Monday, August 10, 2009

ObamaCare's Perfect Day

For centuries, doctors took an oath to protect life and to uphold the covenant relationship with their patients. Even now, with the Hippocratic Oath discarded due to its problematic prohibition of abortion and euthanasia ("do no harm"), doctors still recognize at some level that they have a covenant with their patients, not just a code of conduct.

See: The Hippocratic Oath Today (
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath.html)

And: Taking the Hippocratic Oath Seriously (
http://al007italia.blogspot.com/2009/06/taking-hippocratic-oath-seriously.html)

So with the prospect of government-run health care, my question is this: Where's the oath that the government health care bureaucrats will take? Whose interests will they swear to protect?

With whom will the bureaucrats who run the system and make health care decisions have a covenant - with millions of patients they never see or interact with, or with the government from which they get a paycheck twice a month?

Obamacare advocates like to point to the Mayo Clinic as a model for quality care with controlled costs. Does anybody really think bureaucrats will follow Mayo Clinic's model of care: "The Needs of the Patient Come First" (
http://www.mayoclinic.org/needs-of-patient/)?

For a chilling, prescient view of where Obamacare is headed, read "This Perfect Day" (1966), by Ira Levin. Levin's magic number was 62. I wonder where the actuaries set it now?

10 comments:

Claude said...

And the true reason comes through.

MFC= anti gay, anti choice.

Any way you can get those two things done in the world, by any means, or motion, you will stand behind it.

Forget about children being without health care.

Forget about the fact that millions of people have different choices and religious backgrounds and are just different than you are

Forget about humanity for it has nothing to do with what you stand for.

One day the judgement will come and you will have to see the light

John Helmberger said...

Claude, The post is about health care. Why are you so obsessed with homosexuality and abortion?

John Helmberger said...

...and with slamming biblical Christianity?

Claude said...

This particular post has the undertone that if we have universal health care then abortions will run rampid.

Again and again you prove to the world you have only anti drives no gives.

Religion and faith should be about accepting, and about giveing.

You do nothing but take.

I believe it was troy that said in another place here just recently that its all greed.

Yes greed.

MFC is the one tha tis all obsessed with the Homosexuals and people who make the legal choice to have an abortion or to have birth control or to make any decsion that is not within the very stict pick and piece work of what you call your religon, for if you really believed in being anti Homosexual or being against abortion then you would never have had a hair cut or ever had eaten shell fish.

Claude said...

Lets talk about biblical Christainity as you claim to have?

Do you follow all rules of the bible, do you believe the sun revolves around the earth? have you had a hair cut? have you ever eaten shell fish? Have you ever slept in the same bed as your wife when she had her period? would you take on your brothers wife if your brother would die? would you have multi wives?

Tell me about the 60 somewhat bibles there are and how you only follow a few?

Tell me how you can say you are a christain and not care about health care and about giving to society?

And tell me where you are suppose to be the only religion in this country we should follow?

John Helmberger said...

1. Don't equate support for a government-run health care plan with caring about people. In fact, it is deep concern for true health care reform and for people's needs that leads us to reject a false, government-run solution that masquerades as health care reform and that will, in reality, ultimately hurt people more than help them... you included.

2. Our concern, and that of every real Christian I know, is that people would come to the knowledge of the truth. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me" (John 14:6). His words, not mine.

If someone believes those words to be objectively true, not just for oneself but universally, wouldn't it be wrong to keep it to oneself?

Unknown said...

Keeping things to yourself, promoting your beliefs and colonizaton are all different things. Forcing others under law to have beliefs and faith that is not theirs is morally wrong.

To continue to say that people slam biblical Christainaity when you yourself can not support or answers anyones questions when it comes to why do you pick and choose what parts of the bible you find law and what parts you do not is hypicritical at the very least.

And I would agree with Claude on the view that the only thing that you have against the idea of universal health care is that it goes against your political agenda which is to be anti choice and anti Gay.

Blog mole said...

Claude and Elaine, blah, blah, blah it's the same old rhetoric. If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything. You have fallen for it all.

Claude said...

85% of people in Canada are happy with their health care. That is what I will stand behind. Numbers and facts.

Claude said...

Just as you fell for an illegal war? And how you fell for the idea that its ok to take away Habeas Corpus, or to torture people?