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Clarence Page: ‘Death panels’ myth won’t die

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4:21 PM Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor-turned-blogger, cannot see Russia from her house, as Tina Fey’s version of her claimed in a “Saturday Night Live” skit. But she is poking this country’s politics from her laptop.

I could detect her influence after Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled the long-awaited House health care bill. Within hours, Palin’s famously debunked charge of bureaucratic “death panels” was back, polluting the debate.

For example, when Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn was asked on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” the next morning whether the House bill has any changes “with regard to the death panel,” Cornyn responded, not by debunking the “death panel” canard but by linking them to another politically loaded charge, “rationing.”

“The concern, of course, is with trying to contain costs when the government runs health care, it invariably rations health care,” he said. “And we don’t want the government intervening in the kinds of decisions that ought to be made by families.”

Ah, just when we might have thought it was safe to talk rationally about end-of-life care, here come those alleged “death panels” again, allegedly “intervening between” families and their loved ones.

In fact, the provisions in question only offer to make funds available at least every five years for seniors and their families to receive end-of-life counseling from their doctors or other health care providers if they want it, no bureaucratic intervention involved.

Fortunately, those provisions remained in the House bill Pelosi unveiled. Unfortunately similar provisions were removed from Senate bills amid the controversy Palin helped stir up, in spite of support from doctors’ groups and AARP, the lobby for seniors.

Back in August, Palin got this ball rolling with a posting on her Facebook page regarding President Barack Obama’s health-care plans. “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’,” she wrote, “so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

I agree that it would be, if it existed. Fortunately, it does not. Palin didn’t cite anything from a bill. She only cited a floor speech by Minnesota Republican Michelle Bachmann, who did not quote from proposed legislation directly, either.

Both appeared to be picking up an argument made by former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey of New York, a conservative think-tank veteran who helped to kill Bill and Hillary Clinton’s proposed health-care reforms in the early 1990s. In August she declared in a radio interview that “Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

But a lot of people, including me, read the provisions in the House bill that she cited and found that it said no such thing. Nevertheless, when I reached McCaughey by telephone, she persisted in charging that the bill would lead to bureaucrats at my door when I get older who would order me to “decide how you want to die.”

In fact, similar end-of-life concepts have been a part of federal health-care law with support from both parties since President George H.W. Bush was in office. But in these politically polarized times it suddenly has become an alleged invitation to legal suicide and potential wedge between seniors and Democrats.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at the time a lead negotiator on health care legislation, told constituents at a town hall meeting in August that he did not have problems with “things like living wills,” but “(w)e should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.” No such program is proposed, yet, “pull the plug on grandma” became a much-repeated catchphrase.

Rather than try to educate the public on the usefulness of end-of-life counseling, senators removed the controversial provisions from their proposed legislation. Fortunately the measure survived in House legislation. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who sponsored the provision, says the controversy actually may have helped keep the measure alive by raising public awareness. Thank you for that, Sarah Palin. I hope the Senate gets the message.

Clarence Page writes for the Chicago Tribune. E-mail address: cpage@tribune.com.

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The issue is not about Sarah Palin. The issue is about President Obama and his agenda the dems keep denying or giving false witness about. The healthcare bill that is too big, gives Obama the power over everything to do with our health. It takes away the right for our medical people to participate in free trade. And yes, these people want to care for the elderly less than the young. What happened to equality?! The bill may not call it "death panels," but that is what it amounts to.

Jed Stevens
2:59 PM, 11/5/2009

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No one fears Palin. Her stupidity is so obvious. She failed in getting Clinton's women followers.
If she wasen't such a stupid poor sport she would get out of the chopper and take on the wild life like a true blue hunter. I guess she wants to be sure she's safe so she'll stay in the air to spew her lies and with the help of the right wing, she'll make big bucks with her propaganda.
She's in the class with the rest of the non thinking party loyalists like the Foxx Noise machine.

Dee
1:25 PM, 11/5/2009

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The radical left is so obsessed with Sarah. An independent, attractive, no-nonsense, can do, traditional values woman scares the bejeebers out of them. The fact is that Page has no clue what is in that 1000+ page pile of government bureaucratic garbage called healthcare reform. All we know is they want us to swallow it and wait until 2013 to see what is really in the details. No thanks, Clarence. You go ahead and drink your kool aid, I'll pass. Real America is finally waking up. Get used to it.

cda
9:37 AM, 11/4/2009

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Mr. Page: No, "Death Panels" are not written in the healthcare bill. Nearly 2,000 pages of unacceptable, freedom robbing, big government, Acorn/Chicago Thug style garbage is. The type of government President Obama hopes to direct us to will allow the elders to do without while the Marxists raise the young to become even greater Marxists. No, we are not going to let this happen! America is standing up! Obama is going to find out how many people see through this big govt. plan he has!

Jordon Ougtred
7:53 AM, 11/4/2009

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robert----- you sound alot like that idiot scott, and his lover mignery!

tired of it
6:23 AM, 11/4/2009

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