Dave Obey's "Death Panel"

We all know that David Obey wrote the language enabling the 'review panel' which panel will govern medical decisionmaking under ObamaCare.

I've mentioned it. So has Sarah Palin. It's called 'the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.' That's Orwellian-speak for 'Some Bunch of Characters Who Will Dictate Treatments or NON-Treatments.'

Palin, by the way, was not the first person to notice the potential trouble with Obey's "Death Panel."

...63 patient advocacy groups including the AIDS Institute, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, and the American Association for Cancer Research, have written a letter to Congress, expressing their concerns. They explained that this provision could lead to "restrictions on patients' access to treatments and physicians' and other providers' ability to deliver care that best meets the needs of the individual patient."

That word "could" is important. The Obamabots screech that "there is no provision which SAYS ObamaCare will kill people."

It is far more important to recognize that there is no provision which specifically prohibits it, either. ObamaCare will simply do nothing. (The same twists apply to taxpayer funding of abortions; the bill will simply abrogate the Hyde Amendment, silently.)

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. --quoted by William Jacobson/Legal Insurrection

Yup.

Jacobson then quotes Rahm-a-Jamma's brother Ezekial (an MD), from a 2009 essay, writing about a panel which:

...considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives. A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable....

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.

"Attenuated," eh, Rahm-a-jamma?

Sounds kinda like "death" to me, too.

HT: Legal Insurrection

For another discussion, see McIlheran's column.