Sound too draconian? Enter the ghost of Obama's late maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died of cancer at age 86 two days before her grandson's election to the presidency. Dunham's health issues first surfaced in a New York Times interview with the president on May 3. There, Obama questioned the appropriateness of a hip replacement that his grandmother had undergone after falling and breaking her hip shortly after being diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. The alternative to such surgery is typically excruciating pain and opiate dependency. Obama made it clear that he loved his granny and would have paid for the surgery out of his own pocket if he had to, but he said there ought to be a "conversation" over whether "sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else's aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they're terminally ill is a sustainable model." Obama suggested that such decisions be made not by patients or their relatives but by a "group" of "doctors, scientists, ethicists" who are not part of "normal political channels."
The painful side effects of Obama's healthcare reform
There are warnings signs that the president and his allies are looking at government-run rationing of care for the oldest and sickest.
Obama brought up his grandmother's hip replacement a second time in his June 24 town hall event on healthcare on ABC. The "question was," Obama said, "does she get hip-replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?" At that point I was thinking: If he says, "No hip replacement for you, Grams" one more time, it's going to be a drinking game.
An audience member, Jane Sturm, told the story of her 99-year-old mother, who had initially been turned down for a pacemaker on account of her age. Sturm's mother persuaded a second physician impressed with her joie de vivre to perform the life-extending operation -- and she's still hale today at age 105. "Outside the medical criteria," Sturm asked, "is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit ... and quality of life?"
Nope. "I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's spirit," Obama said. "That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people."
