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The Associated Press recently ran a ‘Fact Check' article rebutting Sarah Palin's claim of a "death panel" in the health care bills currently in the House and Senate. The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. Both are technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel and 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) 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.
Daschle's stated 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."
Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose:
Daschle said 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. Ezekiel Emanuel, who'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 now was previously 25."
[Ah, equal opportunity discrimination - that's better.][snip]
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."
[Apologies for beating this news to death - I'm sure you've already reached saturation via the 24/7 coverage that TV's provided - I just think it's important, is all.]
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