NY Sun: Gov. Palin's beat on ‘Death Panels’ is confirmed by NY Times

Is she smarter than the media and the Congress, or just more honest?
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Sarah Palin scooped the corrupt media in August, 2009 with a series of Facebook statements warning that the Obama administration intended to ration health care. Now, sixteen months later, we learn that since Obama won't be able to achieve rationing by legislative means (since the next House of Representatives with its Republican majority, would never go along with it) , it will do so through regulation. An editorial in today's New York Sun credits the New York Times with confirming Gov. Palin's warnings:

At the time, Mrs. Palin’s prophecy touched off an enormous hue and a cry among the liberal intelligentsia, so much so that the scheme was dropped in Congress. Yet even though it was dropped by Congress the New York Times is reporting that “the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation” and will start doing so January 1. The Times says that the government “will now pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.”

It seems to be the administration's conception of democracy that after the Congress so pointedly left this out of the Obamacare legislation the scheme can be advanced by regulation. The point is underscored in Robert Pear’s dispatch in the Times, which quotes one of the congressmen originally advocating for the so-called death panels, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, as saying of the regulatory approach, “we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet” and warning that the regulation could yet be “modified or reversed.”

No doubt the defenders of Obamacare will argue that this kind of advance directive is hardly a death panel. Participation is voluntary; it’s but “advice.” However, since the “aggressive life-sustaining treatment” being decided upon would be paid for by the same government that is funding the advice on whether to go for it, one can see that this is a step toward exactly the kind of death panel that Mrs. Palin warned about. She used as a proxy for all of us the fate of down-syndrome children like her own son Trig.

So how was Gov. Palin able to see this coming when so many others could not and many more were in denial? The Sun's editors say it doesn’t matter:

It’s enough that she was just ahead of the others, and the point is one to mark. She has become, at a relatively young age and by whatever means, a savvy woman. We noticed it, say, when she suggested the best way to handle the question of the West Bank settlements was to let the Israelis decide, a policy the administration is now following. We noticed it when she went to Hong Kong and warned about the collapse in the value of the dollar and spoke of the importance of gold.

It was apparent when she dove in before other politicians and the intelligentsia and warned about the dangers of the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing. And when, in advance of the BP oil-spill disaster, she’d been campaigning to develop our onshore energy resources. And when she began branding as her own the idea of commonsense, conservative constitutionalism — a year before a resurgent GOP is preparing to open the 112th Congress with a reading of the entire text of the Constitution.

Even though Sarah Palin was not the first politician to discuss these issues, The Sun's editors point our that she did manage to elevate a number of them to the national debate. Gov. Palin, who earned a degree in journalism, say the editors, understands one of journalism’s core principles: "It’s not a scoop until it’s played like a scoop."

- JP

Sarah Palin Was Right #31: Thomas Sowell on 'A Duty to Die'

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Ssrah Palin's early warning radar detected low-flying health care rationing back in the day when ObamaCare was just an idea being kicked around by the neosocialists, and her prediction that "death panels" would be part and parcel of the left's socialized medicine agenda has been vindicated many times, despite the leftist campaign to ridicule her and brand her a liar.

Professor Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, in a National Review commentary, examines the socialist notion that the elderly have a "duty to die." Here are a few choice morsels:

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die” rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

[...]

It is today, in an age when homes have flat-paneled TVs and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites — rather than the masses — have begun talking about “a duty to die.”

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently, you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about “a duty to die.”

[...]

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which “a duty to die” is just one.

Sarah Palin is the Paul Revere of her time. Read Dr. Sowell's full NRO op-ed here. A linked list of all previous posts in our "Sarah Palin Was Right" series is here.

- JP

Sarah Palin Was Right #30: Dr. Berwick Confirms Rationing

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Sarah Palin wrote in a September, 2009 Wall Street Journal opinion piece:

"Is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans... But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration."

Democrats and other supporters of socialized medicine have, as the governor noted, dismissed the "death panels" phrase, but many went further and dismissed the idea that ObamaCare would lead to rationing by any name. Since then, Gov. Palin's argument has been vindicated time and again (See here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Obama supporters not only dismissed both the rhetoric and the reality of rationing, but viciously smeared Sarah Palin, calling her "ignorant", "stupid", "a liar" and everything but a child of God.

Now more confirmation of ObamaCare rationing is being heard from President Obama's own nominee to run the Medicare and Medicaid programs:

But now that ObamaCare has passed, at least some of its supporters have become quite candid in admitting that government rationing is on the way.

Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor, has been nominated by President Obama to run Medicare and Medicaid. But Dr. Berwick has not been shy at all about saying that rationing will be the order of the day under ObamaCare.

In an interview in 2009 in the journal Biotechnology Healthcare, Dr. Berwick declared, "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

In other words, Dr. Berwick does not mind rationing so long as it is government making the decisions about how that rationing takes place -- about who gets what care and who does not.

Dr. Berwick has spoken, and we are reminded, yet again, who the real liars are.

- JP

Sarah Palin Was Right #28: Orszag Admits 'Rationing Panels'

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Sarah Palin is vindicated yet again, this time by another one of President Obama's own:

Peter Orszag, President Obama’s budget director, basically admitted that under Obamacare, access to doctors and medicine will be rationed. And the people on the “powerful rationing panel” making life-or-death decisions will be government bureaucrats, not medical professionals.

Hmmm. Let's review. A “powerful rationing panel,” not accountable to anyone but the president, made up entirely of bureaucrats (no doctors on board), which makes the decisions about whether you or your family members gets a needed medical procedure or prescription for medication...

Sure sounds like a "death panel" to us.

Remember when lefty economist Robert Reich admitted:

"And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."

The Obamunist Left went through all sorts of contortions trying to explain that one away. We can't wait to watch them try to weasel out of this one.

Bottom line: Sarah Palin was right, but it would kill them to admit it in so many words.

More: For a Catholic perspective on this, see Pat Archibold's blog post here.

- JP

Palin: 'Troubling Questions' Remain About ObamaCare

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has dropped the end-of-life provision from the pending health care bill, former Governor Sarah Palin has turned her focus to other details which she finds disturbing in the measure. Palin posted another in her series of critiques of the bill Thursday night on her Facebook Notes page:

I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200). It’s gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress; however, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones.

As I noted in my statement last week, nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time. The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama’s key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I’m speaking of the “Complete Lives System” advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff. President Obama has not yet stated any opposition to the “Complete Lives System,” a system which, if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential. [1] Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the “Complete Lives System”? If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on? I just learned that Dr. Emanuel is now distancing himself from his own work and claiming that his “thinking has evolved” on the question of rationing care to benefit the strong and deny the weak. [2] How convenient that he disavowed his own work only after the nature of his scholarship was revealed to the public at large.

The president is busy assuring us that we can keep our private insurance plans, but common sense (and basic economics) tells us otherwise. The public option in the Democratic health care plan will crowd out private insurers, and that’s what it’s intended to do. A single payer health care plan has been President Obama’s agenda all along, though he is now claiming otherwise. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what he said back in 2003:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care plan.... A single payer health care plan – universal health care plan – that’s what I would like to see.” [3]

A single-payer health care plan might be what Obama would like to see, but is it what the rest of us would like to see? What does a single payer health care plan look like? We need look no further than other countries who have adopted such a plan. The picture isn’t pretty. [4] The only way they can control costs is to ration care. As I noted in my earlier statement quoting Thomas Sowell, government run health care won’t reduce the price of medical care; it will simply refuse to pay the price. The expensive innovative procedures that people from all over the world come to the United States for will not be available under a government plan that seeks to cover everyone by capping costs.

Our senior citizens are right to be wary of this health care bill. Medical care at the end of life accounts for 80 percent of all health care. When care is rationed, that is naturally where the cuts will be felt first. The “end-of-life” consultations authorized in Section 1233 of HR 3200 were an obvious and heavy handed attempt at pressuring people to reduce the financial burden on the system by minimizing their own care. Worst still, it actually provided a financial incentive to doctors to initiate these consultations. People are right to point out that such a provision doesn’t sound “purely voluntary.”

In an article I noted yesterday, Charles Lane wrote:

“Ideally, the delicate decisions about how to manage life’s end would be made in a setting that is neutral in both appearance and fact. Yes, it’s good to have a doctor’s perspective. But Section 1233 goes beyond facilitating doctor input to preferring it. Indeed, the measure would have an interested party -- the government -- recruit doctors to sell the elderly on living wills, hospice care and their associated providers, professions and organizations. You don’t have to be a right-wing wacko to question that approach.” [5]

I agree. Last year, I issued a proclamation for “Healthcare Decisions Day.” [6] The proclamation sought to increase the public’s knowledge about creating living wills and establishing powers of attorney. There was no incentive to choose one option over another. There was certainly no financial incentive for physicians to push anything. In fact, the proclamation explicitly called on medical professionals and lawyers “to volunteer their time and efforts” to provide information to the public.

Comparing the “Healthcare Decisions Day” proclamation to Section 1233 of HR 3200 is ridiculous. The two are like apples and oranges. The attempt to link the two shows how desperate the proponents of nationalized health care are to shift the debate away from the disturbing details of their bill.

There is one aspect of this bill which I have not addressed yet, but it’s a very obvious one. It’s the simple fact that we can’t afford it. But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Doug Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. He told the Senate Budget Committee last month:

“In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” [7]

Dr. Elmendorf went on to note that this health care legislation would increase spending at an unsustainable rate.

Our nation is already $11.5 trillion in debt. Where will the money come from? Taxes, of course. And will a burdensome new tax help our economy recover? Of course not. The best way to encourage more health care coverage is to foster a strong economy where people can afford to purchase their own coverage if they choose to do so. The current administration’s economic policies have done nothing to help in this regard.

Health care is without a doubt a complex and contentious issue, but health care reform should be a market oriented solution. There are many ways we can reform the system and lower costs without nationalizing it.

The economist Arthur Laffer has taken the lead in pushing for a patient-center health care reform policy. He noted in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month:

“A patient-centered health-care reform begins with individual ownership of insurance policies and leverages Health Savings Accounts, a low-premium, high-deductible alternative to traditional insurance that includes a tax-advantaged savings account. It allows people to purchase insurance policies across state lines and reduces the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover. It reallocates the majority of Medicaid spending into a simple voucher for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance. And it reduces the cost of medical procedures by reforming tort liability laws.” [8]

Those are real reforms that we can live with and afford. Once again, I warn my fellow Americans that if we go down the path of nationalized health care, there will be no turning back. We must stop and think or we may find ourselves losing even more of our freedoms.

- Sarah Palin

This latest post by former Governor Palin, complete with linked bibliography, can be found here. It's clear that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee intends to keep the pressure on the Obama administration and Congressional Democats regarding the health care issues. We applaud her efforts.

- JP