I could editorialize at length on how the so-called Cash-for-Clunkers program reveals key pillars of this administration’s worldview and how easily those could begin to inform thinking and policy in other areas (e.g., healthcare).
Since I don’t have time for that, a quick re-write of the first portion of a page one article in today’s WSJ will have to do (see below).
I hope it will prove more thought- than anger-provoking. I’m just thinkin’ ahead and speculating about how an aging baby boom generation, a dramatically heterogeneous country detaching rapidly from its religious (and thus moral/ethical) roots, a massive economic and budget crisis (including a ‘bust’ social security obligation), a push for government-run ‘health’ care and a creeping culture of pragmatism all end up dovetailing together.
Don’t think it can’t happen here because it can.
(Apologies in advance to anyone named Robert Smith, Joe Smith, Jim Jones or Fred Kevorkian. Those names, and this ’story’ are — and I fervently hope will remain — entirely fictional, hypothetical creations. Quite frankly, it made me a little sick to even imagine such a potential future.)
PAGE ONE AUGUST 4, 2011?
The Killer App for ‘Klonkers’ Breathes Fresh Life Into ‘Liquid Bliss’ Rebate Program Prescribes Chemical to Stop Hearts — for Good; Hospitals ‘Can’t Wait’
Robert Smith deals in chemicals for a living — things that can unstick glue, thin paint, make plastic — but he’d never seen an order like the one he got for sodium pentothal.
The compound is typically used to put patients under general anesthesia for surgical procedures, but this buyer’s online order form betrayed a whole different intent: “To Kill Old, Sick and ‘Useless’ People.”
“That worried me a little, so I picked up the phone and called the gentleman,” recalls Mr. Smith, an owner of chemical-firm Death-Concepts Inc. in suburban Chicago.
What Mr. Smith discovered is that sodium pentothal is the designated agent of death for people surrendering themselves under the federal cash-for-families-with-unproductive, costly or otherwise annoying or burdensome elders and handicapped people program. To receive government reimbursement, hospitals who offer rebates to families in exchange for so-called ‘klonkers’ must agree to kill the ‘patients’, using a method the government outlines in great detail in its 136-page manual for hospitals: Inject two thousand milligrams of a sodium pentothal solution, then wait…
In a nation packed with experts on how to keep people healthy, fit and even running, the people-killing powers of sodium pentothal are a well-kept secret. “I, like, have so not even ever heard of this before,” said Jim Jones, new marketing chief and renowned “geriatric guy” at a major HMO, in an email.
Often called liquid bliss, sodium-pentothal solution has been better known for being used to save patients rather than killing them: It is used to perform surgery, for instance to stop leaks in heart gaskets or other organs…
At hospitals across America, overworked administrators accustomed to helping to heal people are battling for the chance to kill them to make room for others. “Everybody wants to go first, so I’m probably going to have to make them draw straws,” says Joe Smith of Big Anonymous Hospital in Kansas City, Kan. As patient service manager, however, he might reserve that thrill for himself. “I can’t wait,” he says.
Over the weekend, half a dozen doctors gathered around three ‘klonkers’ marked for death at another hospital in Lawrence, Kan. As Fred Kevorkian, the hospital’s president held a stopwatch, the sodium-pentothal solution took two minutes flat to kill a lonely 60-year old man suffering from MS, and just a few seconds more to kill a 70-year-old suffering from dementia. But a 85-year-old suffering from depression and osteoarthritis lasted more than six minutes.
“Sometimes those old guys, they’re the hardest to kill,” says Mr. Kevorkian.
But do you get a new person for your old “klunker”?
In the Cash for Klunkers program you turn your klunker in on a new car. Do you therefore get a script allowing you to reproduce, make a baby, or adopt a child when you turn in your elder person for demolition? There will probably be mandatory birth control, so maybe this is how they will do it? Off with the old, in with the new?
Even the Chinese are not this barbarian, as they still, even under communism, retain their reverence for the old, who are thought to have gained wisdom from long life; this would at least be true in the rural areas where more traditions persist.
[Good points both. Thanks for stopping by, Mariel! -ed.]
By: Mariel on August 7, 2009
at 12:05 pm
Do I really need to draw the obvious comparisons to the other National Socialist programs of era’s not-so-gone by?
The Final Solution began as a “cost-saving” measure. National healthcare was draining the national treasury. The road has been trod before. The current problem is that many in the political class don’t realize they are repeating history.Much of MSM is ignoring yet many people are starting to get that nasty little feeling that something is amiss. Sweden’s been doing this stuff for years and no one has called them on it.
I still love the anecdotal story of when the nationalized Swedish doctors (may be Finnish) went on strike… the death rate for that period DROPPED. Essentially its not about death and dying, though… its about man thinking he is God and able to determine when life should end; be it for himself or others.
You can tell where the philosophy has its beginnings by the fruits of its labor. There’s that choice again… LIFE or DEATH. The diabolical embraces death. The holy embraces life. There is no gray area.
By: archangel on August 5, 2009
at 9:59 am
I had a similar response to the Cash for Clunkers program — but with an automobile concept, rather than a human one. Your “news article” gives me the creeps. The parallels between clunkers and seniors is well made.
[It was chilling to write and I almost had second thoughts. Another thought-train occurred: We Americans identify extremely closely with our cars. Our government is a reflection of us (of the people, by the people). Therefore, if we can so easily develop a program like this for cars... -ed.]
The Cash for Clunkers program (destroying old cars/trucks so consumers can buy new ones — that they’ll be paying off for years — repugnant: I buy only used vehicles that I can afford without debt. For those of us who use our vehicles as transportation, not status, there’s the real possibility that parts (not to mention clunkers themselves) will be less available after this CfC program. Given that, our humble forms of transportation will be useless.
Also, I thought we as a nation learned our lesson when people with mortgages above their means defaulted and the government had to step in with billions of dollars to bail these people out. Evidently we didn’t learn the lesson, as encouraging folks to buy cars above their means merely opens the door for additional government bailouts in the future.
Uffdah!
.
By: Just_Saying on August 4, 2009
at 4:32 pm
Interesting! Today a fellow employee and I were joking about both of us being in our 60’s and that the new “Cash for Clunkers” was a “prototype” for the Obamacare to limit health support and even provide for termination. Now, I read your post and it is a bit chilling.
By: AmeriKen on August 4, 2009
at 4:31 pm