How did this become a question of euthanasia?

I have no idea. I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.

Palin's statements are pretty opportunistic. She is a member in good standing of the same band of liars that includes Newt Gingrich who made similar statements on TV this weekend.

Something to think about  (Received second hand)

Senior Death Warrants:  

 I can vouch for this  to a degree.  Wednesday, I was at the doctor   whom I have been  going to since we moved down here (he is the one who discovered my  cancer).  I have to get a very expensive shot every 3 months  ($3000) that is designed to keep the PSI down and  help to prevent a  recurrence of the cancer.  Has  some uncomfortable side  effects, and I was questioning the need to continue with it, which he assured me was necessary.  He  then asked how old I was, and when I replied 70, he said that if this legislation goes  through as intended by the powers that be, that I  probably would not be  able to get it next year, as that would be    money better spent on  someone else with greater longevity.  I would be referred to someone to "counsel"  me.                      

I asked him why the AMA had recently endorsed the plan.   He replied that only  about 15% of the nation's doctors were members of AMA, and most of  them were not really on the front lines of  doctorhood but in  some other areas of medicine.  He said he was a  member, but would not be after this membership  year.  This man got part of his training in London, and practiced in  Canada for 16 years  before coming to the US, and he has no use for socialized medicine, regardless of how you wrap it, or what kind  of bow to put on  it.  He said that we have a shortfall of around 400,000 doctors at the present time, and many of today's doctors are of the baby  boomer generation who are nearing  retirement and/or will decide to  hang it up rather than deal with the results  this is sure to  bring.

Scary, my  friends.  The picture for our age group is not pretty.    

ALL THE MORE  REASON TO NOT PUT YOUR FAITH IN  GOVERNMENT.          

SENIOR DEATH  WARRANTS:    
In England anyone  over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or  bypass  because it is not covered as being too expensive and  not  needed.

Obama wants to have a  healthcare system just like Canada 's and England 's. I got  this today and am sending it  on.  If Obama's plans in  other areas don't scare you, this should.  Please do not let  Obama sign senior death  warrants  Everybody that is on  this mailing list is either a senior citizen, is getting close or  knows somebody that  is.  Most of you know by  now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" bill  includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for  senior citizens. The author of this part of the  bill, former senator  and tax evader,  Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg  with the following  statement: Bloomberg: Daschle  says "health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be  more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of  treating  them."

If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that our esteemed Senators  and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first  dollar or very low co-pay which they  are  guaranteed the  remainder of their lives and are not subject to  this new law if it  passes.

Please use the power  of the Internet to get this message out. Talk it up at the  grassroots level.  We have an election coming up in one year and five  months.  And we have the ability to address and reverse the  dangerous direction the Obama administration and its allies have begun  and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable. Lets do  this!    

If you disagree, do  nothing.

  As I read it, the purpose is simply to mandate that insurers must cover counseling/consultations for people who wish arrange for the nature of their "end of life" treatment through living wills or other advance directives.

  It does not concern whether any other services themselves will be rationed or excluded from coverage but it also has nothing to do with mandating covering care designed to prolong life or enhance the quality of life in the terminal stage.

  The consultation/counseling in question  will not come from the government or from insurers. this provision would siimply mean that people who choose to seek such consultations will be covered and insurers may not write exclusions denying coverage for such consultations.

  That said, nothing in the provision -- or elsewhere I the bill as far as I can tell--- means that people will be entitled to have whatever care they desire covered just because of an advance directive.

that she is not a clever populist moderate and that any democrat with a conscience could never support her.

The real issue is that right now there are Death Panels and those are run by the insurance companies.  They do make decisions regarding coverage of medication and treatment.  And those decisions are largely opaque and unappealable, at least, I have never been able to appeal successfully.

In a public option, won't there be those same panels discussing everything from end of life, to disability, to orthotics and fungal treatments?

The public deserves a conversation on how those sorts of decisions will be made in a public option (should one come about).  Are these decisions of politicians?  Of bureaucrats?  Made in Washington?  Or are they decisions that will be left to doctor and patient, and if so, how, and how will that get paid for?  Will panels exist in Washington, or will they exist locally and encourage local variation and local appeal processes?

AP's opinion that Palin is wrong - is just opinion, not fact. Palin's opinion about the future - is just opinion, not fact.

The only way anyone could say that Palin is "lying" about the future, is if they know that Palin looked into a magic crystal ball, saw a future without "death panels" but claimed she DID see "death panels" in there.

Agree or disagree with someone, fine. But understand the difference between opinion and fact. Here's an example:

1. 'The Holocaust never happened' - this is a lie, because it contradicts a historical fact.

2. '5 people will die in the Garbage Avalanche of 2505AD' - this is not a lie, because the events of 2505AD have not occurred yet, there's no way to check this "fact"

   I profiled Schlafly for The Miami Herald (full text here) in 1987 after she had brilliantly, almost single-handedly stomped the Equal Rights Amendment ratification campaign into a powder by turning it into a gay-sex-rampage-enabling amendment. How, I never quite understood.

So, I asked Schlafly about the formidable skills she deploys in a heartbeat on any public topic. See who she reminds you of...

Schlafly adores absolutes. It's an efficient way to reason in debates.

A serious debate requires an opponent of equal intellectual weight and moral force. Schlafly says she can't think of any honorable spokesman for the opposition -- someone of knowledge and integrity with whom she can respectfully disagree -- on any issue.

People who think differently than she does are either lying, laughing or not truly confronting the issues, she says.

If your opinion is that government should make these decisions rather then insurance companies or capitalist forces then say so but to argue Sarah Palin is making this up is also an opinion that I'd gladly "fact check".

  "Perfect" care for all people in all circumstances is not possible. As just one example, a disease that is extremely rare will  not in any  system gain the level of research and development of pharmaceuticals,  other research into treatment and management and practitioner expertise as will diseases that afflict great numbers.

   Is this "rationing" care? Do people with a rare disease have the same "moral right" to effective health care as those with common maladies? Or, does the collective welfare dictate that those people must receive lesser care because the cost of providing them with effective care will either (or both) deprive others of care or force others to pay "unreasonable" amounts to subsidize their care?

  This and all the other questions relating to the magnitude,  direction and sources of allocated resources constitute real issues of monumental importance.

   With any change or no change in the mechanisms through which the availability and costs of health care are managed these fundamental questions remain.

  At some point we need to be serious and stop either using the relaity such decisions have to be made to scare people or pretending that there is some magic elixir of better legislation that will make these issues vanish.

How Obama lost control of health message

He believes that Obama has taken advice the multitude of Clinton Administrations in the current WH, who were involved with President Clinton's  health care initiative in 1993-4. he calls it The `ClintonCare' effect

The calculated deference to Congress on policy matters is no accident. Obama's West Wing is stocked with Clinton administration veterans who remain haunted by the failed attempts to overhaul the health system in 1993 and 1994 -- an effort that was effectively crippled after the White House developed a 1,342-page health overhaul bill, then demanded Congress pass it. In addition to Emanuel -- who was a senior adviser in the Clinton White House -- other Obama officials involved in that fight include Secretary of State and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton; Jeanne M. Lambrew, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Health Reform; and John D. Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, who serves as an informal adviser to the president.

Such figures come to the debate with a clear cautionary message, observers say: The president should stay on the sidelines and keep Congress invested in an outcome until the time for serious horse-trading arrives.