As if completely non-cognizant that government in the United States is of the people, by the people, and for the people, GOP fearmongering of late has been rife with smears that health care reform will mean the setting up of governmental "death panels".
The charge is that "we the people" will inadequately fund health care to such an extent that some government bureaucracy will wind up deciding who does and does not receive care. Given $10,000 to fund $30,000 of procedures, grandma and the immigrant who mows your lawn will be left to die in lieu of some more productive member of society, the story goes.
It's all bogus, of course, but we are urged to be AFRAID of "big government". Very, very, VERY afraid.
But beyond the fact that big health insurance and hospitals right now serve as death panels in America, a key historical fact this whole smear leaves out is that, during the 1960s and 70s, actual death panels made very real decisions about who did and did not receive care. And very real people died.
After the jump, I describe these death panels and how it was so-called "big government", federally funded Medicare, that put an end to them.
A Sunday Washington Post article by John Buntin tells the story of Willem Kolff, the inventor of Kidney Dialysis.
As the Post article notes, by the early 1960s when development of the machine moved to the U.S, patients with chronic kidney disease could undergo dialysis indefinitely, thus dramatically extending their lives.
But there was a problem: money. At the time, dialysis for one patient cost more than $10,000 a year. The University of Washington Hospital, which had put up the money to support the first dialysis patients, saw an impending crisis as more and more people lined up for treatment, and administrators decided not to admit anyone else until additional funding was secured.
In 1962, with help from a $100,000 foundation grant, Seattle's King County Medical Society opened an artificial kidney clinic at Swedish Hospital and established two committees that, together, would decide who received treatment. The first was a panel of kidney specialists that examined potential patients. Anyone older than 45 was excluded; so were teenagers and children; people with hypertension, vascular complications or diabetes; and those who were judged to be emotionally unprepared for the demanding regimen. Patients who passed this first vetting moved on to another panel, which decided their fate. It soon gained a nickname -- the "God committee."
Born of an effort to be fair, the anonymous committee included a pastor, a lawyer, a union leader, a homemaker, two doctors and a businessman and based its selection on applicants' "social worth." Of the first 17 patients it saw, 10 were selected for dialysis. The remaining seven died.
In the fall of 1962, it was LIFE Magazine that brought this "death panel" to light, which prompted a memo by the deputy surgeon general to the secretary of health, education and welfare. A product of his time, he did not urge immediate action but instead warned that "strong pressure for some federal action" may be forthcoming.
The death panels for kidney dialysis then spread nation wide. It was an expansion of federal funding for the recently created Medicare in 1972 that finally ended them. Afterward,
The availability of [kidney dialysis] treatment exploded. Today nearly half a million Americans suffer from end-stage renal disease, and dialysis is helping keep 340,000 alive.
And here I cannot end better than to again quote Buntin:
So what does this tell us about what universal heath insurance might mean? It tells us that, if history is any guide, the government will expand access to health care, not curtail it. Federal involvement has never led to death panels. It has only ended them.