Still confused about ObamaCare and the so-called death panels? Then you need to listen to these priceless 26 minutes from the Steve Malzberg show. Throughout the segment, Malzberg kicks ass and takes names. If you listen to anything today, let it be this.
Let’s start at the beginning. Below is Sarah Palin’s Facebook message that first mentioned the phrase “death panel,” from August 7:
Statement on the Current Health Care Debate
Friday, August 7, 2009 at 4:26pm
... The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion. [...]
From the moment Palin wrote this, the Leftocracy went into pounce mode. President Hope&Change himself got his White House web team to put up a page debunking such myths about the Health Care bill, declaring “facts are stubborn things.” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathy Sibelius expressed her disgust for such politically-motivated smears about this serious serious bill. Of course, the Obama ass-kissing propaganda machine known as the mainstream media got into the act, with the New York Times and even “AP doing all they can to assure us that the “death panel” rhetoric of Sarah Palin and like-minded ObamaCare opponents was simply a sign of ignorance, fear-mongering, and political desperation. Everywhere you heard, “There’s no mention of a death panel in the Health Care bill!”
On August 12, Palin responded to the backlash armed with specific facts and sources [see her original FB post for endnotes]:
Concerning the “Death Panels”
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 11:55pm
... Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]
Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in theWashington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]
As Lane also points out:
Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.
Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]
Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]
So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:
Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]
Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]
President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.
Indeed, those death panels that the President, other Democrats, and the media were denying were sooooo non-existent that the House decided to ax Section 1233 of H.R. 3200. What could possibly have caused them to do that? Couldn’t have been anything Sarah Palin pointed out, could it?
But now here comes the fun part. On August 15, Joseph Ashby at American Thinker informs us that while there technically was not a “death panel” in the health bill, there is one in … the Stimulus Bill! And since H.R. 1 was already passed by Congress and signed by President Hope&Change, the death panel is alive and well. Except, it’s not called “death panel”; in fluent Orwellian Newspeak, Congress dubs it the “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.” Which makes it a lot less scary-sounding, doesn’t it! Oh, and the members of the Council are already in place. Who are they? Not anyone who, according to their own spoken and written statements, wants you to be alive if they decide you’re costing the system too much money.
‘Death panel’ is not in the bill... it already exists
August 15, 2009
… 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.”
Maybe we should ask the Associated Press and New York Times if they still think we shouldn’t be concerned about a federal “death panel.”
All right, I’ve burdened you with a lot of reading. But it’s essential reading, to be sure.
If there was any essential listening to be had, please to listen to this clip from Malzberg's show on WOR. In this clip from August 18, he refers to the Ashby piece and provides sound clips of all the statements made by Obama and others before and after Sarah Palin put the “death panel” wrecking ball into motion.
P.S. At the end of the clip Malzberg asks his listeners to sign this petition opposing ObamaCare.
[Edited for commercial breaks, long silences, and extraneous talking]
Download Malzberg2009-08-18_32Khz_80kbps.mp3
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