Another Health Care Allegory

True Story.

There is a woman who has a lovely horse - 1/2 Thoroughbred, 1/2 Welsh Mountain Pony (making a nice little dressage horse). This mare was injured a year or so ago, destroying the woman’s hopes of having an eventing horse, as the mare can no longer jump without risk of injury.

So, the lady kept the horse out in the pasture for a year, and the mare is ridable on easy trails or for some dressage classes. But certainly does not have the high stakes future she once had. This horse is 8 years old.

The woman has decided that feeding this horse is just not worthwhile, because the mare’s quality of life is not what it was intended to be, so the woman is going to put the horse down in 4 weeks if no one steps up to take care of this horse.

Now, the woman thinks she is being really altruistic by “giving” the horse away to someone who will take care of her.

The lady will only give the horse to someone who promises to only ride the horse gently, even if the injury is someday ‘cured’. Because she wouldn’t want to put the horse through the stress of being competitive, don’t you know. The horse would be better off … dead.

Naturally, John and I believe that once you get an animal, unless it is meant for food, you take care of that animal for its natural life, so this lady loses all claims to goodness in our eyes. One of our horses, Petey, is blind in one eye and is really not ridable at all (he spooks and bucks if something shows up suddenly), but we would never dream of putting him down or of giving him to someone else to care for.

What does this have to do with health care?

If Obamacare goes through, some bureaucrat will decide the fate of those of us who might suffer an illness or an injury. No, they are not going to “put us down”, but they WILL decide whether the contributions we can make to society are worth enough to pay for treatment for us. So, many people will be neglected by the Government-run health care program, because we have already had enough life.

And what’s worse, is the government won’t even allow you or your family to find your own health care and pay for your own medicine, surgery, etc. It will not matter if you can manage to get your own - Big Brother will make the determination that you will or will not get health care, even if the Govt. does not have to pay for it,

In this case, the horse lady is being kinder than Obamacare will be, for she is at least giving the horse a chance at life if someone else will pay for it. The Federal Bureaucrats who will be running the show will not treat people as well, ask the Brits.

If you look at the statistics for 5-year survival rates for prostrate cancer victims in the USA vs the UK,you will be stunned to find that men in the USA have a nearly 100% survival rate, while in the UK, it is only about 75%.

This is because Bureaucrats decide when your cancer is bad enough for treatment and delay treatment, often for many months, or deny treatment altogether if you are considered too old. No, these are not death panels, in that you are not slipped a dose of Hemlock with your afternoon tea. But they ARE denying people the opportunity to live because of health care rationing, and the determination that only the youth deserve a healthy life, the rest of us can just suck it up and rely upon our happy memories of youth, as that is all we really deserve.

So I suppose, in reality, the poor little injured horse has a better chance at living a long life as someone can rescue her. Whilst we Americans will not even have a chance at being rescued if the Bureaucratic panels decide we are not worth the money for treatment.