Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The real death panels

Via Digby, Southern Beale gives Sarah Palin a lesson on "death panels":

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.

Is it possible that Palin didn't already know this? Or is she a liar? With her, it's almost always hard to tell where the ignorance ends and the dishonesty begins.

4 comments:

Winslow Robertson said...

A point that should be emphasized again and again is that we ALREADY have death panels and we already ration healthcare. Hopefully we can eliminate them with reform, but that's another thing entirely. But Sarah Palin? Come on, how can you take what she says seriously?

And dude, are you a Cowboys fan or something? How can you be so against the Redskins, besides having a d-bag owner, a history of racism, and a (borderline) racist name?

blackink said...

Amen. And I should know better than to parrot Palin's silly claims but sometimes, every now and again, she says something so ridiculous and reckless that I'm moved to words.

And lol about the Cowboys and Redskins. Man, as you'll come to find out through football season, I probably don't detest another pro franchise as much as I do the Cowboys. It's mostly because of a life spent growing up in Texas, and dealing with their obnoxious, bandwagon backers.

I'm actually pretty neutral about the Redskins, despite that horrendous nickname. After all, in their favor, they've got Doug Williams, Darrell Green and Michael Westbrook taking out Stephen Davis.

Winslow Robertson said...

Ha, you have to be stronger than that ink!

Its funny that you should hate the Cowboys after growing up in Texas, as my own American family's hatred for all things Texan came from their interactions with them back in Cali and Louisiana. I have been taught to hate Texans since I learned English. I only got into the skins because my friend made me a convert after I bought Madden 2002 for the Gamecube (which had few good games at the time).

Doug Williams and Darrell Green are pimps, but Westbrook only decked Davis because Davis called him the f-word. As a historian I should probably not be a fan, but I would still love the skins if they changed their name to the Nazi Slaver Rapists.

So what are your thoughts on Pitino?

blackink said...

Lol at "Nazi Slaver Rapists."

And fam, you and your family hate Texans, eh? C'mon. What'd we ever do to anyone - except for the Bush thing. Sorry about that.

I grew up in Houston, so I grew up hating the Cowboys and Longhorns and rooting for the Oilers and Coogs. Since I was an Oilers fan, I'm scarred for life when it comes to investing my heart into rooting for another NFL franchise.

As for Pitino, man, I'm not even sure if I have an opinion about that one. I'm never surprised about that kind of stuff anymore. If he wasn't a winner, I wonder how much the school would have supported him through this.

What say you?