Would Obamacare have killed baby Joseph?

March 24, 2011 04:30


“Don’t think the case of baby Joseph can’t happen here. Unless ObamaCare is repealed, the day will rapidly come when bureaucrats, not patients and parents, will not only decide what care we get, if any, but also how, where and when we should die.”

By Jerry McConnell

Sometimes, a story of love should outweigh any other type. This is a story of true family love. And it’s my feature article this week. But it’s not without its political overtones.

It is a story of a family who were ordered by a judge no less, to pull the plug on their infant son because a “death panel” refused to grant an emergency procedure that most like would have prolonged the baby’s life.

It happened to a devoted couple in Canada; but I feel if ObamaCare isn’t deep-sixed, and SOON, we here in the United States will be hearing more stories with similar problems and rulings by heartless panels of political appointees and equally heartless and politically appointed judges. Right now we can feel righteous in this case because the parents of the infant were able to get the procedure they wanted for their child, here in the States.

But that is because the full whammy of ObamaCare has not been put into effect or fully set in motion as of yet. But trust me, if Congress keeps twiddling its thumbs and weaseling out from under the cold hard hatchet of reality and stop this monstrosity in its tracks, there will be many more incidents of this nature, and to United States citizens.

The story as seen here was told online by Investors Daily.com in an IBD Editorial on March 21, 2011 titled “Baby Joseph is Going Home.” It began when a court in Canada ruled that under socialized medicine the baby Joseph of Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader must die in the hospital.

Baby Joseph, who’d been set to have his ventilator removed against his parents’ wishes at an Ontario hospital last month, got a tracheotomy Monday morning in the U.S., getting the care his parents, not the bureaucrats, want. The baby is doing well, his family says. The procedure was denied him under a system of medicine that may be coming to a hospital near you courtesy of ObamaCare, if nothing is done to prevent it.

Joseph’s parents took him to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis after trying unsuccessfully to get him the simple procedure at London Health Sciences Centre, a Hospital in Ontario, Canada.

Currently, his doctors report that he is resting comfortably and his parents will soon be able to take him back to his home; which was their initial wish.

Thirteen-month-old Joseph has a neurodegenerative disease that doctors say leaves little hope for recovery. Nine years ago his parents lost an 18-month-old daughter to the same disease. What’s made the anguish of this Windsor, Ontario, family worse this time is that the parents have spent precious time battling courts and medical boards as to just how and where their son should die.

But Ontario Superior Court Justice Helen Rady recently ordered the couple to agree to take Joseph off his ventilator. The court was upholding a decision made by Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board, which some here (in the United States) might call a death panel. (Of course the Obama-ites who support ObamaCare claim that the talk about death panels is all false as there are none.) Maybe not yet, but “sounds like” language is in there.

Joseph’s parents defied the court order to consent to the removal of the breathing tube. They feared Joseph would die a painful death if taken off the ventilator and wanted a tracheotomy performed so they could take Joseph home. If he is to die, they said, he should die in his own home in his own bed surrounded by those who love him.

Nine years ago, (apparently before the Canada Socialized medicine law was in effect) the couple’s daughter did have a tracheotomy performed, and she lived at home for six months before she passed away. The family hopes for a miracle with Joseph, but does not expect one. They’ve at least succeeded in having Joseph transferred to where his treatment, care and even death will be decisions that they make.

The judge who ruled in this case in Canada, (Rady) set the time for Joseph’s government-decreed passing “to afford the family adequate time to say their goodbyes.”

The family however, would like the privilege of making that decision at their choosing. They were not reassured when President Obama’s choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, an admirer of Britain’s draconian National Health Service, said in an interview:

“We can make a sensible social decision and say, ‘Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit (new drug or medical intervention) is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.”

In other words, the highly controversial Berwick is saying that we can’t afford the luxury of keeping babies like Joseph alive.

As the IBD Editorial finishes, “Don’t think the case of baby Joseph can’t happen here. Unless ObamaCare is repealed, the day will rapidly come when bureaucrats, not patients and parents, will not only decide what care we get, if any, but also how, where and when we should die.”

That will forevermore be known as ‘Obama Socialist Love’ as written in ObamaCare.



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