Groceries and Politics - and Euthanasia?

A strange thing happened to me a couple months ago while I was grocery shopping.   This was before the Federal health insurance bill was passed.  I was approached by a elderly man (elderly meaning older than me) who commented on my Iowa T-shirt.   The commenting wasn't the strange part.  The discussion that ensued was, at least to me, the strange part.  It started benignly, with "How are things in Iowa?"   I responded that things were pretty good in Iowa (where I used to live), especially as compared with the political chaos in Illinois (where I've lived for the past 22+ years).   

In case you haven't heard, Illinois is drowning under a $13 billion (maybe more) deficit and politicians who don't have the courage to raise taxes to pay for the services the public has come to expect.   So we're laying off teachers because the State owes money to local school districts for last school year.   But I digress.  

I made some remark about Illinois government, and the man launched into a passionate dissertation on how the Federal government wants to ration health care to the elderly.   I was startled initially, but tried to say something about how health care costs are out of control and too many people have no insurance.  His response was that the government wants to set up "death panels" to save money.   I was flabbergasted that this guy was actually convinced that his country wants him dead.

As I listened to this man, who was convinced that any effort to reduce health care costs would be tantamount to executing the elderly, I realized that he wasn't really interested in discussion, but simply wanted to convince me that his view was correct.  I don't feel like I know all the answers to lots of topics, but I wasn't about to buy into this conspiracy theory.  It seemed advisable to extricate myself from the "chat" and finish my grocery shopping, which I did.   But the encounter bothered me a lot.

I had suggested to the man that our current for-profit health insurance system is designed to make profits for the corporations, and that lots of people are denied coverage for various treatments by the insurance companies.  He told me his fate was more secure in the hands of corporate interests rather than government, another consequence of Ronald Reagen's anti-government philosophy.  

I find such a belief truly incredible, given how badly many large corporations treat employees, the environment, and anything else that doesn't directly pad their profits.  

And I'd also suggest that when it comes to something as overtly nefarious as euthanasia, our government is the last place to look for efficient implementation.

No, I don't believe anyone in the current Administration was promoting "death panels" or euthanasia in order to curb health care costs.   I also believe that we Americans expect miracle cures for everything, from "ED" to sleeplessness to terminal cancer.  And we simply can't afford to consider unlimited expensive cures (paid for by someone else) to delay the inevitable.   As usual, there has to be a middle ground and we have to find some way to discuss what that might be.