Lives of the elderly devalued--dollar value placed on human life

August 7, 11:41 AM · Anthony G. Martin - Columbia Conservative Examiner

Several vital facts have come to the surface in the past 2 months that give us insight into the real agenda of Barack Obama.

First, Obama is an extremist and not the moderate he portrayed himself as being during the campaign. One has to look beyond his Cabinet choices to the Czars and advisors he has appointed, all of which hold dangerous, radical views concerning human life, social engineering, and politics.

Second, the Obama healthcare plan is a Trojan horse designed to drive private health insurance companies out of business, leaving citizens with no other choice than a so-called 'single-payer' government-run system. Obama has already admitted this in a video from several years ago.

Third, the government-controlled healthcare plan envisioned by Barack Obama and the Democrats is one that rations care, particularly for the elderly, whose lives are devalued by an instrument referred to by Obama advisors as the 'Value of a Statistical Life Year,' which basically concludes that the older we get the less valuable we are to society, and thus, the more expendable we become in a government-run healthcare system.

A dollar-value is placed on human life. And the elderly are simply not worth doing very much for in healthcare, due to the cost-benefit analysis of such a dastardly program.

Obama's 'regulatory czar,' Cass Sunstein, stated the following about the dollar value of human life and the devaluing of the lives of the elderly (from First Things):

In undertaking cost-benefit analysis, the government has monetized risks of death through the idea of “value of a statistical life” (VSL), currently assessed at about $6.1 million. Many analysts, however, have suggested that the government should rely instead on the “value of a statistical life year” (VSLY), in a way that would likely result in significantly lower benefits calculations for elderly people, and significantly higher benefits calculations for children. I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people. The hard question involves not whether to undertake this shift, but how to monetize life-years, and here willingness to pay (WTP) [what one would pay to obtain a good] is generally the place to begin…In fact, a focus on statistical lives is more plausibly a form of illicit discrimination than a focus on life years, because the idea of statistical lives treats the years of older people as worth far more than the years of younger people.

Note the statement that under the current system, more value is placed on the lives of the elderly than the young due to the cost-benefit analysis, which means of course, that the closer you are to death, the more it costs per year for society to treat your illnesses. Under the new 'ObamaCare' plan, that is reversed. Rather than everyone being treated equally, the elderly become a burden on the economic system and are thus relegated to 'non-essential' status in the healthcare system.

Thus, the closer you are to death statistically, the LESS money society will spend on your healthcare.

Where have we heard of such ideas before? They are not new. These concepts were embraced by the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in the Soviet Union.

But this is not the only Obama advisor who has said these things.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama healthcare advisor and brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, agrees with the Sunstein theory of devaluing the elderly.

Here are a few key quotes from Dr. Ezekiel 'Kevorkian' Emanuel:

(The) medical benefits of a government-controlled healthcare plan would not be given to “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.”

Emanuel clarified his stance by adding, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Got a Dad, Mother, Grandfather, or Grandmother with dementia? Look out, ObamaCare is coming, and your loved ones will be denied healthcare and 'allowed to die.'

Emanuel admits he believes that discriminating against the elderly when it comes to healthcare is not offensive at all. This quote tells the story:

“Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious [offensive] discrimination."

Yet another Obama advisor, Dr. David Blumenthal, has made similar statements about the changes needed to the current healthcare system in order to make it 'more cost-effective.'

And guess what that means. It means rationing, pure and simple. And the elderly are an easy target.

Don't let Barack Obama and high-profile Democrats fool you with their flowery language on this subject. They support a plan that will kill senior adults, and they know it. Let them know that YOU know it.

For more commentary on other issues, visit my blog at The Liberty Sphere.