Well, what exactly is a "program to get people to talk to their doctors about how they want to deal with death?" If that's not a death panel, what is? I guess you could call it a death group, or a death meeting, but it's all the same thing: old people sitting around with their doctors talking about buying the farm.
That's the thing about dummies like Palin. They're so dumb, they have to say things simply so that they make sense. How provincial. In the world of big thinkers, death panel will lose against program in Wisconsin every time.
In Thomas' latest piece he uses his dying and now dead mother as an example. It's tough to go after a guy when he does something like that, but at the risk of being heartless, let's look at what he says:
There is no way we can get control of costs, which have grown by nearly 50 percent in the past decade, without finding a way to stop overtreating patients. In his address to Congress, President Obama spoke airily about reducing inefficiency, but he slid past the hard choices that will have to be made to stop health care from devouring ever-larger slices of the economy and tax dollar. A significant portion of the savings will have to come from the money we spend on seniors at the end of life because, as Willie Sutton explained about why he robbed banks, that's where the money is.
The next time you're at the hospital, don't ask if they can save your life. Ask if they can make sure not to overtreat you.
Pretty much gives the whole game away, doesn't it? He doesn't say "death panel," nor does he say "rationing," but it's all in there. He is quite literally saying that the best way to bring down the cost of health care is to save money on keeping old people alive.
Palin was right. With ObamaCare there will be death panels. If that makes you uncomfortable, just call them something else. Rationalize while you're rationing. Or for the love of Pete, just learn to think of death properly. Thomas: "Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable."
He's right. Death is more than science. It's dollars and sense. Ready to do your part?
1 comment:
Many liberals mocked Palin, and of course they'll snicker about the "lies" of the Townhall Terrorists as they call, them, and yet no sooner does THAT come to my attention than I pick up the latest edition of Newsweek to find that, yeah--Evan Thomas thinks bopping granny has a case to be made.
It's not quite Logan's Run, but he does what some are hesitant to do--finally--at long last--admit that rationing is inevitable under "single payer" or even milder "public option" type plans.
And part of that rationing will be, despite all the denials, a method by which end of life scenarios might include the morphine drip equivalent of just knocking the old bat in the back of the head to make room for healthier and more productive people.
End of life might be frowsy for some insurance plans, and a lousy decision to make for family members watching--as I did my own mother--someone slowly disintegrate.
But at least the decision is not yet in the hands of bureacrats in Washington or doctors told from above who needs to kick the bucket even if they're not ready.
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