NY Times, Politico, Huffington Post, MSNBC----
(Huffington Post’s Shannyn Moore discusses Alaska’s poor health care plans while under the leadership of former Gov. Sarah Palin.)
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I’m not sure the man who popped off and tweeted that Sonia Sotomayor was a “Latina woman racist” is the best Henry Higgins for the Eliza Doolittle of Alaska.
But Newt Gingrich was a professor. And he does know something about pulling yourself up by dragging down others and imploding when you take center stage — both Palin specialties.
Besides, he agrees with Sarah — who fretted that her parents and son Trig might be in danger from Obama “death panels” — that we should be very wary about trusting government with end-of-life decisions.
So Newt took it upon himself to become Palin’s Pygmalion. He told Politico that the out-of-work pol should write a book; take a commentator gig on TV; get a condo in D.C. or New York to use as an East Coast base; and prepare three types of speeches — one “to make money,” another to “project her brand” before universities and interest groups, and a vivid campaign stump speech to use for Republican candidates in 2010.
Most important, he advised, the dizzy Palin has to be “clear in her own head what she wants to do.”
At the moment, what she wants to do is tap into her visceral talent for aerial-shooting her favorite human prey: cerebral Ivy League Democrats.
Just as she was able to stir up the mob against Barack Obama on the trail, now she is fanning the flames against another Harvard smarty-pants — Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a White House health care adviser and the older brother of Rahmbo.
She took a forum, Facebook, more commonly used by kids hooking up and cyberstalking, and with one catchy phrase, several footnotes and a zesty disregard for facts, managed to hijack the health care debate from Mr. Obama.
Sarahcuda knows, from her brush with Barry on the campaign trail, that he is vulnerable on matters that demand a visceral and muscular response rather than a logical and book-learned one. Mr. Obama was charming and informed at his town hall in Montana on Friday, but he’s going to need some sustained passion, a clear plan and a narrative as gripping as Palin’s I-see-dead-people scenario.
She has successfully caricatured the White House health care effort, making it sound like the plot of the 1976 sci-fi movie “Logan’s Run,” about a post-apocalyptic society with limited resources where you can live only until age 30, when you must take part in an extermination ceremony called “Carousel” or flee the city.
Painting the Giacometti-esque Emanuel as a creepy Dr. Death, Palin attacked him on her Facebook page a week ago, complaining that his “Orwellian thinking” could lead to a “death panel” with bureaucrats deciding whether to pull the plug on less hardy Americans.
Never mind that Palin herself had endorsed some of the same end-of-life counseling she now depicts as putting Grandma down.
As the Democratic National Committee pointed out, Palin put out a 2008 proclamation for Healthcare Decisions Day “to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care ... and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions.”
Consistency was long ago sent to a death panel in Palin world.
Sensing traction, she took more shots against Dr. Emanuel, quoting the bioethicist’s past writing that some medical services might not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. ... An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
“Dr. Emanuel,” she wrote ominously, “has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which ‘produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.’ ”
She crowed that she had him on the run, and the White House felt that the doctor, who was being portrayed as a proponent of euthanasia, needed to get out there and explain his opposition to euthanasia. So he interrupted his hiking vacation in the Italian Alps to give a raft of phone interviews saying he was taken out of context and calling Palin’s charges “completely off the wall.”
But, much to Sarah’s delight, he also conceded to The Washington Times that his “thinking has evolved” on the “very vexing” issue of deciding who gets treatment and who doesn’t.
“When I began working in the health policy area about 20 years ago ... I thought we would definitely have to ration care, that there was a need to make a decision and deny people care,” he told the paper, adding that he now feels that if we get rid of expensive “unnecessary care” that “we would have absolutely no reason to even consider rationing except in a few cases.”
A few cases? Sounds like another Facebook entry for Sarah.
Palin stands by "Death Panel" claims
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to retreat from her debunked claim that a proposed health care overhaul would create "death panels," as the growing furor over end-of-life consultations forced a key group of senators to abandon the idea in their bill.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, one of six lawmakers negotiating on a Senate bill, said Thursday they had dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration "entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."
In a Facebook posting titled "Concerning Death Panels," Palin argued Wednesday night that the elderly and ailing would be coerced into accepting minimal end-of-life care to reduce health care costs based on the Democratic bill in the House.
But there will be no "death panels" under the legislation being considered. In fact, the provision in the bill would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.
The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.
The American Medical Association and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization support the provision.
In her posting, Palin wrote: "With all due respect, it's misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients." She added, "It's all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing."
The issue is no longer viable for the six members of the Senate Finance Committee — three Republicans and three Democrats — working on a bipartisan bill, according to Grassley. In a statement, he criticized the House bill, saying there was a difference between a "simple education campaign, as some advocates want," and paying "physicians to advise patients about end-of-life care."
The provisions remain in the House bill.
Palin's posting came one day after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that Palin and other critics were not helping the GOP by tossing out false claims. Portions of the Democratic health care bills "are bad enough that we don't need to be making things up," Murkowski said, invoking a phrase that Palin used in her resignation speech, when she asked the news media to "quit making things up."
Murkowski said she was offended at the "death panel" terminology. "There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill," she said.
Palin hasn't always been against end-of-life counseling. As Alaska governor, she signed a proclamation making April 16, 2008, Healthcare Decision Day with the goal to have health care professionals and others participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information about advance directives.
The proclamation noted that only about 20 percent of Alaskans, and 50 percent of severely or terminally ill patients, have an advance directive. "It is likely that a significant reason for these low percentages is that there is both a lack of knowledge and considerable confusion in the public about advance directives," it said.
Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who co-sponsored a similar measure in the Senate, said it was "nuts" to claim the bill encourages euthanasia.
And Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who authored the provision on end-of-life counseling, said he is astounded that Palin has not tempered her bleak descriptions of the health care bill.
"It's deliberate at this point," Blumenauer said. "If she wasn't deliberately lying at the beginning, she is deliberately allowing a terrible falsehood to be spread with her name."
He said the measure would block funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, calling references to death panels or euthanasia "mind-numbing."
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Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Politico, HUffington Post, NY Daily News, Google Maps
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