Commentary: GOP, don’t use people with disabilities as ‘poster children’
August 14th, 2009Writing in the Huffington Post, Lennard Davis says Republican concerns about “death panels” amount to “misinformation and downright lies” that use people with disabilities as “poster children” in an attempt to sink the administration’s health care proposal. An excerpt:
This rhetorical concern for the disabled is fascinating coming from the right, which has routinely worked against extending accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying that it would cost businesses too much to retrofit their environments.
… It is important that people with disabilities speak out against being used as the negative poster children of the Republican’s smear campaign. The reforms advocated in the health care bill would specifically benefit people with disabilities by stopping the current practice in which insurance companies can terminate people for their health status.
Davis is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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August 14th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Maybe there will be no formal death panels, but Obama’s plan calls for taxpayer funding of abortions (here is the link from the NY Times/ AP: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/05/us/politics/AP-US-Health-Care-Overhaul-Abortion.html
Abortion disproportionately targets people with disabilities. Over 90% of babies with Down Syndrome are aborted according to IH published statistics.
For many government bureaucrats throughout history, eliminating the disabled, preferably as early in their lives as possible, was/is seen as as an approach to both reduce healthcare costs and “improve” society. See the following article for a compelling analysis on this issue: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/23/no-final-solution-but-a-way-forward/
These facts, coupled with a subtext of disdain for the disabled (remember Obama mocking the Special Olympic athletes on the Jay Leno show) are why everyone concerned with the dignity of the disabled should ignore the flowery rhetoric coming from the White House and vigorously OPPOSE Obama’s healthplan.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
It’s interesting that the left has used nearly every minority group to push it’s agenda over the years, but now they want the right to stop doing the same. But I agree that there is a lot of misinformation being spread around about this health care issue…from both sides. It’s time for the disabilities community to speak for itself about this issue.