In his weekly You Tube-radio address, President Barack Obama says there are hopeful signs on the economic front and makes his pitch for health care reform — noting “outlandish rumors” about health care reform including the one raised by talk show hosts and conservative politicians about it including a “death panel”:
The “death list” charge is yet another sign of how how readily some will reach to create and push a hot button — and how readily others will pick it up the hyperbole ball and run with it to try and discredit an opposing policy and rile up trusting followers who respect them.
The latest is Sarah Palin’s Facebook comment which ensures that her appeal to most independent voters — even those who don’t like healthcare proposals — will be limited indeed.
As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
Fair enough..
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost.
Still qualifies as debate. And then:
And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
Some will love this take on it but the betting here is that it won’t appeal to people beyond her yelling choir.
But others may see her statement quite differently. So check out these other viewpoints HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.