I just saw a Washington Post article in which someone "fact checks" some Sarah Palin comments. I have no interest in the accuracy or otherwise of Gov. Palin's comments but it does prompt me to write about death panels.
The only way publicly funded health care can avoid going bankrupt is death panels. So-called death panels decide when further care is not cost-effective, that is, is unlikely to return the patient to reasonable health.
What people don't know is that some of this happens already. Decisions are made about the wisdom of providing additional treatment which will, perhaps, extend a dying person's life for another few days or weeks at vast cost. Or the decision of whether or not to continue life support for a brain-dead individual who is technically "alive," whose heart continues to beat.
Death panels apparently operate sub rosa in the U.K.'s National Health Service today, although they never talk about it.
