Would
You Choose Palliative Care?
by Kerry Thomas
August 1, 2009
Palliative (pal·li·a·tive): soothing; soothing
anxieties or other intense emotions; treating symptoms only; alleviating pain
and symptoms without eliminating the cause; symptom-treating medicine; something
that palliates, especially a medicine that treats symptoms only.
H.R.
3200 America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is the “health care
reform” bill that’s making it’s way through the House of Representatives. While there are more than 561 bills enrolled
in the House that deal in one form or another with health care, this is the
bill the leadership is referring to when they talk about “the bill.”
Here’s
just one little section of this legislation, found on pages 423-425:
SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING
CONSULTATION
(hhh)(1)
…the term “advance care planning consultation” means a consultation between the
individual and a practitioner … regarding advance care planning if … the
individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such
consultation shall include the following:
(E) An explanation by the
practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available,
including palliative care and
hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under
this title.
In plain English, you’re going to be required, under
federal law, to “consult” with a health care practitioner at least once every
five years about how you want to go when it’s your turn.
One of the mandated topics to be discussed is the
idea that maybe it’d just be better to alleviate
your pain and suffering without eliminating the underlying cause of that pain
and suffering. Maybe it’d be better if
they just gave you a pain pill instead of trying to cure your disease.
Is that a course of
treatment you’d counsel your loved ones to pursue?
I don’t know about
you, but when it comes to talking about how I want to be treated when it’s my
time to go, I’d discuss this with my family, with my doctors, with my clergy,
and with about a hundred other people before I’d “consult” with some government
bureaucrat about the best way for me to die.
But getting beyond the minutia of the legislation itself, there
is the underlying question:
Does the federal government have the Constitutional Power to
impose a national health-care program for America?
Recall that
the Constitution
delegates specific Powers to the federal government. These Powers are
enumerated in Article
I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Remember, “Congress shall have the power to ….”
Then, in an
attempt to keep the federal government in check, the Founders added this little
thing called the Tenth
Amendment to the Constitution:
Amendment X: "The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. "
The federal
government does not have the Constitutional authority to impose, under threat
of law, a national health care program. It might be able to offer one,
but it cannot be imposed on the People.
That is, if
you still believe in enumerated powers.
(see Enumerated
Powers, part 2)
Barack
Hussein Obama and his enablers in Congress are writing palliative legislation,
bills that treat the symptoms with a lot of taxpayer money but fail to address
the underlying disease: progressive
liberalism.
There’s nothing wrong with America’s health insurance system
that hasn’t been made worse by government.
If we could just manage to get some basic reforms to existing law,
reforms that would cost taxpayers $ZERO to implement, all the “problems” the
politicians are shouting about would disappear virtually overnight.
Instead we have the Obama-Reid-Pelosi plan to usurp even
more of your Liberty, and have you (and your kids and grandkids) pay for it in
the process.
So how do
We, the People, “fix” our health-care system?
There are
free-market solutions. Tort reform is one (limit punitive damages,
loser pays, etc.). Medical savings accounts is another. Allowing
for tax deductibility of individual health insurance premiums would put that on
par with employer-sponsored insurance plans. True portability of
insurance, which would allow someone in Wisconsin to buy a policy written in,
say, Texas or Florida, puts the power in the hands of the consumer to shop for an
insurance policy that fits his or her needs, a policy that doesn't necessarily
contain all the expensive mandated coverages Wisconsin (and other) lawmakers
insist be written into every health insurance policy.
Benjamin Franklin once said “Any society that would give
up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose
both.” That’s true for health
security, too.
… and if you’d like to read more, here is just a partial
list of some of the more interesting health care reform bills introduced in the
House of Representatives this year:
America's Affordable Health Care
Act of 2009 H.R.109.IH
Quality Health Care Coalition Act
of 2009 H.R.1493.IH
Medical Liability Procedural
Reform Act of 2009 H.R.2787.IH
Healthy Hospitals Act of 2009 H.R.3104.IH
Health Care Freedom of Choice Act H.R.502.IH
Medical Rights Act of 2009 H.R.2516.IH
Medical Justice Act of 2009 H.R.1468.IH
Health Care Incentive Act H.R.77.IH
Help Efficient, Accessible,
Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2009 H.R.1086.IH
Plain Language in
Health Insurance Act of 2009 H.R.3051.IH
National Health Care Quality Act H.R.2252.IH
Healthcare Improvements for
Generating High Performance (HIGH Performance) Act of 2009 H.R.2948.IH
Access to Medical Treatment Act H.R.3261.IH
Health Care Workforce Incentive
Act of 2009 H.R.2929.IH
Health Information Technology
Promotion Act of 2009 H.R.1031.IH
Coercion is Not Health Care Act H.R.2629.IH
Health Care Price Transparency
Promotion Act of 2009 H.R.2249.IH
Blueprint for Health Act of 2009 H.R.2535.IH
Family Health Care Accessibility
Act of 2009 H.R.1745.IH
Strengthening the Health Care
Safety Net Act of 2009 H.R.3141.IH
Tom Lantos Pulmonary Hypertension
Research and Education Act of 2009 H.R.1030.IH
Health Care Paperwork Reduction
and Fraud Prevention Act of 2009 H.R.2785.IH
Place Based Health Care Act of
2009 H.R.3158.IH
PATIENTS Act of 2009 H.R.3002.IH
Patients' Choice Act H.R.2520.IH
Health Care Choice Act of 2009 H.R.3217.IH
Ending LGBT Health Disparities Act
H.R.3001.IH
and
Proposing an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United
States to health care of equal high quality H.J.RES.30.IH