{"id":33019,"date":"2009-07-22T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:06","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:10:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:06","slug":"would_obama_tell_ted_kennedy_to_forego_surgery_for_a_painkiller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/22\/would_obama_tell_ted_kennedy_to_forego_surgery_for_a_painkiller\/","title":{"rendered":"Would Obama Tell Ted Kennedy to Forego Surgery for a Painkiller?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: In fact, there\u2019s a gutsy story today, I found it last night on the American Thinker by a guy named James Lewis. Talk about not pulling any punches. ‘Does Ted Kennedy Deserve His Extended Cancer Care?\u2019 is the headline to the piece. ‘Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was diagnosed with brain cancer in May of last year, is telling the world that nationalized medical care is ‘the cause of his life.\u2019 He wants to see it pass as soon as possible, before he departs this vale of tears. The prospect of Kennedy\u2019s passing is viewed by the liberal press with anticipatory tears and mourning. But they are not asking the proper question by their own lights: That question — which will be asked for you and me when we reach his age and state in life — is this: Is Senator Kennedy\u2019s life valuable enough to dedicate millions of dollars to extending it another month, another day, another year?\u2019 <\/p>\n

<\/a>This is a very brave piece by Mr. Lewis at the American Thinker because you\u2019re not supposed to write things like this about people who are terminal. But it\u2019s a pointed question because we\u2019re all going to reach this stage, or most of us will, and Obama\u2019s health care plan, by definition, will not cover people in Senator Kennedy\u2019s circumstances because the investment will not be deemed worthwhile. Senator Kennedy is available to get this because he\u2019s got a great health care plan and because he has independent wealth to augment it and to go along with it. ‘Consider what happens in the Netherlands to elderly people. The Netherlands legalized ‘assisted suicide\u2019 in 2002, no doubt in part for compassionate reasons. But also to save money. There is only one money kitty for medical care in the socialist Netherlands. When you get old, the question is asked, either explicitly or by implication: Do you deserve to live another year compared to young refugees from Somalia, who can use the same euros to have many years of life?\u2019<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how they look at it in the Netherlands. This is where we are headed. By the way, grab audio sound bite 16. June 24th, 2009, just last month, on ABC\u2019s Obama reality show — primetime questions for the president. One member of the audience, Jane Sturm, said, ‘My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctor said to her, ‘I can\u2019t do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.\u2019 I said go for it, she said go for it, but the specialist said no, she\u2019s too old. When the other specialist saw her, saw her joy of life, so on, he said, ‘I\u2019m going for it,\u2019 that was over five years ago. My question to you is, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who\u2019s elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?\u2019 <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t believe somebody is actually asking this question of the president of the United States in this country, but it happened. A woman asks the president, ‘Would you let my mother live? Would you take into account her joy of living? Would your plan let my mother live?\u2019 Can you believe that we\u2019re even asking that question? Sadly, it was asked, and here\u2019s his answer.<\/p>\n

OBAMA: I don\u2019t think that we can make judgments based on people\u2019s spirit. That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we\u2019re going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they\u2019re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they\u2019re being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn\u2019t going to help. Maybe you\u2019re better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So maybe you\u2019re better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller. All right, would we have said that to Senator Kennedy under the Obama health care plan? No. Senator Kennedy is exempt from Obamacare, as are all members of Congress. And, by the way, do you know that the health care plan — and it\u2019s a cafeteria, it\u2019s a smorgasbord of choices that congressmen and senators have, and members of the federal workforce — do you know the government does not run those plans? Those are private plans. The government doesn\u2019t run the health care of elected officials in Washington. That\u2019s not government-run. They\u2019re not going to opt in to a government-run program. It\u2019s just not going to happen. So many things are misunderstood about health care in this country anyway. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Marla in Rockford, Illinois. Great to have you with us today in the EIB Network. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Listened to you for years and it\u2019s great to talk to you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you very much, same here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Thank you. I\u2019m calling because I have a grandmother who\u2019s going to be 103 in August, and this past June she had a pacemaker put in because she was getting weak and pretty lethargic and very low energy, and so they put in a pacemaker, it went very smoothly. Now my grandma is very active; she lives on her own; my uncle lives above her in an apartment; she gets her hair and her nails done every week; she loves to shop, she goes shopping every week —<\/p>\n

RUSH: A woman\u2019s a woman, doesn\u2019t matter the age.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. She has lunch with her daughters, her granddaughters, her great-great-granddaughters and she\u2019s just in great shape. She got her bill for the pacemaker, $26,000 this past week.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Whoa!<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait a minute. Does she have insurance?<\/p>\n

CALLER: She has a supplement to her Medicare.<\/p>\n

RUSH: How much of the 26 grand was covered?<\/p>\n

CALLER: You know, I don\u2019t know that. I know that my mother, the daughter, told me that it would be covered between the Medicare and her supplement.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, see, this is a very interesting point here. Medicare already covers your mom. Medicare is going broke, but the promise of Medicare was that it would cover the elderly free \u2019til they die. That\u2019s the promise. That\u2019s going to change if Obama gets this plan because your mom, unless she had the money herself to pay for the procedure, \u2019cause she wouldn\u2019t be allowed to buy her own insurance policy, unless she had the money, she wouldn\u2019t get Obama\u2019s health care plan paying any of that pacemaker, because she\u2019s 103, and Obama already said about a 105-year-old woman maybe it would be better just to have her take a pain pill.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, yeah, and he wasn\u2019t listening to her because if he had listened to the woman who was describing it, he said painkiller, there is no pain. My grandma has absolutely no pain. So again another waste of money prescribing drugs —<\/p>\n

RUSH: I know what he meant by this. He knows that there\u2019s not pain associated with a pacemaker, you\u2019re not in pain, you just die.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What he was saying is, if you don\u2019t have a pacemaker and just wither away, like Medicare is going to wither away, Obama is going to cause it to wither on the vine, but nevertheless, what he meant by that was, look, end of life, people have these diseases, sometimes it\u2019s just better to give \u2019em a pain pill, loop \u2019em out so they don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on and let \u2019em just fade away, rather than spend all the money. That\u2019s what he meant by the pain pill reference. You get into advanced stages of cancer, certain kinds and you\u2019re on so many pain medications it\u2019s the only way you can survive. The pain of cancer, everybody I know that\u2019s had it is it\u2019s just unbearable, certain kinds. But he knows there\u2019s no pain with a pacemaker business. He\u2019s just, look, sometimes it\u2019s better to zone \u2019em out, just loop \u2019em out and they won\u2019t know what\u2019s going on and eventually die and we save a lot of money.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, well, he didn\u2019t have any problem entitling himself to a date with his wife that cost over $50,000 that meant nothing to any of us, yet the lives of our seniors who are still inputting into the economy, my grandmother still pays her property taxes every year, she\u2019s still contributing, and in that interview with the woman —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Hell, she\u2019s getting manicures and getting her hair done, don\u2019t leave that out, and she\u2019s shopping.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And buying lunch, yeah. But, you know, he called it end of life, instead of calling it senior care, he called end-of-life care. And really more accurately, it\u2019s end-of-life termination, and he\u2019s the caller of it. My brother-in-law\u2019s nicknamed him ‘the Terminator\u2019 because that\u2019s what he\u2019s going to do to them.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. That\u2019s what the plan will do.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hm-hm.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And we learned yesterday that in the House bill, there are end-of-life counselors, so in the case of your grandmother, under Obamacare, they\u2019d tell her no on the pacemaker, and then they\u2019d send a therapist in to help her deal with the fact that the government\u2019s just sentenced her to death.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, she\u2019d probably pray for them because she\u2019s a pretty strong woman.<\/p>\n

RUSH: She\u2019s gotta be. My grandfather lived to 104, and he worked as a lawyer \u2019til he was 102.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Good for him. My grandma shows no signs of dying. We don\u2019t have any indications that maybe a couple of months or maybe a year.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Did you hear about the guy over there in Europe? Oldest guy died at 113. <\/p>\n

CALLER: Good for him.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Just last week, and he said the secret to his long life was cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women. You should ask your grandmother if she has something similar to his theory.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, she puts salt on absolutely everything and she loves coffee and never turns it down.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Does she drink adult beverages?<\/p>\n

CALLER: No, she doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Has she ever?<\/p>\n

CALLER: No.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No, she\u2019s been a good Christian woman, raised all of her family —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Hey, hey, hey, hey, a lot of Christians drink.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Nothing un-Christian about it, I mean wine is all over the Bible.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right. But in her time you didn\u2019t, and that\u2019s how she lived. She\u2019s a good woman.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. Marla, I\u2019ve enjoyed talking to you. We didn\u2019t get to her yesterday and we called her back. I\u2019m glad you let us do that. Thank you much.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, thank you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: In fact, there\u2019s a gutsy story today, I found it last night on the American Thinker by a guy named James Lewis. Talk about not pulling any punches. ‘Does Ted Kennedy Deserve His Extended Cancer Care?\u2019 is the headline to the piece. ‘Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was diagnosed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWould Obama Tell Ted Kennedy to Forego Surgery for a Painkiller? - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/22\/would_obama_tell_ted_kennedy_to_forego_surgery_for_a_painkiller\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Would Obama Tell Ted Kennedy to Forego Surgery for a Painkiller? - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: In fact, there\u2019s a gutsy story today, I found it last night on the American Thinker by a guy named James Lewis. 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