Cold Chills and Assisted Suicide: Why Every Senior Must Oppose Democrats' Health Care Plans

The gargantuan "Stimulus" bill passed by Democrats sight unseen ordered the creation of a "federal medical database of every American by 2014."

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (pages 445, 454 and 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system.

It also establishes a "National Coordinator of Health Information Technology" to monitor the database.

This coordinator will have the ability to verify that "doctors are using treatments that are federally approved and cost effective."

The goal is to manage costs and "guide" your doctor’s decisions (442, 446).

The stimulus bill calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal that is described by Tom Daschle’s book -- which serves as the Democrats' blueprint -- is to slow the development and use of new technologies and drugs because they drive up costs.

Daschle praises Europeans for accepting "hopeless diagnoses"; he also criticizes Americans for expecting world-class treatment from the U.S. health-care system.

Daschle admits in his book that Socialized Medicine "will not be pain-free". He insists that Seniors should accept the aging process and forgo expensive treatments.

Quite simply, the elderly will suffer most.

How do we know this? We have many examples from Canada and the UK where access to medical technologies is carefully restricted and rationed.

But we can see it in this country as well. Oregon's socialized medical program is an utter disaster. Just days ago, it was discovered that Oregon's health plan covers covers assisted suicide, but not drugs, for certain cancer patients. The drugs are too expensive, but the suicide is deemed cost-effective.

What's next? Euthanasia of the elderly? It's not far-fetched. Euthanasia is legal in the Democrat utopia of Holland, where socialized medicine has become expert at rationing care.

There are more damning ramifications of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will decide the treatments you should get, who should get them, and whether they should be made available at all.

Using the "comparative effectiveness" (CE) approach, virtually every country with nationalized health care routinely denies patients life-saving medical treatments because of out-of-control costs.

In Britain, CE is specifically employed as a deadly tool to deny advanced drugs to patients suffering with breast cancer, Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis under the banner of cost.

How do we know that the Democrats plan the same thing for their "Comparative Effectiveness" research?

A recent proposed amendment prohibited the use of CE research to deny coverage of health care treatments under any federal health care program. The amendment required "that comparative effectiveness research take into account [Page: S4127] the individuals and their treatment responses and their preferences, and it [protected] doctor and patient sovereignty over health care decisions."

In short, the amendment would "expressly forbid Medicare and other federal health programs from using results of comparative effectiveness research to deny coverage of any treatments."

The amendment -- to protect American Seniors -- was defeated on a straight party line. All Democrats voted against protecting American Seniors and instead supported the creation of a deadly health care-rationing bureaucracy; all Republicans voted the other way.

Every Senior in America should shudder in fear. With Democrat Socialized Medicine, assisted suicide is a certainty and euthanasia may be in the cards as well.

And where is the AARP? Too busy raking in dough from its various affinity programs, it would seem, to be all that concerned with the fate of its members.

In fact, Seniors should boycott the AARP until it puts its members first.

And they should call their representatives in Washington to oppose Democrat socialized medicine. To not do so would be -- quite literally -- suicidal.