Will Cancer Survival Rate Be A Casualty of ObamaCare?

For all of the horrible claims the Left makes about American health care, most people around the world would choose to be treated in the United States if possible. That is especially true is they have cancer. The United States leads the world in positive outcomes after a cancer diagnosis. As this is the leading cause of death in America, it would seem that we would want to preserve these desirable victories. Today's Wall Street Journal features an editorial by New York writer Myrna Ulfik in which she discusses her long fight with cancer and the opportunities she has had to be treated and survive.

Innovations in treatments and pharmaceuticals are expensive. The would-be czars of American health care do not seem concerned with this. They are interested in everyone having mediocre and limited care, rather than the overwhelming majority receiving excellent care. Ulfik cites self-appointed health care guru Tom Daschle (who would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services if he paid his taxes):

Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama’s original pick to head Health and Human Services, argues in his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis,” that we should accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments.” Mr. Daschle blames the “use and overuse of new technologies and treatments” for runaway health-care costs. He suggests a Federal Health Board modeled after the British “NICE” board to make decisions on health-care rationing.

But the British system is infamous for denying state-of-the-art drugs to cancer patients. Thus cancer-survival rates in Britain are far below those in America, just as they are in Canada.

Like a true Statist, Daschle believes that the government should control and manage your life. This ghoul believes we should dial back the clock thirty years to the good old days when cancer was a sure death sentence. Just accept your fate. Why, just think how many abortions we could pay for with the money wasted to save your life?

It is cruelly ironic to me that the same political movement that has turned a "right to privacy" into an unwritten constitutional amendment and who wail about the government keeping their hands off a woman's body when it comes to a supposed right to kill babies now advocate turning the very lives of all Americans over to a government review board. The obvious contradiction would be hilarious if it weren't so deadly.

Health care rationing kills and does so in the most cruel way. A person is diagnosed with an illness that requires radical and expensive treatment. A pencil-necked geek representing the Kremlin on the Potomac tells the person that the federal treatment matrix shows they fall outside the qualifications for treatment. They are too old. The odds for survival are too low to risk the money. All the allocated money for the procedure in a given year has been spent. "Go see one of our End-of-Life Counselors to plan your final demise. By the way, if you want to be a real patriot you will swallow this arsenic capsule and we can cancel your other medications immediately."

Look at your family and friends. Do you want them to have the best health care in the world available to them? Do you want them to live in a country that continues to lead the world in health care innovation? Or are you so caught up in "hope" and "change" that you want them to just take one for Team Obama?