The health care “debate” has become so inane and dense with bull***t that I’m resisting the urge to write something big and comprehensive about it, lest my head explode, indeed lest it explode because I cut a hole in the door of a microwave oven and stuck my head in, a la J. O. Incandenza in “Infinite Jest”.
So the plan is to just chip away at it. Which brings us to Sarah Palin’s “position paper” on health care on her Facebook page. She’s referring to a portion of the House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling.
“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.”
If Sarah Palin isn’t an idiot, she plays one on TV. Still, as someone once said, facts are stubborn things.
Here are a few of them: The counseling would be voluntary. It would not involve any government-appointed human, bureaucrat or otherwise. No one would be forced to sign a living will. No one would be forced to sign anything. It would deny no one any form of health care. There is nothing in the bill that would create anything that a person tethered to reality or wishing to appear tethered to reality would describe as a death panel.
All 50 states - even Texas; even Alaska - currently have something written into law allowing end-of-life directives. All this portion of the house bill is saying is that if people want it, Medicare would pay for it. Please refer to the word VOLUNTARY in your dictionaries.
Ezra Klein has an interview here with Sen. Johnny Isakson, who’s perhaps the biggest end-of-life planning advocate in Congress. Bear in mind that Isakson is a red-state (Georgia) right-wing Republican.
Here’s the key portion:
Is this bill going to euthanize my grandmother? What are we talking about here?
“In the health-care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that’s because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves. So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia “durable power of attorney,” you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you’re unable to make those decisions.
This has been an issue for 35 years. All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it’s to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers. It’s just better for an individual to be able to clearly delineate what they want done in various sets of circumstances at the end of their life.”
How did this become a question of euthanasia?
“I have no idea. I understand — and you have to check this out — I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.”
Inject the Senator with truth serum, and I bet he could tell you exactly how it got mixed up.
This specific provision of the house bill is endorsed by: AARP, American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, American College of Physicians, American Hospice Foundation, Center to Advance Palliative Care, Hospice and Palliative Nursing Association, Medicare Rights Center, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, National Palliative Care Research Center, and Supportive Care Coalition and many other groups.
In short, it’s endorsed by the people Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh want you to believe it’s going to kill, and the health-care professionals who take care of them.
Have we reached the point yet where you start to question Palin and Hannity and Limbaugh? If not, what would have to happen for you to reach that point?
