If you have ever seen the movie iRobot, then you might remember this important scene, which I think bears relevance to the Healthcare battle going on in our country.
Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith): Headed back to the station. Normal day, normal life. The driver of a semi fell asleep at the wheel. Average guy, wife and kids, working a double. *Not* the devil. The car he hit, the driver’s name was Harold Lloyd. Like the film star, but no relation. He was killed instantly. But his twelve-year-old was sitting in the passenger’s seat. Never really met her. Can’t forget her face, though. Sarah.
Detective Del Spooner: This was hers. She wanted to be a dentist. What the hell kind of twelve-year-old wants to be a dentist? Yeah, um… the truck smashed our cars together and pushed us into the river. You know, metal gets pretty pliable at those speeds. She’s pinned, I’m pinned, the water’s coming in. I’m a cop, so I know everybody’s dead. Just a few minutes until we figure that out. NS4 was passing by and jumped in the river.
NS4 Robots: [from flashback] You are in danger!
Detective Del Spooner: [from flashback] Save her!
NS4 Robots: [from flashback] You are in danger!
Detective Del Spooner: [from flashback] Save her! Save the girl!
Detective Del Spooner: But it didn’t. Saved me.
Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan): The robot’s brain is a difference engine. It’s reading vital signs. It must have done…
Detective Del Spooner: It did. It was the logical choice. It calculated that I had a 45% chance of survival. Sarah only had an 11% chance. That was somebody’s baby. 11% is more than enough. A human being would’ve known that. Robots,[indicating his heart]
Detective Del Spooner: nothing here, just lights and clockwork. Go ahead, you trust ‘em if you want to.
“11% is more than enough.” Well, in the public healthcare world of the Liberals, and Democrats, I doubt that a 11% chance of survival would be enough for anyone to be given assistance to live, but you can be certain that it would very likely not be provided to anyone outside the golden range (15-40 years) of a real life Grim Reaper, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.
Betsy McCaughey’s article in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Health Rationer-in-Chief,” is a frightening presentation on the thinking of one of President Obama’s most important advisers on healthcare reform.
So, in the world of Dr. Emanuel, of Barack Obama, of Liberals and Democrats, do you think this woman, who at age 50 was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, and given a 25% chance to live 5 years, would be given treatment?
We all know people, family, and friends who have been diagnosed with one serious disease or another, and told the prognosis was not good for survival beyond a few months, or years. Sometimes, the doctors are right, and they pass on as foretold, but as often as not, we can all find examples of family and friends who defied the odds, and went on to live (and continue to live in some cases) long after their supposed expiration date.
Perhaps even Lance Armstrong, who at age 25 was diagnosed with Stage 3 testicular cancer, which had already spread to his brain, lungs, and abdomen, might have been denied care had Obamacare been implemented when this diagnosis happened. He was given a 50% chance to live. Actually, his chances for survival were much less than 50% “but they (his doctors) did not want to get his spirits down.” Hmmm… I guess someone’s spirit does matter after all in situations of life or death.
Or what about Heather Hornback-Bland. She is the author of an incredible, inspirational book that I read last year called God Said Yes. From the about section of her website:
“At the age of four, I accidentally fell out of the car driven by my mother and was crushed under the wheel. My family was told I would never live and, if I did, would surely never walk.” If you go to the link, you can read the rest of the description of her injuries, which are graphic. Her family was told on the way to the hospital, as well as before her first operation, and after, that she would never live, but she did. And today she is alive, married, and has a daughter, which she gave birth to in 1995. Oh, and she can walk too.
Her medical debts have reached as high as $1,000,000, and she pays over $2,000 a month for various prescription medicine. Now, do you think Dr. Emanuel, Barack Obama, or the bureaucratic death panels they would create would have allowed her to be brought anywhere but the morgue after the accident, which occurred when she was four years old? Do you think that had the Obamacare system been in force when the accident happened, and somehow she slipped through and got treated but then as the bills mounted, that the death bureaucrats would once and for all put the kibosh on any further treatments, and give her some pills to keep her out of pain until she died?
Here is another quote:
“Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: ‘Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.’ “
The youngest are also put at the back of the line: ‘Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, ‘It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,’ this argument is supported by empirical surveys.” (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).”
This thinking is disgusting, and warped. They set the value on a human being, and not just that, that this value has its highest worth between and certain age range (15-40.) Before or after that range, the value of a human being goes down. Following this thinking, it is easy to understand then why so many far left Liberals and Democrats have no problem with killing unborn children - they are not even on the chart.
To me, thinking by liberals such as Dr. Emanuel is similar to that of the cs4 robots in iRobot - they want to apply some type of logic, some cold caluclation to how our healthcare is done, to how we see each other, to put an intrinsic dollar and societal value on each one of us. Your value is X, so, you live, yours is Y, so, you die.
But this is wrong.
Human beings are not logical. We may try to do various things in our lives in an organized fashion but we are certainly not logical by nature. We do things every day which would make no sense to a robot, or someone who has come to think like one. For example, what other creatures on this planet run towards fire to help others of their kind? None - except human beings in their role as firemen. And they do it every day.
Is it logical to run into buildings that have just been hit by planes, are on fire and may well collapse in some form? No, but hundreds of firemen, police officers, and other first responders did just that with the Twin Towers on 9/11, even though many may have well believed that they wouldn’t be coming out alive.
Is it logical for a human being diagnosed with Stage 3 testicular cancer, and given less than 50% chance to live, to not only survive, but then return to the sport he had left, and go on to be one of the greatest athletes in his sport, ever? No, but Lance Armstrong did just that - winning the Tour de France a record seven times. FYI Barack Obama, Dr. Emanuel, etc., that’s called spirit, that’s called the will to survive. And yeah, it is important, it’s what makes us human beings.
We do not need a government health plan, nor death bureaucrats, who’ll decide that 11% (or whatever the calculation used is) isn’t a good enough percentage for someone to live.
We need to keep the life and death decisions, which we all face, in our hands, and in the hands of our private doctors. Because 11% is more than enough. So is 25%, or 50%, or 1%, or even, as was the case with Heather Hornback-Bland, when there was (supposedly) no chance at all.
