A foretaste of Obama-style health care? The medical staff who told me my cancer-stricken mother was ‘ready to go’ - Telegraph Blogs

A foretaste of Obama-style health care? The medical staff who told me my cancer-stricken mother was ‘ready to go’ - Telegraph Blogs

The so-called death panel clause may have been dropped from the House of Representatives health care reform bill, but Americans must be very vigilant to make sure it doesn’t come back in another form. Because it will. How can it not?

If you vow to cover everybody who isn’t covered, but not raise taxes, or increase the deficit, or cut Medicare, there’s only one way to pay for everything: convince people – in the most genteel “do your civic duty” way possible – to die earlier. And it will work. You will realise some savings, maybe even enough to cover costs, because there is always a segment of the population (in research I’ve seen on assisted suicide it’s usually the most depressed and compliant female portion) who can be convinced to stop faffing around and just go already.

You see, the so-called death panels (the requirement in House bill 3200 that Medicare pay for periodic end-of-life consultations) were never about anything mandatory. Sarah Palin and Co made a tactical error by implying that citizens would be forced to “stand before them.” All that histrionic phrase – and the erroneous use of the term “mandatory” – accomplished was to allow rows of jeering liberal commentators to dismiss the former governor as “deranged.”