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[Nat Hentoff] Real death panels coming our way
Jewish World Review ^ | 11/24/10 | Nat Hentoff

Posted on 11/24/2010 8:54:44 AM PST by rhema

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and an influential New York Times columnist, also has a blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal." On ABC's "This Week" (Nov. 14), during a discussion on balancing the federal budget against alarming deficits, he proclaimed the way to solve this problem is through deeply cost-effective health-care rationing.

"Some years down the pike," he said, "we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes." That would mean the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission "should have endorsed the panel that was part of the (Obama) health-care reform."

Sarah Palin was one of the first, and the most resounding, to warn us of the coming of government panels to decide which of us -- especially, but not exclusively, toward the end of life -- would cost too much to survive. She was mocked, scorned from sea to shining sea, including by the eminent Paul Krugman for being, he said, among those spreading "the death penalty lie" as part of "the lunatic fringe." (Summarized in "Krugman Wants 'Death Panels'" Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (Nov. 15).

Soon after he had left the ABC Studio, someone must have alerted Krugman that -- gee whiz -- he had publicly rooted for death panels! Swiftly, on his blog, Krugman admitted he had indeed said those dreaded words, but: "What I meant is that health care costs will have to be controlled, which will surely require having Medicare and Medicaid decide what they're willing to pay for -- not really death panels, of course, but consideration of medical effectiveness and, at some point, how much we're willing to spend for extreme care."

"Extreme care," Professor Krugman? To be defined by government commissions, right? Noel Sheppard of media watchdog Newsbusters

(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: death; deathpanel; deathpanels; hentoff; krugman; moralabsolutes; nathentoff; obama; obamacare; palin; panel; paulkrugman; prolife; rationing; sarahpalin
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1 posted on 11/24/2010 8:54:59 AM PST by rhema
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To: Caleb1411; wagglebee; cpforlife.org; Salvation
Fess up, Krugman, you owe Sarah Palin an apology for so often scandal-mongering her. Also, professor, aside from the abortion wars, don't most Americans agree that the most fundamental of all our rights is the right to life? Not the government's right to our lives. When you said "death panels" on that Sunday morning, you knew and meant what you were saying. As an economist dedicated to deficit-reduction you were not lamenting the coming of death panels. Clearly, you were affirming their inevitability under President Obama's determination to prevent government subsidization of "extreme care."

As you said on ABC, this is "reality therapy."

2 posted on 11/24/2010 8:58:03 AM PST by rhema ("Break the conventions; keep the commandments." -- G. K. Chesterton)
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To: rhema
Nat Hentoff, who years ago used to be a left wing loony tunes
is now showing signs of aging and thus coming to grips with
reality.

3 posted on 11/24/2010 9:09:17 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: UriÂ’el-2012
He's been a strong pro-lifer for more than two decades.

"... Nearly ten years ago [1986] I declared myself a pro-lifer [ The Indivisible Fight for Life ]. A Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, left-wing pro-lifer. Immediately, three women editors at The Village Voice, my New York base, stopped speaking to me. Not long after, I was invited to speak on this startling heresy at Nazareth College in Rochester (long since a secular institution). Two weeks before the lecture, it was canceled. The women on the lecture committee, I was told by the embarrassed professor who had asked me to come, had decided that there was a limit to the kind of speech the students could safely hear, and I was outside that limit. I was told, however, that I could come the next year to give a different talk.

[...]

"Yet being without theology isn't the slightest hindrance to being pro-life. As any obstetrics manual--Williams Obstetrics, for example--points out, there are two patients involved, and the one not yet born "should be given the same meticulous care by the physician that we long have given the pregnant woman." Nor, biologically, does it make any sense to draw life-or-death lines at viability. Once implantation takes place, this being has all the genetic information within that makes each human being unique. And he or she embodies continually developing human life from that point on. It missses a crucial point to say that the extermination can take place because the brain has not yet functioned or because that thing is not yet a "person." Whether the life is cut off in the fourth week or the fourteenth, the victim is one of our species, and has been from the start."

"Pro-choice bigots: a view from the pro-life left"

4 posted on 11/24/2010 9:13:50 AM PST by rhema ("Break the conventions; keep the commandments." -- G. K. Chesterton)
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To: rhema
"Some years down the pike," he said, "we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes."

If it works as well as the Left is hoping, I guess they'll call it the Final Solution.

5 posted on 11/24/2010 9:14:12 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: UriÂ’el-2012
Hentoff is the most powerful pro-life voice on the left.

And on other subjects, even if I disagree with him, I will give his views on those subjects consideration. He has earned that.

6 posted on 11/24/2010 9:19:41 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: rhema
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

One can not have liberty without life.
One can not have the pursuit of happiness without life.

If we do not protect life all else is a sham !

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
7 posted on 11/24/2010 9:19:41 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: rhema; 185JHP; 230FMJ; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; Amos the Prophet; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]


8 posted on 11/24/2010 9:21:03 AM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: rhema
Government-run health care wouldn't invent "death panels." The truth is that "death panels" have existed for a long time.

After all -- what do you think is happening, when an insurance company denies coverage for various operations and cancer treatments?

"Death panels" makes a fine bumper-sticker. But it's less than truthful.

9 posted on 11/24/2010 9:26:05 AM PST by r9etb
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To: UriÂ’el-2012

I’ve commented several times that I’ve met Hentoff and he’s a Constitutional absolutist - in some ways a stronger strict constructionist than “moderate” RINOs.


10 posted on 11/24/2010 9:28:46 AM PST by JMS
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To: JMS
I first listened to Hentoff on the subject of Jazz on WBAI in the late fifties.

I started to read his articles in the Village Voice at the same time.

When he was not on the topic of Jazz, he was a bomb throwing progressive.


11 posted on 11/24/2010 9:44:04 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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To: UriÂ’el-2012
Nat Hentoff, who years ago used to be a left wing loony tunes is now showing signs of aging and thus coming to grips with reality.

I'm old enough to remember that too and was really shocked when I first started noticing conservative words coming out of his mouth.

Oh well, some people actually die in their liberalism.

12 posted on 11/24/2010 9:44:29 AM PST by Graybeard58
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To: rhema
require having Medicare and Medicaid decide what they're willing to pay for

the problem is: if Medicare does not pay for a procedure, the patient is NOT allowed to spend their OWN money on it. That is why it is called "Healthcare Rationing".
13 posted on 11/24/2010 9:44:49 AM PST by campaignPete R-CT ("pray without ceasing" - Paul of Tarsus)
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bump!


14 posted on 11/24/2010 9:47:50 AM PST by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: rhema

My very favorite people to read: Nat Hentoff, Sowell, and Mark Steyn. Thanks for posting this, you’ve made my day.


15 posted on 11/24/2010 9:48:25 AM PST by GOPJ ('Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power." Martin Buber /a Tea-nami's coming..)
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To: r9etb; rhema; All

-—nonetheless, society is going to face up to the fact that if we are going to spend 35-40% of a person’s lifetime medical expense in the last 6 months or so of their life, that it has to be paid for in current money and that “society” can’t do it for everybody-—


16 posted on 11/24/2010 9:59:20 AM PST by rellimpank
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To: rellimpank

But if you don’t die, it’s not the last six months of life...


17 posted on 11/24/2010 10:09:49 AM PST by mh
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To: rhema

bump


18 posted on 11/24/2010 10:10:10 AM PST by EveningStar (Karl Marx is not one of our Founding Fathers.)
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To: rellimpank
-—nonetheless, society is going to face up to the fact that if we are going to spend 35-40% of a person’s lifetime medical expense in the last 6 months or so of their life, that it has to be paid for in current money and that “society” can’t do it for everybody-—

That's a good point.

Note, btw, that if you substitute "premium-payers" for "society" into that quote, you're describing the situation as it stands today.

I think a big part of the problem is that most of us don't even pay for most of our own insurance premiums -- our employers pick up a large part of the tab as part of our benefits package. The majority of our medical care is "free" to those of us who are fortunate enough to have good medical coverage.

And as a result, most of us are almost completely ignorant of the true costs of medical care -- all we see is the co-pays, deductibles, and a not uncomfortable deduction from our paycheck every month.

Out on the other end of the situation, the folks at the insurance company who are sending checks to doctors and hospitals, have a fixed pool of money to work with, and they have the corporate bottom line to worry about as well.

The simply cannot pay for everything. And because of that, insurance companies deny coverage all the time, even for treatments that might prolong life for a few months.

Those who are fixated on the word "government" in this debate, are overlooking the fundamental similarity between the dreaded "government death panel" and the actual "death panels" that make decisions for the insurance companies.

There are many very good reasons to oppose government-run health care. A focus on "death panels" is not one of them.

19 posted on 11/24/2010 10:18:00 AM PST by r9etb
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To: r9etb
r9,
Well said in post #9 and #19. Indeed, there will always be limits on how much that can be spent for an individuals health care versus what is technically possible. The question is if we'll transition towards a free market based system or “trust” others to collectively make choices for us.

My vote is for medical savings accounts, health ensure that could be purchased during ones working years (but last through a life time) and charity.

20 posted on 11/24/2010 10:34:01 AM PST by Red Dog #1
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