Sarah Palin: There Won't Be 'Death Panels' After All -- Thanks to Her

In an op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Sarah Palin suggests that there won't be any "death panels'' under health care reform legislation after all. Only in her telling, this is thanks to her diligence in sounding the alarm, and the scared-witless response from those for whom "it rang true.''

The former Alaska governor and '08 Republican vice-presidential nominee nimbly grabs credit for killing the (nonexistent) idea of killer panels while rolling around on the ground laughing at the idea that the government could ever do anything right, including cutting health care costs:

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"Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council -- an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of 'normal political channels,' should guide decisions regarding that 'huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives.' Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by -- dare I say it -- death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through 'normal political channels,' they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context.''

So she's going to declare victory and go home? The fact that people were concerned doesn't mean they were right to worry. Palin makes it sound as though Mr. and Mrs. Minding Their Own Darn Business just naturally got anxious after reading Obama's scary boo-boo remarks in the Times. When no, if they worried at all it was after watching Palin's – dare I say it – death-defying leap from a perfectly harmless proposal (to pay for one optional counseling session about end-of-life decisions every five years) to the notion that bureaucrats might come knocking on her door to tell her they'd given the thumbs down to her son with Down syndrome.

(Her actual quote, posted on her Facebook page: "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.'')

In today's piece, she hedges, backs off of her original position by a couple of miles, and gives herself a permanent out by making the nonsensical, yet impossible-to-disprove claim that providing a counseling session might ultimately have led to rationing of that kind. (Or not.)

Yes, Congress will likely remove any mention of this modest nod to the reality that we're all going to die – and you could argue that our whole health care system is built around our energetic denial of that fact – because that one little counseling session has become way more political trouble than it's worth.

But there were never going to be any such panels, and for Palin to so slyly suggest that that's thanks to her eagle-eyed efforts is the cheekiest thing I've heard since – this morning, when I saw that her fellow Republican Jim Greer, head of the Florida GOP, was claiming that since Obama did not get political in his Tuesday speech to school kids, that can only mean that he changed his mind under the pressure of all the preemptive criticism.

"Clearly last week there was a plan with the Department of Education," Greer told CNN. "When you ask students to write a letter to the president on how we can help you...that is leading the students in an effort to push the president's agenda. Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything.''

Are we also to thank Palin and Greer for the absence of locusts on the land and gremlins on my lawn?

Palin's piece, "Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care,'' also goes on confoundingly about how painful it would be to have bureaucrats telling us what procedures we would be reimbursed for – which either means that she hasn't been to a doctor in 15 years or doesn't mind paying out of pocket.

She does make one accurate claim, however, arguing that it won't be possible to simultaneously reduce costs and subsidize universal health care without growing the deficit or raising taxes, twin maladies the president has promised to avoid. To which I say: Duh. In the longer-term, costs could be tamed, but positive steps like more preventive care and electronic records won't pay off overnight, and Obama should come out and say that. Because ultimately, to borrow Gov. Palin's word, he can only battle misinformation with unpadded facts.


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