Rigth-wing talk radio host Austin Hill recently wrote an article called Democrats, Health Care Reform, and Your "Duty to Die"

Democrats, Health Care "Reform," And Your "Duty To Die"
Austin Hill
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Welcome to the Era of Obama. You now have a duty to die.
I'm not saying that someday you will die (that's a given).
And I'm not saying that you should be given the "right to die" - - the freedom to take your own life, or to direct your Doctor to put you out of your misery - - that's something entirely different.
I'm saying that someday, if current trends continue, your United States Government will determine that you have a “duty,” an obligation, to die.
It’s bad enough that hundreds of congressional members voted to spend nearly one trillion of our dollars, without even reading the so-called “economic stimulus bill” and without knowing fully what our money is being spent on. It’s even more horrific to know that more of our tax dollars are being allocated to the Office Of Health Information and Technology, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, and that the bill also provides for the beginnings of a nationwide “health records database” that will track the healthcare of every person in the country.
As recently as last Monday, President Obama was praising the nationalization of health records, and the “conversion” of health records to electronic formats, noting that managing electronic data is less costly than managing hardcopy documents. But unfortunately, the creation of a nationalized health records database also creates another means of “cost cutting” - - namely, the denial of medical treatments to severely ill and elderly patients.
Language in the health care sections of the “stimulus bill” stipulates that the Department of H.H.S. will provide “appropriate information to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care,” and also allows for “penalties” to be assessed to physicians who “spend too much” on individual patients. Essentially, we now have the beginnings of a governmental agency that eventually will, by force of law, determine which persons will be eligible for health care, and what treatment they will receive.
As noted in a recent Bloomberg news article, the way in which the Office Of Health Information and Technology is being expanded emulates the plans put forth in “Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis,” a book authored by former Senator (and would-be HHS Secretary) Tom Daschle. In the book, Daschle praises the Western European nations for, among other things, the ways in which they have “nationalized” health care, and have ‘contained” health care costs.
Yet, not surprisingly, Western Europe’s utopian ambitions to “insure everybody” and make healthcare “free” have by no means been realized. In fact, the nationalizing of healthcare in Europe has led to worsening government deficits, and increased healthcare costs, and efforts to contain those costs have resulted in the denial of treatment to those persons not expected to live much longer - - that is, the elderly and the seriously ill.
This “need” to deny people health care has frequently, in Europe, been cast in terms of one’s “duty to die.” The idea is that, once you have lived “long enough;” after you have consumed your “fair share” of the earth’s resources; and when your combined age and health conditions make it “obvious” that further efforts to prolong your life just simply “aren’t worth it;” you will then have a responsibility to accept these consequences, and to accept that you’ll just have to get along without life-sustaining healthcare.
In other words, once a government employee has determined that spending healthcare resources on you will not produce much of a “return on the investment,” you will then have a “duty to die.”
Forget the notion that the Doctor-patient relationship is “sacred,” or that you will make “private” decisions about your health care, in consultation with your Doctor. If Democrats continue the trend of "Europeanizing" our American health care, the office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will eventually be overseeing your healthcare, making sure that if your Doctor spends “too much” on you, they will face federal “penalties, ” the likes of which have yet to be fully defined.
For over three decades, the Democratic Party has insisted that it is wrong for government to “interfere” with a woman’s medical decisions with respect to the child in the womb. Now, President Obama and congressional Democrats are insisting that government must be involved in everybody’s medical decisions. Worse yet, their proposals threaten human life on yet another front: not only are unborn children threatened by their policies, but so, also, are the ill and the elderly.
If Americans continue voting for “more government” as a means to “cure” all our societal ills, we will continue to move closer to the point where anonymous government bureaucrats determine when you have lived “long enough,” when you have consumed your “fair share” of resources, and when it is “obvious” that you won’t live much longer.
President Obama and the Democratic Congress are determined to take us to this point.

Mr. Austin Hill is an idiot.  
I have had the opportunity to observe and use both universal health care (in Sweden and Denmark) and the insurance-based health care system in the U.S.  In all honesty, I received good care in all systems. In fact, from a quality-of-care standpoint, I can't tout one system over another (notice how I don't try to artificially inflate the positives of the Scandinavian model. There are problems there just like there are problems here). That being said, I have never seen or heard of a patient in Sweden or Denmark being denied healthcare because they're old and/or sick. My sister is a nurse in Sweden and concurs with me (she actually thought the very notion was both outrageous and silly). 
 
Mr. Hill says if we have universal healthcare, the government will decide who should or should not receive care.  I suppose he thinks it far superior if a for-profit insurance company neck-deep in bailout money makes those decisions?  The argument from the right is so ignorant and cruel that I wonder sometimes how these people sleep at night.  "You get to pick your own doctor...blah, blah, blah..." 
 
When are they going to realize that you don't get to pick your own doctor if you can't afford to pay $500-plus for healthcare every month? 
 When are they going to realize that the average tax-payers health premiums have increased at least 30 percent during the last five years, making the long-term viability of the current system a question mark anyway?
 When are they going to realize that those without insurance will still go to the emergency room, costing us much more in higher premiums?
 When are they going to realize that those without insurance have kids? Who also don't have insurance?
 When are they going to realize that if those kids had insurance, chances are they'd become much healthier, more productive members of society (I suppose I should say 'consumers,' since that's what they really care about anyway)?
 When are they going to realize that, in many cases where there is a pre-existing medical condition (my wife's Type 1 Diabetes included) people wouldn't be able to even get insurance if it wasn't included as an employment benefit? They could in fact be DENIED ("Duty to Die", anyone?) So, rather than have the government decide who should get care, we now have heartless suits at AIG deciding for us, based on risk and profit margins (wasn't his argument that the government would deny care if it got too expensive?). Does that really seem like a better option to the blithering nincompoop who wrote the article? Not so much for me, considering my loving wife would perish without constant, adequate care. I guess I better hope and pray my employer doesn't fall victim to the recession...
 Also, since Mr. Hill brought up abortion (I guess he couldn't possibly get through writing the article without bringing that one up), when are they going to realize that abortion rates are likely to drop to unheard-of low levels if more kids and young adults had access to proper health education? 
 Does anyone think I'm out on a limb if I make the assumption that the writer in this case is probably one of the first to yell about illegal immigrants? I'm sure he is angry that a pregnant Mexican woman might sneek across the border for healthcare so her unborn child would be automatically naturalized.  I'm sure he would prefer if the doctors turned the woman down for care, even if she had some troubles, like eclampsia for instance.  Which, to me, seems uncomfortably close to murder. 
 Lastly, on a subject that should be near and dear to the hearts of those on the right. When are they going to realize that the average tax payer would be able to keep more of their own money under a universal health care system? When are they going to realize that most companies could and would pay better wages if they weren't saddled with the responsibility of lining the pockets of fat-cat insurance execs? When are they going to realize that the only segment of the population that would truly get hurt by universal health care are the pharmaceutical and insuran.........
 Oh wait, I just figured out that's where they're coming from. Hmm, it all makes so much more sense when you realize who they're actually lobbying for and that everything else is just window dressing to confuse those who have not been able to afford college degrees (which, by the way, is also free and universal in most western nations).
 But oh well, I guess they know better than I do, since they communicate directly with God. Moral values...sheesh, spare me their values.  They're neither moral nor valuable. I just hope God is indeed watching the people who constantly use his name in veiled defense of the almighty profit margin.