Sarah Palin has a (boring) opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, wherein she (or rather her ghostwriter) reiterates her fears about “death panels.”  She blames the government for high costs of Medicare and Medicaid yet says healthcare reform including reductions in costs as proposed by the President amount to “rationing.”

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.

One wonders how healthcare costs can be reduced if plans to fund medical procedures that work, and eliminate those that do not, are not allowed to be enacted. There are huge amounts of wasteful spending throughout our healthcare system, public and private, and elimination of ineffective and unnecessary tests and treatments must occur to reduce costs and improve effectiveness at the same time. Characterizing elimination of waste as a type of “rationing by death panels” is shameful demagoguery. But is typical of the right in America today.

She also claims that healthcare reform will result in “unelected bureaucrats” making decisions affecting life and death healthcare matters. Well, even those of us lucky enough to have health insurance today must deal with decisions on life and death matters made exclusively by “unelected bureaucrats” in the private insurance companies or unelected employers deciding what coverage to offer.  She seeks totally private healthcare which, by definition, is filled with nothing but “unelected” (and therefore absolutely unaccountable) bureaucrats. I would rather have a group of experts under government supervision making life and death decisions, not those who are paid to make such decisions in a manner designed to maximize the profits of a private company.

Southern Beale takes on the right’s claims of “death panels” in the healthcare reform bills currently underway. In a direct rebuke to the remarks on the topic made by Sarah Palin, Beale writes:

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. “Living will” or no, it doesn’t matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.

The entire piece is worth a read.