Death Panel Advocacy on This Week

The National Review ^ | February 24, 2013 | Wesley J. Smith

[2ndDivisionVet]

Liberals screamed when Sarah Palin warned about “death panels” during the run up to the passage of Obamacare. But many really want health care rationing based on invidious methods of medical discrimination–as I have repeatedly reported here. I was just watching This Week and Steve Rattner–former adviser to Obama Treasury Dept. who has written in favor of death panels–alluded to them again. In a discussion on medical spending and cost control, he said (my transcription:)

Rattner: Here is a small question for the country…Right now most Americans do not see price in deciding whether to use healthcare…When people go on Medicare, they really don’t see price, they tend to consume more than they otherwise would. Twenty-six percent of all Medicare spending is last year of life. We don’t know how much of that is really efficacious spending. These are really tough moral questions for the country but we are going to have to deal with them.

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal caught the reference:

Strassel: What you are getting to though is the fundamental question: Are you going to let consumers make those choices about end of life decisions, or are you going to have Medicare make a decision about what procedures you can have and how much they will pay, and government make those choices. That’s the moral question...

[2ndDivisionVet]

She MUST be president.

[Aglooka]

It would be nice if the GOP could at least try to make this an issue. Even though it would make them less popular with their media friends (who hate them anyway).

[Aglooka]

It would be nice if the GOP could at least try to make this an issue. Even though it would make them less popular with their media friends (who hate them anyway).

[humblegunner]

She MUST be president.

Kimberly Strassel?

[Notary Sojac]

Are you going to let consumers make those choices about end of life decisions, or are you going to have Medicare make a decision about what procedures you can have and how much they will pay, and government make those choices.

The only conclusion that has ever seemed to make any sense to me is that the amount of medical care which can be offered by Medicare, or any other government program, has to be constrained by the amount of money coming into its budget. Services which that budget cannot afford need to be selected, and paid for, by the consumer.

So-called "conservatives" on FR, who apparently think that Medicare should have an unlimited blank check on which to draw, do our country's future no good.