President Obama tried to brush aside the "death panels" in the Democrats' health "reform" bill that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had warned about. The trouble for Obama is that the text of the bill (section 1233) and other commentators, even champions of the Democrats, support Palin.
Palin herself carefully cited chapter and verse in responding to the President' statement, which she called "misleading" in her posting on facebook.
One of the huge advantages of the internet and services like facebook is that information can be distributed worldwide in an instant without having to rely on the whims of major media outlets to carry the message (or not) and their power to spin the information any way they want. The New York Times can twist her statement however it wishes, but the statement itself is accessible to all as she wrote it.
It seldom happens that the media calls the president on his misstatements, mischaracterizations and downright falsehoods, but with the actual text of his remarks, the bill itself and Palin's commentary for all to see, their ability to fudge the facts is greatly diminished.
Has Palin identified what is at the heart of the Obama health plan? Indeed, she has. It's government power over life and death: It can make decisions about the relative value of the lives of the healthy and the ill, the unborn and the aged, the professor and the cop.
Nothing doing.
Concerning the "Death Panels"
Yesterday at 8:55pm (August 12, 2009)
Yesterday (a August 11, 2009) President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these "unproductive" members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.
The President made light of these concerns. He said:
"Let me just be specific about some things that I've been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't, it's too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they're ready on their own terms. It wasn't forcing anybody to do anything." [1]
The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled "Advance Care Planning Consultation." [2] With all due respect, it's misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.
