Check the palm of your hands. Some of you ol’ heads out there remember the movie “Logan’s Run”.

From Wikipedia

Logan’s Run is a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Published in 1967, it depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources is managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expedient of demanding the death of everyone upon reaching a particular age, thus avoiding the issue of overpopulation. The story follows the actions of Logan, a Deep Sleep Operative or “Sandman” charged with enforcing the rule, as he tracks down and kills citizens who “run” from society’s lethal demand only to himself ultimately “run.”

In the world of 2116, a person’s maximum age is strictly legislated: twenty-one years, to the day. When people reach this Lastday they report to a Sleepshop in which they are willingly executed. A person’s age is revealed by their palm flower — a crystal embedded in the palm of their right hand that changes color every seven years, then turns black on Lastday.

Art does imitate life to a certain extent with Obama’s plans for health care in this country.

While Obama supporters were cheering him for getting his first major piece of legislation passed ( the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–a.k.a the stimulus bill), monies from this bill were being allocated for his government health care agenda.

What is the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research team?

From the hhs.gov website:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced the members of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the new Council will help coordinate research and guide investments in comparative effectiveness research funded by the Recovery Act.

“Comparative effectiveness research can improve care for all Americans and is an important element of President Obama’s health reform plan,” said HHS Spokeswoman Jenny Backus. “President Obama is committed to openness and transparency and the Coordinating Council will host open meetings and a listening session as it begins its important work.”

Comparative effectiveness research provides information on the relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions. Such research will give clinicians and patients valid information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system.

Now what do they mean exactly by improving “the performance of the U.S. health care system?” There is one person on this 15 member team that has answered that question already. His name? Ezekiel J. Emanuel.

# He is the brother of Rahm Emanuel. Currently, he is President Obama’s White House chief-of-staff. Relationship map.

# He is a strong proponent of euthanasia (mercy killing/physician-assisted suicide) and has authored books and many articles on the subject. Here are just a few.

The History of Euthanasia Debates in the United States and Britain
Here he contributed to a book (written by his wife, Linda) also on the topic of euthanasia.
Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions : The Lancet (Must register. Free)

# Does not believe that Blacks were disproportionately targeted for high risk experimentation by the medical community.

Here, the author of the book ”Medical Apartheid” (Harriet A. Washington) responds to a review Ezekiel gave on her book. On page 2, he responds to her comments.

Here are a couple of excerpts from “Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions”

“The death of a 20-year-old young woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects. Youngest-first allocation also ignores prognosis, and categorically excludes older people. Thus, youngest-first allocation seems insufficient on its own, but it could be combined with prognosis and lottery principles in a multiprinciple allocation system.”

And this~

A young person with a poor prognosis has had few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern that disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable. Some small benefits, such as a few weeks of life, might also be intrinsically insignificant when compared with large benefits.
Saving the most lives is also included in this system because enabling more people to live complete lives is better than enabling fewer. In a public health emergency, instrumental value could also be included to enable more people to live complete lives. Lotteries could be used when making choices between roughly equal recipients, and also potentially to ensure that no individual—irrespective of age or prognosis—is seen as beyond saving. Thus, the complete lives system is complete in another way: it incorporates each morally relevant simple principle.
When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated. It therefore superficially resembles the proposal made by DALY advocates; however, the complete lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value. Additionally, the complete lives system assumes that, although life-years are equally valuable to all, justice requires the fair distribution of them. Conversely, DALY allocation treats life-years given to elderly or disabled people as objectively less valuable.
Finally, the complete lives system is least vulnerable to corruption. Age can be established quickly and accurately from identity documents. Prognosis allocation encourages physicians to improve patients’ health, unlike the perverse incentives to sicken patients or misrepresent health that the sickest-first allocation creates.

In an article he wrote for the Hastings Report back in 1996 (titled “Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet”), we find the following excerpt.

“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.

This is the man that Obama has tapped to be a health care ADVISER for his administration.

Incidentally, Obama himself voted for infanticide while he served as a Senator for the state of Illinois. So anybody wishing to distance Obama from Emanuel’s views on eliminating the less fortunate must take note.

Two points I find interesting:

#All of those who are pro-abortion are alive
#Ezekiel Emanuel was born in 1957 which would make him about 52 years old. I wonder if HE has reduced his medical coverage.

The whole issue of euthanasia has historically been rejected by the Black community due primarily to our spiritual heritage. In fact, there have been studies conducted on the subject (here’s one). So I find it most unfortunate that much of our Black media is supporting this bill based on the simplistic theme of “equal access to health care for all.”

“President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

The president’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had a hip replaced after she was diagnosed with cancer, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”(more…)

 ObamaCare: Dont get too old




 

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