The health care law and death panels!

We have all heard about those death panels that are being set up by the new health care law the president got passed. You know, the faceless bureaucrats who sit behind their desks and decide who will die because it would be too expensive (remember those words) to allow efforts to keep them alive.

The news about the death panels started with the tea party darling Sarah Palin. (See here) The notion has been endorsed by another tea party mouthpiece, Michelle Bachmann. (See here)

Senator. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said that his daughter would not be alive today if the law had been in place when she was born. He said:

"I don't even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents [sic] on what would be covered," Johnson writes. "Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?" (See here)

Republican Congressman Phil Gingrey, from Georgia, says:

“Under this IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board)… that the Democrats put in Obamacare, where a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy, I guarantee you when you withdraw that the patient is going to die,” Gingrey said recently. “It’s rationing.” (See here)

Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, who has made a career out of fighting these death panels, says Obama wants to "pull the plug on Grandma." (See here)

I could go on and on about this, but what's the point. The death panel accusation is pure lie. It is a lie by people who claim to be Christians. They want you to believe their lies. They want you to VOTE based on this outrageous lie that they are telling you. The health care law does not call for death panels, pure and simple. (See Wikipedia)

I know it is sad to think that somebody would order that your child, your parent, your spouse, or even you, be denied life saving treatment because it is too expensive (remember those words). But the health care law does not provide for that. It is a lie so big that it has been voted the "Lie of the Year" in 2009. (See here)


(The death panel lie is not the only lie about the health care law. See this article entitled "Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200." That article is nearly three years old, exploding lie after lie, and we still get in our emails the same old lies that have been proven to be false.)


Again, it is an outright lie that the health care law provides for death panels. This lie is designed to cause distress to millions of Americans, to cause them to worry needlessly that they or their loved ones will be allowed to die unnecessarily because keeping them alive is too expensive (remember those words).

Here is a comment at the Tea Party Nation site by a woman whose son is in medical school:

"My son is in his 3rd year of medical school and the thought of him possibly being the doctor that is "FORCED" BY THE GOVERNMENT to write the patient order to remove those tubes horrifies me--this is not why he wants to become a doctor--to give folks mediocre care; to have to be the one who has to carry out the govt's death panels!" (See here)

This woman is agonizing over the thought that her son, when he is practicing medicine, will be ordered to let people die! She is a victim of the vicious lie that the tea party and Republicans are telling. 

Although the death panel accusation against the health care law is a lie, there are death panels! They really do exist in American health care! They have existed for years!

Remember the little girl I talked about in a previous message? (See here) What was the danger there? It's in the video, as clear as can be. The problem was that the girl's insurance company was going to soon cut off her coverage because of a lifetime limit on coverage. In other words, the girl would likely die because some faceless insurance company bureaucrat would decide enough is enough, and would cut off her coverage on the grounds that continuing her life saving treatment is too expensive. (Sound familiar?)

Here is a video I have not mentioned. (See here) It is about another girl, one who needed emergency surgery on her heart when she was 15 HOURS old. Watch the video. Watch the anguish of her mother, who knows that the tea party and Republicans are doing everything they can to take away the law that is keeping her daughter alive. What Christian could possibly want to return to a system where insurance bureaucrats send out letters telling parents that their child cannot live, because that would be too expensive?

Here is another person who is helped by the health care law. (See here) The children in that video are not sick. But who wants to send them a letter telling them that their mother must die because it would be too expensive to keep her alive? Do I hear any volunteers?

Actually, I misspoke. I said there are death panels. That's not true. Because of the health care law that the president and the Democratic Party passed, those death panels are now forbidden. They are ILLEGAL. No longer can those death panels make life and death decisions for you, your children, your parents, just because the insurance company decides it is too expensive, and your life is not worth enough.


Those who complain about death panels are, in reality, just liars and fake Christians. They are claiming to be against death panels and they tell lies about imaginary death panels on the one hand. On the other hand, they are actively working to return death panels to America, so millions of people, like the ones you see in the videos, can die--all because it would be too expensive to keep them alive.