“I didn’t mean to kill Grandma”

The author of the end-of-life counseling provision in the health care bill reflects on the Great Blood Libel of 2009.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) reflects on the history of the “death panel” lie, and names some names:

The Speaker Gingrich I served with a decade ago would have been appalled at the blatant and repeated falsehoods of the Newt Gingrich of 2009.

People like Senator Chuck Grassley, a Iowa Republican, were now parroting these falsehoods in their town meetings and letting it drive their policy decisions. (Mr. Grassley: “We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on Grandma.”) When the most extreme elements peddling false information can cow senior members of Congress into embracing their claims, it does not bode well for either policymaking or for the Republican Party.

I had dinner recently with a libertarian friend who felt wronged by media accounts portraying the tea-party crowd as a bunch of racist Yahoos.   But those events have helped spread the Great Blood Libel of 2009, and - as Blumenauer says - helped cow Republican politicians who know better into embracing that libel.  

On a purely short-term, cynical accounting, the tactic has worked; the public has been given a vague sense that health care reform is somehow dangerous and Big-Brotherish.   All we can do is hope that Lincoln was right about fooling all of the people all of the time.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

9 thoughts on ““I didn’t mean to kill Grandma””

  1. "The Speaker Gingrich I served with a decade ago would have been appalled at the blatant and repeated falsehoods of the Newt Gingrich of 2009."

    The Speaker that was cheating on his wife while trying to bring down a President for having an affair?

  2. "The Speaker Gingrich I served with a decade ago would have been appalled at the blatant and repeated falsehoods of the Newt Gingrich of 2009."

    Also: the same speaker Gingrich who blamed liberalism for Susan Smith's decision to drown her two children?

    What earthly reason could there be for claiming that Newt Gingrich had an intellectual conscience ten years ago? None that I can see.

  3. Nice to see you back, Hilzoy. Mark, it's frustrating how so many people will lie through their teeth about the honesty of somebody who's repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that honesty is foreign to his nature.

  4. Wingnuts have resurrected death panels - a couple of investment newsletters talk about a "rationing and enforcement board" in the stimulus bill that they claim are death panels.

    usually it's just glibertarian and anti tax stuff to wade through.

  5. Didn't President Obama himself suggest that there are some treatments that are currently available to the elderly do not "make sense"? Where are all these costs savings coming from — Medicare? Is it truly equal to the "Blood Libel" to suggest that there is absolutely no basis to fear rationing under this plan?

  6. "Is it truly equal to the “Blood Libel” to suggest that there is absolutely no basis to fear rationing under this plan?"

    Yes, since we have actual, existing Medicare to judge by.

  7. Perhaps the old Gingrich would have been appalled because he hadn't been watching 10 years of evidence that lies like this work, at least in the short term. And that there are really no public consequences for uttering them.

    I understand, btw, that under health-care reform there will be no money for implantation of monkey glands in the elderly to return them to a state of youthful vigor. How dare the government ration treatment like this?

  8. Barry,

    Are you aware that the plan explicitly relies on Medicare cuts? http://www.whitehouse.gov/MedicareFactSheetFinal/

    Now, I believe it is reasonable to criticize Republicans for their sudden defense of the Medicare status quo, but you can't use Medicare as it is currently constituted to claim that there is no reasonable concern about rationing.

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