You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

See, some lives are worth saving, regardless of the cost, and some…eh, not so much. Thus their views on abortion and pulling the plug on people like Terri Schiavo. Those kinds of people, well, they’re unworthy, so we gotta get rid of them or let them die. But people like Tooki Williams, why, we simply can’t let them die, it’d be such a waste!

Conservatives believe that every single life, no matter what their status or situation, is worth saving, regardless of what it costs. We place a higher value on life than liberals do, regardless of what they say or do.

I know what liberals reading this are thinking: what about capital punishment? Well, we believe that capital punishment protects innocent lives in the long run. The guy is dead, he’s not going to be harming any more people. Now, we can argue that point until we’re blue in the face, but it’s not about revenge, it’s about making society safer. It’s a punishment that should — and usually does — fit the crime.

But back to this kook article in the liberal NYTimes, what this article is saying, in a nutshell, is that at some point in time other people should be able to make a decision as to whether you or your loved ones will live or die, and when. That’s too much power for anyone — especially the government — to have. But that’s exactly the kind of power the left is seeking over the people of this country. They want to tell you who your doctor is, where you can go for treatment, what kinds of treatment you can get, where you can send your kids to school, what kind of car you must drive, how much water your toilet uses, what kind of house you live in, how much energy you use, etc. The list goes on and on and on and on.

It’s not enough that the government is already screwing us over at every turn, liberals want to make sure we stay screwed for the rest of our natural born lives…and if they had it in their power (that is, if they actually believed in an afterlife) they’d probably find a way to screw us after death, too. The problem isn’t that the government has too little power or not enough to do, it’s that it has too much on its plate right now, things that it shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

Controlling health care is one of those things.

Thursday Morning Update: Others are starting to weigh in on this:

Hot Air
Say Anything
The Strata-Sphere
Winds of Change
Don Surber
Tammy Bruce
Sweetness & Light

A CURE has been found for ­diabetes, meaning that patients could soon be able to stop taking ­insulin injections just to stay alive.

The breakthrough treatment, ­using stem cells made from human bone marrow, is being used on ­patients suffering from Type 1 ­diabetes, a chronic condition affecting about 900,000 people in Britain.

The drug could be on the ­market in less than two years.

(snip)

Early trials show the drug, ­Prochymal, can stop the immune system destroying the pancreas.

Stem cells in the new drug form a barrier to protect the pancreas from attack, allowing it to recover and to continue ­making insulin.

One of the US researchers, ­Professor Aaron Vinik, a hormone specialist based in Virginia, said: “This is a very exciting discovery.

It sure is exciting…to everyone except liberals, that is. For years, now, we’ve heard nothing but how embryonic stem cells are the miracle cure of all miracle cures and that we should pour all of our time, effort, and money into that. To date, however, ESC’s are capable of curing…nothing. That’s right. We’ve been doing research (don’t let the left tell you otherwise), but there’s no “there” there. That’s not to say there won’t be results someday, but right now most of the advances are being made in other areas, mainly those using adult stem cells or stem cells from cord blood and such.

The left doesn’t care a fig about finding a cure for anything with embryonic stem cells, make no mistake. All they want to do with this issue is settle, once and for all, whether a fetus is a human life or not. That’s why they’re fighting tooth and nail for this kind of research.

Now, don’t take that as my excusing someone going out and shooting him, because that’s not what I’m saying at all. The full weight of the law should be brought to bear on the killer, and I believe it will be. I hope and pray for their families (both Tillman’s and the killer’s) and hope they both find peace and comfort.

Having said that, I think it’s important to point out that the left has already started to paint the actions of this one person as being representative of the entire right wing, which is ridiculous. No sane person on the right advocates or is advocating going out and shooting somebody (now, that’s not to say we don’t have our kooks on the fringes who do advocate it, because we do…but so does the left, in even greater numbers).

What I find bizarre is that the left has all of a sudden developed a conscious about cold-blooded murder*. I mean, they’ll wring their hands in despair over the fact that Tillman was murdered yet they won’t think twice or even bat an eye over all the innocent lives he snuffed out.

Even funnier (in a sick, non-haha way) is how the current President exclaims his shock and his quote-unquote “outrage” over the murder of a person who could, perhaps, be described as a serial killer, yet doesn’t express even the slightest regret over all the lives this person took. And, in addition to that, he’s friends with one of this countries most-wanted “domestic terrorists”, who routinely targeted more people — innocent people, mind you — than this anti-abortion killer ever did. Apparently, though, the zany and whacky antics of pal Bill Ayers doesn’t quite register on the Obama Offense-ometer (Ayer’s targets weren’t liberals, so that makes it ok, I guess), but this does.

As I said, there’s no excuse for someone to go out and kill anyone they disagree with politically, but then again, I’d also suggest that there’s no excuse to be murdering innocent children, either. The killer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If he’s found guilty, then that certainly means the possibility of the death penalty.

Just my two cents.

*Pardon me, that’s not exactly fair. The left does have a problem with murder, so I stand corrected. They have a problem with murder when it’s done to someone who shares their political beliefs. Those who don’t? Eh, screw ‘em. Am I right, Kos?

And, of course, the first obvious question the liberal L.A. Times asks is “who funds this?” Nevermind the violations of the law or the health and safety of a minor, that’s not important! We’ve got to find out who is behind this!

See, to the abortion-on-demand left, it’s more important that as many abortions as possible take place each year. It doesn’t matter to them how the female got pregnant and it doesn’t matter how far along she is in the pregnancy. It certainly doesn’t matter if there are any ethical or legal obstacles in the way. The only thing that matters is that they increase the number of abortions performed each year, otherwise their funding will shrink, and they might see their power diminish.

Look, abortion is murder, I don’t care how you slice it. The fetus is not a “collection of cells”, but a unique, genuine life with chromosomes and everything else that make up a human being. Just because it may not look like a person yet or be able to survive outside of the womb at the moment doesn’t make it any less alive.

Our obligation as a society is to protect all forms of life, whether it is in the womb or hooked up to life support. When you can excuse the murder of millions of unborn, innocent people, you can excuse just about anything. Grandma a burden on your family? Pull the plug and let the old bag die. Might have a baby with brown hair instead of blonde? Or green eyes instead of blue? Abort it and try again! With the liberal murder-machine, you can get anything you want, morality and ethics be damned.

I find it amazing that the left in this country cry over the destruction of a tree, a dolphin snagged in a tuna net, or a rare snail that nobody ever heard of that might become extinct if we build a strip mall, yet they don’t give a second thought as to how many innocent lives they’ve taken through abortion.