I'll be brief.
I don't know if I am in the minority here, but I think the best way to deal with the "deathers" is to shove this meme down their throats and make them choke on it.
The other night, I wrote about the big insurance bureaucrat death panels, and there have been diaries about Palin's comments, other republicans who have embraced one idea or another that is hypocritical to this discussion, but I haven't seen (and if I am wrong, then I apologize) anything about the Advance Directives Act, a death panel in every sense of the word that then Texas Governor George W. Bush signed into law.
For those who don't like Wikipedia as a source (bravo, actually), here is the relevant section of the Texas Health and Safety Code that essentially allows a medical facility to decide whether it wants to continue giving life-sustaining treatment, even against the wishes of the patient or family.
Focus on Section 166.046, Subsection E, which allows:
If an attending physician refuses to honor a patient's advance directive or a health care or treatment decision made by or on behalf of a patient, the physician's refusal shall be reviewed by an ethics or medical committee. The attending physician may not be a member of that committee. The patient shall be given life-sustaining treatment during the review.
So if a patient or his/her family don't agree with the physician, it goes before a board to decide the patient's fate. But wait, there's more:
If the attending physician, the patient, or the person responsible for the health care decisions of the individual does not agree with the decision reached during the review process under Subsection (b), the physician shall make a reasonable effort to transfer the patient to a physician who is willing to comply with the directive. If the patient is a patient in a health care facility, the facility's personnel shall assist the physician in arranging the patient's transfer...
So what happens if these Texas death panels end up winning - against the wishes of the family?
A person does not commit an offense under Section 22.08, Penal Code, by withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from a qualified patient in accordance with this subchapter.
Immunity from civil or criminal prosecution.
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But you don't see any basic reporting on this true death panel, nor the ones that go on every day in the big insurance companies. The "deathers" started this meme - we should make them own it.
Update [2009-8-12 7:32:16 by clammyc]: This comment by ek hornbeck will show you what this law did to a baby.