OPINION:
President Donald Trump has just scored some massive political capital by tweeting of America’s willingness to help save little Charlie Gard from the evils of socialized health care — in other words, from government-imposed decision that he must die.
Congress, on the other hand, ought to hang a photo of little Charlie right in the House and Senate, as a reminder — amid all the Obamacare fate debates — why government has no business in health care.
But first, the warm and fuzzy.
“If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so,” Trump tweeted.
And with those few words, all that’s best about America has gone blaring forth to the world stage.
What’s the message? We’re compassionate.
We’re led by a compassionate leader.
And we’re outraged at the idea of a government being able to decide the life or death decision of a baby — and moreover, refuse the parents the ability to counter that decree.
The basic story is this: Charlie and his European caretakers — the European Court of Human Rights — just ruled he’s too sick to live and as such, his parents need to just let him “die with dignity,” as the bureaucrats put it.
Only little Charlie’s parents disagree and want instead to take him to America to try out some new meds.
As his mother, Connie Yates, argued — albeit unsuccessfully — “He literally has nothing to lose but potentially a healthier, happier life to gain.”
The pope’s weighed in, siding ultimately with the parents.
But Yates and the baby’s father, Chris Gard, said the doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, where their son has been receiving treatment, refused to let them take him home after the ECHR ruling. The ECHR also deemed the United States unable to help Charlie — that the medical treatment offered in America would not work.
So what’s wrong with Charlie?
He suffers from a rare genetic condition, mitochondrial depletion syndrome, and has serious brain damage. But even worse, he suffers from British Bureaucracy, born by socialized medicine — the same type Barack Obama installed in the United States.
So take note America: Today’s British Charlie Gard is tomorrow’s American Jack or Jill Johnson. Repeal Obamacare might be a good sign to wave about now.
In the meantime, though, Trump has made a tremendous goodwill outreach — via Twitter, no less, the media medium the left loves to excoriate him for using. And it’s one that helps shed the bitter taste left by a very similar Government v. Family battle that played out in America, under then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Remember Terry Schiavo?
She was the woman who collapsed from cardiac arrest in early 1990 and suffered brain damage that left her in a vegetative state. Her husband, years later, filed a Do Not Resuscitate order, kicking off a major political battle over the fate of Schiavo and the question of her feeding tube. Bluntly, to pull the plug or not to pull the plug, that was the underlying question. Politicians all the way up to the White House weighed in; so, too, judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Schiavo’s parents wanted the feeding tube to stay; Schiavo’s husband wanted it pulled.
In October of 2003, Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed — but then Terri’s Law passed, allowing for the state to intervene, and the tube was reinserted. That law was later found by a couple courts to be unconstitutional. Schiavo died in March of 2005, after a long medical battle that led the country into an equally long legislative and judicial fight and, more importantly, accompanying search for moral truths.
Americans still remember the pain of this case, which played very simply in the minds of most as this: Who has the right to decide a disabled person’s life — the government or the family?
Now, across the sea, comes Charlie Gard, at a time when all the Obamacare talk has hit a new crescendo and Republicans are trying, once more, to do the will of the people and make sure government doesn’t decide individual health matters.
Charlie’s not a political tool. But he does put a very innocent face on what government-run health care means.
So now comes Trump, the very anti-Obamacare president who ran all the way to the White House promising to reel back this atrocious socialist law.
And he’s offering, most graciously, America’s help — in whatever form it might be able to come.
That’s going to be a hard tweet for the left to condemn, not to mention a tough message for the anti-Trumpers to counter. But for Congress, and those in politics resisting the idea of doing away with Obamacare, there’s a deeper takeaway here, a larger lesson to be learned from both today’s Charlie and yesterday’s Terri Schiavo — and it goes like this: The less government in health care, the better. Don’t just reform Obamacare. Repeal it, and get the government out of the medical provision business entirely.
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