Dr. Krauthammer, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Death Panels

From one doctor to another, Melissa Clouthier to Charles Krauthammer, "People Telling Sarah Palin To Shut Up Should Shut Up":

"Sarah Palin is the only politician reflecting, in plain language, the will of the American people. Charles Krauthammer believes she should 'leave the room'. He is referring, specifically, to the concept of death panels and then goes into the provision in the House Bill about end of life counseling. He then comes out against, I think, the very counseling that Sarah Palin also rejects.""

Clouthier is a chiropractor who is also a conservative blogger. Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, columnist and commentator is a littler harder to pin down on the political spectrum. Although widely touted as a conservative, Krauthammer was a moderate Democrat who worked for the Carter Administration and as a speechwriter for Walter Mondale. Before gaining a reputation as a conservative columnist, he wrote for such hard right-wing media outlets as The New Republic, TIME magazine and the Washington Post. Some of his views on domestic issues are not those one would expect from a conservative. Krauthammer supports abortion, opposes the death penalty, rejects intelligent design, preaches evolution, favors embryonic stem cell research and advocates radically higher energy taxes as a conservation measure. He has been one of Sarah Palin's more vocal critics since the day John McCain announced her selection as his running mate.

While Clouthier agrees with Krauthammer that technically, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 is more a "death recommendation" than a death panel, she says Dr, K is forgetting that there are more death-related provisions in the bill than just this one section:

"The counseling is an indicator of intent. While a doctor is financially incentivized to have a death discussion, the government program will, by nature of sheer numbers, want people to choose, as President Obama says, a 'pain pill over surgery.'"

She is also justifiably suspicious of boards composed of appointed bureaucrats making life or death decisions:

"Individual needs will get lost in the collective good. Some people will die because of these choices."

At Red Slippers, marysue has a more succinct message for Doctor K:

"Charles seems to be suffering from selective hearing syndrome , and has conflated end-of-life counseling with the inevitable rationing that would accompany government run health care. Two cases in two days might warrant a call to the CDC. Charles seems to have forgotten an important lesson from those who failed to heed the warning, 'Iceberg, Right Ahead.' It didn't end well Charles."

At The Riehl World View, Dan Riehl believes that Krauthammer, like many others, has been misled by the media's misreporting of Palin's remarks:

"Given the poor press reports, few people likely understand that Sarah Palin never claimed that any 'Death Panels' would be brought about by immediate legislation. An examination of the actual record makes that clear."

"Usually Charles Krauthammer is very sharp. He seems to have fallen into a bit of a media trap, as have most of us, in discussing Sarah Palin's infamous 'Death Panels' remark. If the nuance of her original invocation of the term had been reported, there really should be no issue here at all."

Finally, Doctor Zero weighs in from The Green Room:

"Let me dispense with the most controversial part of Krauthammer’s recent Town Hall column first: this condescending nonsense about asking Palin to 'leave the room' while 'we have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.'"

[...]

"Those Facebook pages she’s tossing around like ninja throwing stars are eloquent proof that no one has the right to pat Sarah Palin on the head and send her out of the room, while the grown-ups settle down to serious talk. She isn’t just writing snarky rants. She’s providing both devastatingly effective criticism, and substantial policy alternatives. It’s fairly obvious the White House paid a great deal of attention to her infamous 'death panel' column."

[...]

"What Palin brings to the health-care debate is the energy, wisdom, and wit to make complex ideas understandable to ordinary people. Let me once again restate my admiration for Charles Krauthammer before saying, with regrettably brutal candor, that Sarah Palin had more impact on the health-care debate with one Facebook note than everything Krauthammer has written in the past year."

And Dr. Clouthier has the bottom line:

"The fact is, America needs MORE plain spoken politicians, not less. Sarah Palin has managed to define the debate for Republicans and conservatives. She should be thanked, not shunned."

- JP