Back in 2007, former Robert Reich told an audience at UC Berkeley what an “honest” presidential candidate would tell the country that health care reform would require.
First, young people will have to pay more for their health insurance. No question there under Obamacare, because one price fits all.
Second, elderly people will be rationed out of life saving care and will die earlier due to the expense of maintaining their lives. This has been discussed extensively, and the denials by the usual suspects ring false.
Third, medical and scientific innovation would be stifled because of the financial pressures put on drug companies, meaning that the next generation won’t live much longer than the current generations.
And the audience applauded–particularly about imposing a duty to die on the oldsters. Wow.
Here, listen for yourselves:
The speech wasn’t about Obamacare precisely, because the current bills had not, obviously, been filed yet. But the plans were already in the works. Moreover, it seems to me that Reich was precisely on target about the foreseeable consequences of passing Obamacare. And these just scratch the surface. Yikes.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:32 pm
Are we sure that wasn’t sarcastic applause?
October 14th, 2009 | 12:12 am
bmmg39: He was serious. And he was among fans. So, I don’t think so.
October 14th, 2009 | 12:49 am
Well Obama promised Hope and change. I think what he meant to say, is that there will be Change, but no Hope if you are a senior citizen. So, I guess Sarah was right. Sounds like a death Panel run by the Gov’t to me. This is sick!
October 14th, 2009 | 7:37 am
[...] Wesley J. Smith’s Secondhand Smoke: former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich spoke at UC-Berkeley in 2007 about how an honest candidate [...]
October 16th, 2009 | 7:36 am
[...] will have no alternative, when the US system is run by Reichian death panels. And the term “death panels” is not inapt, for all the ridicule Sarah Palin suffered [...]
October 16th, 2009 | 9:53 pm
What’s really bizarre is that Reich is trying to say that for bloggers now to bring this up is “misrepresenting” and “taking out of context,” even though the context is perfectly clear. It turns out that a certain type of liberal says that anything is “taken out of context” if it is _criticized_. “Taking out of context” means “evaluating what I said and what I think differently from the way I want you to evaluate it.”
October 16th, 2009 | 11:37 pm
The speech was about what an “honest” presidential candidate would say. He was right about where Obamacare would go, before it was known as Obamacare, of course. Now, the POTUS or his people don’t want honest discourse, because the bill wouldn’t pass. So Reich changes his tune. How disappointing.
Amazing how SO MANY PEOPLE can be taken out of context whenever they urge that people be thrown out of the lifeboat.
October 30th, 2009 | 6:15 pm
Oh, my God!
Elderly people! “…let you die.”
WHAT?
Applause?! The same thing will happen to you!
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