The Connection Between ObamaCare & Euthenasia

Coverage That's Ir-Rational

While people in Washington debate the end-of-life issues in the President's plan, people like Barbara Wagner are already experiencing them. She and others have been in the fight of their lives--and for them. In a chilling new TV report, Barbara talks about her battle with Oregon public health officials who refused to pay for her cancer treatments but did offer to subsidize "physician aid-in dying"--better known as assisted suicide. "I'm not ready to die," she says, crying. "I said to them, 'Who do you guys think you are? You'll pay for my dying, but you won't pay to help me live longer.'"

And she's not the only one. Fellow Oregonian Randy Stroup applied for help to foot the bill for chemotherapy. He received a similar response: no to treatment, yes to euthanasia. In the President's health care reform, rationing isn't a matter of "if" but "when." Even the President aired his concerns that "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." The President was clear about his response to these end-of-life issues in June when he said, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller." In the push to cut costs, more liberals may push to cut lives short.

As with abortion coverage, plenty of liberals dispute that health care rationing is a part of the health care legislation. FRC Action has just released a list of 10 reasons why it is included and where you can find it in the bills. The greatest evidence comes not from what's in the legislation but what isn't. We made the point a few weeks ago that Republicans have tried on five different occasions to ensure that certain language in the bills is not used for rationing purposes-three times in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and twice in the House of Representatives. Each time, committee Democrats voted the amendments down. Of course, there's also the fact that the provision on "end-of-life" planning for seniors in the House bill originated with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democratic congressman from Oregon who has been a major proponent of the state's assisted suicide law.

The bottom line is that health care rationing isn't coming--it's here. And until euthanasia is specifically prohibited in the legislation, the only thing that should be humanely killed is the plan to encourage it.

Read FRC Action's 'Top 10 Reasons Rationing Is in the Health Care Bill'

Watch Barbara Wagner tell her story