On "Death Panels" and Downs Syndrome

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's health care reform would allow "death panels" to decide to kill her son Trig, who suffers from Downs Syndrome, is not just further evidence of Caribou Barbie's detachment from reality.

It's not even just another example of cynical repugs stoking irrational fear to undermine President Obama.

No, it is actually a horrifically dangerous lie that threatens the very people she claims to wish to protect.

First, via Crooks and Liars, the final word on "death panels" from Southern Beale.

Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.

You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.

In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.

And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

Read the whole thing.

Along the same lines, Anonymous Liberal (corrected from original, and apologies to AL) explains how the real, immediate, status-quo threat to people with Downs Syndrome is the private health insurance industry Palin is so desperate to defend.

Palin warns that the people who "will suffer the most" when the government "rations care" are the "the sick, the elderly, and the disabled." The exact opposite is true. It is the private insurance industry, not the government, that excludes the sick, the elderly, and the disabled. Insurance companies are in the business of making money, and it makes no economic sense for them to cover people who are likely to incur enormous health care costs over their lifetimes. Good luck trying to purchase private health insurance if you're old, sick, or disabled.

Indeed, it is for exactly this reason that most every other country long ago gravitated toward a universal system. The alternative is a world in which people like Trig (and their parents) are punished because of their bad luck, a world in which the elderly are priced out of the system, and a world in which those who need insurance the most are unable to purchase it. Medicare wasn't just passed as some sort of grand social experiment. It was passed in response to a dire social need, i.e., a situation in which most elderly Americans could not afford to see a doctor.

The reality is that kids like Trig Palin make just about the most compelling case possible for health care reform. Through no fault of his own, Trig will likely have very large medical bills over his lifetime. He is lucky that he was born to a family of means who also happened to have good government insurance when he was born. But many other children with Down Syndrome are born into families without insurance or families who must, from that moment forward, worry constantly about what will happen to their child if they lose their insurance (because of a changed or lost job). In his post, Publius links to stories of mothers who want to quit their jobs to help take care of special needs children but know that if they do so, they won't be able to find insurance for them. That's heart-breaking. And it is the inevitable result of a system in which most people must rely on the private market and have no public insurance option. Nothing would do more to improve the lives of people with Down Syndrome and their families then to pass health care reform.

Read the whole thing.

There is simply no way to overstate the eagerness of those who fellate the health insurance industry to lie, to lie big, to lie spectacularly in the service of their corporate masters.