A Rose By Any Other Name

Before today's look at "Death Panels: Fact or Fiction" we are truly blessed to have a glittering jewel of incompetence to examine that doesn't involve health care.

Michigan's own Debbie Stabenow proclaimed today that "climate change is real" because "she can feel it when she flies." She was apparently refereeing to air turbulence which she attributed to man made climate change along with an increase in hurricanes and tornadoes. (read the full article here.)

A few thoughts:
Of course climate change is real, it has been changing since the beginning of time.
Decade long global cooling trend.
Coldest July on record for Michigan.
Massive defection amongst scientists endorsing man made global warming.
You and your loser Governor have continued to endorse policies that have turned one of our great states into a laughingstock of poverty and depression.
Leave the rest of us the hell alone please.

Allright then, now Sarah Palin has been catching some heat lately for referring to the death panel provisions in the House Health Bill. Leftists all over the media and politics exploded denouncing both her and the idea of death panels. When leftists react so strongly, it's usually because you labelled something correctly and they don't like it, so further investigation is in order.

After some reflection I believe that death panel is the wrong term because it is too limiting. It would seem to suggest that all he panel does is decide life and death issues. I think that torture panel might be more accurate. I'll explain.

We know that there is absolutely going to be a panel of doctors that set policy according to proper treatment of patients. This is too solve Obama's complaints of doctors performing procedures that aren't needed. Think "take the painkiller" or "cutting off diabetics feet" or "removing tonsils for the money." So we know clearly, there will be a panel giving the thumbs up or down to patients treatments depending on the circumstances.

Also, we know that the intended result of this is not to provide better health care but to save money and time. This is critical given that the plan would add 50 million new patients with no new doctors. Efficiency and cost reduction are a must and rationing will occur. The only place that cost savings can be realized is by altering how you deal with people who use lots of insurance. You can't save money on people who only have a yearly physical and nothing else. This puts the elderly, disabled and people with chronic disease squarely in the firing line. As an example, Dr. Emmanuel (Rahms brother and Obama health czar) has advocated denying treatment to people with dementia due to he fact that they have a very low probability of being productive again.

Now we come to torture camps. Combining the overload of patients, target reduction of costs, health care philosophy of the administration and natural inefficiencies associated with government run programs, he decisions of the panel can only be detrimental to people in the target groups. Procedures such as hip or knee replacements, pacemakers, cancer treatments, dementia treatments, etc. are all subject to be delayed or cut. The elderly are especially vulnerable given that their age makes them far less likely to ever regain optimum productivity. Medicating the problem rather than solving them also frees up the medical providers to see all the extra patients that they are forced to treat. The elderly are not alone though. Many young people through birth defect, injury, etc. are similarly incapacitated. How far is the panel willing to go to treat a child with Down's Syndrome or Muscular Dystrophy? Young adults in a coma from brain trauma or afflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease or inoperable brain stem tumors? These medications/procedures used to treat these conditions are often extremely costly with low rates of success. Some only prolong life with minimal increase in livability. Some result in no improvement at all. One thing all treatments offer though is hope. Experimental drugs, treatments and surgeries are sometimes all a person has before coping with the looming specter of mortality. Will the medical panel allow these procedures to continue on into infinity? Given the expense and low success rate it seems unlikely. This is where the end of life counselling comes into play. Patients faced with the awful realization that their needed treatments will be delayed or cancelled will have to make the choice between three options; 1) Live with the pain and/or suffering 2) Take the government morphine and live out your days in a fog or 3) take the government provided exit to this world. Worse still, the bill in the House gives no clear indication what will be covered or who the bureaucrats will be. We all would have to wait until this thing takes effect to know for sure what is covered and what isn't. That coverage would also be subject to change given the cost needs of the government. The Canadians, Brits and French can all testify to their own rising out of pocket expenses.

So the new ObamaCare medical plan doesn't really have death panels. The panels would more frequently than not simply deny (ration) coverage to those people who are too taxing on the system. Rather than resulting in an spike of dead people, the result will be more people living out their lives in pain from easily treatable but costly conditions.

So Mrs. Palin while I admire you greatly I must quibble with the term death panel. Given the prolonging of suffering that will be the end result of this program I prefer torture panel in an attempt to give greater weight to the duration of suffering endured.

I suppose we could meet halfway and just call them slow-death panels but that isn't very catchy.