"...Next question. Member of the audience. Jane Sturm: "My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, 'I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.' I said, 'Go for it.' She said, 'Go for it.' But the specialist said, 'No, she's too old.' But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, 'I'm going for it.' That was over five years ago. My question to you is: Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?"
Obama: "I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know -- and your mom know -- that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller." Do you realize how cold and heartless that answer is? This woman is asking about her mother. And everywhere she went, except one doctor, refused to put in the pacemaker. "Nah, she's too old; she's going to die anyway."
So they found a specialist: "Maybe this woman really loves living. I'll put it in." She's lived five years with the pacemaker, and still Obama: "Maybe you're better off to tell your mother to take a pill, take a painkiller." See, we have to have rules. "We have to have rules. Your mother should have died five years ago, lady. She would have been better off taking that painkiller." Who says we have to have his rules? The President of the United States is not a king. He's not an autocrat. He's not a ruler. He doesn't get to set the rules. Obama has taken it upon himself to do so. This woman found a way to get her mother a pacemaker. With Obamacare, you just heard the answer: It wouldn't have happened. I know how this stuff works.
The hospitals are under pressure to free up beds. If they think somebody's terminal, get them out of there. I understand how all this works. But we're not talking about a terminal woman. We're talking about a woman who needed a pacemaker. "I don't think we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making." Maybe not if the government's in charge. That's the whole point. What about if families... Do not families have the right to judge the spirit of their fathers and mothers and family members? Of course! Do we want to have a cold, cruel, unfeeling government saying, "Spirit doesn't matter to us"? That's exactly right. Obama wants you... The best way to put it, and it's working, is he's trying to kill spirit. All this hope and change? He's trying to kill it. [...] The point is there are a lot of people whose spirit is just broken. They're fed up with it and saying, "To hell with it. I don't want to fight it anymore. I just want to get away from it," and here's Obama admitting: "Well, we can't start making judgments based on people's spirit." Imagine if we had had presidents in the past who said we couldn't make judgments on any number of political issues using "people's 'spirit.'" It's the American exceptionalism the spirit-can-doism that built the country. Spirit's everything. Energy, desire, get-up-and-go. Ambition! The woman's mother had ambition to live. She just needed a pacemaker. It didn't matter. She should take a painkiller! I'm telling you, this is a coldhearted, ruthless guy. Not a cool, calm, and collected one.
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*** Did Obama Say We Should Kill the Old Folks to Save Money Last Night?
*** Making treatment decisions for the "temporarily alive"
*** Obamacare is rationing
*** 'Death panel' is not in the bill... it already exists
...in the Stimulus Bill...
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whatta guy...
no care for babies who survive botched abortions.
and now no care for the inconvenient elderly?
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