Death panels in our health care system are a frightening thought.\u00a0 However, look who introduced this idea into the discussion.\u00a0 It was the Republicans who thought about this as a way to save money, not the Democrats.\u00a0 The Republicans are saying it is a horrible idea now in order to frighten you away from the Democratic plan.\u00a0 However, if they came to power and a public insurance option were in operation, might they change their tune about how horrible it is?\u00a0 The Republicans are the ones telling you that government doesn’t work.\u00a0 Whenever they come to power, they set out to prove their point.\u00a0 Instituting such a policy might be one way they would do it.\u00a0 This could be similar to how they treated the people of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina..<\/p>\n
Who was it that thought torture might be a good war tactic?\u00a0 Again, Republicans not Democrats.\u00a0 Remember they disguised their actual thoughts by telling us that they do not torture.\u00a0 In fact, at the highest levels of government,\u00a0 they were requiring water boarding even as they denied that it was torture.<\/p>\n
When you look at the ideas that people bring to the public forum, it gives you an insight into how their minds work.\u00a0 Especially when they originate the idea without prompting from actual events. Although, maybe the death panel idea does come from some of the private insurance companies where some Republicans have worked.\u00a0 The private insurance companies do seem to be able to put roadblocks in front of promising to make their rightful payment until the patient dies.\u00a0 After death they promise that they would have covered the surgery that would have saved the patient’s life.<\/p>\n
The lesson to be learned here is that when we do get health insurance reform in this country, we must make absolutely sure that no Republican death panel dreamer ever gets control of the reins of this public program.<\/p>\n
I can’t imagine what other ugly schemes they can dream up to save money, but I bet they have lots of them.<\/p>\n
For those who don’t remember the news for more than a few days, I’ll remind you that people like Sarah Palin helped popularize the myth of the mandatory government death panels that would sit in judgment of people to decide if their lives had sufficient merit and future prospects to warrant spending money to preserve their lives.<\/p>\n
The Republicans pretended that this was the same thing as the Democratic proposal to fund optional conversations between a patient and a doctor about how to handle the practicalities and options that present themselves toward the end of your life.\u00a0 I don’t call a discussion between a doctor and patient to be a panel.\u00a0 It is certainly not government run.\u00a0 Also voluntary is not mandatory although I guess it is easy to confuse the two words.<\/p>\n
But at least they told us what options would come to their minds if they had the chance to run things.<\/p>\n
If you need any further reminders, see my posts on this blog, Palin\u2019s ‘death panel\u2019 comment on health care is challenged<\/strong><\/a> and Special Comment On Sarah Palin<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Death panels in our health care system are a frightening thought.\u00a0 However, look who introduced this idea into the discussion.\u00a0 It was the Republicans who thought about this as a way to save money, not the Democrats.\u00a0 The Republicans are saying it is a horrible idea now in order to frighten you away from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}