Universal Health Care and the Elderly's "Duty to Die"

With the Obama-care bill continuing to get over hurdles in the US House of Reps., George Marlin's column over at The Catholic Thing. Here's a taste, and I highly recommend you read it in its entirety.

"The national health care debate has elicited President Obama’s pledge that the proposed $1.3 trillion, 1,018-page government health insurance program is “not going to mess” with anyone’s current coverage. But this does not ring true.

If Obamacare becomes law, expect Medicare – which represents 15 percent of the federal budget, consumes 11 percent of federal taxes, and has a future unfunded liability of at least $60 trillion (yes, trillion) – to be cut immediately.

According to Medicare expert Dr. Thomas Saving of Texas A&M, if the “federal income tax remains at the 50-year average of 10.89 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the present value of all future federal income tax revenues from now to eternity is $99.3 trillion so that the Medicare debt of $61.6 trillion is 62 percent of all future federal tax receipts.” Since the feds will not spend that much money to meet this financial obligation, its only alternative is rationing health care for the elderly.

President Obama began to lay the groundwork for “messing” with Medicare when he publicly mused that perhaps his grandmother (who died last fall) should not have had a hip replacement in old age."

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