Every now and again, there is a story the really makes the consequences of policy decisions crystal clear. Roxanne de Luca, at the Camp of the Saints, has published such a post.
Take a look…
Your ultimate feel-good story of the day: a little boy with no cerebellum is inexplicably normal. When little Chase Britton was born, he was legally blind; when he was a year old, doctors did a MRI and said that it looked like he was a vegetable – except that Chase laughs, cries, sits up, crawls, is starting to learn how to walk, and colours.
Read the whole thing and get ready to tear up – it’s a lovely story of a boy who shouldn’t be able to sleep, let alone sit up, but is learning to walk and play.
Now for the other kind of tears: a Canadian death panel mandated that a little one-year-old boy will have his breathing tube removed, because he has the brain scan of a vegetable. The parents’ request for a trachetomy, so that he could die at home with them, was denied because it could lead to infection – which is even more absurd than not giving opium to terminal cancer patients for fear that they would become addicted. Little Joseph Maraachli’s parents and entire family fought a long legal battle to keep him on the most rudimentary of life support systems, but were ultimately denied by the government:
The father and relatives of one-year-old Joseph Maraachli wept outside a London courthouse after an emotional Justice Helen Rady upheld the earlier decision of an independent provincial tribunal forcing the baby’s parents to comply with doctors’ orders.
With all of their legal avenues exhausted, the family will have to say goodbye to Joseph Monday morning — on Family Day — when his breathing tube will be removed.
“I do my best for my baby. My son is not a criminal . . . to just let him die,” dad Moe Maraachli said through tears.
“They are taking my baby away from me . . . Where is the humanity?”
He said he didn’t know how to break the news to his wife Sana Nader, who was too upset to sit through the day’s court proceedings, or explain to their seven-year-old son Ali what’s going to happen to his little brother.
Obviously, Chase lives here in the US. His family had a choice. Even though, by all medical testing and opinion, he should be a vegetable. On the other hand, Joseph is a Canadian. His family has no choice, as the government makes the decisions. I can’t say that there is any chance of recovery for Joseph, just as doctors here could not have predicted Chase’s improvement. However, since health care decisions are made by the government, and not by families, he will be killed.
In countries with socialized medical systems, there are formulas, or protocols, that bureaucrats used to determine what treatments a person of a certain age, with a certain condition, and so on, can receive. If you fall outside the lines, you will die. You are not a person. You do not have a family that loves you. You are a number, and if you fall outside what the system thinks is worth the cost, you will be given a death sentence…and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. Socialized medicine reduces life and death to a mathematical formula, humanity, love, a will to live, or any other consideration, does not enter into that equation.
You’ve read the words or Ezekiel Emanuel and Donald Berwick here. They have been appointed to positions in our government by Barak Obama. Just imagine if the Democrats had achieved their end goal-a single payer heath care system. Would children like Chase survive?
And this is the type of system the “progressives” want for us?
All I can say is that this is just wrong. When anyone is faced with such a decision, they should remember they are human and what makes them that way. A child should be more than a number on a chart and it’s parents should be the ones making the final decision.
The government disagrees with that. We are too stupid not to kill off our relatives.
This is headed to America if we are not able to repeal Obamacare. The state will be deciding who lives and who dies, that sounds like a death panel to me.
It’s called IPAB, and it’s part of ObamaCare.
You beat me to it, Matt. I was going to post on the Canadian boy tomorrow. How do the people making these decisions sleep at night? How is in the little boy’s best interest to make him die in the hospital instead of letting go home to his parents and loved ones? Does anybody really need any more evidence that socialized medicine is wrong?
You beat me to it, Matt. I was going to post on the little Canadian tomorrow. How do the people that make these decissions sleep at night? How is it in the the boy’s best interest to die in the hospital insread of going home to his parents and loved ones? Does anybody really need any more proof that socialized medicine is wrong?
They apparently sleep well. All I can say is that this is what happens when you give government power.
And this is the type of system the “progressives” want for us?..yes it is Matt..sigh…
That it is Angel, that is is.