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November 17, 2024
Depopulation Agenda Is Real: A Reminder - Almost 15 Years Ago Bill Gates Suggested A 'Death Panel' System Be Implemented In The USA Because Palliative Care Wasn’t Cost-Effective
In 2010, Bill Gates weighed up the cost of keeping “terminally ill” Americans alive versus paying for teachers’ salaries.
He said the US was unwilling to question if spending money on people in “the last three months” of their lives was cost-effective. He suggested there wasn’t a benefit in end-of-life care and a decision should be made to end people’s lives instead of providing costly palliative care. “That’s called the death panel,” he said.
Bill Gates was interviewed at an Aspen Ideas Festival in 2010 and said that the USA must get medical costs under control and re-examine its funding priorities to prevent its education system from further erosion. He said medical costs are dominating state and federal budgets in the form of Medicare and other payments, and fewer funds are available for education.
Gates told Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson that the USA had demonstrated an unwillingness to question if “spending $1 million on the last three months” of a person’s life is a cost-effective direction, especially considering the same amount of money can keep 10 teachers employed.
He called for the nation to do a better job of examining the benefits of costly end-of-life medical care. “That’s called the death panel and you’re not supposed to have that discussion,” Gates said, taking a jab at critics of the health care bill that the US Congress had considered earlier that year.
The clip above is taken from a 60-minute interview held on 8 July 2010. You can watch the full 60-minute interview on The Aspen Institute’s YouTube channel HERE, the clip at the bottom begins at timestamp 31:22.
Where did the term “death panel” that Gates was taking a jab at come from? As Wikipedia notes:
“Death panel” is a political term that originated during the 2009 debate about federal healthcare legislation to cover the uninsured in the United States. Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a “death panel” of bureaucrats who would carry out triage, i.e. decide whether Americans – such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome – were “worthy of medical care.”
Palin’s spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counselling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives and end-of-life care options.
Some prominent Republicans backed Palin’s statement. One poll showed that after it spread, about 85% of respondents were familiar with the charge and of those who were familiar with it, about 30% thought it was true. Owing to public concern, the provision to pay physicians for providing voluntary counselling was removed from the Senate bill and was not included in the law that was enacted, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a 2011 statement, the American Society of Clinical Oncology bemoaned the politicization of the issue and said that the proposal should be revisited.
HR 3200, also known as America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, did not become law. Instead, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, built upon some of the provisions in HR 3200 was signed into law on 23 March 2010.
By referring to “death panels,” Palin was referring to committees or panels that would decide whether to withhold life-sustaining medical treatment from patients based on cost or age considerations. Wikipedia, of course, negates Palin’s concerns as the “death panel myth” citing “fact-checkers.”
However, as American Thinker pointed out in a November 2010 article, they really did mean “death panel.” Highlighting two statements made by a New York Times columnist, American Thinker wrote:
They laughed when Sarah Palin said Obamacare would require death panels to control medical costs. But for some reason no one laughs when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says the same thing … Yesterday he did it again both on This Week with Christiane Amanpour and then further explained in his New York Times column that no, he didn’t really mean death panels just because he called them … death panels.
… they really are death panels. Having government officials – panels, if you will – deciding the cost and medical effectiveness of treatment [versus] the value of a person’s life with the same compassion of Government Motors choosing to cease manufacturing Pontiacs and closing down dealers.
Death panels. Say it again, say it any which way but Sarah Palin nailed it the first time – a death panel by any other name is still a death panel.
Paul Krugman, if you want some highly paid government official deciding whether your life is worth sacrificing to control health care costs put that on your DNR (do not resuscitate) order not on mine.
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People has spoken about the use of DNR orders during the covid “pandemic,” particularly in patients with learning disabilities, elderly people and those with severe illness. Concerns raised and reported in corporate media include:
Inappropriate application of DNR orders: There have been instances where DNR orders were made without the knowledge or consent of patients or their families, breaching human rights.
Blanket policies: Some hospital departments implemented blanket DNR policies based on age, disability or medical condition, rather than individual patient circumstances.
Disparities in DNR order use: Patients with learning disabilities, particularly younger adults, were disproportionately affected by DNR orders.
It is claimed that death panels do not exist. We beg to differ. Although doctors and nurses may not have been officially appointed to or taken instructions from a committee labelled as such, death panels existed during the covid era and perhaps continue to unofficially exist to this day. Whoever decided who should be placed on a DNR or given end-of-life drugs, such as midazolam, was and/or is the death panel.
Additionally, death panels exist in countries that have through legislation incorporated euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide or medically assisted suicide into their “healthcare” systems. Wherever euthanasia is being legalized so, by default, death panels are being created. In countries that have not passed statutes that permit doctors to kill their patients, death panels will continue to exist in one form or another if the misanthropic death cult has its way.
We are living through the process of the normalization of “healthcare” systems being used to kill anyone who the state deems too costly to keep alive, is deemed a financial burden on the state or whose lives, according to the state’s criteria, are not worth living. This is eugenics. It is a form of eugenics that is easily implemented at scale where populations are dependent or reliant on socialized healthcare, such as in Canada and the UK.
Under the United Nations, socialized healthcare could be rolled out globally. Achieving Universal Healthcare (“UHC”) is one of the targets the nations of the world set when they adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) in 2015.
According to the World Health Organization, UHC is where citizens can access health services without incurring financial hardship. The concept is to provide either all residents or only those who cannot afford it on their own, with either health services or the means to acquire them. According to HealthInsurance.org, UHC can be provided via socialized healthcare, but a more common approach is a mix of public and private coverage and care.
According to Wikipedia, most universal healthcare systems are funded primarily by tax revenue and also by contributions from employers and employees to regulated sickness funds. Employer and employee contributions are compulsory and defined according to law.
Although UHC sounds like a noble cause, is it simply socialized healthcare for those who cannot afford it?
Sarah Palin was not only correct in 2009, but perhaps she has also served as a warning to the world of what was to come.
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