Opinion

ObamaCare’s brave new world


Sarah Palin ignited a political firestorm when she worried that “death panels” would deny end-of-life treatment to her son with Down syndrome. In fact, ObamaCare would more likely see to it that people like Trig never even make it out of the womb.

The outlook for children found to have disabilities in utero is bleak now — because the medical-ethics establishment has spent decades pushing for their abortion.

Thanks to advances in prenatal testing, it’s now far easier to detect conditions like cystic fibrosis and spina bifida — and our “best and brightest” overwhelmingly counsel parents to destroy the unborn child. It’s estimated that about 90 percent of American babies with Down Syndrome are now aborted.

We’re clearly on our way to the systematic elimination of “imperfect” people. And President Obama’s “health-care reform” would get us there faster, by vastly expanding the government’s influence over private health-care decisions.

Even without accounting for “the public option,” the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Dems’ health-care scheme would cause the number of non-elderly Americans relying on government for health care to spike from 40 million to 73 million. To offset this massive growth in government outlays, President Obama has pledged that bureaucrats will “bend the cost curve” by setting coverage rules and determining physician fees — for everyone, even those not getting treated on the government’s dime.

With finite resources, government has every incentive to keep heavy consumers of health care off the public insurance rolls. And it isn’t hard to see where an unborn baby with a disability will land on the government’s priority list.

Under Obama health-care adviser Zeke Emanuel’s system for allocating “scarce medical interventions,” newborn babies rank the lowest, behind the elderly. Already, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been caught telling disabled veterans that their lives aren’t worth living if they’re “a severe financial burden on” their families.

The National Institutes of Health has even put a price tag on how much Uncle Sam saves when disabled babies are aborted: A 1997 NIH report on cystic fibrosis noted, “Studies showed that the cost per identified CF fetus averted ranged from $250,000 to $1,250,000 for a Caucasian family of Northern European ancestry,” while the “direct and ancillary costs associated with a CF birth” come in at around $800,000.

So when Obama’s bureaucrats set health-care policies with cost-cutting in mind, don’t be surprised if they “recommend” that OB-GYNs receiving federal funds (which will be all of them) screen for genetic defects as part of routine prenatal care, and “advise” expectant mothers of the “burdens” of raising children with disabling conditions.

The medical establishment will be happy to comply. Brian Skotko, a clinical fellow in genetics at Children’s Hospital Boston, recently surveyed 1,100-plus mothers across the country who’d received a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome. He was told by “the majority of mothers that physicians were often providing inaccurate, incomplete and in the worst cases offensive information about Down Syndrome.” Whether explicit or implied, the “prescription” was often that the children should be aborted.

The social stigma will rise, too. When everyone is on the hook for everyone else’s health-care costs, the result is nannying so hard-core it would make Mary Poppins blush — just look at the scorn already heaped on smokers and the obese. Why should we pay just because some silly woman wouldn’t abort her defective em bryo?

Plenty of people already condemn such choices — and more will surely do so when the private decision about whether to give birth to a disabled child becomes a matter of public expense. When it’s up to Uncle Sam to make the dollars-and-cents judgments about treatment, expect unborn children facing a lifetime of costly care to get shut out.

Massachusetts mom Beth Allard understands the stakes. When she learned in 1998 that the baby she was carrying had Down Syndrome, she says, the pressure to abort grew relentless, because (she was told) he would be “hanging on her and drooling” for his entire life.

Yet Ben is now about to enter fourth grade; he has won medals in the Special Olympics and an MVP award at basketball camp — and has friends and family who adore him. Beth says it’s “unfortunate” that many Americans look at children like her son only in terms of public costs and benefits, adding: “I hope it doesn’t get where health care turns into that.”

Unfortunately, under Obama’s “reform,” people like Beth can pretty much count on it. clyne.meghan@gmail.com