Tuesday, August 18, 2009

"Death panels" couldn't be closer to truth

Dr. Thomas Sowell shows how the feigned outrage of a potent phrase is also false:

"Whose Medical Decisions? Concerns about bureaucrats deciding who get to receive medical care didn’t “arise from nowhere.”

"The current “health care” bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats. People are taking that personally — as they should. Your life and death, and that of your loved ones, is as personal as it gets...

"The mainstream media are again circling the wagons to protect Barack Obama, but this time it may not work. One of those front-page editorials disguised as a news article in the New York Times begins: “The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored ‘death panels’ to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.”

"Nowhere? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is “Special Advisor for Health Policy” for the Obama administration. That’s nowhere? He is also co-author of an article on Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care in the June 18, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Is that nowhere?...

"As for a “death panel,” no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. “End of life” care under the “guidance” of “some independent group” sounds so much nicer — and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th."

Read the rest at NRO: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzkzNTIxNDhmZTE5ZjNjNjZlYWY0MjMzNTM2OWJmNTU=

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