  And if the (let’s be kind) unintended consequences of such conferences result in the untimely “mercy” killing of the elderly, what good does it do to oppose a result the legislation he will sign predestines?

            A similar question Mr. Obama finessed related to withholding treatments viewed as not cost-effective.  Mr. Obama converted that topic to that of unnecessary, duplicative tests.  That was not the question.  The question, as I like to phrase it, because I despise baseball, is: will we have a process by which, e.g., Mickey Mantle, whose life, fans would say, is easily more important than anyone else’s, but whose crystal clear prognosis is certain death, gets a precious liver in preference to some other, less rapacious drinker, with a better predictable outcome?  In other words, Mr. Obama dodged the question of rationing where there is no alternative to rationing, as in the case of organ transplants.

            I’m sorry, Sarah, but you were right the first time.  If a panel of experts is going to decide whether I am too old and fat to have surgery to correct my degenerative spinal condition, and that panel says Elizabeth Taylor can be reimbursed, under Medicare, for the same operation, what’s wrong with calling such a committee not only a “death panel,” but a death panel guided by fascist principles?

            I am sick to death of Obama’s railing against the small print in insurance contracts and then demanding, as an act of loyalty, we support health care reform, so far, written in what amounts to invisible ink!

            You’ve had your forty days and forty nights, Uncle Moish.  Time to reveal the Ten Commandments or the Fourteen Points or the Four Freedoms or the Square Deal, the New Deal, Lend Lease, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, a thousand points of light or “you’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie.”  It’s time to tell the country what you really stand for, and if you are too pusillanimous to speak clearly, with one voice, then you should resign, yes, even in favor of our beloved, clearly brain damaged, but far more candid Vice President, Joe Biden.

Harvard Hollenberg is a writer and appellate lawyer in New York City.

© Copyright Harvard Hollenberg 2009.  All rights reserved.

smkovalinsky, I've added a NowPublic scan to your story that follows the real-time converstaion about health care reform on twitter. Thanks for your post, I hope we can host a real debate on the issues here, it seems someone other than main stream media has to uncover the facts of this important issue.

Thank you.  Great idea.  

I agree to participate, and to make my arguments credible I will reference them to the Health Reform Bill. (Phew!)  This will be daunting, but its the only way to discuss the issues as written, not as interpreted by fear mongers.