A "No" Vote Grows In California, And What It Means For Obama/Plesoi/Reid Rationing

Wednesday, May 13, 2009
by Hugh Hewitt

Excerpt:
On yesterday's program I played a clip of Professor Stuart Altman's testimony before a Senate committee meeting devoted to the radical restructuring of health care. Professor Altman got perilously close to candor:

People are using technologies that really don't work at all or keep people alive for very limited or very high costs, hospice is one option, but we do need to take account of the costs, ya know, I hate to say it, the cost benefits of some of the things we do.

As I told the audience yesterday, this is a message to older Americans that they are the target of health care "reform," and that they are going to find themselves the first to run into rationing. Mortuaries should be gearing up for the transition to ObamaCare because the life expectancy of the elderly is going to take a sudden turn for the worse under any cost-benefit analysis of treatment of older Americans.

This brush with candor will be the exception, I think, but the experience in California gives me hope for the coming battle. The Obama/Pelosi/Reid coalition of those willing to let other people die in the cause of lowering health care costs will try and sell the radical restructuring as other than it is --which is rationing. In so doing they will be repeating Arnold's mistake of contempt for the electorate. Even though the MSM in California is nearly as craven in its coverage of the propositions as the MSM in the Beltway has been in its coverage of Obama, the reality of the proposed laws will get through. President Obama is insulated from the public for another 40 months, but Democrats who want to ration care have to present themselves for re-election in a year and a half, and the old people and the families of the significantly disabled --who along with the elderly will be pushed out the hospital and clinic door by Obama/Pelosi/Reid-- will get their say then. And it is likely to be as loud as that about to be heard in California. the rest