Vaccine mandates created the death panels Obamacare only dreamed of

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vaccine mandates death panels COVID Obamacare

Vaccine mandates created the death panels Obamacare only dreamed of

When Obamacare became the law of the land, there was a growing debate about “death panels” and healthcare rationing, but in the Age of COVID tyranny, vaccine mandates are doing what the Affordable Care Act only dreamed of.

We were given a glimpse of what Obamacare death panels and healthcare rationing could look in practice 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.

“We’re trying to best utilize the gift of the donated organ,” said Kenneth Andreoni, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University who chairs the committee that is reviewing the system for the United Network for Organ Sharing, a Virginia-based private nonprofit group contracted by the federal government to coordinate organ allocation. (emphasis mine)

“Best utilized” is politispeak for “sorry grandma, but you simply won’t live long enough for Uncle Sam to recoup his investment.”

When questioned about the ethical and moral issues of denying someone life-saving care simply because they are too old or too sick, this Bio-ethicist had this to say.

“It’s a big shift,” said Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bio-ethicist. “For a long time, the whole program has been oriented toward waiting-list time. This is moving it away from a save-the-sickest strategy to trying to get a greater yield in terms of years of life saved.” (emphasis mine)

While this study was specific to kidney transplants, Caplan admitted that such an approach could be applied in other situations. For example:

“If adopted, the approach could have implications for other decisions about how to allocate scarce medical resources, such as expensive cancer drugs and ventilators during hurricanes and other emergencies.” (emphasis mine)

Though the story above is 10-years-old, it shined a light on the possible motivations behind recent decisions by the healthcare industry to ration healthcare or flat-out deny non-elective medical treatments like organ transplants for unvaccinated patients in the Age of COVID tyranny.

The death panel approach to making healthcare decisions has been with us long before vaccine mandates.

For example, an April 2020 report by The New York Times told the story of Luis Arellano’s struggle to receive care during the early days of COVID; a struggle he would lose to New York’s defacto death panels.

After feeling unwell with what seemed like symptoms of the coronavirus, Luis Arellano first tried going to a nearby hospital in Brooklyn, where he was told to come back if his condition worsened.

Days later, as his health deteriorated, his family took him to a New Jersey hospital. He waited eight hours, and after being told they’d have to wait another seven to nine hours, the family left, they said.

By the time Mr. Arellano, 65, was finally determined to be sick enough to be immediately admitted into a hospital, his body had already been ravaged by Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

He died of cardiopulmonary arrest on April 5 after five days in the hospital.

An LA Times article in December 2020 showed us how the healthcare bureaucrats working in these defacto death panels justified the 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)

COVID death panels were only able to go so far with mask mandates and lockdowns, but that changed with the arrival of the far-left’s vaccine mandates. (via The Denver Channel):

An El Paso County woman says she won’t be able to get a kidney transplant through UCHealth because she’s not vaccinated against COVID-19.

Leilani Lutali learned of this after receiving a letter, dated Sept. 28, from the UCHealth Transplant Center at its Anschutz Medical Campus:

“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)

Back in August, Lutali said the hospital told her that the vaccine would not be a prerequisite to get the surgery.

“At the end of August, they confirmed that there was no COVID shot needed at that time. Fast forward to Sept. 28. That’s when I found out. Jaimee [the donor] learned they have this policy around the COVID shot for both for the donor and the recipient.”

Jaimee Fougner is an unvaccinated friend Leilani met at a Bible study group and both of them have tested negative for the COVID virus. In today’s tyrannical America, however, nothing but complete surrender to COVID tyranny and vaccine mandates will satisfy the bureaucrats running the new death panels — a reality that received some attention from 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,” he said Tuesday.

Barack Obama and the rest of the far-left ridiculed those of us who warned of death panels and healthcare rationing under Obamacare, and they denied that government bureaucrats would be making life and death decisions about whether or  not seniors will receive life-saving healthcare.

Of course, what they didn’t deny was that instead of government bureaucrats, non-government bureaucrats like those serving on the UCHealth death panel would be making those decisions.

Unfortunately for Leilani Lutali, the elderly, the poor, and anyone else the state deems unworthy of receiving life-saving healthcare, it looks like vaccine mandates will create the death panels and healthcare rationing Obamacare only dreamed of.

Welcome to the new normal.

 

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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