Sarah Palin Was Right #2: Robert Tracinski on Death Panels

Robert Tracinski, former senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and now editor and publisher of The Intellectual Activist, in a Real Clear Politics op-ed:

Here's a tip: when Barack Obama says, "So let me set the
record straight," he is about to lie to you about his past.

One of Tacinski's points in the opinion piece strongly supports Sarah Palin's warning about death panels:

Obama attacks the "bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple."

But what is Obama's most plausible recommendation for cutting Medicare spending? "[A]n independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead." How will they identify waste? By deciding which procedures are "cost effective" and should be covered by Medicare-and which procedures are "wasteful" and should not be covered.

Britain's National Health Service already has such a commission, established on precisely the same rationale. They call it the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, known by the Orwellian acronym NICE. It is becoming notorious for rules that deny care to older patients because they don't have enough "quality adjusted life years" left to justify the cost of their treatment.

If you read the British newspapers-and if you're concerned about what greater government control of medicine might look like, you should -- then you might have caught the latest development: a letter by a group of distinguished British doctors complaining that the Liverpool Care Pathway, a NICE-endorsed system for determining the care given to severely ill patients, is causing doctors to abandon care for patients who still have a chance of recovery.

If that's not a "death panel," I don't know what is. Yet it is precisely the system Obama advocates to cut costs under his plan.

Tracinsky makes such a compelling case that there's nothing we could or should add. It speaks for itself. But be sure to read his entire article. "You lie!" indeed.

h/t: Roger Kimball

- JP