Death Panel, You Betcha?
A lie by any other name would still smell like bullshit.
When I first heard about the “death panels” I thought, “sweet, I’m going to apply for that, it will be just like gladiator!” Damn you Sarah Palin, for getting my hopes up. You see, she has been spreading this awesome rumor that the old and infirm would have to stand before a “death panel so (President Obama’s) bureaucrats can decide…whether they are worthy of health care.” Unfortunately there are to be no death panels and I am out one sweet job. I mean, can you imagine all the perks and fruit baskets you’d get as a member of this elite group of bureaucrats? I’m talking about pineapple every dang day. Instead, the bill calls for reimbursing a doctor for patient driven consultations about end-of-life care. So, basically, if you go, “hey doc, if I have cancer, maybe we should stop treatment if after a year nothing is helping,” or, “don’t you dare do anything, doc, you can pry my life from my cold, dead hands,” your doctor could go ahead and super size his lunch. Every five years. So, how is planning for the future a bad thing? Well, given the Republicans’ track record on wartime spending and exit strategies it seems like is it less of a bad thing and more a fear of the unknown.
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Tags: death panel, health insurance companies are teh suck, healthcare reform, Lisa(#1), Palin, Republicans, Sarah Palin, universal health care
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 11:00 AM and is filed under Culture Critic, Don't Be a Doosh!, Politiks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:43 AM
DonnaMartin says:she needs to have a meeting with the death by voluntarily dying in a fire panel.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:47 AM
baby fish mouth says:hahahaha DM!
August 11th, 2009 at 12:30 PM
Stay, see? says:Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi did a hilarious death panel round table (straight table?) last night on The Daily Show. I can’t find the vid link b/c I’m at work, but it’s worth a look.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Lisa(#1) says:Here it is. Thanks for the heads up Stay - hilarious indeed!
August 11th, 2009 at 1:20 PM
blah says:She’s either a fear-monger who knows exactly what she’s doing in which case she’s worse than being just plain dumb because she is purposely and willfully playing on the fear that the elderly have, or she is just dumb and too ignorant to read what Obama’s idea of what a public option entails. It can’t be both. It would be easy to say “she’s just dumb”. While I agree to a certain point that her opinions may be dumb, I think she can be incredibly calculating in a truly evil way that poisons people’s minds.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:42 PM
DonnaMartin says:oh she ain’t that dumb. this is all very calculated to scare people off of healthcare reform.
it fucking pisses me off.
although, maybe it shouldn’t. i have good health care. fuck the town hall idiots who are screaming and crying about taking their country back when they don’t have coverage to go get the mental health treatment they so desperately neeed.
fuck ‘em in the eye.
and then don’t give ‘em an eyepatch. why should they get to be trendy pirates? they are a bunch of fuckwits.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:24 PM
TT2 says:She is a GOP spin-doctor’s dream. She’s great at putting ideas out there, just hoping some idiot will listen to her. The scary thing is she has a lot of supporters.
She’s not dumb, she’s just ignorant and she hopes that you are, too.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:36 PM
blah says:The way people are behaving is just embarrassing. What does this say about us as Americans? All this shouting and yelling and getting red in the face has us come across as uncooth, loud, crazy, blow-hards that are just one nitro glycerin pill away from imploding like a neutron star.
Perhaps we should throw out the idea of getting rid of Medicare and SSI; since “those people” (in the racist way) are so hell bent on avoiding becoming like Russia, let’s just do away with Social Security and Medicare. I’m sure that will go over like a lead balloon
I’d like to propose that idea to Sarah Palin and see what she thinks of it. I think that it would cause her brain to malfunction and she’d blow a fuse.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:05 PM
DonnaMartin says:blah, that was well said. and very colorful!
August 11th, 2009 at 11:38 PM
rumoUr says:We have a death panel up here in Canada. We start with your feet and work our way up.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:47 PM
Sarah says:Ahahahaha, rumoUr!
::gives rumoUr a sideways glance::
August 12th, 2009 at 12:00 AM
Rev. Random says:I’m not lettin’ any Canadians NEAR my feet.
Seriously, I can’t stand how this has turned into a “these socialists are gonna take all your decisions away from you and your doctor!” shouting match.
I have healthcare. I have a great doctor. She’s a member of my church. She even HEARS that my son and I are in the PARKING lot and she clears her schedule to make sure we get seen. She’d prescribe me STM’s awesome potsticker acupuncture for my weight, for my allergies, for my migraines, for my son’s eczema, for our asthma… She researched and prescribed the proper birth control/hormone combination to make me start lactating so I could breastfeed my adopted son AND I’VE NEVER BEEN PREGNANT.
You know how much my healthcare has helped with this? Nada.
My doctor and I wish we could make all kinds of decisions that our health INSURANCE won’t let us choose.
So I ask you: What the gently caressing hEdoublehockeysticks is the difference if socialized medicine, health care reform or any other kind of gently stinking caressing plan gets in the way of my already gently caressed up choices?
August 12th, 2009 at 3:56 AM
blah says:Whoa Rev. Your doctor is either the most amazing doctor ever or she’s a witch! A WITCH! A WITCH! Does she weigh the same as a duck?!
I’m kidding of course. That’s so great that you lucked out with a great doctor that truly seems to care. I think a lot of doctors go into medicine with the best of intentions, but somewhere along the line they become jaded by all the red-tape, insurance bullshit, and corporate crap that goes along with working in a hospital. It’s truly sad. A jaded and frustrated doctor is a help to no one and only ends up taking it out on thier patients. There has to be healthy balance between giving the doctor the room to groove and dealing with costs in a responsible manner.
August 12th, 2009 at 7:19 AM
SeaKat says:Agreed, blah. Also, people have a misunderstanding of what insurance is. Insurance is NOT “pay a little bit every month and then you can get whatever the hell treatment you want/feel you deserve for free or next to it.”
Health insurance is a shared risk group pooling their resources under the assumption that the good health of the many will be able to bear the costs of the few that require major medical intervention. That’s it.
And, frankly, the “good health” of the many is not what it used to be. Partly because of our generally sedentary, overweight ways and partly because our expectations have changed. HIV? Used to be a death sentence. Now people live for decades taking a cocktail of expensive drugs. Cancer? Used to be a death sentence. Now people live for decades after undergoing expensive surgery and chemo. 30 week old fetus born premature? Used to be a death sentence. Now we can intervene and give that baby a pretty normal life after weeks and weeks in the (expensive) NICU.
When it’s your loved one getting the expensive care, it’s the best thing in the world. But when the time comes to pay the bill, people bitch about the rising costs. Jesus healed for free. Every other medical provider charges for it.
August 12th, 2009 at 7:55 AM
Rev. Random says:Being born? Used to be a death sentence. Now we can live forEVAR!
Jesus not only healed for free he encouraged folks to be okay with dying…but then again, in the first centaury, as the great SeaKat points out, folks didn’t have the medicine we have now.
I help people die for a living and I’m here to tell you it ain’t so bad. You know what else nobody thinks about as “health care” but should? Chaplains.
And yes, blah, she is amazing. I’m pretty sure she weighs more than a duck. I didn’t know that that was new Witch Doctor test but I will be sure to check the next time I have to find a new doctor!
August 12th, 2009 at 12:14 PM
SeaKat says:Being born? Used to be a death sentence. Hahahahahaaa!
That’s pretty much it. I wish I had the answer. Believe me, when my parents were diagnosed with cancer, I was mighty glad they had the treatment options that they did. If either of my girls had been born premature, you can bet that I would have expected every possible intervention. I’m just as bad as anyone else - I expect Nordstrom care at WalMart prices. The difference is that I don’t expect to get this without some major intervention from our gov’t.
On a side note, Rev., regarding your doctor - you could try sticking her with a pin - if she doesn’t bleed - WITCH! (nb: This may piss her off and you’ll need to find a new doc)
August 12th, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Sarah says:Rev. Roon - your doc helped you lactate without having been pregnant? That is some miraculous, dope-ass sorcery right there! LACTIVISM FTW!
August 12th, 2009 at 9:38 PM
chellelee79 says:I can’t say this aloud, I can’t put it my social sites. By some dumb luck I’ve landed in rural Texas, where Bush is still king and you can’t even think anything bad about him, where my family twitches upon even referring to Obama as our president. Heck, I even get threatened at work when people find out I not only respect Obama, but support him too. God forbid they find out I voted for him. Anywho, let me get this off my chest-
I effing hate Sarah Palin. I hate everything she is, I hate everything she supposedly stands for. I hate the way she speaks. I honestly think of her everytime I see a reference to Satan in my bible. She’s not that dumb, it’s all her political ploy. She can say whatever the hell she wants, but throw out the dumb card when she’s called on it. I hate this woman more than life itself.
After her comments about pro-life, I quit listening to her. How she talked about deciding to keep her baby after learning his diagnosis…. while somehow failing to acknowledge that is in fact PRO CHOICE…. anywho, I hate her.
Good god, that felt good. That removed a massive weight on my shoulders. Sorry about the long post, but thanks for letting me vent. And thanks for putting me in the mood to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
August 12th, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Sarah says:hooray, chellelee79! hooray!!!!
August 13th, 2009 at 12:07 AM
DonnaMartin says:“being born? used to be a death sentence.”
hahahahahahahaha
holy shit.