Wright on Palin's "Death Panel" Comment

Guest blogger Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God, offers a clever take on The Daily Dish on Sarah Palin's recent comments on a "death panel" doling out health care based on their judgement as to one's "level of productivity in society." These comments garnered the coveted "Pants on Fire" ruling from non-partisan website Politifact.com.

In Palin’s fantasy, the death-panel “bureaucrats” were going to pick winners and losers based on a judgment about their “level of productivity in society.” Well, if you view income as a gauge of a person’s productivity in society—and God knows there are Republicans who do—then the quality of health care is already correlated with “productivity in society.” Obama’s plan, by making health care more affordable to lower income people, would make that less true.

Any government health care plan will bring some new form of “rationing,” since no government can afford to guarantee everyone all possible medical treatment. But let’s be clear: the people who are trying to sabotage reform by telling mind-boggling lies about its hidden rationing agenda seem, in fact, pretty content with rationing; they seem happy with a system in which the least “productive” members of society get bad health care, including, occasionally, health care so bad that it leads to death.

--Ballard Burgher