Daschle Challenged As Promoting Hitler's T4 Program, Denies Obama is Cutting Health Care

June 4, 2009 (LPAC)—Speaking about the White House' so-called health care reform at the National Press Club on Tuesday, former Senator and Obama "health care czar" Tom Daschle was challenged by William Jones of EIR News Service, on imitating Adolf Hitler in health care policy. Jones asked Daschle how his and Obama's cutting health care to pay for bail-outs of Wall Street, was different from the motivation of Hitler's 1939 "T4" order to eliminate "useless eaters" by withdrawing medical care from them. Amid a buzz and nervous giggling in the audience of 150, Daschle called Jones' question "understandable", then defended himself by claiming, "We're not cutting. We're slowing the growth." But he gave the game away by claiming "a growing awareness among Americans, of the large amount of unnecessary medical care being delivered."

Challenged again later in the event by EIR's Paul Gallagher, on how he could deny that President Obama's health care "reform" is to deny care and ration and cut off "lives unworthy to be lived, like the Nazi doctors did," Daschle denied it. He said it was not he or Obama who wanted to ration care, and claimed the U.S. health care system "rations care now, in the worst way; we're just trying to allocate resources so that everyone can get necessary care, although some will get less elective care."

Daschle and his fellow speaker Michael Leavitt, George W. Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services, were also accused, by an advocate of government single-payer (Medicare for all) health insurance, of "letting Wall Street and the insurance interests control this process" of so-called health care reform.

During the event Daschle's mantra was, "Change the focus from treating illness, to wellness; from volume to value of health care delivered." In answer to one question, he opined that the chance of a health care "reform" bill passing this year, was just 50%.