In the multi-million dollar PR campaign to kill off health care reform, insurance companies, special interest groups and
Republicans are lying to seniors telling them that health care reform will literally kill them; That government agents will be sent to senior's homes to ask them how they want to die or they will be required to have five-year medical reviews that could result in death sentences, if Pres. Obama's health care reform is enacted. Many Republicans in Congress are completely on board with this "kill granny" campaign of terror against senior citizens.
Last week, Sarah Palin echoed the audacious "kill granny" claim that President Obama plans to institute a system of “death panels” where “bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of people's level of productivity in society, whether they are worthy of health care.”
On his radio show Glenn Beck said that he thinks Palin has a point. ” I believe it to be true, but that’s quite a statement,” said Beck, adding, “I believe she at least should be listened to and you should question, ‘Is it evil?’” Listen to video above left:
Georgia’s junior Republican senator Johnny Isakson says that “death panel” talk is just “nuts.” The Republican lawmaker made that assessment in an
interview with the Washington Post.
“In the health-care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that’s because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves,” Isakson said. “So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia ‘durable power of attorney,’ you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you’re unable to make those decisions.”
How someone could take end of life directives or living wills as [“death panels”] is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.”
The senator noted that all fifty states — including Palin’s Alaska — have some power of attorney or end-of-life directives aimed at protecting guardians from having to make life-or-death decisions.
“All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it’s to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers,” Isakson said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) of Palin's home state doesn't much like Palin's "death panel" talk either. Speaking to a crowd of over 100 at an event in Alaska, Murkowski took aim at her former governor, Sarah Palin, by talking some sense about "death panels." "It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels," Murkowski said. Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn't [in the bill]. There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill.
AirAmerica Radio: President Obama asked Americans to ratchet down the rhetoric. It's time to have a conversation on the topic of health care reform--not a screaming match.
