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Wouldn't This Be a Lot Easier with Drones?

twig's picture
Submitted by twig on Tue, 11/13/2012 - 3:35pm
Departments: 
Department of All The Damn Gall
Tags: 
congress
obama
Social Security
medicare
Medicaid
entitlements
fiscal cliff
budget cuts
healthcare now

Seriously, if you want to wipe out large numbers of people, why bother with entitlement cuts when you've got high-tech weaponry available? It's fast, impersonal, and you can just hose down whatever's left and voila! Problem solved!

Unfortunately, it looks like Obama prefers the slow, painful method of saving us from the debt.

From a Healthcare NOW email [bolding added]:

Just because President Obama won another term doesn't mean that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are safe. Far from it. Obama's seeking a "grand bargain" with the Republican-controlled House by January 1.

The President, in order to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," is willing to raise Medicare's eligibility age from 65 to 67 and to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security by $650 billion. This is no joking matter--these changes would mean life and death to the most vulnerable in our country.

President Obama is serious about these cuts:

"I am willing to move on entitlement reform--even if my own party is resisting--and I will bring them along as long as we have significant revenues so that people feel like there’s a fairly shared burden when it comes to deficit reduction."

Healthcare NOW suggests calling our senators/reps right away to tell them this is not acceptable. I have a feeling they don't give a flying f*ck. Also, there was a discussion some months ago about how Obama uses the stacks of letters from progressives to show how that he's so tough he won't even bow to pressure from "his" side. But what else is there?

Btw, here are the supporting links from Healthcare NOW. (Also, last time I checked, Healthcare NOW was still one of the better organizations. If that's changed, let me know and I'll unpost this):

Ron Wyden and Paul Ryan's Bipartisan Plan for Health Care and Medicare Reform

Liberals fear grand bargain betrayal if President Obama wins

Post Election Deficit Deal Threatens Medicare and Social Security

The One Percent Bounce Back

Obama More Flexible on Medicare Than Rhetoric Suggests

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Comments

twig's picture
Submitted by twig on

Here's the comment, it was in this post:

These "protesters" are actually helping him move to the right,
By twig on Sat, 07/16/2011 - 12:37pm

according to some pundit on msnbc yesterday. Next time he's in negotiations with the Rs, he'll just point to the 200,000 pledges and say something like 'Look at the heat I'm getting from my own party over this. But I'm willing to stand firm because I believe in blah blah blah.'

Sorry it's so vague, not very helpful.

Submitted by cg.eye on

Obama will know when his domestic sanctions start to work when we beg for our own federal death panels.

At least he should give those of us without the means to live the right to end our lives with dignity. If he doesn't want to frighten the horses, at least in the beginning, he should allow for Federally-supported assisted suicide among those who will no longer have Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security protections due to his changes. His austerity buddies will line up to get the franchise for the comfy death hotels and the cyanide pills.

Making elders spend their assets down to nothing, instead of allowing them to properly dispose their assets to those they choose, is just the final rents-seeking behavior by the inefficient and cruel medical industry. And, for those who don't want to spend their days in hospice (which also requires spending down assets, to have such care qualify for federal aid), suicide should be an option that doesn't invalidate wills, insurance policies or other financial bequests.

If Obama wants us to die, then for us to choose the means and the time is the sanest act we can make -- and our sacrifice might, at least, shock the conscience of those we leave behind.

twig's picture
Submitted by twig on

everything before getting assistance must be a terrible thing to go through, especially for people hoping to leave their children or relatives something.

Jonathan Swift meets the 21st century!

Submitted by cg.eye on

a h/t to cg.eye's best.

Funny how Obama's Administration tried casting the idea of death panels as conspiracy theory, but are now making the concept real (though many bureaucratic levels, of course) through Simpson-Bowles...

One other detail -- any viatical settlement agreements any jackals have made with said elders become null and void -- they would anyway, due to most insurance policies' bars to suicide, but not one more rents-seeker should profit from these decisions. That's what the 'dignity' piece is all about.

Submitted by cg.eye on

... and ain't it peculiar that yet one more Emanuel brother is leading the charge for hospice-for-all?

All of these changes would come as part of an ongoing shift in psychology and broader openness about death. Emanuel is quick to add the caveat that he is not talking about euthanasia or [shudder] ... "death panels." His inclination toward explicit clarification on that point stems from accusations that he and other leaders in the realm of end-of-life care have endured in the past. The fact that he still needs to make that clarification speaks to the persistent widespread misunderstanding surrounding quality end-of-life care. That mindset is and will remain the primary barrier to seeing these improvements out.

I agree that progress must be made in palliative care, and, incidentally, with all his recommendations -- but this topic, popping up now, along side the hype of the Fiscal Cliff? Would it be irresponsible, to speculate? It would be irresponsible....