By now we've all heard Sarah Palin's dire "warnings" about the future of health care under Democratic health insurance reform proposals. What the former governor doesn't say is that the future is already here.
Palin's outrageous lie, of course, is her claim that Americans
...will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide... whether they are worthy of health care.
If the former governor were to open her eyes, she would see that we already have "death panels." Here are the names of some of the condemned:
Robin Beaton
Otto Raddatz
Jennifer Wittney Horton
If you don't recognize these names, Beaton is the Texas nurse whose insurance was canceled three days before her scheduled mastectomy because her dermatologist mistakenly charted her acne as pre-cancerous. Raddatz lost his coverage over conditions having nothing to do with the lymphoma for which he was to receive a stem-cell transplant. Horton's coverage was canceled because she was taking a drug for irregular menstruation. These horrendous stories came to light at the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee hearings in June.
At least under Palin's imaginings, you would get to "stand in front" of a government "death panel" to make your case. The real death panels operate in the shadows. They're the private insurance company underwriters and bureaucrats who decide whether you will have health coverage or keep it if you become gravely ill. They are not accountable to their customers--only to their investors and their executives who plunder the dollars paid by their policyholders so that they can line their own pockets. They are rewarded with bonuses and promotions for finding flimsy excuses to deny sick people the care they so desperately need.
These dreadful practices will continue until we finally come to our senses and scrap our system of for-profit medicine and health insurance. I'll leave the last word to Palin:
Such a system is downright evil.