Wow, Roger Ebert is right about the "death panel" meme - it's a term of genius, if what you want to do is short-circuit rational discussion:
"Death panels" is such an excellent term. You know exactly what it means, and therefore you know you're against them. Debate over...
Of course the term is inspired by a lie... But now we hear "death panel" repeated so often that the term has taken on a sort of eerie reality, as if it really referred to anything...
There's something a little...too perfect...about it. Did it spring into [Sarah Palin's] mind in an instant, while she was typing away on Facebook? It has the feel of having been coined or crafted.
Now here's conservative screenwriter Andrew Klavan being pressed into service in the WSJ, trying to extend the work of the meme now that it's in wide distribution. He does his feeble best to take the now-familiar term and bring it into the realm of (vicariously) lived action by placing you, the reader, into a highly emotionally charged imaginary scenario supposedly showing how those evil Democratic death panels just might operate:
The people behind the long table do not know what they've become. The drug of power has been sugared over in their mouths with a flavoring of righteousness. Someone has to make these decisions, they tell their friends at dinner parties. It's all very difficult for us. But you can see it in their eyes: It isn't really difficult at all. It feels good to them to be the ones who decide.
"Well, we have your doctor's recommendation," says the chairwoman in a friendly tone. She peers over the top of her glasses as she pages through your file.
You have to clear your throat before you can answer. "He says the operation is my only chance."
"But not really very much of a chance, is it?" she says sympathetically. Over time, she's become expert at sounding sympathetic.
And there it is, the poor doomed citizen pleading for his life before the death panel of indifferent bureaucrats.
Are these right-wingers really this stupid? Or are they incorrigibly evil, ready to spread any fearful lie they can come up with to do the bidding of the insurance companies and derail health care reform? Look at this despicable emotional manipulation he engages in:
"Look, it's not just about me," you argue desperately. "My daughter's engaged to get married next year. She'll be heartbroken if I'm not there for it."
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you put on so much weight," says the medical officer. "I mean, you people have been told time and again . . ."
Andrew Klavan, do you believe seniors on the government health care program Medicare currently plead for their lives before bureaucratic panels? If you don't, why would you think any similar public option would suddenly start making people do so?
That's certainly not how publicly funded health care works in Canada. Medical associations negotiate with each provincial plan in Canada to establish a list of what services are to be considered "medically necessary," and thus covered by the basic public plan. What's considered not a medically necessary service can be bought privately and may be covered by private insurance. All medically necessary services are covered by basic public health insurance, by law.
No pleading before panels of any sort. The decision isn't made on the basis of individuals. The decision is made at a more abstract level, by medical professionals, before any individual patients are involved. Cosmetic rhinoplasty - not medically necessary. Unnamed operations that have a seventy percent chance of treating a condition that will otherwise be fatal by Christmas - well, that's going to fit into the medically necessary category in any sane health care system.
In fact, the only pleading likely to go on is right now, by people wrestling with their insurance companies to get the care they need paid for and not refused when they get sick. There's already way too much pleading before heartless administrators who have a financial interest in denying you care in the current insane private health insurance system.
I don't know if a Canadian-style negotiating group is exactly what Obama has in mind when he talks about setting up consultative groups of physicians and other health care providers to make recommendations about best practices and what should be covered and what shouldn't.
But I do know that the sick scenario Klavan pictures isn't anything but his own imagination and lack of understanding of how civilized societies go about caring for all their citizens, not just the fortunate elites.