Reposted by request from reader.  (Vancouver Sun) – Canadian panel decides baby should die – upheld by court. … Don’t think death panels are real? Don’t think they were in the ObamaCare bill? Two words for you: Comparative Effectiveness. In comparative effectiveness, only two things are taken into consideration: 1) cost, 2) age.  And that’s it. Your life is a number on some beancounter bureaucrats spreadsheet. What would death panels look like? Probably what it looks like across our northern border. From the Vancouver Sun: Ontario couple’s appeal to bring baby home dismissed. They (The Panel) are going to kill “the baby” – His name is Joseph. 

A Windsor, Ont. couple’s fight to bring their gravely ill baby home to die ended in bitter tears Thursday when a Superior Court judge dismissed their appeal to stop doctors from removing the infant’s breathing tube at the hospital.

The father and relatives of one-year-old Joseph Maraachli wept outside a London courthouse after an emotional Justice Helen Rady upheld the earlier decision of an independent provincial tribunal forcing the baby’s parents to comply with doctors’ orders.

Uh – how is this ‘independent provincial tribunal’ not a death panel exactly?

With all of their legal avenues exhausted, the family will have to say goodbye to Joseph Monday morning — on Family Day — when his breathing tube will be removed.

“I do my best for my baby. My son is not a criminal . . . to just let him die,” dad Moe Maraachli said through tears.

“They are taking my baby away from me . . . Where is the humanity?”

It’s not there by definition. That’s what a death panel is – a bunch of unelected bureaucrats making life and death decisions. All government run plans have one end result – rationing. And what is rationed is that which is most expensive. And those that bear the brunt of the rationing are those that need those expensive procedures but who aren’t expected to be paying much in the way of taxes – the elderly and babies. From the bureaucrat’s point of view, why care for the elderly that 1) don’t pay taxes and 2) aren’t going to live much longer anyway? That’s liberal compassion, the same that a fetus gets at Planned Parenthood. This is the essence of comparative effectiveness that is at the heart of ObamaCare. Comparative effectiveness, as per Obama’s rationing czar ‘Dr.’ Ezekiel Emanuel, takes only 2 things into consideration when denying or approving treatment: 1) age, 2) cost. Simple as that. It yields this ghoulish chart:

This chart would be page 1 of the “how to” guide of any death panel. Old people are too expensive to be worth keeping alive because they’ve already paid their taxes and are thus essentially useless to a totalitarian state. The very young too are of little value since they won’t be paying taxes for a while yet. The people that should be treated are healthy people that pay taxes, but don’t really need it because, well – they’re mostly healthy. Welcome to ObamaCare, where people that don’t need treatment get it, and those that need it don’t. More from All American Blogger: Canadian Death Panel Decides Baby Should Die, Canadian Court Agrees

Speaking of death panels and ObamaCare, from The Hill: Administration asks judge to tell the states that healthcare law isn’t optional. So let me get this straight – Obama is asking the federal judge that ruled ObamaCare was unconstitutional in its entirety to make states obey the unconstitutional law that he himself struck down. Uh – did I miss something? This is either a joke or a stunt (or a necessary step in an appeal process?). I’m not laughing, but I am scratching my head.