Friday, August 14, 2009

Obama, Palin, Euthenasia, Oh My!

So, you may have noticed that I don't usually talk politics on this blog, but since you guys aren't too interested in breakfast today ;) , I've decided to go for it, mainly because there's a political issue lately that has really been burning my butt. Now, I'm pretty middle of the road politically, but the one thing about politics and the media that I really, really hate is when parties and their affiliated media sources continue to purport rumors about another candidate, party, or legislation with seemingly no care to check the facts. Case in point: the recent media firestorm that Obama and his new health plan are pro-euthenasia.

As many of you may know, the NY Times published an article today explaining that these rumors are false, and have been advanced by the Republican party and conservative media sources (and to be clear, I'm not just talking about Fox News here). The Huffington Post also does a great job fact-checking this myth.

As far as I can tell, one of the major catalysts behind these headlines that seem to be all over the media (in fact, I think Justin and his brother were even discussing this last night at band practice) was Sarah Palin's Facebook post that said, in reference to Obama's health care plan currently before congress,

"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."

Essentially, Palin and other conservative media sources have purported that under Obama's new plan, those who are sick, would have to go before a panel that would decide whether or not they were a productive member of society and worthy of medical care.

Obama himself recently addressed these rumors saying,

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.”

Interestingly enough, this is something that Sarah Palin herself endorsed as Governor of Alaska. Still, Palin continues to misguidedly imply on her Facebook page that Obama's Health Care Reform would surely mean the death of thousands of unwilling seniors, despite the fact that it's simply not true. And I can personally testify that many, many, people I've spoken to recently believe what she's been saying, and really haven't checked into the facts of it at all.

The message today from me is clear: when it comes to politics, fact-checking is essential. Getting your news from one source--whether that be ABC News, FOX, or Jon Stewart--is a bad idea. If you want to know a political figure's opinion on an issue, research their voting record (On The Issues is a great website for this), don't rely on what an opposing political figure says about it. And don't believe everything you hear on TV. Duh.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting this! It scares me that so many people believe Palin's lies and don't read other sources to determine the truth for themselves. Health care is a huge issue for me as well, and I think everyone American believes basic health care. This is not a left or right issue, it's a human rights issue.

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  2. I didn't see your quote when I copied this directly from Sarah's Facebook page.

    Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

    The President made light of these concerns. He said:

    “Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

    The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

    Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

    Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

    End Of Part 1

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  3. Part 2

    As Lane also points out:

    Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

    Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

    Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

    So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

    Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

    Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “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.” [11]

    President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

    - Sarah Palin

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  4. First of all--boo to Blogger. There were actually TONS of links in this post, which Blogger didn't properly change to a different color so y'all could see the links!

    Dad-

    Like I said yesterday, it isn't that the bill is without flaw. And I'm not saying that the end-of-life conversations should be doctor initiated rather than patient initiated.

    However, it's pretty clear that the nazi-death camp era "death panels" that Palin keeps talking about (and yes, I've seen Fox News discuss the bill with a montage of Nazi death camp video playing in the background) is NOT the situation. Yet she continues to use that term and that imagery--and many people are coming away thinking that a "death panel" is exactly what they'd have to go before.

    Further, I'm not saying the medical system isn't broken--you and I know well that it is. HOWEVER, doctors at hospitals are already required to ask adult patients if they have a living will or would like help creating one. Again, this is a doctor-initiated situation that became mandatory in 1992 under Bush's administration. For Palin to pretend this is something new that Obama's plan has created is crap, and I think it's a pretty far stretch that it will eventually create health care rationing.

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  5. My point is this...You mentioned that Sarah keeps quoting on her Facebook page about euthenasia. There are only about seven letters from Sarah herself on her official facebook page. None that I could see that mentioned euthenasia at all.

    There is a letter mentioning that the Facebook page I was reading was the only official Facebook page and that there were others that were pretending to be her site which post information that is not written by Sarah herself.

    None that I saw that was written on Aug 7th.

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  6. It's so easy to believe something because it's what so-and-so said, or what you read on facebook. Many people take a side of an issue just because it sounds good, not because they've done the research and made an educated decision.
    If I haven't done my job at educating myself on candidates or issues, I don't vote. I don't automatically take one side because it's what my parents told me to do, or because one sounds better than the other.
    Good point of view!

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  7. Nice. This likewise chapped me ass.

    It's best, I think, to view the corporate news media, especially the televised news media (e.g., CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) as entertainment rather than legitimate news. They're trying to make money and you don't do that with reporting that isn't sensationalist.

    Also, fuck Sarah Palin. Although I'm glad she's staying around to entertain me.

    Honestly, I'd like euthanasia to be an option--again, an option--in a perfect system. The problem is that any system with profit-driven health care will favor killing people cheaply instead of treating their illnesses if they don't want euthanasia, which is bad. But I'd love it as an option if I was suffering from a terminal, extremely painful condition. I might not use it, but it would be nice to have some modicum of control over how my life ended.

    Then again, I'm a raging atheist marxist who thinks that Obama is leftist only by the standards of America, where everyone left of Franco is a godless communist.

    Among all this public discussion/deception, I found it ironic that no one mentioned that the industrialized Western nation that infamously carried out a program of involuntary euthanasia (i.e., murder) of socially undesirable people (mostly handicapped people) was a rightist dictatorship, Nazi Germany.

    Ultimately, I'm a firm believer that, in a system like ours, people get the government they deserve. Which is unfortunate for those of us in the minority who give a damn and have a brain too.

    ReplyDelete

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