Remember that whole crazy thing: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Betsey McCaughey?
Remember that editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, possibly the greatest own-goal in the history of health policy?
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
Remember IBD’s subsequent correction? It quietly removed the self-refuting passage and added this “Editor’s note:”
This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK.
I remember all that. For more, here’s me at Politico Magazine.
EdWhitney says
On the first day that “death panels” became a household word, someone from the Obama administration should have come out and said, “These people do not want you to have the choice to discuss with your doctor what kind of care you want in your final days. They do not want you to have the choice to spend your last days at home with your loved ones; they want the government to force you to spend that time in a hospital intensive care unit, hooked up to tubes and machines and electronic devices just because those measures will prolong your life by a few days or weeks.”
Pres. Obama instead gave a rather lame denial that the ACA was going to kill granny. That little smart ass from Alaska continued to have the polemical momentum instead of being thrown on the defensive as she deserved to be thrown.
marcel_proust says
Best sentence from the linked article:
Politicians across the political spectrum have made important contributions in the domain of intellectual disability.
Yes, indeedy.
JamesWimberley says
Let's not talk about "death panels". Refuse to discuss end-of-life care with anyone who repeats a simple lie for political gain. OK, you can cite it to identify and shame the guilty.