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I wasn’t sure what a “Death Panel” was, so I did some research. MedPageToday had a great article by Dr. Rob. He tried to find some at Home Depot, but they didn’t have any available. See: MedPage Today Blogs: Medical News plus CME from MedPage Today. Sarah Palin said a Death Panel is a group of government bureaucrats who would decide if the sick, old, disabled, and unproductive would be granted life or be sentenced to death. Scary thought. I mean, I was picturing these bad guys in military uniforms smoking cigarettes and blowing smoke rings. But, somewhere, like a being rescued out of a nightmare, I heard the phrase “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...” And I remembered, “We live in America, not Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia.” And I thought, “Maybe Sarah’s been gazing at Russia too much.”
But, then I heard something today, and now I know what the Death Panel is. It is the gang of activists who would kill health reform, who have worked the crowds into frenzy and who managed to scare America into not getting the care they need and deserve.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
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Dianne,
ReplyDeleteIt is completely irresponsible that these people are misconstruing the facts and in some cases just blatantly lying about what health care reform is meant to do.
The only one's who are happy with the status quo are the one's who are making a fortune from it. Time to look at their ties to insurance and big Pharma and disclose what sort of health care coverage they have.
How dare anyone in congress, anyone in government deny their fellow American an opportunity to have the same type of health care plan that government workers have. The health care reform plan is essentially based on the government workers plan. All Americans deserve to have access to an affordable health care plan. There is something fundamentally wrong with people who would interfere with this.
I have to laugh when people say that government should not get involved in health care - what is Medicaid/Medicare? Why do people think that insurance companies can do a better job?
I know two family members who worked for HMO's, both were told by their boss to deny a bone marrow transplant claim for a young child because the family had reached their cap. In both cases the child died. Doesn't that sound like a death panel decision to you?
We are learning a lot about certain people's character, which will help in decision making later on..
So here's to Health care reform - YES WE CAN!
A darker perspective.
ReplyDeleteAs I work-up my course for the coming semester, which concerns the Holocaust, I will assign again a reading that contains the following passage:
"There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and the superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people..."
This is not to summarize all the real issues in the reform debate. But it is to suggest its darker shadow.
Fear is very powerful. It can be positive, warning us of real danger and evoking an instictive "fight or flight" response. We use fear to deal with and help resolve our threats.
ReplyDeleteFearmongering is not positive. It uses innuendo, half-truth (or less) and outright lies to confuse and frighten, to promote a false agenda, to kill an idea before it can be heard or understood.
When there is no merit-based arguement, when the thesis has no proof, the options are to either shut-up and go away, or make-up crap. Death panels are made-up crap. What next; images of
executioners cloaked in black hoods, gramma blindfolded in front of a firing squad...?
You want fear. The ditz who coined the phrase, or at least who mouthed it, was a major party's candidate for Vice President of the United States. And, given a few not unlikely scenarios, could very well have become President.
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