a duty to die for old folks

The duty to die thing seems to have come from a speech that then Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado gave way back in 1984. Lamn did use the phrase "duty to die", but he was talking in the context of people making the choice to end their own lives at some point not the government making the decision for them.

And it is a topic for discussion in bio-ethics circles. It is a rather obvious question after all. How far does your right to health care extend? How much money should the government spend for health care? Is it worthwhile spending limited medical resources extending the life of those with terminal conditions? If you don't believe your right to medical care is unlimited, then at some point you have a duty to die.

For the radical right it is just a rhetorical point however. These same people who argue the left is for government mandated death panels are for capital punishment, less regulation of insurance and health care, and would like to prevent illegal immigrants from getting health care at all. They are just selectively and intentionally misunderstanding the other side to produce a sound bite.

Jay

Post #325,987 by boxley 5/11/10 12:08:23 PM Reply	a duty to die for old folks http://www.wnd.com/i...iew&pageId=152337 One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have "a duty to die," rather than become a burden to others. death panels! /me flees If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #325,997 by lincoln 5/11/10 2:10:25 PM Reply	Re: a duty to die for old folks And who are "some of the intelligentsia"? Funny, but Sowell never identifies them, though because of his track record over the years I can hazard a guess: "them damn, long-haired hippie libruls". "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #326,000 by jay 5/11/10 3:00:43 PM Reply	It isn't as much of a misrepresentation as death panels The duty to die thing seems to have come from a speech that then Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado gave way back in 1984. Lamn did use the phrase "duty to die", but he was talking in the context of people making the choice to end their own lives at some point not the government making the decision for them. And it is a topic for discussion in bio-ethics circles. It is a rather obvious question after all. How far does your right to health care extend? How much money should the government spend for health care? Is it worthwhile spending limited medical resources extending the life of those with terminal conditions? If you don't believe your right to medical care is unlimited, then at some point you have a duty to die. For the radical right it is just a rhetorical point however. These same people who argue the left is for government mandated death panels are for capital punishment, less regulation of insurance and health care, and would like to prevent illegal immigrants from getting health care at all. They are just selectively and intentionally misunderstanding the other side to produce a sound bite. Jay

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