Palin Endorsed End-Of-Life Counseling As Alaska Governor
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care, Palin, Partisan Hacks
Given how intellectually dishonest she was in the past, especially about issues like the Bridge to Nowhere, you knew something like this might pop up.
Apparently she made the following proclamations during Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska in April 2008.
WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. [...]WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.
WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.
And so it goes…
By the way, Palin posted some more about end of life counseling on her Facebook page, and this time she’s trying to justify her previous post by suggesting that just because end-of-life counseling can be offered if a patient comes into a facility with serious enough conditions to warrant it that this somehow means that the government would be in the business of putting people to death.
Ugh.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 and is filed under Health Care, Palin, Partisan Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
[...] H/T: Donklephant [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
[...] 3: Donklephant discovered that in April 2008, Governor Sarah Palin endorsed the same end-of-life counseling that [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
She was referring to people unable to speak for themselves – not every five years have a death conference.
need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are UNABLE TO SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Oh my GOD! This is stunning news. Sarah Palin making no sense whatsoever?
I . . . I can’t believe it. It’s so very out of character.
I mean, it’s not like she’s a manipulative little airhead who’ll say anything that pops into her teeny, tiny little brain.
This after all is the Next President of the United States!
Where’s Simon by the way? Haven’t seen him around lately.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Can life be stranger than fiction? Ask MR….
August 14th, 2009 at 1:09 am
[...] to look into her own policies on health-care as Governor of Alaska. Sure enough, Mrs. Palin was in favor of providing ‘end-of-life’ counseling, the very same measure she now finds so [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Is Sarah Palin capable of being anything “intellectually”?
August 14th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
To be fair though, the “death panels” also may (as far as can be determined from her ranting) refer to the expert panel to advise congress on the effectiveness of various treatments, this to assist in deciding what should or should not be covered under a public option. (God forbid! Private insurance companies would never do such a thing, nor are they doing that already. That would be rationing, or something really bad/scary/evil….)
So, in being fair, we find she’s still a twit.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:08 am
The “death panel” remarks are both a distorted reflection of Section 1223 (or was that 1233?) on end-of-life counseling and the obvious — you can NOT lower or even level off overall system costs without top-down fiat rationing, and in any rational “social worth” scheme of rationing, the elderly know they do not stand at the head of the line.
Before someone rejoinders with “but there won’t be rationing, Obama said so!”; please, don’t insult our intelligence. It is simply not possible to lower costs or hold them even or even “bend the cost curve” without some serious heavy-hand rationing, as even the most socialist single-payer systems have discovered. Whether or not it’s written into the final bill, there is simply no way that a government-run system will NOT result in such overt rationing. And there’s not much chance that a “public option” will NOT over time squeeze out the private players, given the long-demonstrated governmental propensity for offloading costs onto the (remaining) private portion of the system. That’s a tendency that will get progressively more damaging to the private system that suffers from the offloading as that private portion shrinks.
America’s elderly are also not idiots. Many of them lived through real rationing in WW2 and they understand exactly what it means. They know it means prioritization of resources by the government’s perception of one’s societal usefullness and future usefullness, a metric skewed strongly against the elderly. They are perfectly capable of finding such things as the writings of Obama’s “Special Advisor on Health Care Policy” Ezekiel Emanuel. For example, his article in Lancet this year [PDF] wherein he advocates a “complete lives system” for rationing of health care. America’s elderly can see where they rate in that system — down towards the bottom — and it’s not acceptable to them.
Yes, that’s Rahm Emanuel’s brother, and Pete Singer’s soul brother in assessing the “bioethics” of health care.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Tully:
“…you can NOT lower or even level off overall system costs without top-down fiat rationing…”
“It is simply not possible to lower costs or hold them even or even “bend the cost curve” without some serious heavy-hand rationing…”
Not possible? Could you please direct me to some information the Western country with universal health care that is practicing euthanasia on the sick and elderly?
August 15th, 2009 at 11:03 am
. . . the elderly know they do not stand at the head of the line.
Baloney.
They stand at the head of every line in this country. They have huge political clout and their programs are the only ones that are deemed untouchable by both parties.
Show me the party or candidate who’s going to start killing off Florida’s voters.
In the USA we sacrifice children, not old people. If there were “death panels” they’d be pulling the plug on kids with cancer, or sick prisoners, or smokers, not old people.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Chris:
See, you don’t get it. The fact that it’s possible in every other developed country on planet earth does not in any way demonstrate that it would be possible here.
Why? I don’t know. Apparently conservatives think Americans are dumber than Frenchmen. And dumber than the Dutch. And the Germans. The Swiss.
In fact, I guess the conservative point of view is that Americans are just about the dumbest most incompetent people on earth. That’s their new slogan for 2012. “America: Could We Be Any Dumber?”
August 15th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Michael, liberal denialism and sneering does not change the facts, nor does your apparently complete (and perhaps intentional) inability to read what I wrote and respond to it in actual context. You might want to read Dr. Emanuel’s work. It’s quite enlightening. Obama chose him as advisor for this topic. Emanuel himself would agree that it’s simply not possible to pull off what Obama has promised without government control and top-down rationing.
Follow it through to the logical conclusion: What is being proposed as ObamaCare “reform” requires certain practices that would have certain inevitable effects, the President’s own “Special Advisor” has on more than one occasion sketched out what is required to implement such plans, and those effects and that rationale are unacceptable to the elderly and much of the rest of our society. What does that imply?
Uh huh. For the BS promises to be even partially kept in any substantive fashion, certain things HAVE to occur, certain conditions such as overt rationing incorporated. Those things and conditions are completely unacceptable to a majority of the voting public, including its most politically influential demographic groups.
Conclusion: In its current proposed and promised (yet still amorphous) reality-defying fairy-dust form, ObamaCare will go down (IS going down, visibly and noisily) in flames. The question has shifted from getting it crammed through without extensive public review and debate, to how much collateral damage the continued attempts of the White House and the very liberal Congressional leadership to cram it through will cause to the swing-district centrist factions the Dems need to hold veto-proof control of Congress.
I said a while back that the 2010 elections were starting to look a lot like 1978. At this point that may be a best-case scenario for the Democrats, despite the GOP’s ineptitude. And in traditional Democratic party fashion, they’re doing it to themselves.
[Bonus CAPTCHA words "rein- centres". Heh.]
August 15th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Tully:
I have a bottle of your favorite Scotch that says Obama gets his bill.
A second that says the GOP sustains net losses in 2010.
And I’ll toss in a third: by 2012 the health insurance reforms will be polling in net positive territory.
Bet?
August 15th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@MR
I’ll take the 2nd bet.
The GOP will have net gains in 2010 (no majority in either house though).
BTW – I drink expensive scotch. 15 year old Laphroiag is my favorite.
August 15th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
@MW
I’ll take that bet (itmes 1 and 2 from MR…not betting on 3). 15 yr Laphroiag is no problem…
August 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I have no doubt that health care reforms would be popular if they were enacted, but part of the reason for that is that costs can be obscured and pushed off into the future, such as with Medicare. This is a great find about Palin, its fun to see politicians deal with their records not matching their rhetoric.
August 15th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
MW:
I would never bet cheap Scotch. I’ll take The Macallan 12.
August 15th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
MR,
We’re on. But by my standards, the Macallan 12 is cheap scotch. If I lose I’ll deliver the 18 – smoother, more character, nicer finish.
Lets get clear on terms. I’m assuming simple numbers. if the GOP picks up any net seats in the Senate and House – I win, If they lose and/or tie in both houses I lose. What do we do in the unlikely event there is a split? GOP gains in house and lose in Senate or vice versa? Do we come up with formula to equalize Senate vs. House seats? Or just no bet?
August 15th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Wait – you said they would sustain net losses… Correction: If the GOP picks up any net seats or ties in the Senate and House – I win, If they lose in both houses I lose. This is why it is important to read the bills.
BTW, Did you see this? Your team is already losing hope;
August 15th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The Macallan 12 — while it has become popular and a bit mundane as a result — is still the gold standard of Scotches. But I would certainly not reject the 18.
The Laphroaig is a lovely malt but more peat-y than I normally like. I’m a Highlands guy, a Sherry wood guy.
I don’t know where you live but here in CA Costco sometimes has amazingly good deals on whiskies. $33 for Mac 12. I’ve seen Glenlivet there as well, although I got sick of Glenlivet since it was the only single malt I could find while living in Italy.
Note to self: Costco.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I started with Glenliivet. Actually not true. I started with some rotgut scotch blend in my fathers liquor cabinet when the parents were out of town and a teenage buddy and me raided the stash. Long short – I was puking for 12 hours. Couldn’t even stand the smell of scotch for 20 years. Glenlivet brought me back. Moved on to Macallan, then the smokey Islay malts. The 10 year Laphroiag is rough, but I like it as an everyday scotch. Its great to sip on while tormenting Obamites at the Donk on a Saturday night. You can get it in the SF Costco right now for $26. Hell of a deal. But the 15 year Laphroiag… ambrosia. I keep an unopened bottle around just to exercise my discipline and strengthen my resolve.
I think I’ll have one right now to celebrate a winning wager.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Johnny Black and hash in the Azores put me off Scotch for about a decade. I recall being attacked by a cobblestone street and nor much else.
I found my way back.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Michael-
Macallan the Gold Standard? I’ve finally found something to disagree with you about. Macallan is a step up from the regular no doubt but Glendronach 1968, Cadenheads Inchgower, Balvenie Portwood or 21, the Glenmorangie Tain Hermitage, Glenfarclas 105 or if you want to leave Scotland Redbreast Irish Potstill is reasonable and at Macallan 12 level or for a really nice change of pace the Penderyn from Wales. They all make Macallan look quite pedestrian.
and mw You may want to try the Ardbeg UIGEADAIL