A post by Maynard
It’s almost too obvious to speak of, but here’s the irony of naming a healthcare bill after Ted Kennedy.
Part of the theory of government-controlled healthcare is that money will be saved by the “intelligent” allocation of resources. This means you’ll live or die based on the government’s assessment of your quality and quantity of life. I’d argue vehemently that the government has no business making those decisions, and in fact to do so would be unconstitutional…but let’s set aside the legal/ideological discussion and get back to Ted Kennedy.
In describing the treatment for Kennedy’s fatal cancer, this article notes:
Kennedy’s cancer, a glioblastoma, kills almost everyone who gets it, usually in about a year. Although he got the most aggressive treatment, Kennedy lived just 15 months after his diagnosis — about the median survival for patients with his type of tumor who get the radiation and chemotherapy regimen that has become the standard of care.
…The cost [of treatment] is high. Estimates from experts vary from $100,000 to $500,000.
In other words, Kennedy was a poster boy for someone who was not worthy of expending resources on. He was old and in poor health and doomed. He should have been given end-of-life counseling.
The article notes not only the futility of Kennedy’s treatment, but the uselessness of the expensive research that Kennedy had demanded be funded.
Kennedy strongly supported the idea of a war on cancer, promoting it for months before President Richard M. Nixon announced the battle was to begin in 1971, and advocating for more money than Nixon initially wanted to spend.
And when Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer last year, he became one of the millions whose fate was not much changed by the cancer war. Despite billions that have been spent, the death rate from most cancers barely budged.
Kennedy also suffered from the self-inflicted wounds of gluttony. He was extremely obese, an alcoholic, and almost certainly had other risky behavior traits (which probably were a contributing factor to, for example, his driving off that bridge). He was clearly a public burden, making choices that resulted in his consuming more than his “fair” share. He’s the kind of man we only tolerate if he’s willing to take responsibility for his own healthcare, because most people wouldn’t want to pay for the damage he does to himself.
So the theory would have it that a Ted Kennedy would have gotten minimal treatment under KennedyCare. Of course, you can bet your life that the reality is a well-connected man like that will always get tiptop treatment.
On the other hand, somebody’s got to get substandard care in order to free up resources for the Kennedys. Who do you think will get the shaft? Mary Jo Kopechne, that’s who!
Kopechne was young. She had most of her life in front of her. She was a perfect example of a person the government would supposedly deem worthy of medical attention. But instead she was left at the bottom of a lake to drown. She might have been saved by prompt action, but she was placed on a waiting list. Her “health care provider” and his assistants neglected her, so she didn’t get serviced until she was found by strangers the next day. By that time, she was “shovel ready”. Her funeral cost a lot less than Teddy’s back brace and physical therapy, not to mention his legal expenses and a new car.
So the moniker of “KennedyCare” (or maybe “KopechneCare”) is surprisingly descriptive. It strips away the seductive fantasy and illuminates the ugly reality. As Tammy might note, this is another example of that weird “compulsion to confess”. The warning is clear; we ignore it at our peril.
“In other words, Kennedy was a poster boy for someone who was not worthy of expending resources on. He was old and in poor health and doomed. He should have been given end-of-life counseling.”
This is indeed ironic. Ted Kennedy would stoop to support a health system that would ultimately deny medical aid for anyone else in his condition (via inevitable rationing under such a system), and yet had no problem “squandering” such resources on himself.
It could be said that this was his last act of sociopathy.
WOW. Speechless.
I’d argue “too soon” but members of the left are already trying to score political points based on the “liberal lion’s” passing.
TAX CHIEF CHARLIE IS A TAX CHEAT, TOO (See story below)
Hey, wasn’t Rangel the one who proposed raising the tax rates to pay for deathcare? Looks to me like Eric Holder has plenty of justice to pursue without putting a knife in the heart of our national security. Maybe he was absent from law school the day they taught that the law applies to all. Or, maybe he has been blinded by the light from his own shining star as poster boy of sleeze. And, just when you think the Democrats couldn’t find another inch of debasement to descend to, they shamelessly announce — We have to pass deathcare and bankrupt the country — for Teddy. (Oh, and Nancy Pelosi refuses to remove Rangel from his Ways and Means Chairmanship.)
The New York Post, August 27, 2009
The Tax Man is a deadbeat.
Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, has failed to pay taxes on two plots of land he has in New Jersey, records show.
Rangel’s ownership of the small, undeveloped properties came to light on Tuesday only after he drastically amended at least six years of financial-disclosure forms he had filed annually with the House clerk as required by law.
The corrected filings as much as doubled the amount of personal wealth Rangel has claimed going back years and revealed at least $780,000 in previously unreported assets.
The Harlem Democrat concealed somewhere between $38,902 and $116,800 in 2007 income, according to the revised filings.
Among the assets he failed to list was a checking account containing somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000.
Also undisclosed for years were two lots he owns in Glassboro, NJ, about 100 miles from the city.
Rangel is delinquent on his taxes on that property, according to the Gloucester County Clerk’s office.
He currently owes $159.39 in unpaid property taxes for the second and third quarters of this year, according to the clerk’s office.
Rangel’s second-quarter taxes were due May 1 and his third-quarter taxes were due at the beginning of this month.
Skating on property taxes is nothing new for Rangel.
A review of property records for the borough of Glassboro revealed at least six tax liens levied against Rangel’s property during the past 16 years.
Just last year, two separate liens were levied against both properties owned by Rangel.
The June 5, 2008, liens totaled $339.64.
On Dec. 6, 2001, a tax lien was filed against the property for $125.57 in unpaid taxes.
Rangel’s earliest tax lapse, according to the records still on file, was June 24, 1993, when a tax lien was filed against him for failure to pay $57.53 in property taxes.
In each case, Rangel eventually paid the lien and interest to prevent foreclosure on the properties.
Rangel’s office did not respond to repeated questions yesterday from The Post about his failure to pay taxes.
Meanwhile, Rangel was scheduled to hold a press conference yesterday just as dozens of stories revealed his ongoing ethical woes in Congress.
Rangel canceled the press conference at the last minute, citing “changes in his schedule,” according to one participant.
The most hideous aspect of a brave new world calculus for quality adjusted life years isn’t a dollars and cents bottom line. It won’t be explicitly written into law, but a subjective analysis of a person’s worthiness will inevitably be factored into the accounting. With government run healthcare, government officials will be the most worthy of all. Tucked into the media fawning over Ted Kennedy is the morally twisted excuse for Kennedy’s criminal acts resulting in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. What is the death of this one woman compared to the life of “the greatest Democratic Senator in history”?
Although thinly presented as a moral dilemma, I point to this example. This sort of rationalization applies only to liberals as we well know.
Kennedy’s redemption from the depths
If the significance of the public sphere blinds us like an enormous sun, the future is indeed very dark.
Melissa Lafsky even writes (and posted on HuffPo), “Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
What a sick, disgusting, perverse, morally bankrupt position to even suggest that.
“Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?” The calculus is going to take place, the question lay by whom is the calculus performed.
If one has a “personal code of morality”, he will do the math himself and act accordingly. If one does not have a “personal code of morality”, then others will decide the “wickedness”, decide the “good deeds” and inevitably, tailor the results to their own agenda. It comes down to, as usual, personal responsibility.
The left’s agenda has always been to replace our natural sense of an absolute moral code grounded in individual interpretation and personal responsibilty with an imposed code cloaked in a relativistic sense of social responsibility.
Just Saying… the left believes they are ordained to do the math for us, because they truly do not believe we are endowed the right to do the math ourselves.
Obviously we’re all compromised, one way or another. For example, the Biblical King David in effect murdered Uriah to cover up his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. David was condemned by God and he subsequently repented, but there were consequences to his sin. In studying David, we look at the big picture rather than focusing exclusively on the transgressions. Should we grant the a similar leeway to Ted Kennedy?
My problem is, although his defenders broadly reference all the good he’s done in a long Senate career, I don’t know what they’re talking about. His personal failings are up-front and obvious, and I won’t repeat them again. As for his public policy…where’s the good? They say he reached across the aisle, but I see divisive nastiness (the most obvious example being how he “Borked” Robert Bork). His legacy is nothing more than advocacy of coercive central authority that does much harm and little good. Mary Jo Kopechne isn’t an isolated mistake; she’s a victim of the Kennedy reality. Unlike King David, Teddy neither repented of nor learned from his sin.
And really, what does it take to negotiate with spineless Republicans? They probably wet themselves when the almighty Kennedy approached them.
Maynard Sir,
Bravo! to a most blistering, withering and sardonic indictment of the shameless elitism of those smugly patronizing oligarchs who hope to wrest control of our poor pathetic lives from our bitterly clinging grasps. I bow to your literary talents and gift for satire.
Well said, you two. Take it from me–I work on a county road crew–government employees are the most disinterested, indifferent, arrogant, lazy, greedy, most out-of-touch workforce on the planet. We get paid whether we do anything or not–because there’s always tomorrow–and we have no incentive to be efficient because there’s no competition. You do not want people of that kind of organizational culture in charge of your health care. You better believe I’ll consult a professional before I take Obama’s medical advice. There’s an old municipal saying: “Never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over”. Yeah, I want that printed on a big banner and hung in every emergency room once KennedyCare gets implemented.
Ted Kennedy would never have been subject to national healthcare. Remember, congress exempted itself from the program.
“…if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?” What is one to think of the accomplishments vs the evil acts of Hitler? Sure he had a bad side, but wow, look how he turned around Germany.
my vet came over the other day- a perfectly wonderful, highly intelligent sane grounded person (and the best vet in the universe)and was shocked when i said something to the effect of “teddy, that drunken whore who gives a f”” and she said- ” it’s that chappaquaddick’ thing’, isn’t it?”
chappaquaddick … thing? a woman was left to suffocate in a few feet of water. you could throw a stone from that bridge and have hit an occupied house with a functioning phone. the thing was a dead woman, so, yes, that’s part of why ted is loathsome to me but the thing was part of a continuing pattern of selfishness , hypocrisy and being above the law. one should always lead by example or one is unworthy of power. teddy ruled as a corrupt elite- i find nothing redemptive in that. demonizing your political adversaries as racist evil pigs and pounding tax dollars out of people to fund a bunch of crap isn’t exactly putting the hair shirt on and seeing the error of one’s ways . in the end one woman’s life was judged to be worthless when compared with one man’s career- and for over 40 years voters concurred.
she further assumed i was against the health care ‘ thing’ because of the ‘chappaquaddick thing’ going on to acknowledge the big businesses behind the ‘ reform’ and that it wasn’t the reform ‘ ted wanted’. what? this intelligent woman went on to list all the things wrong with health care reform but then seeming to insist that we’d better pass it and’ those blue dogs are just republican trolls are in the way.’ she sounded so confused and you could see that that whole dialogue about health care and indeed about obama is so poisoned and twisted and frankly filled with lies that well meaning smart people spin like tops within their own minds trying to articulate what is going on. they’re dumbfounded when trying to wrap themselves around what’s coming out of their own mouths. i just sat there while she picked apart all this insane obama and kennedy sick legislation while somehow supporting it.
ted was morally good because he made a career out of saying that anyone who opposed his pet policies was inherently evil. a generation or 2 of educated, caring classically liberal souls have grown up with the likes of ted and now obambi as good and ‘ for the people’ merely because it has been posited for so long that the opposition were therefore the exact opposite- evil, prejudiced war mongering shills of big business. now they’re finding in their hearts that this is a lie they’ve believed all their lives- and they’re having trouble letting go. it’s a moral crisis and they still can’t decide whether to leave the ‘ thing’, the truth, to die and be covered up or to rescue it and admit their complicity driving it into the drink. saying they’ve been wrong means saying they’ve been supporting everything they have lifelong been ethically opposed to- because they refused to use reason and logic instead of emotions to guide them and help them assess the important political and social issues.
the thing has finally come home to roost.
I just finished reading “The Fountainhead”, and the article posted by Pat about “Kennedy’s redemption from the depths” sounds like it was written by Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. Ayn Rand’s insight into the warped minds of liberals is so accurate it’s scary.
Speaking of warped minds, it’s only appropriate that when the old monster died, his fellow cannibals leapt at the opportunity to serve him up as a big, heaping helping of Obama Health-scare. It’s mostly fat and not much lean, and the liver looks like swiss cheese, but the good news is that there will be plenty of leftovers for a long time to come. With all the reverence of a neandethal, they’ll feast long and often on their fallen comrade to promote their twisted agenda. A fitting end.
Bon appetit, miscreants!