Life's Overrated

I think Sarah Palin hit it on the head with the "death panel" thing. Her opponents see it as demagoguery, but they keep coming around to it. They call it "end of life care," or, as Evan Thomas puts it (without uttering the dreaded Palin's name), "Although demagogued as a 'death panel,' a program in Wisconsin to get patients to talk to their doctors about how they want to deal with death was actually a resounding success."

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?

Overexposed

BBC: US President Barack Obama is set to make one of the most critical speeches of his presidency, as he faces Congress over his plans for healthcare reform.

Yawn. Another month, another "critical" speech. You'd think the greatest speaker ever would have nailed it down by now. See you in October.

I had a juggler buddy who could juggle seven pins at the same time. It looked awesome. When I asked him why he didn't do it in his show more often, he replied, "It's a 'look-what-I-can-do' trick. After five seconds, nobody cares."

Tricks get old fast.