The Two Faces of Obamacare- Neither is Pretty

By Bruce Frohnen

Have you seen the internet ads? “Get Covered America” is literally popping up everywhere with its smiling faces, its semi-anonymous endorsements for Obamacare, and its offers to “help you on your journey to get covered.” At least there is some honesty, there. Far from a point and click process, let alone the semi-automatic process promised when Obamacare was being peddled, signing up for government healthcare has proven too complicated for the vast majority of Americans. Uninsured Americans must find guidance for their “journey” through the maze of regulations, options, and tables of costs in order to find the government-crafted plan providing the “best” coverage for them. Still, the “non partisan” “Get Covered America” is presenting the friendly face of Obamacare—the “we are here to help” face of socialized medicine.

 The not-so-smiley-face of Obamacare has been more in shadow until quite recently. But it is beginning to come more into focus. For example, there is a recent article in the online journal Slate, titled “Canada has Death Panels—and that’s a good thing.” Here we learn about the Province of Ontario’s quasijudicial tribunal, the Consent and Capacity Board, which the Canadian Supreme Court recently confirmed has the authority to overrule close relatives of an incapacitated person, should the bureaucrats want to put that person to death—sorry, “end life support.” The author explicitly calls the Board a Death Panel, quite intentionally, in an attempt to get us used to the notion that “the question is no longer whether we can ‘play God,’ but when, how, and who should do so.” For the author, the answer is simple: “Experts” must decide. Who are the experts? Government appointed psychiatrists, lawyers, and “members of the general public” who presumably know what “justice” (the author’s term, here) demands when a person is helpless and viewed as a burden on the public purse. These “experts” must decide whenever the family has failed to get the message that those who are near death may need a little push. They see the issue as one of “justice” rather than compassion and human dignity because they operate within a system where the resources are doled out by the government, and must be shared according to common criteria, rather than accessed in different ways by different people exercising their own reason and conscience.

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