Latest Excuse in the “Death Panel” Controversy
- I didn't touch your bicycle.
- It was broken when I borrowed it.
In other words, there are no death panels and the Republicans are responsible for them.
It looks like at least one Republican (and that's enough to blame them all) made the mistake I warned about a few years ago and tried writing general-purpose bills to prevent a future Terri Schindler Schiavo case.
By the way, I suspect that one reason leftists try to get some conservatives on board one of their bandwagons is to be able to blame them when they run into trouble. This might be another case of that.
2 Comments:
A few years ago, Texas wrote health-care legislation. Mostly it is working: costs down, an influx of doctors, more insurance companies so a bit more lowering of costs. Perhaps largely because it included tort reform.
But an unintended consequence may, indeed, have been a "death panel" authorisation. At least according to one article, hospitals may set up a committee which can "Pull the plug" without even conferring with patient/family/guardian...
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/19/death-panels-exist-already/print/
Oops!
That's not what the point being made was. The point was a) there are no death panels and b) almost identical wording already existed in prior legislation. b is an argument more of the form "if we couldn't do death panels under the previous legislation, presumably we can't do it under this new legislation."
There may be some tribalistic bickering going on which you touch on, but that's not the ultimate point of the argument. Of course, the fact that the health care dispute has turned into a massive shouting match on all sides shouldn't be terribly surprising since that's what most American politics amounts to anyways.
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