Why Obamacare Is Bad for America

This is from an e-mail sent to me by my son Marc. I didn't think I could improve on it.

 

While I'm sure there is no shortage of topics you could write about in your next blog, I would suggest comment on the recent case of little Sarah Murnaghan who is dying of cystic fibrosis while she waits for a lung transplant. I actually lost sleep over this story last night and woke up thinking about it.

Without getting into the medical merits of the case, it's a perfect example of how to apply the Dali Lama's rule #5 on living your life - "Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly." This would be excellent advice for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in light of her refusal to intervene despite pleas from the girls parents and members of Congress. To me this is the quintessential example of why Obamacare or Government-run health care is a bad thing. Here we have a Washington bureaucrat failing to be proactive in trying to save a life when she could do so with the stroke of a pen, but instead refused. What was she thinking? Sarah's doctors say she has a good chance of survival with a transplanted adult lung, and here we have the Secretary of HHS putting policy enforcement at a higher priority than medical need. I don't get it.

Thank God Sarah's parents found a judge who actually has some common sense and ordered HHS to suspend enforcement of the age rule.

What does this have to do with Obamacare?  Simple. Wwe've just seen how federal bureaucrats do not always put the patient first when their decision making could have a direct impact on a patient's survival. This is an example of government weighing in on who gets treatment and who is denied treatment. If that's not a chilling thought, I don't know what is. As frustrating as it is, I've seen this sort of thing time and time again in the military where people in decision-making positions can't look beyond policy guidelines to make common sense decisions in matters that fall into gray areas. That's where judgment comes into play. That's what these officials are really paid to do. Any person with half a brain can point to a rule in a book and say their hands are tied. I say Bullshit! What ever happened to judgment and the courage to do the right thing? And in this case, when someone's life is on the line?

Is this what we can expect with Obamacare, where the state has the final say in who receives medical treatment and who does not? Who's next? A cancer patient being denied a liver transplant because he's already Stage 4? Or a senior citizen being denied a lung transplant because he's too old? To me, it ranks right up there with the progressive mindset that terminating an unwanted pregnancy is a matter of personal choice because that's what the law says.

The fact is, in the future this type of insensitive bureaucratic decision-making will certainly squash the hopes of other patients fighting for their lives. This is what we can expect with Obamacare. This is why government-run healthcare is bad for America.