Healthcare rationing, death panels, and other COVID vaccine mandate benefits
Part of the “new normal” in “post-COVID” America has been the loss of liberty as tyrants issue mask and vaccine mandates, but instead of providing benefits like health and safety, their arbitrary and unconstitutional edicts have given us healthcare rationing and death panels.
Before COVID vaccine mandates, we were given a taste of what healthcare rationing and death panels might look like in a 2011 news report explaining how the “nation’s organ-transplant network [was] considering giving younger, healthier people preference over older, sicker patients for the best kidneys” (via Denver Post):
Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney, the most sought-after organ for transplants. (emphasis mine)
In the Age of COVID, this death panel approach to making healthcare decisions received new life long before vaccine mandates arrived on the scene.
For example, in a December 2020 LA Times article, healthcare bureaucrats working as de facto death panels justified their god-like power to decide who lives and who dies:
Decisions [concerning care] would be made by an appointed triage officer. For patients who receive a scarce resource, they will be given up to two days to see if it is helping, at which point they should be reassessed to determine whether the treatment should continue.
If the patient has not shown improvement or has gotten worse, the resource may be reallocated to someone else.
“The ethical justification … is that in a public health emergency when there are not enough critical care resources for all, the goal of maximizing population outcomes would be jeopardized if patients who were determined to be unlikely to survive were allowed indefinite use of scarce resources,” the document states. (emphasis mine)
But that was back when mask mandates and lockdowns were the tyranny du jour; all of that changed with the arrival of bipartisan vaccine mandates, as we witnessed in a Colorado story from October 2021.
That’s when an El Paso County woman was informed by the University of Colorado Transplant Center that she was no longer eligible for a kidney transplant because she had refused to receive the COVID vaccine.
“The transplant team at University of Colorado Hospital has determined that it is necessary to place you inactive on the waiting list. You will be inactivated on the list for non-compliance by not receiving the COVID vaccine. You will have 30 days to begin the vaccination series. If your decision is to refuse COVID vaccination you will be removed from the kidney transplant list. You will continue to accrue waiting time, but you will not receive a kidney offer while listed inactive. Once you complete the COVID vaccination series you will be reactivated on the kidney transplant list pending any other changes in your health condition.” (emphasis mine)
In the words of State Rep. Tim Geitner, a Republican serving El Paso County, “The understanding is basically… conform to this demand. Take this COVID vaccine or otherwise you will be denied a life-saving procedure.”
Also in October 2021, an Ohio man in need of a kidney transplant had his operation canceled days before the life-saving surgery, not because he wasn’t vaccinated but because the donor wasn’t.
Once thought to be isolated incidents, de facto death panels are in the headlines again as they deny life-saving healthcare for people who refuse vaccine mandates — even if their refusal is for health reasons (via New York Post):
A 31-year-old father [DJ Ferguson] has been removed from the heart transplant list at a Boston hospital because he is refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, his family said.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which is a Harvard teaching facility, said research had shown transplant recipients were at a much higher risk of dying from COVID compared to non-transplant patients.
“Our Mass General Brigham healthcare system requires several CDC-recommended vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and lifestyle behaviors for transplant candidates to create both the best chance for a successful operation and to optimize the patient’s survival after transplantation, given that their immune system is drastically suppressed,” said a spokesperson.
“Patients are not active on the waitlist without this.”
The hospital’s policy requiring recipients to have the COVID-19 shot is in line with many other transplant programs across the US, the spokesperson added.
According to Ferguson’s father, his son’s refusal to receive the COVID vaccine goes beyond liberty and his right to do so; he’s also refusing because the vaccine could literally kill him.
A GoFundMe set up by a family friend explains:
“DJ is now in severe end stage heart failure, meaning that he is going to need a heart transplant to live. On top of the heart failure his heart is extremely swollen and dilated. Which puts him at high risk of cardiac arrest etc.”
“In DJs case he can NOT afford for his heart to swell any more than it already is right now. He is at extremely high risk of sudden death if it does.
“We have had many conversations with the doctors, who confirmed that his heart COULD swell [if he received the vaccine] and go into severe crisis, but they can’t guarantee anything and it’s a choice we will have to make if he wants to be listed.” (emphasis mine)
In other words, these hospital bureaucrats know the risks, but they are passing the buck. That way, if DJ dies — with or without the vaccine — it’s on the family, not the hospital.
Concerns about how the COVID vaccine could result in DJ’s death aren’t without merit.
In a November 2021 report, the CDC admitted that myocarditis (inflammation and damage of the heart) and pericarditis (inflammation of the lining around the heart) have been documented side-effects of receiving the COVID vaccine.
Years ago, when Obamacare became the law of the land, Barack Obama and his army of Marxists and Democratic Socialists ridiculed those of us who warned of death panels and healthcare rationing, and they denied that government bureaucrats would be making life and death decisions about whether or not patients received life-saving healthcare. What they didn’t deny, however, was that instead of government bureaucrats, non-government bureaucrats sitting on hospital boards could one day be making those life and death decisions.
Thanks to COVID vaccine mandates, healthcare rationing and death panels are no longer the stuff of conspiracy theories, but a reality.
It’s not about health, it’s about control.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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