By now we are all familiar with Caribou Barbie's "ZOMG!! OBAMA WILL KILL MUH BABY!!!" statement from yesterday and Jake Tapper has actually taken up her claim in a thorough debunking of the "death panel" claim.
The truth be told, this is kind of irritating to me. It is the lefty blogs that should be carrying this water to fight disinformation. Never the less...
Link to Jake
She questions Democratic promises that the health care reform plans will reduce the cost of health care, invoking economist Thomas Sowell, saying the only way to cut costs is to refuse treatment.
So, hey! Why try then? Who could possibly argue with that kind of logic?
Asked specifically what the former governor was referring to when painting a picture of an Obama "death panel" giving her parents or son Trig a thumbs up or down based on their productivity, Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton responded in an email: "From HR3200 p. 425 see 'Advance Care Planning Consultation'."
That's a curious reading of page 425 of the House Democrats' bill, which refers to "advance care planning consultation," defined as a senior and a medical practitioner discussing "advance care planning, if...the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years."
So because doctors will be allowed to discuss end-of-life care and living wills with patients once every 5 years, this is tantamount to a "death panel"? How incredibly ridiculous can this woman be?
It directs the medical provider to give the patients "a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning," and an explanation "of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title," as well as "an explanation of orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar orders."
Oh noes! Explaining all of the options available to a patient? We must stop this at all cost!!! This is clearly nothing more than a discussion into what type of lethal chemical you'd like put in your IV bag if you have to get stitches.
Politifact and Factcheck have also weighted in on the various forms of nonsense.
We need to do a better job of fighting this misinformation. It seems like these clowns can pretty much make up whatever they want and their megaphone (FOX, Drudge, and Talk Radio) is more than happy to up the volume to the point of being ridiculous. They seem to understand that if they repeat something enough times, enough people will eventually believe it.