By Joseph Ashby
"Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill. The Associated Press recently ran a ‘Fact Check' article rebutting Palin's claim.
AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading.
The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. Jim Rutenburg and Jackie Calmes assert the following:
There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.
The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.
What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.
H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.
Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."
McCaughey goes on to explain:
Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free." Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.
Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on elderly care as follows:
Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.
On average 25-year-olds require very few medical services. If they are to get the lion's share of the treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his Council increasing power to push such recommendations.
Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.
How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.
Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/death_panel_is_not_in_the_bill.html
Then there was Palin's note was well written and made some good points. Next thing you know the senate is "removing" the "death panel" crap (that didn't exist in the first place)
You gotta be careful with these guys though, they tend to sneak stuff back in the bills at 3 a.m. before the prez signs it.
I [Fluff] read through Section 1233 (end of life issues) of HR3200 and there are some pretty interesting things in there given what Obama has said and what Rahm Emmanuel's brother Ezekiel has said (he is a "medical ethicist" and oncologist who advises President Obama). There's lots of mentions of the "Secretary" and what is established by the "Secretary" as in Secretary of Health and Human Services who of course is a gvt appointee, currently Kathleen Sebelius who is a baby killer.
Article quoting Ezekiel Emanuel:
"Betsy points out a 1996 Hastings Center article in which Emanuel wrote this:
This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just alloca- tion of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future genera- tions, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.
So, according to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health care advisor to President Obama, the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good. I can tell you that as a mom to a four year old girl with severe speech apraxia that prevents her from being able to speak intelligibly, this scares the living hell out of me. If you have a child with autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, or any other neurological disorder or chromosomal defect that prevents him or her from participating in society in the manner Dr. Emanuel or the government thinks they should, that neurological care would not be guaranteed as basic and would, therefore, not be covered in a government takeover of health care."
http://www.wizbangblog.com/content/...elderly-and-disabled-for-the-greater-good.php
So when you hear talk about death panels, now you're more informed than you were before.
"Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill. The Associated Press recently ran a ‘Fact Check' article rebutting Palin's claim.
AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading.
The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. Jim Rutenburg and Jackie Calmes assert the following:
There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.
The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.
What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.
H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.
Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."
McCaughey goes on to explain:
Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free." Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.
Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on elderly care as follows:
Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.
On average 25-year-olds require very few medical services. If they are to get the lion's share of the treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his Council increasing power to push such recommendations.
Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.
How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.
Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/death_panel_is_not_in_the_bill.html
Then there was Palin's note was well written and made some good points. Next thing you know the senate is "removing" the "death panel" crap (that didn't exist in the first place)
You gotta be careful with these guys though, they tend to sneak stuff back in the bills at 3 a.m. before the prez signs it.
I [Fluff] read through Section 1233 (end of life issues) of HR3200 and there are some pretty interesting things in there given what Obama has said and what Rahm Emmanuel's brother Ezekiel has said (he is a "medical ethicist" and oncologist who advises President Obama). There's lots of mentions of the "Secretary" and what is established by the "Secretary" as in Secretary of Health and Human Services who of course is a gvt appointee, currently Kathleen Sebelius who is a baby killer.
Article quoting Ezekiel Emanuel:
"Betsy points out a 1996 Hastings Center article in which Emanuel wrote this:
This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just alloca- tion of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future genera- tions, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.
So, according to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health care advisor to President Obama, the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good. I can tell you that as a mom to a four year old girl with severe speech apraxia that prevents her from being able to speak intelligibly, this scares the living hell out of me. If you have a child with autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, or any other neurological disorder or chromosomal defect that prevents him or her from participating in society in the manner Dr. Emanuel or the government thinks they should, that neurological care would not be guaranteed as basic and would, therefore, not be covered in a government takeover of health care."
http://www.wizbangblog.com/content/...elderly-and-disabled-for-the-greater-good.php
So when you hear talk about death panels, now you're more informed than you were before.
Last edited:
