(They're just not what and where she thought they might be)
I never thought I'd live to see the day, and am looking outside to see if a blizzard or a tornado is about to unexpectedly hit us because of it. I must admit however that Sarah Palin may have been onto something when in August, 2009 she denounced on her Facebook page the ”Death Panels” which she insisted were part of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
The “Death Panels” which I will describe shortly are much different from those former Gov. Palin described. These groups are not normally even called “Death Panels”, but that is what the effect of their actions will be if they succeed in their quest. Their actions are much more insidious than the ones Gov. Palin imagined, and the effects of their actions will be far more widespread as well. I just hope that she will be honest enough to condemn the actions of these “Death Panels” as vociferously as she condemned the imaginary “Death Panels” she thought were part of the ACA.
According to a report cited in Forbes, some 50,000 fewer patients died and $12 billion in health costs were saved between 2010 and 2013. This was “due in part to initiatives woven into the Affordable Care Act that helped reduce hospital-acquired infections from 2010 to 2013. Many of the initiatives, such as Medicare reimbursement incentives to improve quality as well as penalties for hospitals that re-admit patients within 30 days from errors and hospital acquired infections, were part of the health law signed into law by President Obama.”
These figures do not include the millions of people who now have access to affordable health care. These people are now able to see a doctor about health conditions before they became too advanced so they are now more easily treated. By finding and treating these conditions early, the costs for this care is also much less than it would be if the conditions are allowed to advance. I have not been able to find any figures about how many people's lives may have been saved due to early detection of potentially serious illnesses, but I would think that it would at least be in the thousands given the number of people who have signed up for the ACA.
It appears that well over 50,000 American lives and billions of dollars have been saved as a result of the reforms implemented as part of the Affordable Care Act. Yet there are groups who are determined to repeal Obamacare and return us to the health care system we had before the ACA was enacted. These groups act as if the tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars saved since its enactment are not important. If they succeed in their efforts, they will, in effect, become Sarah Palin's dreaded “Death Panels” because tens of thousands of people will not benefit from the reforms included in the ACA.
Who are the members of these new “Death Panels”? Who would be so heartless as to condemn tens of thousands of Americans to slow lingering deaths if they succeed in their efforts to repeal Obamacare? The first and most persistent of these is the Republican caucus in the United States House of Representatives. Earlier this year, the House passed their 56th attempt to repeal Obamacare. The House did this even though until January the Senate was controlled by Democrats and there was no way that the Senate was going to even consider the bill. Now that the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, it appears that the second “Death Panel”, in the form of the Senate, will approve repeal of the ACA if they can vote down the filibuster which is sure to occur, even though it is certain to be vetoed by President Obama.
Realizing that the chances of repealing the ACA legislatively is slim at best, opponents of Obamacare have turned to judicial means, hoping that a majority of the Supreme Court will become the third “Death Panel”. They nearly succeeded in 2012 when Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito agreed in their minority opinion that the mandatory provisions of the ACA were unconstitutional. It was only the surprising decision by Chief Justice John Roberts to go along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan which kept the ACA intact.
The Supreme Court is now considering King v. Burwell, the latest legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act and will be ruling on it later this month. This case could have far more repercussions than the previous case as the ACA is now in effect, where it hadn't been at the time of the earlier case. The plaintiffs in King claim that the only subsidies that are legitimate under Obamacare are those set up by the states which had established their own state run health exchanges and that subsidies for the states which depended upon the federal exchanges are not valid.
If the Supreme Court finds in favor of the plaintiffs, up to ten million people in over thirty states could be directly affected right away as they would lose their subsidies. Almost overnight, their health insurance premiums and other health care costs would skyrocket. They will be facing the same dilemmas and concerns they had before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Do they spend their hard earned money on food, a roof over their heads or on health care which will no longer be affordable? Will a serious illness or accident drive them into bankruptcy? Will they be forced to forgo possibly life saving treatment for a threat to their health because they will not be able to afford it?
The effects of the Supreme Court overturning the subsidies would not stop there. As more people dropped their health insurance because it was no longer affordable, premiums would increase on those remaining so that insurers could cover their costs. Those costs will also escalate as hospitals will face increasing numbers of uninsured patients who will wait until their conditions are serious before going to the emergency room for treatment. Hospitals will try to pass along some of those increased costs to the health insurers, who will then pass them along to those they insure. More people will then drop their health insurance coverage because of the higher premiums, reinforcing the vicious cycle. The situation will only worsen until we begin seeing hospital emergency rooms beginning to close and health insurers going bankrupt. I wonder if that will finally be enough impetus for Congress to finally enact a solution.
Besides the House, Senate and Supreme Court, there is yet one more group that could qualify to be a death panel. These would be the intractable implacable opponents of Obama in general and Obamacare specifically. These would include most Republican officials throughout the country, their bankrollers such as the Koch brothers, and their mouthpieces at Fox News, right wing talk radio, social media and in the blogosphere. They wuld also include among their ranks other conservatives who have been speaking out against Obamacare such as former Governor Sarah Palin herself.
Sarah Palin was outraged and horrified at the very idea of her imaginary “Death Panels” back in 2009 when she first spoke out against the Affordable Care Act. Why haven't we seen that same outrage and horror now that she could be considered to be part of one of those “Death Panels” now? Will she condemn these new “Death Panels” as she condemned the ones she imagined? Somehow I don't think she will. Can you say hypocrisy?