No health care for people with Autism or other disabilities

(food for thought..form your own opinion)

FROM THE NEW YORK POST:

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (JAMA, Feb. 27, 2008).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

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Betsy McCaughey brings to our attention the Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel's views regarding universal health care. Dr. Emanuel is a health policy advisor to President Obama and brother of Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, so what he thinks may impact all of us. As Betsy points out, Dr. Emanuel has some very radical views regarding the rationing of health care. Take for example Emanuel's comments in a 2008 article in which he says cutting costs won't be easy:

Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change.

In other words, these procedural changes aren't really change at all. Instead, he thinks we need change in how we apply health care coverage. As Betsy notes, Dr. Emanuel believes doctors try too hard to apply the Hippocratic Oath to everyone as equally as possible, which is what drives up costs. Instead Emanuel thinks we need to ration basic, guaranteed care to only those who can fully participate in society. Betsy points out a 1996 Hastings Center article in which Emanuel wrote this:

This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.

So, according to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health care advisor to President Obama, the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good. I can tell you that as a mom to a four year old girl with severe speech apraxia that prevents her from being able to speak intelligibly, this scares the living hell out of me. If you have a child with autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, or any other neurological disorder or chromosomal defect that prevents him or her from participating in society in the manner Dr. Emanuel or the government thinks they should, that neurological care would not be guaranteed as basic and would, therefore, not be covered in a government takeover of health care.

Making things even worse, private health care companies will be driven out of business, so that won't be an option for parents with disabled children, either, leaving them with no coverage whatsoever. This kind of policy would drive up the abortion rate, which Obama and other liberals want covered as a basic care, as doctors urge parents go out of their way to screen their unborn babies for any and all disorders and defects that would not be covered under basic care. If a child's disorder is undetected by prenatal testing, what happens when the disorder becomes obvious after birth? I shudder to think what the government would come up with then.

Emanuel's policies would lead to a further deterioration of our nation's culture as people begin to look at those with disabilities as objects that drive up collective health care costs instead of as individual human beings who have intrinsic value and rights endowed to them by God.

More below on next article and video
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(September 3, 6:46 AMBirmingham Autism & Parenting ExaminerJennifer Terry)

People with Autism and other disabilities will not receive adequate care under the new health care reform proposals. This is due to the formula which will be used to determine who gets treatment and who does not and which treatments will be provided.

When Health care is paid for by the general public it will be rationed. Resources will not be available to keep up with the demand. There will be waiting lists. Who decides which patient goes to the front of the line? Who decides if your child will receive the care, service or equipment you feel he needs? A simple formula created by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the "health-policy adviser" to President Obama.

Dr. Emanuel also serves as a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. These two key positions puts his ethical, professional and moral values directly in the spotlight. Dr. Emanuel has a career long history of his stance on comparative effectiveness and related issues. His vision for American's is clear. In order to use his system decisions are created to determine what it means to "participate fully" in society. Those who are not deemed as full participants will not receive as much investment of resources. In other words, people with Autism, dementia, developmental disabilities and other people not valued as highly by mainstream America will not receive the support worked for throughout the middle 20th century.

Dr. Emanuel said, "Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example Is is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason." (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

Dr. Emanuel is confronted on this matter in this June 10th video of a public hearing of the Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. ---He leaves without denying the allegations.

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AND to anonymous readers again who cannot even bother to provide legitimate information in order for me to post your comment if I would choose to do so.....it makes NO real difference now what Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel has or has not done in the past as far as supporting or not supporting assisted suicide - in the end ....the facts still remain ....with a government health care plan.....THEY will be the ones who decide everything for you......and who does and does not receive treatment, what is and is not covered and why. The highlighted facts directly from the proposal remain facts of the proposal. That is the disturbing part. If you remove the video here.....the statements of controversy from Betsy McCaughey...the facts of the proposal...what is written within the document itself...is what remains extremely dangerous. If you choose to not believe it.....don't. Some will stick their heads in the sand forever rather than see what is right before their eyes. This is posted here to try to get you all to think for yourself for once and not be apathetic and trust or believe all the big government tries to get you to fall for or believe. Don't think for a minute that they are on YOUR side or want only the best for you at all times. There are many dark things our own government does you may never know about or read about that would sound horrific if you did. They do not tell you everything. Only what they want you to hear...to believe what they want you to believe. I am hopeful our own country will remember our government was supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people and big gov was to back out.