McGinniss: Beware the power of the fully operational Palin machine

I say we go after this Joe character. I mean, only scumbags use such hyperbole. Nazi tactics? Next he’ll say that Obama wants to kill grandma with his healthcare bill and set up death panels deciding who will live and who will be snuffed out!

TheBlueSite on June 1, 2010 at 8:44 PM

That was only the most effective criticism of that bill. So effective that people are still talking about it.

It focused attention on the rationing that will inevitably be necessary with the explosion in costs and our current fiscal situation.

June 2, 2010
‘Death panels’ were an overblown claim – until now

During the debate over ObamaCare, the bill’s opponents were excoriated for talk of rationing and “death panels.” And in fairness, with a few minor exceptions governing Medicare reimbursements, the law does not directly ration care or allow the government to dictate how doctors practice medicine.

But if President Obama wanted to keep a lid on that particular controversy, he just selected about the worst possible nominee for director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the office that oversees government health care programs. Obama’s pick, Dr. Donald Berwick, is an outspoken admirer of the British National Health Service and its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE).

“I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,” Berwick said during a 2008 speech to British physicians, going on to call it “generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just.” He compared the wonders of British health care to a U.S. system that he described as trapped in “the darkness of private enterprise.”

Overall, more than half of British patients wait more than 18 weeks for care. Every year, 50,000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed.

The one thing the NHS is good at is saving money. After all, it is far cheaper to let the sick die than to provide care.

At the forefront of this cost-based rationing is NICE. It acts as a comparative-effectiveness tool for NHS, comparing various treatments and determining whether the benefits the patient receives, such as prolonged life, are cost-efficient for the government.

Recent reports suggest that the recently passed health care bill will be far more expensive than originally projected. As it becomes apparent that that ObamaCare is unsustainable, the calls for controlling its costs through rationing will grow louder. With Donald Berwick running the government’s health care efforts, those voices will have a ready ear.

Maybe those worries about death panels weren’t so crazy after all.

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

At the root of the death panel metaphor was the academic work of Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother to WH Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.

Statement on the Current Health Care Debate

Friday, August 7, 2009 at 1:26pm

As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!

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.

Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.

We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.

- Sarah Palin

Rep. Bachmann’s speech can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CHBvKGmevI

I still to this day don’t see the problem with this opinion, and many others are coming around to the same view.

Brian1972 on June 1, 2010 at 10:39 PM