DEATH PANELS REDUX

Remember “Death Panels?”

In 2009, the Republican far-right pushed the notion that President Obama's “socialist government” had, via its new Affordable Care Act, established “death panels” in which medical panels would decide which patients should live and which should be euthanized. The phrase was coined by that eminent scholar Sarah Palin, and was picked up by a substantial segment of conservative Republicans including the likes of Gingrich, Grassley, et al. 

The assertion was largely rejected by the press and most of the public. PolitiFact gave it a “Pants on Fire” rating. and scored it as the biggest lie of the year. Nevertheless a poll showed that 30% of the population believed the lie. 30%!

 Well, Sarah Palin's death panels have returned, only this time they are real: 

Last night, Judy Woodruff’s guest was the Medical Director of a Hospital in the State of Idaho, where hospitals are at 100% capacity. When a new covid patient is brought into the hospital, in need of the ICU and a ventilator, the medical professionals confer and decide whether to take another patient off a ventilator because he is not "doing well", and put the new patient on the freed-up machine. The removed patient is placed a room where he dies.

 But we no longer hear the right wing talk of death panels when sick patients are removed from ventilators and placed elsewhere in the hospital to die.

Why? Because in Idaho, as in other states, 95% of ICU covid patients are unvaccinated and 63% of Idaho residents between the ages of 12 and 64 are unvaccinated. This puts Idaho in league with Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Wyoming and eight other states that border on or below the 40% mark. It seems the right wing does indeed prefer to see death panels decide who lives and who dies, and to see the death rate climb.

It is a political idea that I cannot wrap my brain around. 

A correspondent tells me this story: she made a visit to her physician in the State of Georgia for her annual checkup. The nurse took her medical history and asked whether she had been vaccinated against influenza, shingles, etc. The nurse ran down the list but never asked about covid. The patient asked her why she omitted the covid question and the nurse told her that in her experience the question enraged many patients! "Why do you ask about my personal affairs?  Did you get vaccinated? It's none of your business!” The nurse said the confrontational responses were so prevalent and so disruptive, they decided to stop asking the question!

Ironic, non?  The same people who saw Medicare as encouraging medical panel euthanasia, now refuse vaccination and thereby volunteer to become a victim of medical panel euthanasia.

I guess this proves Sarah Palin was wrong, and there is nothing wrong with death panels?

Who knew?

A bientot.

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