Tom Daschle praises Europeans for being more willing to accept "hopeless diagnoses..."
Via gus van horn via Matt Drudge comes an
article by Betsy McCaughey, a former Lieutenant Governor of New York, on an aspect of the "stimulus" bill that needs closer scrutiny: how it will affect the medical sector. Among many other very bad things is the following:In [Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis], Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the "tough" decisions [i.e., rationing --ed] elected politicians won't make.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle's book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept "hopeless diagnoses" and "forgo experimental treatments," and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Tom "Details Kill" Daschle, who supported socialized medicine during Bill Clinton's term, is behind many of these provisions.This is two days in a row now that I have seen the Left calling for the government to force people to accept less freedom because some activity the government should have nothing to do with is costing -- whom? -- "too much".
And to think this administration is not yet a month old! Let everyone you can think of who might care know about this.
And again via gus van horn, who often speaks my kind of rationality, comes this vivid comparrison to the medial rationing advocated by Daschle and others like him. van horn's columns however did not link the two separate blog postings. Perhaps he didn't see the comparisons.
Over at Spiked Online is a fascinating book review by Neil Davenport of Austerity Britain: 1945-51, by David Kynaston. The last paragraph should be enough to show you why I recommend it:
The best thing about Austerity Britain is that Kynaston provides the winning arguments for having the exact opposite of austerity. By exposing the suffering, the degradation and the desperation of the majority of people in the mid- to-late 1940s, Kynaston also helps to expose the poisonous mindset of today’s austerity cheerleaders.
Who in his right mind would want anyone to return to ration-era Britain? As Kynaston reminds us: ‘Britain in 1945. No supermarkets, no motorways, no teabags, no sliced bread, no frozen food, no flavoured crisps, no vinyl, no CDs, no computers, no mobile phones, no Pill, no trainers, no Starbucks.’
If they had their way, environmentalists and well-to-do commentators would make sure that the vast majority of people didn’t enjoy access to any of these comforts, either. This is why, as millions of people fear for their jobs and livelihoods, they are hoping that the worst recession in 30 years will do that job for them. If you want to know why they are wrong, and morally warped, read this book about the last time austerity ruled Britain, when it did not liberate us or make us more spiritual, but rather punished, degraded and alienated working people across the country.
Read the whole thing, and remember it the next time some you hear some hippie or some fundie -- or some fundie hippie -- gushing about how "good" our economic crisis could be for everyone.
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