PrintAugust 13, 2009
The Great Bubbie Rebellion
In 2008, Sarah Silverman famously proposed the Great Schlep, in which the comedienne urged young Jews to go to Florida and coerce their grandparents to vote for Obama or they would not be visited by their grandchildren. Silverman had previously performed at a nursing home singing to the seniors that they will all soon be dead - and filmed it for a DVD.
Well, things have changed in Florida's retirement communities since November 2008. Obama's leading health advisors have come out in favor of saving money by not paying for seniors' treatments.
Well, things have changed in Florida's retirement communities since November 2008. Obama's leading health advisors have come out in favor of saving money by not paying for seniors' treatments.
Betsy McCaughy stated in her August 10th New York Post article that:
'Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.
Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they're "associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it "debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you'll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)
Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically delivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.'
The Canada Free Press reported:
"Obama advisor Ezekiel Emanuel likewise suggested that the Hippocratic Oath ought to be junked to cut costs, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008. "Medical school education . . . emphasize[s] thoroughness," he wrote. Doctors "are trained to identify and praised for . . . enumerating all possible diagnoses and tests that would confirm or exclude them. . . . Peer recognition goes to the most thorough and aggressive physicians. . . . This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically, the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."
Apparently Sarah Silverman had composed the theme song for ObamaCare seniors no longer "worthy" of expensive medical treatments.
It is articles like the ones above that have raised anxiety levels among seniors. Even my liberal dentist who still supports Obama told me this week that he is concerned about the so-called Death Panels under ObamaCare.
To remedy this situation, I propose the senior bubbies/grandparents in Florida start a Great Bubbie Rebellion of 2010 and 2012. This would consist of telephoning their grandchildren who hectored them last November to inform the youngsters that if they don't vote against the Democrats and their exclusionary health care plans in 2010 and 2012, that the grandparents will disinherit them and stop sending them money for their car insurance or perhaps the grandmotherly supplement to their unemployment insurance like they now do.
If this met with laughter by the callow youth, they should be further told that if and when an Obama healthcare plan comes into effect - and the seniors are denied coverage for a hip replacement or a pacemaker, the grandparents, if well enough, will fly to Costa Rica or India or South Africa for the operation they might need and stay a while on vacation, eating up the inheritance their grandchildren were counting on to finance their grad school education where they would learn to better express disdain for those "greedy Republican yuppies."
To emphasize the limited choices and desperation of what ObamaCare could create for these grandparents - and to get through to the youngsters - the grandparents could quote a line from Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," saying, "When you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose." For if no hospital in the US would pay for a needed pacemaker, the grandparents would, indeed, have nothing to lose.
So I am calling on all Republicans that have at least as much testosterone as Gov. Sarah Palin (all women have a bit) to stand up to the Death Panels and the Great Schlep emotional blackmailing youths of 2008 and show them that it's payback time. If you aren't into revenge, consider it Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Time, so to speak. If you are going to die soon or sooner, you might as well do it fighting for your dignity.
Zei Gezint, Bubbie. You should be well, Grandma and Grandpa.
