Mike Huckabee Says Folks with Pre-Existing Conditions are Uninsurable, Just Like a Burnt-Out House

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Readers might have noticed that some other groups and individuals who oppose legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia spend a fair amount of time and energy warning about “pro-death” ideology on the left.  You don’t have to search very far to find warnings about “Obamacare,” impending rationing and “death panels.”

While a lot of the rhetoric about “death panels” and rationing are overblown, it’s obvious that many self-identified “progressives” can be very “pro-death” when it comes to disability.  What else explains the eager way in which the liberal Huffington Post, for example, has provided a home for the extreme (and often sloppy) polemics of self-described “bioethicist and medical historian” Jacob Appel, to offer up one example.

Where I – and other disability activists – part with politically Right-leaning opponents of assisted suicide is that we see cause for alarm on the Right as well.  A lot of radical conservative rhetoric right now – like from the Tea Party – sounds pretty pro-death if you’re a person with a disability, chronic condition, etc.

If that sounds extreme and alarmist (as opposed to the “death panel” cries), please watch the video embedded below.  It’s good old “Compassionate Conservative Christian Mike Huckabee” speaking at the “Values Voter Summit” – the site for the summit says the “values” they want to further are to: protect marriage, champion life, strengthen the military, limit government, control spending and defend our freedoms.  Guess which one of those “values” Huckabee throws under the bus?

Check it out – and for those who need captioning, I tried the automatic captioning on this video and it works well.  There are a couple of typos, but you get the full content of Huckabee’s remarks:

To summarize – Huckabee blasts the idea of requiring insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions.  He compares those individuals – which includes me and just about everyone I know and care about – to both a burnt-down house and a wrecked car.  And, of course, it would be ridiculous to expect an insurance company to insure a house that burned down yesterday.

This can be interpreted in no other way but as a blatantly utilitarian appeal to Tea Party folks who combine the scary traits of wanting as little government as possible, want to pay as little tax as possible, and resent “paying” for people on “entitlements.”

I guess they should amend that “Champion Life” to read “Champion the lives of young, healthy, nondisabled people.”

It’s a chilling message, given the context.  Huckabee objectifies people like me, my loved ones and friends by comparing us to burnt buildings reduced to ashes.

He says we’ll raise the cost of health care for everyone.  I’m guessing that he doesn’t want to expand government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, since the only “program” on the agenda that is targeted for increases in funding is Military Defense.  Does he think that emergency room use by uninsured people won’t continue to raise health care costs?

Radical libertarians would eliminate that practice and only grant medical treatment to the insured or those who can pay in some other way.  The rest of us can go find a publicly-owned bridge to crawl under and die quietly where we won’t bother anyone.

I’m sure Rev. Huckabee would be glad to pray for our souls, though, since that won’t cost him anything.

Well, speaking for myself, this burnt-out pile of ashes has a message for Huckabee and other “Values Voters” who agree with him.

I’ll take care of my own soul; making sure I can get affordable health coverage is what I’d like help with.

Mike Huckabee and anyone else who doesn’t like that can kiss my ash! –Stephen Drake

Scotland: Disability Community Protesting Assisted Suicide Bill

assisted suicide, disability activists, disability rights, discrimination, Margo MacDonald, Our News & Commentary Blog, Scotland, suicide

There’s an effort in Scotland right now that is spearheaded by Margo MacDonald. She’s been successful in getting the matter before the Scottish Parliament.  There has been an encouraging amount of opposition to the proposed bill from the medical community.  The disability community seems pretty united – and serious – about opposing this bill, which they think is badly timed, to say the least:

Members of Inclusion Scotland say Margo Macdonald’s End of Life Bill discriminates against disabled people and contradicts the independent living agenda. They were protesting as evidence about the bill was being heard inside the parliament.

Disability support worker Catherine Garrod said: “I think it is offering assisted suicide to disabled people but a non-disabled person who was suicidal would be given counselling.

Dr Colin Cameron, a disability equality trainer, added:: “We need to provide support for disabled people to live on their own terms, not providing support for them to die.”

More later on…

The bill would make it legal for doctors to assist those who wish to die. It is designed to help those with a terminal illness and those whose physical disability makes life intolerable.

The move has been proposed by Margo MacDonald – who herself suffers from Parkinsons disease.

She said: “The bill has nothing whatsoever to do with disabled people, and I think it is absolutely disgraceful that such vulnerable people should have been used here today.” (Emphasis added.)

The row came as MSPs took detailed evidence on the bill.

Pam Duncan, a board member of Inclusion Scotland, said; “I genuinely believe that as a parliament we have a responsibility to make life a better choice than death.”

MacDonald reveals a type of contemptuous dismissal common among pro-euthanasia advocates in her framing the people with disabilities who are protesting as people who “have been used.”  On the one hand, she wants to respect individual choice and autonomy – but when disabled people come together and turn collective “thumbs down” to her “dignity” bill, she labels them as puppets “being used” by others (although she doesn’t say who the puppeteers are in this article, anyway).

In other coverage, disability advocates and activists harshly criticize the timing of this bill:

Catherine Garrod, of Lothian Centre for Inclusive Living, claimed that under the bill only disabled people would be eligible for assistance to die, suggesting their lives were of less value than those of non-disabled people.

She cited the case of 23-year-old Daniel James, who chose to die after being paralysed while playing rugby and added: “His wish to die was considered to be acceptable because he was a disabled man. The same desire to die in a non-disabled person of either sex or any age would be considered to be unreasonable and a sign of mental illness.”
Ms Garrod also called for a greater emphasis on tackling the social hurdles which can make life difficult for disabled people. Inclusion Scotland has criticised the timing of the bill, arguing that cuts to benefits and services might put some people in even more desperate situations, and make assisted dying appear “attractive”. 
“There is no mention throughout the End of Life bill of the barriers facing disabled people that may contribute to them finding life intolerable,” Ms Garrod said. “Barriers such as cuts to welfare benefits, cuts to social work services and other types of support, cuts to health services and the lack of accessible housing and being in poverty can all make life intolerable for disabled people.”
She added: “Disabled people are among the most disempowered in our society. This limits their choices. Some disabled people don’t even get to choose their own socks.
“The so-called safeguards in the bill would not prevent insidious and sometimes even unconscious pressure being brought to bear on disabled people by carers, health and care professionals. All research studies conducted on assisted dying show ‘not wanting to be a burden’ as the principal reason for seeking death.”

I invite Margo MacDonald to educate me.  Who, pray tell, is “using” Catherine Garrod?  She seems pretty clear on what she wants and why.  If you can’t name someone who is “using” Garrod, you should consider apologizing to her and to all disabled people in Scotland.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that apology or advise anyone else to, either. –Stephen Drake

Washington State: Grieving Relative Compares Legally Scheduled Suicide to Execution

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To be honest, the letter from Katie Densley in the Spokesman-Review on Sunday didn’t surprise me at all.  That is, the content of the letter didn’t surprise me.  The fact that her letter was published did surprise me.  I suspect there are more stories like hers in Washington – and even more in Oregon.  But they don’t have the well-funded Public Relations department of C & C (Conflation & Con Jobs) working to get those stories to the public by way of the media.

Here’s the beginning of Densley’s letter, titled “Suicide Like Execution“:

It’s been a year since my uncle opted for assisted suicide. To me it’s an excruciating anniversary. He talked about this for a year before it became law. He’d had surgery for cancer which left him with a catheter. He was depressed at 94 but was home with assistance from friends and health givers. I thought this could never happen because he was just old and depressed.

When the law became reality, friends helped him with his quest. They took him to doctors that my uncle convinced this was what he wanted. His profession had been car salesman so he got the doctors to sign off on him. Friends who were his caretakers tried to talk him out of it, saying it wasn’t right because he wasn’t terminal.

The date was set for the final event. I loved him and wanted to be with him when he died. It felt like an execution.

And the execution went ahead as scheduled.  Not terminal, but able to talk doctors into giving him a lethal prescription.  Friends who didn’t like it, but just went along with it.

In case you’re wondering, there’s nothing that this niece could do in terms of complaining about the doctor who gave a prescription to someone who wasn’t terminally ill.  Unlike the “safeguards” that allegedly restrict assisted suicide to the “terminally ill,” the physicians in question are protected against any sanctions as long as they acted “in good faith.”

What that means is that even if the physician violates any of the guidelines, they are protected from professional sanction, along with civil and criminal liability.  All a physician needs to do is stick to the claim that they believed they were acting in accordance with the law.  It would take something like a public email from the physician admitting they knew they were breaking the law to pierce the “good faith” liability armor.

Please go and read the rest of the letter and check out the comments.  Right now, there aren’t many  – just 2 at last count.  That says something.  What also indicates something about the Washington public is that both commentators ignore Densley’s assertion that her uncle wasn’t terminally ill.  Ignoring that piece of her message makes it easier for them to urge her to respect her uncle’s values and get over it. 

Why fuss over details?  They just get in the way when you want to parrot platitudes about “death with dignity.”

–Stephen Drake

NDY Applauds Appointment of AAPD CEO Andy Imparato to Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors

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Great news coming out of Washington, DC last week.  Andrew Imparato, the President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), has been appointed to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors.

Here’s the relevant info from the AAPD press release:

WASHINGTON, DC – September 23, 2010 – The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the country’s largest cross-disability membership organization, is pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Imparato, AAPD’s President and CEO to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 established PCORI as a non-profit organization to assist patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policy-makers in making informed health decisions by carrying out research projects that provide quality, relevant evidence on how diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, monitored, and managed.  The Patient Protection Act directs the Comptroller General to appoint 19 of the 21 members of the PCORI Board of Governors. Today, PCORI announced AAPD’s President and CEO, Andrew Imparato, is appointed as one of the inaugural PCORI Board Members. Imparato will be part of this team, charged with reviewing the research given to the government regarding healthcare reforms and implementation.

Needless to say, just about every aspect of health care reform has been debated exhaustively – and the PCORI is no different.  The views on this board range from those who have suggestions about how they should do their work to those who put their concerns in terms of outright paranoia.

 Since PCORI will be looking at “effectiveness” in medical treatments, it does bear watching just how “effectiveness” is defined.  Is “effectiveness” to be defined in terms of how well a given treatment works?  Or will “effectiveness” rely in part on judging in certain treatments aren’t merited for certain people because they are too old or too disabled to justify the expense?

Knowing that Andy Imparato is part of the process provides some comfort.  He was general counsel and director of policy for the National Council on Disability (NCD) during the time the Council published its paper opposing legalization of assisted suicide.  Since then, he – and AAPD – have been at the forefront of advocacy againts genetic bias in employment, “futile care” cases, medical discrimination against people with disabilities and many other areas that overlap with NDY.

We at NDY congratulate Andy Imparato and thank him for his long-term advocacy and commitment to safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities.  –Stephen Drake

Robert Latimer – Murderer of Daughter Tracy Latimer – In the News Again

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I can’t explain the feelings that go through me when Robert Latimer surfaces in the news again.  Robert Latimer’s murder of his daughter Tracy was pivotal in getting my attention directed at the euthanasia movement and in providing a solid foundation for my opposition to the movement.

Even though it looks like I haven’t written anything here on the blog about Tracy Latimer’s murder, the role the public debate about her murder played in my turn to activism has long been a part of my official bio:

During his years at Syracuse, one key event turned his interests and passions toward assisted suicide and euthanasia. In the early 1990s, Robert Latimer, a Canadian farmer who murdered his disabled daughter, Tracy, became a “poster child” for the Canadian pro-assisted suicide groups. Tracy Latimer was not dying and she did not ask to die. In 1996, while growing increasingly alarmed over the “better dead than disabled” rhetoric of the pro-euthanasia movement, he learned of the formation of Not Dead Yet and dropped everything to join its first protest action.

How far did the euthanasia activists in Canada go in embracing the killer of a nonterminally ill child who never asked to die?  What did the champions of autonomy have to say?

Here’s one example from a Canadian “right to die” leader, quoted in a 1994 NY Times article on Robert Latimer.  She is reacting to the imposition of a 10-year prison sentence:

Marilynne Seguin, executive director of Dying With Dignity, a Toronto-based group promoting freedom of choice for physician-assisted deaths, said that the Latimers had already lived under a sentence during the 12 years that Tracy was alive and that to add the 10-year punishment “is quite unconscionable.”

It’s not often that people you didn’t know were your enemies declare themselves so openly.  When Seguin equated parenting Tracy Latimer to being under a prison sentence, it also meant that her murder was a release – but not for Tracy.  By her reckoning, it was Robert Latimer who engineered his own “release.”

Alex Schadenberg has posted about the latest round in news coverage – which revolves around efforts to get Latimer’s parole conditions loosened.  I recommend reading Alex’s post on the subject.

No disrespect to Alex, but in all honesty, I found a blogger who has written two posts on this latest round of press coverage that seems to touch every single element in the complex mix churning in my own stomach every time Robert Latimer is in the news again.

On August 19, Trouble posted a blog entry titled “This post is about Tracy Latimer’s Murderer“:

OH YAY! Gentle reader, I’m here to inform you that once again Tracy Latimer’s murderer is in the news, which means we can deal with another week or two or months or years of people wibbling on about how Tracy Latimer’s murderer is such a sweet innocent man who only murdered his disabled daughter because Tracy wasn’t really a person and deserved to be murdered, and how he’s such a victim of the system, and woe is poor him, and how cripples really DO have no life and it’s totally okay for people to murder disabled children, as long as they don’t have a disability and murder their own non-disabled children. Those people are menaces and should be locked up forever!!!!!!!!!!!

That was just for beginners.

She followed up with the post “it has begun“:

I’m sure this weekend and into next week will be full of these shit-tastic stories, and I’m going to spend the whole damned week in a state of rage, and people will tell me to calm down because, you know, it’s okay, it’s just some 12 year old girl whose been dead since 1993.

She also left a comment in that section on the second post that accurately describes how Tracy Latimer is treated in stories about her own murder.  And it’s a treatment that I’ve seen repeated in countless stories involving the murders of both adults and children with disabilities:

It’s also something it’s really hard to talk about. I try to blog about it calmly and rationally and then I remember that these people think that Tracy should be a footnote in her own murder, and I lose it.

I confess to having many of these same thoughts and feelings churning inside on a regular basis.  Some days, it can be very difficult to write “calmly and rationally.”

Please read both of Trouble’s posts on Tracy Latimer’s murder.  I only shared a small excerpt and her posts should be read in their entirety.  First go here and then here.  –Stephen Drake