Death Panels Revisited
Do you remember the “Death Panels?” The phrase, of course, belongs to Sarah Palin. On her Facebook page – on Friday, 5 August 2009 – she attacked President Obama’s plans for rationing healthcare, writing:
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.
Palin was by no means the first to attack Obama’s plan in this fashion. In her post, she cited a speech by Minnesota Congressman Michele Bachman. Moreover, on 1 July of that year, in my very first post on Powerline, which was entitled Obama’s Tyrannical Ambition, I had myself raised the issue. After pointing to our President’s extraordinary political discipline, I had added that once in a while, “when Obama gets separated from his teleprompter, the mask slips a tad,” citing his famous remark to Joe the Plumber about spreading the wealth around. “Something of the sort,” I continued,
happened again last week--when, at a carefully staged rally for the administration's health care proposal, to which the flacks who run ABC News tellingly invited no one who regards the current healthcare arrangement as even remotely satisfactory--President Obama responded to a question by acknowledging that his plan aimed to reduce medical costs by aligning "incentives" in such a fashion as to discourage the sick and the dying from undergoing "additional tests" or taking "additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
Obama's choice of words was, as always, soothing. But anyone familiar with the healthcare debate will immediately recognize what he left unsaid. We all know that, wherever there is socialized medicine, there is rationing. Cutting costs is, in fact, its rationale, and this end is achieved by a refusal on the part of the government to pay for care that the bureaucrats judge uneconomic. Already now, in the semi-socialized system to which we have been made subject, those consigned to HMOs come up against gatekeepers charged with shaving costs by restricting care.
Why, we might ask, should one have to wait months or even years for a hip-replacement operation? Why should one be denied a cataract operation if one is over a certain age? What business is it of Barack Obama's whether I choose to spend my own hard-earned money on procedures thought to have only a limited chance of success? What gives him--or, for that matter, anyone else--the right to make decisions that are for me a matter of life and death?
Defenders of Obama's proposal will reply that I am misrepresenting his proposal. No one, they will say, will be forced to give up the health insurance they have. Technically, of course, this is true. But what President Obama calls the "incentives" will be structured in such a way that employers will no longer have to offer coverage, and to save themselves the expense (which is considerable), they will seize the opportunity to opt out, and then we will have no choice.
Perhaps we will then be left free to spend as we see fit the money left to us after we have paid for the government-run insurance program. Perhaps we will be able to go into the private market and pay for a hip-replacement operation, a cataract operation, or for tests and procedures that our doctor recommends but that the government-run insurance program refuses to pay for.
Here is where Obama's "incentives" reappear. The government-run insurance program will, for all practical purposes, be a monopsony--the sole purchaser. It will be in a bargaining position enabling it to dictate the price that it will pay, and, of course, it will pay very little. You, as an individual purchaser, will have no leverage at all; and, like those not covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans today, you will have to pay through the nose. Unless you are filthy rich, you may well have to wait your turn for that hip-replacement operation, forego that cataract operation, or do without those expensive tests and procedures. In sum, you will not be in the driver's seat.
To grasp what is at stake, one must step back and consider what sort of thinking underpins the drive for what is called "health care reform." There was a time in the United States when we lived under a regime of individual rights, and as individuals we assumed responsibility for our own welfare. We worked; we saved; and we took pride in looking after ourselves. Many of us still think in this fashion, but this is not the manner in which our masters now think. We may be the heirs of the men who adopted the Declaration of Independence; those who rule us are the offspring of the Progressives, and men of this temper have dominated our political life for almost a century now.
It is symptomatic of Sarah Palin’s political genius that the moral point it took me seven paragraphs and more to make she managed to sum up in two words.
She was, of course, vilified for what she said. Rachel Weiner at The Huffington Post called her assertion “an extraordinary, unsupported and incendiary claim.” In the aftermath, in The New York Times, as The Catholic League for Religion and Civil Rights pointed out some weeks ago, Paul Krugman wrote nineteen separate columns denouncing what he called the "death panel smear" and the "death panel lie" and describing the "death panel people" as being part of "the lunatic fringe"; Maureen Dowd attacked those who engage in "their loopy rants on death panels"; and Frank Rich denounced those who spoke of "fictions like 'death panels.'" In September, in an editorial, the Times lamented "the cynical demagoguing about 'death panels.'"
All of this adds spice to the fact that on 14 November – in a little-remarked appearance on the ABC News program This Week in which he focused his attention on escalating healthcare costs – Paul Krugman, who was separated from his computer keyboard, let his mask slip a tad, telling listeners that “some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes." As Nat Henthoff intimates in a piece first posted yesterday, Krugman and his colleagues owe Sarah Palin an apology. I suspect, however, that working at The New York Times means never having to say you’re sorry.
- Comment (11)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments :
May '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
I never contemplate this issue without thinking of the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man" with Burgess Meredith as a librarian condemned to death for being of no use to the state. Final narration: "...Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under 'M' for mankind in the Twilight Zone."
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Amen.
Jul '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
The good news: the Times is currently before a sort of death panel itself. It may not be today. Not even tomorrow. But, of course, if Obama is in office, there will likely be a bailout.
When children begin to die because the health care market has been wholly replaced by a labyrinth of federal bureaucrats and American parents are not allowed by law to pay for life-sustaining treatments and cures, will the execrable Mr. Krugman then apologize? And who does he think will accept his apology.
And thanks again, Paul, for your good work in this area.
Edited on Dec 7, 2010 at 7:43amNov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Sarah Palin's critics point out (very disengenuously) that no provision of Obamacare makes any specific reference to "death panels." Well, of course not. If you read the bill, you will not find any page with the words "DEATH PANEL" in big, black gothic letters. Not even the Democrats are that stupid. As Mark Steyn has often stated, the whole bill is a death panel.
Just another reminder of why the Democrats are terrified of Sarah Palin — and why she makes the Old GOP Guard very, very nervous.
Nov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Not to stray off topic, but a government bailout for a newspaper represents a gross, obscene, very obvious conflict of interest. It seems to me that it should also be very, very illegal. What do our resident legal experts say?
Under Eric Holder's DOJ, it is hard to tell what is legal or illegal anymore.
Edited on Dec 7, 2010 at 7:58amNov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
If you carry government-controlled healthcare to its logical extreme, this is what you get:
Imagine a billion dollar hospital filled with gleaming, state-of-the-art equipment. Add a huge staff of bureaucrats and administrators with no medical knowledge, all pulling in fat salaries. Put a big sign on the front door: "To All Patients: Buzz Off."
The system itself will suck up all revenue, with precious little left over for anything resembling real healthcare.
Nov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Obamacare is bad in more ways than anyone can count. Medical decisions that affect people's lives will be made by bureaucrats who are stupid, amoral, unethical, unprincipled and utterly ignorant of medicine. The potential for abuse and corruption is almost unlimited – and terrifying.
Suppose a selfish twit is waiting for his inheritance from Grandma, who is currently 90 and looking much too healthy. If Grandma went into the hospital for a relatively minor operation, how difficult would it be to bribe an Obamacrat to make sure that certain life-saving procedures were withheld? Costs must be cut somewhere.
Rationing will be a given. But Obamacare will be doled out strictly according to political guidelines. If you are a member of the Tea Party (or any group perceived as unfriendly to Democrats), you will get precious little care. You will be lucky if you can get an aspirin while you pass a kidney stone. For purely political reasons, it is no loss if you die. Costs must be cut somewhere.
The same kind of people who run the Post Office will run your healthcare. If that is not a perfect prescription for Nightmare, I do not know what is.
Jul '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Actually, it is worse than that. Even if you assume a Kryptonian bureaucrat with the best wishes mortally conceivable, real Kal-El on his best day stuff, as Hayek points out in the Road to Serfdom, there is the knowledge problem. This person does not know you. Has only bits and pieces of documentation regarding who you are and what is wrong with you, and on only that information must index the particulars of your case against the government mandated standards for care. The index will make the medical decisions.
And thanks to a data error deep in the X machinae, the retina implant patient has both eyes removed instead. Please see the cashier on the way out about your adjustment. A nurse will deliver a cane as soon as we've got through this backlog. Five years at worst. Sorry? No, if you buy one yourself it is a felony punishable by life imprisonment.
Drive safely!
Jun '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Lady K @#4
Just another reminder of why the Democrats are terrified of Sarah Palin — and why she makes the Old GOP Guard very, very nervous.
B,b,but Sarah Palin is just stupid. She has no original thoughts. She takes all the oxygen out of the room, leaving no breath for all of our smart conservatives. As our beloved non-blueblood, blueblood Matriarch, Barbara Bush says, 'that Sarah Palin is very pretty and she should stay in Alaska'
Thanks for the post Dr Rahe. It sometimes takes a truly smart person such as yourself to apperciate the ability to condense concepts into their simplist terms, especially when one's goal is to communicate with a great many people. Thomas Sowell comes to mind, as well. People with thousands of flowery and smart sounding words can write books. But some of our best leaders had the ability to cut thru to the core of an issue in a few simple sentences.
Edited on Dec 7, 2010 at 10:09amNov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Precisely. There are "death panels" happening in every hospital every day. But they consist of the doctor, the patient (if they're able) or kin, maybe a religious advisor. It only becomes scary when you replace all of those with the guy currently behind the counter at the DMV and a big book of regulations to follow.
Rationing of medical care happens today, as well. Every time I take two aspirin instead of going to the emergency room for my headache, I've just rationed medical care. You're welcome.
Nov '10
Re: Death Panels Revisited
Great post. Hope that all the Palin detractors out there (paging Claire!) take note. While Palin may not be as polished or even as electable (maybe) as Romney, many of us support her because she always seems to be on the right side of an issue the first time around. We can trust her instincts. Romney may be against gov't run healthcare now, but he didn't always sing that tune. He may be pro-life now, but he wasn't always. Our country's financial situation is terrible. If we are fortunate enough to elect a Republican in 2012, there may not be a chance for a do-over. It doesn't have to be Palin, but we better have someone in there we can trust to make the right decision the first time around.