Obamacare: Treating People Like Dogs

A practicing surgeon for 30 years is witnessing a transformation in health care that abandons the "Hippocratic Ethic," which serves patients, and adopts a "veterinary ethic," which serves government bill payers with 3 pet-like options: cure, palliation or euthanasia. Dr. Jeffrey Singer explains:

For centuries, my predecessors and I have been inculcated with what has come to be called the “Hippocratic Ethic.” This tradition holds that I am ethically required to use the best of my knowledge to recommend to my patient what I consider to be in my patient’s best interests—without regard to the interests of the third-party payer, or the government, or anyone else.

But gradually the medical profession has been forced to give up this approach for what I like to call a “veterinary ethic,” one that places the interests of the payer (or owner) ahead of the patient. For example, when a pet owner is told by a veterinarian that the pet has a very serious medical condition requiring extremely costly surgery or other therapy, the veterinarian presents the pet’s owner with one or more options—from attempt at cure, to palliation, to euthanasia—with the associated costs, and then follows the wishes of the owner.

Dr. Singer highlights several changes by which "government is putting the medical profession—and your health—at risk," not to mention your privacy.

• Government adopted price controls for Medicare in the 1980s, and Medicare is Obamacare's test model.
• Government required all health care providers to adopt electronic health records, with "the ultimate goal that every health care provider, including pharmacies, will have electronic databases ... accessible to the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS).
• Obama's 2009 'Stimulus Bill' created a new government agency to collect "data culled from all electronic health records" and determine the "most cost-effective way" of allocating health care resources for 310 million people—a clear turn to health care rationing. This new process produced its first determination in 2009: no mammogram screenings for women under age 50.
• In 2014, Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) of 15 presidential appointees "will determine what therapies, procedures, tests and medications will be covered" for Medicare and government-run health care exchanges.

In his full article, The Coming Medical Ethics Crisis, Dr. Singer goes on to explain how medical students "are now being trained to follow federally-driven protocols and guidelines," and how current physicians and hospitals are being methodically reshaped to government's will.

It is a chilling look at the future of a U.S. health care system that, if left intact by the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, will treat people like dogs.