ObamaCare May Put 40% of Home Health Care Providers Out of Business

obamacare99

We had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. Also destroy health care in America.

Sebelius herself, using discretion granted her by the Affordable Care Act, cut the maximum allowed by law from home health care funds. The cuts were deep enough that officials offered a damaging prediction of the impact saying, it was estimated that approximately 40 percent of providers would have negative margins.

And companies with negative margins don’t last long — or have to cut workers.

In fact, those cuts put in jeopardy 498,000 jobs of home health care workers who work just for that 40 percent of firms that will be forced into the red — the kind of home health workers who allow Yvonne Wightman, 98, to avoid expensive hospital or nursing home stays by getting care at home.

“If she fell like she has a few times,” says her daughter, Janet Connor, “typically you go to the ER, but because we can call a nurse to come, they can do the wound care here. Because she did have a fall, and it was a bad wound. We didn’t go anywhere we just had people come and dress it at home.”

Her mother also came down with pneumonia and was treated at home, but Janet needed help caring for her and turned to home health care workers, again avoiding expensive alternatives.

Home health care is one of those things that help the elderly live longer and ObamaCare has been targeting senior medical services from hospitals to Medicare Advantage to pacemakers. Some might think this is a coincidence, but it looks like an attempt at breaking down care for the elderly from multiple angles and reducing life expectancy in order to cut medical costs.

Think of it as a vast death panel.

  • tagfu222

    My mother had a wonderful home health care worker for almost 2 years. Without that service she would have been in a much more expensive nursing home. But I guess Hobamacare would have solved the problem when she had the stroke that caused her to need care. Its just that he funeral would have been 2 years earlier.

    • A Z

      What did she do in those 2 years? Did she see a grandkid graduate Highschool or college or something else she could appreciate?

      Or maybe it was something else that she could appreciate.

      • 1stworlder

        Asians and whites were better off with catastrophic coverage until they hit 50 or had kids unless they had a family history of disease. Obamacare takes money from Asians and whites when they start needing what they put into the system and gives it to those who evolved in R type environments.

  • CaoMoo

    This crap needs to be repealed and the president were he a man would resign in disgrace and never show his face again. But he isn’t a man. He is just a boy and the other side are cowards.

  • truebearing

    More apalling evil from the Progressive ghouls who are presiding over the policy of Stealth Eugenics, designed from the start to kill off older and sicker Americans. This is the malignant result of combining Environmentalism with Marxism.

    We have a cult of death running the country. If they are capable of premeditatedly executing millions of senior by denied care, what won’t they do? Violating the constitution certainly doesn’t bother them, nor would ignoring the two term limit for presidents.

    • A Z

      When the Left gets more power they will just move senior citizens out of their homes and give them to immigrants.

      http://chaeshoernli.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/liberal-traitors-move-out-granny-103-we-need-your-place-for-a-terrorist/

    • hiernonymous

      Killing off the old would be evil, but it wouldn’t be eugenics. Are you sure you’re clear on the concept?

      • truebearing

        Yes, it would, in the broader understanding of the concept. Euthanasia is considered to be a form of eugenics, especially since it isn’t voluntary and is being engineered by the government for what they think is a “healthier” population.

        • hiernonymous

          The indispensable element of eugenics, its sine qua non, is not killing, but the sense of improving the gene pool. The whole point of eugenics was that one used birth control or whatever other means, nefarious or no, to prevent the undesirable element one was targeting from continuing to increase its numbers in the population.

          • truebearing

            There is a dispute as to what the definition should include, but the meaning of words do morph, and never so much as when leftists are involved. Where they are in power, eugenics is social engineering. To them, the population is the body and they want to “improve” that body by doing things like putting sterilants into the drinking water, as Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren once proposed, or by abortion, or by amputating the unproductive segment of the body politic, thus improving the “social genes” — those genes being human beings instead of the biological meaning of the word. the Left has a long history of “improving” populations via procrustean method. Killing off problematic segments of the population is simply retroactive abortion to them.

            If you would prefer, one could call it political eugenics, since political power is the only thing the Left cares about.

          • hiernonymous

            What would be preferable, of course, is to simply limit yourself to the arguments you can support.

            One wonders why you would believe that being able to establish that “they want to kill the elderly” would not be sufficient indictment; why the never ending urge to embellish?

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “What would be preferable, of course, is to simply limit yourself to the arguments you can support.”

            A novel idea. You should try that sometimes.

          • hiernonymous

            It’s a good idea, of course, but I’m surprised that you found it novel. Still, thanks for the well-intentioned advice; I always do try to follow it.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            Try a little harder.

          • hiernonymous

            That’s also always good advice. Thanks!

          • truebearing

            I won’t try to improve upon Daniel’s trenchant reply. It fits you like a tailored suit.

          • hiernonymous

            “I won’t try to improve upon Daniel’s trenchant reply.”

            And yet…

          • truebearing

            And yet what? I didn’t try to improve his reply, I simply noted how appropriate it was.

          • hiernonymous

            “I didn’t try to improve his reply”

            Clearly.

            When you have nothing to say, you can never seem to bring yourself not to say it.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “When you have nothing to say, you can never seem to bring yourself not to say it.”

            Projection?

          • hiernonymous

            Maybe so. Though it seems an odd question.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “The aim of eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute more than their proportion to the next generation.”

            Francis Galton

          • hiernonymous

            If you see those statements as contradictory, you apparently do not understand what “contribute more than their proportion to the next generation” means.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            You’re confusing contradictory and supplementary.

          • hiernonymous

            In the context of Galton’s quote, to contribute to the next generation is to bear offspring, not to provide material support. Since you offered the quote absent any argument or context of your own, it’s difficult to determine exactly how you believed that offering that quote would serve as an answer, rebuttal, or rejoinder, but no, ‘supplementary’ would be a poor choice.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            Bearing offspring is a factor of the material support and other forms of support that can be provided, as Galton discusses.

            Your insistence on pretending that eugenics advocates disregarded practical and social factors is ignorant.

          • hiernonymous

            The Communists in the Soviet Union built schools. Education was one of the practical and social factors necessary to consolidating control over the people and to educating the workforce preparatory to industrializing the state. However, school-building did not thereby become a Communist activity, nor would building schools today be evidence that one is a Communist.

            My insistence, of course, is not that advocates of eugenics disregarded practical and social factors; my insistence is that not everything they did thereby became part of “eugenics.” And forgive me if part of the prior conversation slipped my mind – did you contend that any American eugenicists had planned to kill off the elderly?

          • Daniel Greenfield

            School-building most certainly was a Communist activity since it was one of the means of indoctrination.

            While building schools does not make one a Communist, building schools for the purposes of Communist indoctrination does.

          • hiernonymous

            While building schools does not make one a Communist, building schools for the purposes of Communist indoctrination does.

            Excellent. Then you understand that if you kill someone for the purpose of preventing them from reproducing, such killing could reasonably described as ‘eugenics.’ Killing those who could not reproduce anyway could not.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            …unless you are killing them to free up medical resources for those who can

          • hiernonymous

            I address that elsewhere, but I’ll summarize here:

            Killing the elderly does not free up resources for the suitable; it simply frees up resources. Those resources must then be identified, marshaled, and employed in a way that helps the suitable without helping the unsuitable.

            In that respect, killing the elderly is no different from any other human productive or conservational activity. Training doctors, digging coal, making pencils, repairing tires, purifying water – you name it – the results of such activity can then be collected and turned to the support of the suitable. Glass-making becomes “eugenics” – the glass might be used to produce spectacles employed by a clerk to enable him to make note of the address of one of the suitable to which a bottle of aspirin was to be shipped. The lumberjack who felled the tree that provided the wood used to make the clerk’s pencil was engaging in “eugenics.” The printshop that produced the timetables for the streetcars on which the clerk rode to work was engaging in “eugenics.”

            You’d have made “eugenics” synonymous with “all human activity,” and deprived the word of any meaning at all.

          • 1stworlder

            Why are we talking about eugenics when the left is all about dysgenics? Importing low IQ 3rdworlders whose offspring will always vote for more free stuff, and never produce more than they take is the plan for the left. At least Israel has sense enough to deport them, and give them depo-provera shots.

          • hiernonymous

            “Why are we talking about eugenic”

            Overenthusiasm and poor aim.

      • A Z

        Truebearing beat me to it

        I went to Wiki & found a euthanasia poster that was part of the NDSAP eugenics program.

        If you look at the word eugenics etymologically, euthenasia does not figure into it. But if you look at how the word is used in practice and historically, Truebearing is correct.

        One way to free up the beautiful people so they can be all they can be is to have euthanasia program to get rid of those who are retarded the infirm and the old.

        Which is what they did in Germany in the 1930s. Pope Benedict XVI had a cousin who was taken away because he was mentally handicapped. The state, N_ZI Germany, decided they did not need the expense.

        They are euthanising people right now in the Low Countries of Europe and in Britain.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

      • A Z

        “Historically, the term has referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia”

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

        • hiernonymous

          Precisely. The common element in all of those activities is that they are intended to improve the quality of the population by preventing, by any number of methods, the continued reproduction of whatever element was identified as ‘undesirable.’

          Killing someone who is past the age of breeding may be all sorts of nasty, but it’s not eugenics.

          • A Z

            “Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things. Historically, the term has referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia.” – wiki

            It is not a far stretch to go from sterilizing or euthanizing a mentally handicapped person to euthanizing an elderly person. such euthanization of the elderly can be rationalized on the basis there is more left over the fit in society.

            The societies that do not count low birth weight babies as live births are the same that put the elderly or those with a low probability of recovery on “Death Pathways.”

            Euthanasia and eugenics are linked both in popular perception and historically.

            Personally, I support eugenics. I just do not support authoritarian eugenics any more than I support authoritarian capitalism (which if it wasn’t coined by the CFR was certainly used in an issue of Foreign Policy).

          • hiernonymous

            “It is not a far stretch to go from sterilizing or euthanizing a mentally handicapped person to euthanizing an elderly person.”

            It may not be a far stretch in the sense that “someone who is ruthless enough to do one is ruthless enough to do the other.” It may not be a far stretch in the sense that the same sort of person may rationalize both as being good for society. But there’s simply no way to sell killing the elderly as eugenics.

            “Euthanasia and eugenics are linked both in popular perception and historically.”

            A very specific type of euthanasia – the involuntary killing of those who were considered a risk of passing on undesirable traits in the population – was linked to eugenics. It would be an error to invoke that link, and then rely on a loose or vague use of the term “euthanasia” to imply that other (and, today, more prevalent) senses of euthanasia are associated with eugenics. The intentional killing of the old would not be eugenics in any sense, and an attempt to portray it as such simply betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the principle underlying eugenics.

          • A Z

            “But there’s simply no way to sell killing the elderly as eugenics.”

            The same people, who advocate mandatory eugenics ,usually are all in for euthanasia.

            Action T4
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4

            Etymologically speaking I agree with you as to the meaning of eugenics. But apparently I do not agree with you as to how it is meant connotationally.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.:

            Francis Galton

            The ” can be properly cared for,” part here is crucial. Its ideas live on in leftist death panels and birth control schemes.

          • hiernonymous

            The ” can be properly cared for,” part here is crucial.

            It was apparently so crucial that it rendered you unable to understand the very line that you quoted.

            Galton, in that quote, was quite plainly attempting to establish a distinction between the brute efforts of “natural selection” and the precise and scientific action of “eugenics.” He notes that natural selection relies on overproduction and death to serve the function that eugenics can better serve by simply attending to limiting reproduction to the fit.

            The sentence you emphasize reads “Eugenics [rests upon] bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for…”

            So Galton’s statement of the principle of Eugenics is that it deals with controlling who and how many are born; he says exactly nothing about killing the already living in the service of freeing up resources for their betters. His juxtaposition of natural selection and eugenics rather firmly implies that he views eugenics favorably at least in part because of its stark contrast with the destructiveness of natural selection.

            The ” can be properly cared for,” part here is crucial. Its ideas live on in leftist death panels and birth control schemes.

            It’s usually a good indication that some rhetorical sleight of hand is being effected when one suddenly sees extraneous elements slipped into an argument at the end. “Its ideas live on in …. death panels and birth control schemes.” Where did this “birth control scheme” come from? We’ve been discussing whether killing the elderly could be construed as “eugenics,” and you’ve slipped birth control into the mix, as if it had been part and parcel of the discussion all along.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            Are you still playing dumb?

            Viewing eugenics as a question of resource availability inevitably deals with the availability of medical care and who should be receiving it.

            Galton was not a monster and was not proposing murdering the elderly, however the nitpicking argument you decided to start was about whether eugenics also encompasses such things as euthanasia of the elderly.

            Once it becomes a question of the availability of medical resources, it quite clearly does.

          • hiernonymous

            Are you still playing dumb?

            Don’t lead with your chin.

            “Viewing eugenics as a question of resource availability inevitably deals
            with the availability of medical care and who should be receiving it.”

            But, as even the quotes you provided from Galton that you mistakenly believed supported your own position demonstrate, eugenics is not simply a question of resource availability.

            To so interpret it would be to broaden the concept to meaninglessness. There would be no human activity that was not arguably linked to eugenics. Coal mining? Provides energy for the children of the fit – Eugenics! You champion public schools? You are providing resources to improve the survival chances of the offspring of the elect – Eugenics! You champion school choice and vouchers? You’re providing a way to prioritize scarce educational resources to those who should have it – Eugenics! Genetically modified foods? To save the A-10 or not? Public roads or toll roads? Can you find an activity, an issue, a question or thought that cannot be turned to satisfy such a broad linkage of resource availability to the idea of eugenics?

            You might be better off returning the Galton passage you quoted and consider the boundary that he established therein for eugenics, instead of allowing you to allow the petty politics of discussion board conversation trap you into trying to defend silly positions.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            The quotes demonstrate that eugenics also encompasses resource availability.

            Eugenics doesn’t become meaningless that way since

            1. The man who developed the concept defined it that way

            2. It’s a more sensible and holistic definition than your insistence that eugenics is purely limited to preventing the reproduction of the unfit.

            ” There would be no human activity that was not arguably linked to eugenics. Coal mining? Provides energy for the children of the fit – Eugenics! You champion public schools? You are providing resources to improve the survival chances of the offspring of the elect – Eugenics!”

            Welcome to progressivism.

            Strawman aside though, some resources bear much more directly on the question than others, specifically the availability of medical care.

          • hiernonymous

            1. The man who developed the concept defined it that way

            So far, you don’t seem to be fully following the material that you’re citing. As I’ve noted earlier, Galton’s comments firmly undermine the idea of killing the elderly as in any way linked to eugenics.

            2. It’s a more sensible and holistic definition than your insistence
            that eugenics is purely limited to preventing the reproduction of the
            unfit.

            Galton himself noted that his goal was for the most suitable in society to contribute to the next generation disproportionately. The only ways of achieving this are to increase the reproductive rates of the ‘fit’ and to decrease the reproductive rates of the ‘unfit.’ Killing the elderly accomplishes neither.

            Truebearing’s apparently reflexive categorization of the killing of the elderly as eugenics, which you have gallantly, if mistakenly, chosen to champion, does not fall reasonably within either the prevailing understanding of eugenics nor within Galton’s vision, which you so helpfully provided. You seem to be trying to redefine ‘eugenics’ as some sort of synonym for “social engineering,” and in so doing, you’re departing from his clear intent.

            And, really, it’s such an unnecessary exaggeration. I’m frequently baffled by the ideologue’s passion for piling on accusations. Why accuse someone of “murder” when “genocide” sounds so much more lurid? Why accuse someone of being an ineffective leader when the word “traitor” is out there to spice up our posts? If one could establish that the administration were trying to kill off the elderly, that would be a grave accusation indeed; there’s no need to embellish it by trying to recast it as ‘eugenics.’

            Welcome to progressivism.

            To progressivism, perhaps, but not to eugenics.

            I’ll read your response with interest, but will not respond absent a new and compelling argument on your part. Regards.

          • truebearing

            Good idea. Quit while you’re behind.

            You seem incapable of recognising when you are wrong, or when someone else is right. All of that erudition is useless if you can’t acknowledge that it is ever so finite, and leaving you infinitely short of the omniscience you try to project. Humility would do wonders for your ability to contribute something other than supercilious pontification.

          • hiernonymous

            Good idea. Quit while you’re behind.

            I’m afraid I’ve never seen the point of announcing victories and defeats in online discussions. What sort of weight do you suppose them to carry?

            You seem incapable of recognising when you are wrong, or when someone
            else is right. All of that erudition is useless if you can’t acknowledge
            that it is ever so finite, and leaving you infinitely short of the
            omniscience you try to project. Humility would do wonders for your
            ability to contribute something other than supercilious pontification.

            Yes, you’ve noted your disapproval of my deficient humility before. It’s no more topical now.

          • truebearing

            I read your response with interest, but will not respond absent a new and compelling comment on your part. Regards.

          • hiernonymous

            That makes far more sense than continuing an exchange that appears to be getting repetitive. Good to see you are learning something.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            A pity arrogance is no substitute for rightness or you might have proven your case.

          • hiernonymous

            To this point, you’ve offered no adequate response to the objection that the logic by which you attempt to include ‘death panels’ under the umbrella of “eugenics” requires that the latter be redefined beyond Galton’s parameters into essential meaninglessness.

            My case seems in reasonably good shape. As for ‘proving’ it, I suppose that depends on whether you have anything else to offer by way of argument.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            Galton’s parameters encompassed the social as well as the genetic.

          • hiernonymous

            Galton’s clearly stated objective was the disproportionate contribution of the suitable to the next generation. To argue that a social activity fits under that umbrella, you’d have to show a clear and direct contribution to that goal. The chain of reasoning that you offered – that killing the elderly frees up resources that can then be applied to supporting the suitable – is so tenuous and vague that, were it to be accepted, could be applied to essentially any human activity. Simply asserting that Galton’s vision included social elements does not address that weakness.

            To help you understand just how tenuous the chain of logic really is, consider that killing the elderly does not, in fact, free up resources for the suitable. It simply frees up resources. Those resources must then be identified, brought under control, and directed toward the support of the suitable, as opposed to the unsuitable. The act of freeing up those resources, then, is no different from the act of creating or conserving any type of resource. Training a doctor becomes an exercise in eugenics, since that doctor could conceivably be employed in tending to the suitable. Digging a coal mine would be eugenics, as the coal could be used to power a turbine that generates electricity that lights a lamp used by a nurse to read the notes of a doctor tending to the suitable.

            And, though not directly related to the above, Galton’s disparaging comments concerning natural selection indicates that he contrasted the bloody and imprecise methods of nature with the civilized and selective methods of eugenics. Slaughtering the old in order to free up resources is hardly consistent with that characterization.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “Training a doctor becomes an exercise in eugenics, since that doctor could conceivably be employed in tending to the suitable.”

            If that doctor’s training involves the priorities of eugenics

            We’ve been over this with the Communist schoolhouse

          • hiernonymous

            If that doctor’s training involves the priorities of eugenics

            But that’s just the point: the doctor doesn’t have to be trained “in the priorities of eugenics” for his training to fall under your definition of eugenics. All that’s required is that his training could conceivably be of some use, however slight, remote, or indirect, in the support of the suitable. Any doctor trained in medicine of any sort could, at some point, be directed to tend to the suitable.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            The question is not whether Galton personally supported killing the elderly, but whether his definition of eugenics can be used to encompass such a scenario.

            That is a very simple question which you are attempting to unnecessarily complicate while introducing all sorts of irrelevancies and insults.

            That is a tactic that works better in law school than in real life.

            “I’ll read your response with interest, but will not respond absent a new and compelling argument on your part. Regards.”

            I’ll take that as a concession.

          • hiernonymous

            I’ll take that as a concession.

            I can’t prevent you from taking anything you read in any manner you choose, but I’ll generally make such a comment when it appears that someone with whom I am speaking is offering no new arguments, but is simply repeating prior points. Since I don’t subscribe to “last post wins,” I don’t feel the need to attempt to post you into subjection, nor do I feel obligated to keep responding until you choose not to post.

            As I’ve often noted, those who feel the need to declare victory in this sort of discussion often suspect the quality of their own arguments. I prefer to let my arguments stand on their own merits.

            That is a very simple question which you are attempting to unnecessarily
            complicate while introducing all sorts of irrelevancies and insults.

            I don’t recall insulting you; what did I say that you took as such?

          • truebearing

            We’re talking about the Left here. They don’t care about biology, they care about political power. To them euthanasia is a humanectomy that improves the human race. if they can eliminate people en masse with situations they have engineered, without direct culpability for them, so much the better.

          • hiernonymous

            “We’re talking about the Left here.”

            Yes, and doing so sometimes appears to inspire an unquenchable thirst for embellishment. It’s not enough to accuse “the Left” of plotting to murder our grandparents – they’re doing so in the service of eugenics!

          • A Z

            The Labour Party in Britain seems to do quite well.

            The Swedes practiced eugenics until 1975. The Left has been in charge of that country since the Great Depression.

          • truebearing

            By golly, you’re starting to get it! I don’t think they are doing anything in the “service of eugenics,” however. They are employing eugenics, as the Left always has.

            Your opprobrium over what you claim is “embellishment” is singularly hypocritical given your tendencies toward sustained bouts of grandiloquence.

            Since it eluded you so completely, the point of calling the Left’s plot to kill old people eugenics, in addition to that being the proper term, is that it connotes a systematic, premeditated intention, as opposed to a “mistaken” policy.

            Stop projecting your own tendencies onto others. You’ll understand them much better. You might even learn something, but that would require you to stop being so blindingly arrogant, as well.

          • hiernonymous

            “Your opprobrium over what you claim is “embellishment” is singularly
            hypocritical given your tendencies toward sustained bouts of
            grandiloquence.”

            Or it would be hypocritical, if these ‘sustained bouts of grandiloquence’ involved making exaggerated claims. If you believe that they do, feel free to point them out and explain.

            “…is that it connotes a systematic, premeditated intention…”

            That’s a bit like accusing an embezzler of murder because you want to make sure that the reader understands that his thefts were planned, not opportunistic. There are ways of claiming premeditation that don’t sacrifice accuracy.

            “…but that would require you to stop being so blindingly arrogant, as well.”

            Your obsession with my personality continues to lead you into committing yourself to bad arguments.

          • truebearing

            Embellishment isn’t defined only as making exaggerated claims. And even by your understanding of the word, you haven’t come close to establishing that I have made any exaggerated claims. Step out of your delusions of superiority for at least long enough to assess your inadequate argument and read some definitions.

            Obamacare was hardly an accidental event. Death panels were planned from the start, and even your prodigious capacity for obfuscation won’t hide that.

            It doesn’t take an obsession with your personality to spot your towering ego. A mere glance at highway speed is sufficient.

            Sometimes, in a debate, one makes the mistake of playing to the level of the opponent. Perhaps you are uninspiring.

          • hiernonymous

            Embellishment isn’t defined only as making exaggerated claims.

            Which is precisely why I worded my post as I did. Since embellishment can cover a pretty fair amount of ground, from substantive dishonesty to rhetorical decoration, my post was worded to ensure that no false equivalency could be drawn between the former and the latter.

            And even by your understanding of the word, you haven’t come close to establishing that I have made any exaggerated claims.

            We’ve established, though the words of one of its seminal minds, that eugenics is aimed at changing the composition of succeeding generations, such that the ‘suitable’ members of society produce offspring in greater proportion and the unsuitable less.
            We’ve established that your original use of the term applied to a government program that you alleged was aimed at killing the elderly.
            Killing the elderly has no plain link to the composition of succeeding generations. You and Daniel have subsequently tried to argue that there is an indirect chain of consequences to such a policy that would allow you to squeeze it in under the aegis of “eugenics” on the basis that killing the elderly would free up resources that could then be used to keep the ‘suitable’ healthy. And I’ve pointed out that, using that logic, there is literally no human activity that can’t be defined as “eugenics.”
            Unless you have some other compelling argument to offer, I would say that I’ve done far more than “come close” to demonstrating that your claims are exaggerated. Your ‘death panels’ are ‘eugenics’ to precisely the same degree that a recycling center is – both arguably make more resources available to the next generation – and neither has a thing to do with the actual concept of eugenics, which deals with those measures aimed at altering the composition of the next generation.

            Obamacare was hardly an accidental event. Death panels were planned from
            the start, and even your prodigious capacity for obfuscation won’t hide
            that.

            That’s true, though not for the reasons you believe it to be true. My prodigious capacities, of any sort, have not and likely will not be following you down that particular conspiratorial rabbit hole. I’ll leave you to rave as you like about death panels. My interest in the matter has been, and will continue to be, confined to your description of such an activity, real or imagined, as “eugenics.”

            It doesn’t take an obsession with your personality to spot your towering ego. A mere glance at highway speed is sufficient.

            It’s not so much spotting it that’s causing you such great difficulty; it’s your obsession with cutting it down to size that is. It prevents you from reading intelligently; it forces you to disagree reflexively rather than thoughtfully; in short, it keeps you from thinking clearly.

            Sometimes, in a debate, one makes the mistake of playing to the level of the opponent. Perhaps you are uninspiring.

            Perhaps. I suspect that the real problem is that you are frustrated at your inability to play to the level of your opponent, but only you can decide the truth of that.

            That said, I do suggest, for both your own peace of mind and the quality of the exchanges, that you try to limit yourself to the topic, and enter the metaconversation only if it clearly cannot be avoided.

          • truebearing

            Yada, yada, yada… more of your tedious pomposity.

            In the broadest sense, eugenics is an ill-concieved attempt to improve society. As practiced, both in the US by the Progressives, and by the Nazis, who learned about eugenics from them, part of the solution to percieved problems with the resident population was to eliminate those who not only could pollute the gene pool, but compete economically, and for resources in general. Regardless of how nit-picky you want to get so you can win, it is irrefutable that those who actually practiced eugenics did include killing off those who were unlikely to effect the gene pool.

            What I find the most troubling about your relentless quibbling is that you have invested immense effort to debate a minor point of definition, but have yet to post your own comment decrying the consequences of driving up to 40% of these home care providers out of business. It is clear that your only interest is in criticizing the opinions of others, in your typically snobbish, condescending manner, not commenting on the topic, which is infinitely more important than your pathetic ego-driven compulsion to waste your talent on petty hair splitting. People will suffer and die as a result of this policy change, yet you blithely ignored it in your haste to attack my comment. Your choices evince a coldness that is impossible to miss…yet the other day, you postured mightily over slavery. That sugessts that your compassion is highly selective, or more accurately, purpose driven. I’m not surprised, since you are always obliquely defending the Left.

          • hiernonymous

            In the broadest sense, eugenics is an ill-concieved attempt to improve society.

            That one of eugenics’ goals is to improve society is a distinctly different proposition from the idea that one can substitute “improvement of society” as a definition of eugenics.

            …it is
            irrefutable that those who actually practiced eugenics did include
            killing off those who were unlikely to effect the gene pool.

            You’d have an interesting time finding many who practiced eugenics in isolation. For the vast majority of those who took any interest in eugenics at all, it was one of several manifestations of an age that sought ‘scientific’ solutions to social problems. Eugenics was in large part the intellectuals’ attempt to grapple with the implications of new understandings in biology and apply those lessons to society.

            It would be a profound error in logic to argue that any action performed by any party that had embraced eugenics to any degree somehow becomes defineed as “eugenics.”

            If your reasoning is “if it is aimed at improving society, and it was practiced by someone who approved of eugenics, it must be eugenics,” then your logic is simply lacking.

            As I noted before, a recycling center is “eugenics” to the same degree, and using the same logic, as your alleged “death panel.” If you’re going to continue to argue, do me a great favor and use the several paragraphs you would normally dedicate to complaining about my ego to address that issue, instead. If you like, I will stipulate that I am insufficiently humble for the purposes of your next post.

            What I find the most troubling about your relentless quibbling is that
            you have invested immense effort to debate a minor point of definition,
            but have yet to post your own comment decrying the consequences of
            driving up to 40% of these home care providers out of business. It is
            clear that your only interest is in criticizing the opinions of others,

            You’re embellishing again! It is clear that one of my interests is in criticizing the opinions of others, certainly (at least, when they offer opinions on matters I find interesting). How did you conclude that it was my only interest? This habit of overstating your case undermines the credibility of your arguments.

            As a matter of fact, I also take an interest in appreciating the sandhill cranes that haunt the back of my residence. And in fine port. And a few things besides. True, none of those interests include conspiracy theories, which may help you to understand why I have not made that post decrying the consequences, etc, but still, I do have other interests.

            …in your typically snobbish, condescending manner, not commenting on the
            topic, which is infinitely more important than your pathetic ego-driven
            compulsion to waste your talent on petty hair splitting. People will
            suffer and die as a result of this policy change, yet you blithely
            ignored it in your haste to attack my comment. Your choices evince a
            coldness that is impossible to miss.

            It is beyond me why you believe my temperature to be either topical or of your concern.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            Eugenics refers not only to directly modifying the gene pool, but also to modifying society in such ways that the best and brightest are more likely to reproduce.

            Removing people considered to be burdens falls under that category.

          • hiernonymous

            Daniel,
            Eugenics deals, plain and simply, with determining who will be parents and who will not.

            The degree to which logic must be tortured in order to argue that killing the elderly is intended to serve this purpose would put de Sade off his lunch.

          • A Z

            The movie Gattaca showed another way.

            If we can change the methylization of DNA, that is if we can tinker with epi-genetics we can go a ways to fixing genetic defects. One doctor made an analogy that epi-genetics is like writing in pencil whereas DNA itself is like writing in ink. The takeaway was that he thought it would be easier (or it would happen sooner) to fix epigenetic problems than DNA problems.

            Or maybe we can manipulate DNA directly or using viruses.

            But if we have breeding programs, then my life on the farm teaches me that we are going to have to sterilize or kill over 50% of the males & maybe the same number of females. It is quite educational to see traits passed on from generation to generation of bany chickens and other livestock.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            That is incorrect.

            Eugenics refers to the process of constructing a society in which those most fit are most likely to reproduce.

            See the Galton materials.

          • hiernonymous

            I did see the Galton materials. You posted them; but you apparently either did not read them, or did not understand what you read. They rather firmly advance the notion that “death panels” in no wise fit into Galton’s understanding of eugenics.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            “.You posted them; but you apparently either did not read them, or did not understand what you read.”

            You would be better off directing your remarks back at yourself.

            Galton was not proposing death panels, but his understanding of eugenics encompassed society as a whole, rather than pure genetics.

          • hiernonymous

            You are still not following. “Society as a whole” is also served by the process of high birth rate and culling, but Galton specifically distinguished eugenics from such destructive methods. As I note elsewhere, in attempting to broaden the definition of eugenics to encompass anything at all that could be interpreted as impacting resources or the survival chances of the ‘fit,’ you depart from the vision he outlined.

          • Daniel Greenfield

            No, I’m afraid you’re the one who isn’t following.

            The question is not whether Galton personally endorsed killing the elderly, but whether his definition of eugenics extended to society as a whole and the use of resources.

            It did.

          • 1stworlder

            The redistribution of wealth from old Asians and whites to Latrina’s 20 illegitimate crack babies is a form of eugenics, as Latrina couldn’t have 20 of them without redistribution.

          • A Z

            I think why you go round and round with people is, because you use boolean logic. You are very good at it. No, you are excellent at it.

            And many people need multiple rounds in the ring.

            But you might consider fuzzy logic.

          • hiernonymous

            My apologies for not responding to this earlier. This, and at least one other post you made 2 days ago, just now appeared to me. They did not appear in my “to me” list on Disqus at all.

            I think that a fuzzier logic, or less precise approach, can be appropriate for certain topics. I don’t think it’s necessary to be unduly demanding in more congenial conversations. But I think that it’s fair to expect a bit more rigor of those who make public accusations against others. If, for example, you’re going to accuse someone of practicing eugenics, I think it only fair that you be expected to understand what you are saying and to be able to lay your case out in a defensible manner.

            I also find that insisting on a precision helps me in a couple of ways. One, if I get involved in a conversation on which my understanding was tangential, getting sucked into an argument often educates me – both by the facts presented by others, and in the research I have to do. Second, when someone has really thought through his position, I get exposed to arguments I hadn’t thought of. Over the years, my positions on capital punishment and religion have both been greatly modified by arguments others have presented. My position on the Iraq War changed 180 degrees (well, maybe 150) as the result of a running series of arguments I had in the first couple of years of the war.

            I infer from your posts as well that some view these boards as a place to vent and gain emotional release, without expecting to have to defend their positions. It’s an interesting and valid point. It raises an interesting question – to what extent is it intolerant to object to others’ intolerance offered in the spirit of release? :)

      • 1stworlder

        As long as you understand importing the 3rdworld with people that evolved in R type settings is dysgenics.

  • truebearing

    Quality of life is the most important reason for older people staying in their homes with the advantages of home care, but there is another reason: costs. Long term care costs are very high, and can drain the assets of a nursing home patient fairly quickly if they don’t have long term care insurance and aren’t wealthy.

    When long term care first began becoming an issue, the government, and groups like The Coalition on Aging, were hyper-critical of the insurance company’s long term care policies. They all but accused them of fleecing poor old people…until the nit wit bureacrats realized that the aging baby boomers, who had no insurance, nor the money to pay for a sustained stay in a nursing facility, would put the financial burden on the state. Suddenly they were more positive about the need for LTC.

    Long term care insurance is essentially a financial product — asset protection — not a health care insurance. It eliminates the need of a patient to “spend down” their assets in order to cover nursing home care. The government passed strict laws that eliminated strategies like gifting, or selling assets to children at hugely reduced prices, to avoid having their nursing care eat up what they wanted to leave as inheritance.

    This move by Sebelius forces people to get their care in nursing homes, pay more for in-home care, or get none. Is this yet another way for the Left to destroy generational wealth transfer? In-home care gives people more control of their money, which the Left hates, naturally. Once you “enter the system” of nursing home care, the government controls the process, and the nursing patient’s money.

    Soon we’ll hear that Obama is teaming up with Soros Retirement Homes, Inc to build millions of units to help aging Americans find a place to get sub-standard nursing care. Maybe they have already been built. Say Bye-bye to inheritance for millions of Americans.

    • A Z

      “Long term care insurance is essentially a financial product — asset protection — not a health care insurance. ”

      That is an interesting point. I had not considered it that way before

    • A Z

      “The government passed strict laws that eliminated strategies like gifting, or selling assets to children at hugely reduced prices, to avoid having their nursing care eat up what they wanted to leave as inheritance.”

      That part I do not agree with. That is cost shifting by people onto society so as to favor their children.

      They can favor their children all they want, but not by shifting cost to others.

      • truebearing

        Shifting costs onto others isn’t necessarily ethical, but consider that these people paid excessive taxes for their entire lives, accruing some measure of financial success, despite having to pay for millions of people who did nothing but pass on the cost of supporting themselves to others. When these working people are nearing death, they understandably want to leave something substantial, that earned, to their children.

        The working people, let’s call them “producers,” have been forced to participate in an unethical entitlement scheme their entire lives, and they know their children will have to do the same. The solution is to end all of these entitlement programs that support the social parasites so that older Americans can afford to get LTC, and protect their assets. Why is the producer always the one being punished? Why not make life a little more difficult for the parasites?

      • 1stworlder

        You would begrudge productive peoples children more of their families earnings than Latrina’s 20 illegitimate crack babies receives of it? Any money passed on to family has been taxed multiple times, including being devalued by inflation. The dollar lost 25% of its value in Obama’s first term so $100 only buys what $75 bought when he got in unless you consider gas at $1.88/gallon. Asians and whites are willing to work so their children can be better off, do you want a world where Asians and whites stop producing, if so go to Haiti.

        • A Z

          What I said is that they should pay for their own nursing home care. If they do so I don;t care how much money They give to their kids. IMO they should be able to give 100% of their money to their kids without any tax.

  • A Z

    An elderly person treated at home is less likely to get catch germs they would in a hospital. Unless the in home healthcare providers have low standards.

    In Sweden housing authorities moved out elderly to make room for Muslim immigrants. Nothing like moving elderly people out of their comfort zone.

    Leftists think alike.

    Far Left Swedish Government evicting citizens from public housing and replacing them with Arab & African Muslim

    http://www.barenakedislam.com/2012/07/07/far-left-swedish-government-evicting-citizens-from-public-housing-and-replacing-them-with-arab-african-muslim-parasites/

    http://chaeshoernli.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/liberal-traitors-move-out-granny-103-we-need-your-place-for-a-terrorist/

    • objectivefactsmatter

      It’s for the greater good. Trust me. It just is. Here’s your free cheese.

    • swemson

      I just read a great one sentence description of Obamacare:

      (Note: It’s a long sentence)

      “So let me get this straight… We’re going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers ten million more people without hiring a single extra doctor, but which provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a congress which didn’t even read it, but which exempted itself from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his income taxes, for which we will all be taxed for 4 years before any benefits take effect by a government which has already bankrupted social security and medicare, all to be overseen
      by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke………… so WTF could possibly go wrong?”

      That pretty much says it all…

      fs

  • Habbgun

    I guess the proper comment spam for this is article is my aunt makes as much money as she can just at her keyboard. She lost her real job.

  • Ben Reeder

    Excellent. Then you understand that if you kill someone for the
    purpose of preventing them from reproducing, such killing could
    reasonably described as ‘eugenics.’ Killing those who could not
    reproduce anyway could not.

    http://www.newgenerationshc.com/