Posted on 06/26/2012 1:32:38 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday revived her inflammatory accusation that President Obama's healthcare law creates "death panels."
Palin used her Facebook page to capitalize on the publicity surrounding the Supreme Court's upcoming healthcare decision. She said she wanted to take the opportunity to stand by comments in a 2009 Facebook post that touched off a firestorm of controversy.
"I stand by everything I wrote in that warning to my fellow Americans because what was true then is true now, and it will remain true as we hear what the Supreme Court has to say," Palin said in Monday's post.
Palin said in 2009 that under Democrats' healthcare plan, "my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."
The claim has been widely criticized. The nonpartisan website PolitiFact selected it as the 2009 "lie of the year."
In defending her original accusation, Palin is not talking about the same policy she originally attacked.
She said Monday that her inflammatory comments in 2009 were about the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), a group of healthcare experts tasked with cutting Medicare's payments to doctors if the program's spending grows faster than a certain rate.
"Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that Obamacare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life and death decisions about health care funding," she wrote Monday.
But Palin's initial comments make no mention of the IPAB. At the time, she referred to a proposal in the House's healthcare bill to have Medicare reimburse doctors for discussing end-of-life planning with their elderly patients.
The House bill did not include the IPAB at all, and in the wake of Palin's remarks, end-of-life planning was axed from the Senate bill that Obama ultimately signed.
“inflammatory” tells you all you need to know about the author.
Right. Telling the truth is sometimes a revolutionary act.
I’ve coined the term “Vicious Truthing” for such occasions. Don’t know if anyone had used it before, or not.
The OBAMACARE panel gave me the feeling their decisions could deny my life without due process. Seriously. That could make it unconstitutional at the core.
Did you mean Sam Baker is inflammatory or Sarah Palin?
If ObamaCare is upheld....well the National DeathPanel all wear black robes and sits in a building behind Capitol Hill....we used to call the Supreme Court.
If 0bama0care is so great, why are the politicians and unions exempt from it?
And why did they want to be exempt from it?
The death panels are there.
Sarah is right.
No matter how the idiot that wrote this article tries to twist the truth,The truth is that there will be rationing and death because of it.
What an idiot.
Yes, she referred to "end-of-life planning" specifically as an example, but the broader point she was making was the a board of bureaucrats were going to make cost-based treatment decisions as a result of the law, which would basically be choosing who gets to live and die. Whether it was actually called a "death panel" or IPAB, or anything else for that matter, she accurately predicted what the logical result of the law would be.
Even one of the NYT resident socialists, Paul Krugman, has acknowledged MengeleCare will have Death Panels.
Just look at the only graphic in Dr. Ezekiel Immanuel, et. al.’s article in the January 29, 2009, of Lancet, and the answer is apparent. Follow this with what is currently happening in “our pattern,” according the the man in charge in Washington, the NHS in Great Britian, and Palin’s conclusion just kind of gets nailed to the floor.
Us old folks who are not independently wealthy are in great danger of health care services being rationed because, according to them (read ‘death panel’), our useful life is fininshed.
Also, a side benefit is that our “early removal” will help lower the pressure on the SS funds held in the great “lock box” in the sky....what? There’s no lock box...who knew?
It is pretty obvious the death panels are coming...just look at the new “guidelines” for breast and prostate cancer screenings created by a group of government bean counters. The current standards for mammograms and PSA testing were developed by cancer researchers and physicians actually treating cancer. However according to government bean counters these are to be thrown out because there is no “statistical difference” in outcome and they might lead to “unnecessary” and expensive tests. Tell that to the thousands of Americans whose lives were saved by such frequent tests.
No surprise, but Sam Baker just lied. It wasn’t Palin who brought up the end-of-life counseling provisions as the part of Obamacare she opposed. It was the media and many pols who jumped to that conclusion. Palin made two subsequent posts addressing these errors by the media.
In the link that Baker uses in this story, it’s Palin’s response to Obama referring to end-of-life counseling. Obama tired to steer people to believe that she was referring to end-of-life counseling when she referred to “death panel”. That was a lie, and here we are today with Baker lying about it again. Do you wonder why Baker didn’t link Palin’s original post where she first used the term “death panel”? It’s because she did NOT refer to end-of-life counseling in it. Again, the link that Baker has used here is a response to an erroneous conclusion by Obama and others.
Here’s the link to her initial post. Notice there is no mention of end-of-life counseling. It wasn’t Palin who called that counseling a “death panel”. As a matter of fact, Palin favors voluntary end-of-life counseling. http://www.facebook.com/note.p...
Some of you try to minimize the actuality that the IPAB is in essence a death panel, of which there is no appeal process, by writing that its the insurance companies that have the death panel. One has nothing to do with the other. Besides, as bad as insurance company decisions can be, you still have the right of multiple appeals as well as working with your state insurance commissioner to advocate for you. With the IPAB, there is absolutely no appeal process.
This article has nothing to do with facts. It has everything to do with trying to belittle Palin. She was right then and she’s right today. Sam Baker is a two-bit hack who either can’t comprehend the written word or he’s purposely lying. I suspect it’s both.
Gov. Palin is exactly right. The first place we will see death panels is in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU). No more will there be all out efforts to save every baby. Under Obamacare an assessment of their “worth” will have to be made according to government “guidelines” before these infants can have any treatment.
Do you get a vote in the, “Obama Death Panel?”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.