Last week, Obama received an extraordinarily loud message that his calls for a post partisan era of politics will fall on willingly deaf ears when his opponents shamelessly and hypocritically misrepresented what is the cornerstone of any good health care system- for both fiscal pragmatism’s sake and the sake of decent morality- as a plan to euthanize older citizens. Betsy McCoy, a woman with numerous ties to the current health care system, invented the rumor that the bill Congress is now working on to reform our nation’s lapsing health care was "deadly to seniors.” The idea was further popularized by the quickly relinquishing in popularity, former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin who invented the term "death panels". This however was a lie.

What was Ms. McCoy referring to? The bill being put forth required seniors to participate in end of life counseling every five years. While the terminology leaves a bit to be desired, it is essentially a no-lose proposition.

Let’s place the reader in a hypothetical situation. You are in your hospital bed and have recently been presented with some “bad news.” You either have terminal cancer, six months to live, fill in the specifics to your heart’s content. The provision in the bill entitled you to end of life counseling at the government’s expense. You would be entitled to a doctor, lawyer, possibly an insurance agent who would ask vital questions concerning your circumstances. In the event you die would you like to be resuscitated? What are the risks of resuscitation? What is the quality of life afterwards? Is doctor assisted suicide an option for you? If you lost the ability to make decisions, e.g.  you fall into a coma or are brain dead, who will make the decisions for your treatment? As one can see, far from being a “death panel” this is actually a wonderful thing and, yes, should be mandatory. The government is not taking your autonomy away from you, they are demanding you be informed about all of your options.

How does this also make fiscal sense? 80% of all health care costs go to treating chronic diseases and end of life care. End of life counseling lessens the chances of making uninformed, and thusly stupid, expensive decisions.

As for the hypocrisy of the “death panel controversy” (if one truly is in the habit of promoting errant lies to the level of controversies) the provision was introduced by a Republican, Senator of Georgia Isakson and Sarah Palin, as governor created a “Health Care Decisions Day” in which it was urged that people should learn more about living wills. To quote the declaration:

“… one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.”

Can anyone doubt that this is surely a political ploy?

Why else should we not be afraid of this? Because we have it already! Medicare, that socialistic single-payer system that of which only 8% of participants ranked their care as fair or poor and that 70% have never had a problem with, contains such a provision! If we wanted grandma dead, she would be dead!

These are not even the most ridiculous of arguments. On a more humorous note, this past week Investor’s Business Daily, a conservative publication, published an editorial containing the following critique of the British health care system, a system in which we, in part, are trying to emulate. To quote the article:

“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.”

Chilling news unless one were to have any knowledge about Mr. Hawking aside from his reputed brilliance. If not, a simple visit to any of his numerous biographical WebPages would quickly make clear that Mr. Hawkins is, in fact, a citizen of Great Britain and resides there. Mr. Hawking replied with the quote:

“I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

But at the end of the day, who do I blame for this? I blame the Democrats. They capitulated to what is easily provable as a lie by removing the provision from the Senate bill. We are aware of the perils of an out of control government. If the recent removal of the “death panel” provision from the bill (not to mention the last eight years) have shown us anything, it is that too little government can be perilous as well.

Corrected is the first paragraph which inaccurately implied that Betsy McCoy invented the term "death panel."