Right Wingers Social Hysteria Aimed at the Elderly

Right Wingers Social Hysteria Aimed at the Elderly
James Owens
Remember the fear card Bush, Cheney and the fringe right wingers played in the years immediately following 9/11; The tightened air port security with the color coded terror alert system, the illegal arrests and detentions, the torture and the stripping of liberties from the Constitution in the name of "national security?" Well, that was nothing compared to what they've been up to lately.
The "Death Card” has replaced the “Fear Card" and they have aimed this at the helpless, easy to frighten elderly.
This new tactic of these shameless and selfish people is meant to be a dagger in the heart of healthcare reform, but there has been collateral damages as well - your grandparents.
The right wing conspirators have spread false information that healthcare reform will cause the elderly in this country to have to choose how to die; their care will be rationed as they get older and they will for forced into death counseling. This false information has been generated and spread over Internet Blogs and mass mailings in an effort to scare the elderly and it has worked.
The AARP reported that thousands of letters and calls have come into their offices in the past two weeks about the false claims. The elderly are being told that Medicare recipients are going to be forced to "choose how they want to die," according to a Washington Post report.
Known as the "kill granny" campaign it makes claims that counseling sessions for the elderly on how to die will be mandatory. The campaign goes further, in that it claims as people get older; health care will either be withdrawn or rationed to them. This is an outright and shameless lie!
The truth is the proposal amounts to voluntary counseling sessions the government will pay for. The sessions would be geared toward the terminally ill or others near the end of their lives. Just like living wills, the plan would seek to find out what people want to do when the time comes. It seeks to find out what medical interventions they would prefer or not prefer. It's about communication between a patient and doctor, not about rationing healthcare, sending someone out to pasture or killing your grandmother.
In fact, about one third of elderly Americans already have a living will in place. A living will is not about rationing health care or killing granny as the right-winged conspirators would like some to believe.
The fear card and the death card are pretty much the same; they rely on misinformation to spread panic and distort the facts. The fact is these shameless liars are taking money from lobbyist who opposes healthcare reform. The campaign to scare us into believing healthcare reform will kill us rather than cure us has had some success, but apparently not enough. So, as this issue continues to evolve we need to be ready for their next hysterical set of lies and scare tactics. Now that they have made our elderly shiver with hysterical fear, I suppose they will go after our children next.
There is no low these people won't stoop to in an effort to get their way, and they will even use the name of "God" to promote their dogma.