Under "ObamaCare," Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Spector, a cancer survivor, and former PA Democrat Gov. Bob Casey (PA Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.'s father) would both have been goners long ago, according to the
New York Post:
The controversial core of ObamaCare is a so-called "public option" that critics insist would eventually wipe out the ability of average Americans to get the kind of care Specter and the senior Casey received. This already is being set up, with the establishment in the Obama stimulus bill (passed with votes from both Sens. Casey and Specter) of the ominous-sounding "Federal Coordinating Council for Effectiveness Research."
Modeled after European equivalents such as the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the council is supposed to assign a monetary value to your life. This is done through a "QALY" -- a "Quality-Adjusted Life-Year." In Britain, The Wall Street Journal reports, NICE refuses to pay more than $22,000 "to extend a life by six months."
In other words, had Obama's plan been in effect in 1993, given the QALY of the 63-year-old Arlen Specter and the 61-year-old Bob Casey Sr., and had they been private citizens on the Obama public-insurance plan, both might, literally, have been allowed to die...
Pennsylvanians are well aware that the Specter and Casey families have benefited directly from high-profile medical treatment that the Obama plan would deny to average folks. So the question for Sens. Specter and Casey is: Would they be willing to enroll themselves and their families in the public plan the president is pushing?
Would they give up the quality health care that extended the senior Casey's life by seven years and quite literally saved Specter from death -- not once but three times?
On ABC News, Michelle Malkin aptly noted that ObamaCare is the "redistribution of
health."
