Free Health Care and the Road to Involuntary Euthanasia

“What you get under Obamacare isn’t really insurance. It’s prepaid health care,” said Colin Gunn, producer of a new documentary on health care, in a recent phone interview with Politichicks. Gunn spoke about his latest project, the euthanasia movement, and what he sees as solutions to an American health care system in crisis.

Gunn’s film explores the perils of a single payer, government-run health care system, which warns viewers in its title, Wait Til It’s Free. The documentary investigates what European health care really looks like as a glimpse into what American health care will become. Wait Til It’s Free is currently being screened across the country. A schedule of dates and locations can be found here.

A native of Scotland—but now an American citizen—Gunn is familiar with the pros and cons of a government run health care system. He stated that Scotland has had a single payer system for over 70 years. “Scotland is ahead of the game in terms of progressive, bad ideas,” Gunn said. He gave the example of the In-person Act in which the Scottish government now requires the appointing of “a named person” to a newborn baby to oversee the child’s welfare. Gunn opposes the legislation, stating that the person responsible should be the parent.

The indy film maker remarked,

“When we (most Americans) talk about health care, we think a broken leg or a heart attack, but what they (the progressive left) are talking about is well being and the extension of health care—which is why we see health care expanding into education with clinics in schools.”

Gunn labeled the U.S. health care system as a mix of socialized medicine and crony capitalism.

Gunn pointed out that the left looks to Europe for what America should look like. He uses the Liverpool model as an example of the type of European health care that America may want to avoid. “Free is the worst price for anything,” Gunn said. “It’s always an illusion. And the consequences of free can be deadly. The illusion is that even though it’s billed as free, someone still has to pay for it. The consequences are deadly because access to medical attention will be rationed.”

Wait Til It’s Free questions the quality of health care as seen in the Liverpool model known as the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP). A BBC article from 2013 stated,“The Department of Health (DoH) in England set up an independent review amid fears the LCP was being used to hasten death, to clear beds and save money, and that patients or their families were not being consulted.”

Gunn touched on the “Dying With Dignity” movement that is sweeping across America. Euthanasia via physician assistance, known as physician assisted suicide, is legal in two states—Oregon and Washington—with numerous bills being introduced in state legislatures across the country. Gunn explained that while it sounds like a freedom movement, there’s a hidden agenda with a mind set that embraces a eugenics process. When asked about the connection between free health care and the Dying With Dignity movement, Gunn said, “There will be a rationing of care for the elderly where doctors decide not to help you. In Europe this is part of what we call the pallet of care.” In other words, what America can expect to see coming out of the dying with dignity movement is involuntary euthanasia. 

But Gunn also offers some solutions to the problems seen with the current American health care model. He said that America needs to reclaim a free market system, but until then there are specific things individuals can do—and all of them start with taking personal responsibility for caring for one’s self to caring for elders.

Gunn emphasized eldercare as an essential component to improving the current health care system. With eldercare as part of the health care model, nursing homes and assisted living facilities are not the first choice, but instead families take in and care for aging relatives.

“What you do to your parents will be done to you. That example has been set by you,” Gunn said. He shared that caring for one’s elders was once a moral obligation families embraced and that society is now missing out on the blessing of having an older generation of relatives under the same roof. He explained that stories from these generations are lost as are the tight-knit cross-generational relationships that was once woven into the fabric of American culture.

Gunn said that a better health care system starts with taking personal responsibility of one’s own health, from the daily decisions one makes in what to put in the body to looking for cash only doctors not beholden to the rules and regulations imposed by insurance companies.

“We must be personally responsibly for health care choices. When you give up financial responsibility, you do so with consequences and those consequences can be deadly.”