LaRouche:
`Obama Is Now Impeachable'
For His T4 Plan
by Nancy Spannaus
July 24—When President Barack Obama delivered his nationally televised press conference on July 22, in which he pressed for legislation that called for an "independent board of doctors and health-care experts" to be established as a means of cutting health-care costs, he crossed the line. Lyndon LaRouche, America's leading economist and statesman, who has been warning of the dangers of the President's Nero complex with ever-greater urgency since his April 11 webcast, responded immediately, with the following statement:
President Obama is now impeachable, because he has, in effect, proposed legislation which is an exact copy of the legislation for which the Hitler regime was condemned in the post-World War II trials. It is an impeachable offense to propose such a thing in this time. With this statement from him, the President now deserves impeachment.
What the President, and his cost-accounting henchmen, like budget chief Peter Orszag, are now insisting on, as the centerpiece of their health-care "reform," is precisely what LaRouche had identified weeks before. Having adopted the view of the British financier oligarchy, that society cannot afford to put its resources into maintaining what Nuremberg Trial veteran Dr. Leo Alexander called the "non-rehabilitatable sick," the Obama Administration has concluded that there are some (i.e., many) lives "not worthy to be lived." They have thus fixed on a mechanism to make the decisions as to who will get the scarce resources. Not surprisingly, they came up with the same approach that Hitler did in 1939—setting up a board of experts to determine who shall live, and who shall die. The program, which killed hundreds of thousands of Germans even before the mass killing of Jews began, was called T4.
Starting on July 16, when they saw their bill was in trouble, the White House has made such an "independent" board the centerpiece of their demands for action. But don't believe for a second, that this proposal is the result of pressure from Congress to cut costs. Such a dictatorial agency is what Obama's closest advisors, including Ezekiel Emanuel and Tom Daschell, have wanted all along.
But, the all-out attempt to ram the reform through has run into a huge roadblock. Many Congressional offices who previously told LaRouche PAC organizers that they thought the Nazi comparison was "over the top," are now stunned to find that the President is openly pushing such a Hitlerite program. Others in Congress, and in the health-care profession, are reacting instinctively against what they smell as a fascist cost-cutting regime against the poor and the sick, a regime totally antithetical to the principles upon which the American system of government is based.
Their instincts are right. As LaRouche has emphasized, the President's proposal spits on the General Welfare clause of the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the Declaration of Independence's commitment to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the President were to be successful in ramming through his dictatorial board, it would be the equivalent of a Reichstag Fire coup against the Constitution, and lead to crimes against humanity in the form of avoidable deaths of millions of Americans.
For this reason, LaRouche PAC has escalated its battle to crush Obama's health-care "reform," and replace it with the program of FDR-style public-health measures, which LaRouche outlined in his LPAC video reply to Obama on July 17 (transcript of Larouche's reply).
A Nazi Mentality
Before looking at the battle, as it has emerged over the past week, let us focus, once again, on the glaring Nazi mentality which characterizes the Obama Administration's approach to health care.
It begins with the rejection of the sacredness of every human life, substituting for that, an idea of how "useful" a life is, generally measured in how much money should be spent to save it. The Nazis were relentless in pressing this point, beginning early in their reign, when they complained vigorously about spending money to save "cripples," when it should be spent on vigorous young workers instead. Money spent on the chronically ill—and obviously on the elderly, as well—was considered "wasteful," because the individual could not be expected to contribute to the economy, in the way they wanted.
Contrast this anti-human approach with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, a "cripple" himself. Roosevelt waged a vigorous campaign in favor of research to cure diseases (e.g., the March of Dimes), and to help those who were limited by physical incapacities to overcome them, and play a role in society. Rather than seeing the expenditure as a drain on society's resources, he saw it in terms of what the individual who was helped could contribute to society, which perhaps could be measured financially, but not necessarily.
The Nazi mentality, however, takes the Social Darwinist approach, and deplores spending money on the weak. It's not "cost-effective," they say today.
This outlook was on exhibit at the Obama press conference July 22, when the President lied that the major cause of the fiscal problems of the United States was spending on Medicare and Medicaid (the old and the poor). Even the President's perverted economists have to know that this is a lie: The rampant speculation and looting of the casino economy of the past 40 years makes a mockery of the statement. Yet, Obama chose to scapegoat the old and the poor, and target them for massive cuts, in his alleged attempt to solve the health-care crisis.
Another hallmark of the Nazi mentality, of course, which maps onto the President's own Neronic egomania, is the propensity to use force, not reason, to work one's will. This approach shows up in the Obama health-care "reform," in its drive to set up a council to circumvent Congress, imposing the cuts in health-care spending, in combination with the financier sponsors of the Administration's program. Like Hitler, Obama seeks to set up an executive agency which will wield power without being subjected to challenge—the Constitutional provisions for Congressional responsibility be damned.
One major difference, of course, between the Obama approach and that of Hitler, is that Obama is pursuing his fascist assault on the elderly and the sick in public. Hitler, when he issued his infamous 1939 order setting up Dr. Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to decide who should live, and who should die, felt compelled to act in secret, because he feared opposition from the German people.
The Death Bill
As we reported last week, the President launched his public campaign, on July 16, for an independent commission to exercise life-or-death power over medical care. Taking a leading role was Peter Orszag, the "behavioral economist" and soulless accountant who heads Obama's Office of Management and Budget. Orzag sent a letter to Congressional leaders, to which he appended a piece of draft legislation called the "Independent Medicare Advisory Council Act of 2009," a law which he repeatedly has characterized as "the most significant aspect" of the pending legislation. Its transparent intent is to cut care for those on Medicare.
Orszag's bill would set up a council (IPAC) of five physicians, who, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPac) established in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, would issue two rulings a year on reimbursement rates for various medical procedures. But that's not all.
First, the bill specifies, under the title "No Increase in Aggregate Medicare Expenditures," that the rulings could only freeze or lower total Medicare/Medicaid spending, not increase it.
Second, once the rates are sent to the President and approved, they could only be voted up or down in toto within 30 days by the Congress. Should this not happen, they would go directly into effect.
But there's another telltale aspect. The proposed legislation says that "the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)" would get the final review of each of the commission's detailed regulations, after the President and Congress signed off. This appointed bean-counter, if deciding that any of the regulations would overpay for medical treatments, could simply "declare them null and void," and tell the "commission of doctors" to start over, and cut deeper.
In fact, the CMS is, right now, about to issue a ruling that Medicare and Medicaid will issue "bundled payments for kidney dialysis" from January 2011 onward. Reuters notes correctly, in reporting the ruling: "Under the bundled system, dialysis providers will receive a fixed payment [per patient] for all services and drugs. The dialysis center would effectively profit by spending less money on each patient."
The President Goes Ape
Following the release of Orszag's proposed bill, Obama went into a non-stop campaign on its behalf. His Saturday radio address July 18, his press appearances in New Jersey and in the Rose Garden, and his public meetings, all featured the call for the "independent" commission to cut costs.
In an interview with the Washington Post published on July 23, the President elaborated on the policy under the heading of "delivery system reforms." He wrote:
"At this point, I am confident that both the House and the Senate bills will contain what we've been calling 'MedPAC on steriods,' the idea that you continually present new ideas to change incentives, change the delivery system, understanding that, because this is such a complex system, we're not always going to get it exactly right the first time, and that there have to be a series of modifications over the course of a series of years, and we have to take that out of politics and make sure than an independent board of medical experts and health economists are providing packages that are continually improving the system. So I think there's general consensus that that is one of two very powerful levers to bend the cost curve...."
Obama repeated this concept July 23 at his town hall meeting in Shaker Heights, Ohio, saying that an empowered MedPAC would "eliminate waste and save money."
The point of the President's remarks was crystal clear: Health-care decisions should be made by technocrats who are not responsible to the political process—just as they were under Hitler's T4 Program. Orszag was even more explicit at a Nw York Council on Foreign Relations event July 23 when he said: "But moving more decisions into the hands of medical professionals and out of the political process will enable us to continually update the system to reflect new information and changed circumstances...."
Among those "changed circumstances," of course, is the reduction of monies being allocated to health care for those whom the "professionals" believe are not "helped" by the care—the old and the chronically ill.
The Revolt Mounts
As of this writing, Obama's steamroller has run out of steam, and a brawl has broken out in Congress over health-care "reform." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has declared that the Senate will not vote on Obama's bill until the Fall—although the President had insisted it go through before the August recess. And a large number of House Members, Democrat and Republican alike, are in revolt against the House leadership's attempt to ram through the bill there.
On July 22, top members of the House Ways and Means Committee objected to the Obama IMAC policy, warning that it would shift too much power away from lawmakers, and give the White House the power to make decisions reserved to Congress, under the Constitution. "You're outsourcing Congressional responsibility," said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) called the idea "unworkable" and "stupid, at best."
According to Politico, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, "We should resist that," referring to Obama's program. "They're the imperial Presidency, just like Bush.... You have this appointed body, with no essential accountability to anyone, making these very important decisions. We should make the decisions. Essentially what they're saying is, the Congress is either incompetent or corrupt. In fact, we are competent, we are honest, and we know more, because we get input from the public."
LaRouche said that the Congressmen are right, that the transfer of decision-making to the White House, in this case, is "just like Hitler." There would be "no accountability to anyone, but to a mentally and morally defective President."
In addition to the Congressional uproar against the imperial council idea, some Republicans are raising the substantive issue of Obama's intent to slash care for the poor. Most notable, was a press statement issued by House Republican Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), which blasted a provision in the House bill that attempts to mandate counseling on "end-of-life" care options for senior citizens, a transparent attempt to pressure older people to refuse treatment. They wrote of Provision 1233:
"This provision of the legislation is a throwback to 1977, when the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare proposed federal promotion of living wills for cost-savings purposes described as 'enormous.' At that time, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago decried this effort by saying: 'The message is clear: government can save money by encouraging old people to die a little sooner than they otherwise would. Instead of being regarded with reverence, and cherished, human life is subject in this view to a utilitarian cost-benefit calculus and can be sacrificed to serve fiscal policy and the sacred imperative of trimming a budget.'
"With three states having legalized physician-assisted suicide, this provision could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself.
"Health care reform that fails to protect the sanctity and dignity of all human life is not reform at all."
Exploding the Fraud
The reason the President's backers, especially among the British, were insisting he ram the reform through before August is clear: The more the people know about it, the less chance it has of going through. This has been demonstrated with a vengeance.
The same is true of the lies that have been used to sell the Obama health-care fraud, especially those generated by the Dartmouth Institute, one of the prime "authorities" for those who argue that 30% of U.S. health-care expenditures are "waste," and can be cut. The Dartmouth studies use comparisons between expenditures in one part of the country, against another, to argue that areas of high cost are just ripping off the system, and should be forced to lower them. The methodology of these studies, especially those which compare end-of-life care, perpetrates a hoax, simply by deliberately eliminating from the studies those who are successfully treated.
We include below a thorough refutation of the Dartmouth fraud, whose premises mirror those of Orszag and Obama: namely, the less you spend, the more efficient you are—even if the patient dies!
