THE FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA

By Bill Dunn

If the donuts don’t get me first, I fully expect when I reach age 75 or so, I will be put to death via lethal injection administered by an idealistic young government employee who will be absolutely convinced he is doing what is best for American society.

Do you think that scenario is impossible? Well, let’s consider the following:

• Demographics. The number of Americans age 85 and older is expected to double by 2030. My generation, the Baby Boomers, are beginning to retire. The already struggling health care system is about to face, as its been dubbed, the “silver tsunami.”
   
• Health care costs are bankrupting the nation. Even without the looming huge Baby Boom generation, senior citizen entitlements have been consuming larger and larger chunks of state and federal budgets. The current trend is unsustainable. The government simply HAS to reduce expenditures—someway, somehow—or the nation’s economy will collapse. Denying service to the old and sick is a logical choice.
   
• Paul Krugman, columnist at the New York Times and a big supporter of the recently-passed health care reform bill, offered this comment on a key feature contained in the “Obamacare” legislation: “The advisory panel has the ability to make more or less binding judgments on saying this particular expensive treatment doesn’t do any good medically and so we are not going to pay for it. That is actually going to save quite a lot of money.”
   
• Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, explained in a 2007 speech what liberal presidential candidates really think about health care, but would never say in public: “…if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life….It’s too expensive...so we’re going to let you die.”
   
• President Obama suggested what doctors should tell certain senior citizens: “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.” In other words, life-saving surgery is too expensive, so we’ll try to keep you comfortable as you die.

During the past four decades moral relativism has become our nation’s entrenched worldview. We now define right and wrong to be whatever suits us. The Bible describes this frightening relativistic situation: “Everyone did what was right in  his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). In the near future a new definition of right and wrong just might declare it is perfectly moral and just to speed up Grandma and Grandpa’s inevitable date with the grave.

The Roe v. Wade decision has conditioned our culture to adopt the quality of life standard rather than the sanctity of life standard. If we can eliminate tens of millions of unwanted people before they’ve had a chance to enjoy life, how easy will it be to eliminate millions of people AFTER they’ve enjoyed seven or eight decades of life? Very easy, I’m afraid.

I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect some 5th grader somewhere in America today, say, in Dayton, Ohio, is already well along the process of being indoctrinated into the joys of moral relativism and the notion that the federal government is the solution to all problems. In about a decade this youngster will receive some medical training, and then another decade after that he will do his patriotic duty and say, “Just relax, Mr. Dunn. This won’t hurt a bit.” I hope he first lets me enjoy one last donut.