Red Cross Exec: "Yup, They Are Death Panels"

Technically, Bernardine Healy, MD, is an EX-Red Cross official...

The bill takes all sorts of choices out of patients' and doctors' hands. Even mammograms and prostate-specific antigen tests would be similarly restricted by the government for millions of people, and they actually serve as better examples of what happens more broadly to personal medical decision making in the new system.

The ground is being laid already, with the announcement by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-appointed body, of new guidelines for mammograms just days ago. Such a board of experts, composed mainly of primary care, prevention, public health, and epidemiology experts, would recommend the list of preventive services covered in the post-health-reform insurance plan that all would have no choice but to buy. Until now, the government's task force has been one voice among several medical groups issuing sometimes conflicting prevention guidelines, leaving room for patient-doctor choice. But in an elevated role under health reform, the federal preventive task force's declarations would carry greater force and have an economic impact on everyone.

We'll remind you that David Obey (D-Potatohead) wrote the enabling legislation for Death Panels in the budget. He also believes that WWII terminated all of FDR's New Deal programs and that VietNam ended the Great Society.

So far, Obey has not commented on the demise of the Easter Bunny, but you can bet he'll postulate that Bush/Cheney and Blackwater were in the background. After all, they have guns, or something.

HT: Confederate Yankee