When the government pays the bills it calls the shots

The federal government is helping troubled banks stay alive, so it has decided it’s appropriate to limit executive salaries. The just-passed stimulus plan has a execrable new provision that will let the government limit how much medical treatment you’re allowed. The language appears to have been crafted by Tom Daschle and reflects the proposals Obama wanted him to enact as HHS secretary. Betsy McCaughey compared the stimulus bill and Daschle’s book and found many similarities.

Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

In the Democrats’ eyes, babies are an unwelcome drag on the economy. Now, the elderly are too expensive to treat. 

The “party of the people” to young babies: don’t live. To old people: hurry up and die.