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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 17, 2009 / 23 Shevat 5769

How about a stimulus for life?

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Thanks to former Lieutenant Governor of New York Betsy McCaughey and her recent essay on Bloomberg.com entitled "Ruin Your Health with the Obama Stimulus Plan," we know of another problem with the just-passed stimulus bill, one that may threaten the lives of many Americans.


McCaughey discovered buried in the bill a new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. Among other things, it means that a Washington official will "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective." Some of that occurs now, but this would take it to a whole new level.


The idea comes straight from former HHS nominee Tom Daschle's 2008 book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis" in which he says that doctors are going to have to give up their autonomy and "learn to operate less like solo practitioners." Inevitably, this means the government will decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn't. It is survival of the fittest in practice. Thank you, and belated happy birthday, Charles Darwin.


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In 1979, six years after Roe v. Wade, philosopher and theologian Dr. Francis Schaeffer and the about-to-be surgeon general of the United States, Dr. C. Everett Koop, wrote a book, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" In chapter three, "Death by Someone's Choice," the authors write, "Will a society which has assumed the right to kill infants in the womb — because they are unwanted, imperfect, or merely inconvenient — have difficulty in assuming the right to kill other human beings, especially older adults who are judged unwanted, deemed imperfect physically or mentally, or considered a possible social nuisance?"


No one should be surprised at the coming embrace of euthanasia. After the Supreme Court deprived the unborn of their right to live by declaring them nonpersons, it was only a matter of time before other categories of human life deemed to be inconvenient or unwanted would also face extermination in order to benefit the government, the healthy and the wealthy, who prefer not to be disturbed in their pursuit of pleasure, personal peace and affluence.


Schaeffer and Koop predicted "the next candidates for arbitrary reclassification as nonpersons are the elderly." That 30-year-old prophecy, deemed hyperbole and alarmist by many at the time, now seems to be coming true. In 1993, Hillary Clinton, as chair of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, pushed the bureaucratic-heavy Clinton Health Care Plan, quickly labeled "HillaryCare," which was long on government oversight, short on patient choice. A Democratic Congress defeated it a year later. Now we have the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology and a Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama appear ready to resume their assault on all but the fit and those who do not burden government with their need for treatment. "Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective," writes McCaughey. "The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost-effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council."


I called Koop, who is now 92. He reminded me that in 1988 he had an ailment that left him a quadriplegic. Surgery restored his limbs, but "if I'd lived in England, I would have been nine years too old to have the surgery that saved my life and gave me another 21 years." Koop fears the United States is about to embrace English socialized medicine with government authorities deciding who lives and who dies. He says the idea of government second-guessing doctors sickens him.


Great inhumanities are usually ushered in at the extremes in order to make the public more accepting. Abortion on demand followed the 1973 Roe v. Wade case where Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe, "alleged" she had been raped, resulting in pregnancy. Technology allows people to abort a "defective" baby in the womb, "selectively reduce" implanted embryos to the desired number, or even abort a female when a male is wanted.


Euthanasia will not originate with your beloved grandmother or parents. It will start in a public hospital with a 100-year-old woman who has multiple health problems and "wants" to die so as not to "burden" anyone. Public opinion polls will determine that a majority favor letting — even helping — the old girl die.


Yes, there are times when a patient and his family may decide to forego treatment and allow death to occur, but that decision should not be made by a government official. Once that door is opened (as it was with abortion) there will be no closing it and dying will become a patriotic duty when the patient's balance sheet shows a deficit.


They'll probably have a clergyman available to bless the government's decision and make everyone feel better about it.

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JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.

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