There was a lot of backlash when ex-half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (aka Caribou Barbie, and Sarah Who?™) piped up with her infamous "death panels" comment back in 2009.
In case you have forgotten:
"...The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
Of course, this comment got picked up by the Right Wing bull-puckey enhancement Wurlitzer, and the usual conservative parrots chimed in as expected:
Betsey McCaughey
On July 16, Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York and a conservative health care commentator, suggested that the Democratic plan included a measure requiring seniors be told how to end their lives. "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner," she said on a radio show hosted by conservative Fred Thompson.
John Boehner
...John Boehner issued a statement July 23 that said, "This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."
Virginia Foxx
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said on the House floor July 28 that a Republican alternative for health reform was "pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
Source:
http://www.politifact.com/...
Well, surprise, surprise - we NOW KNOW who the REAL Death Panels are:
Republican Governors and legislatures who have REFUSED to extend Medicaid coverage.
Follow me over the fluffy orange healthcare cloud below for more info...
Let's first take a look at the states that have denied Medicaid expansion, and the number of citizens falling into the "Coverage Gap" where they will not be eligible for Medicaid or subsidized ACA.
(table courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation)
Original page here
That's nearly FIVE MILLION citizens who are being deliberately "left behind", and denied insurance coverage that would be made available if ideologues weren't in charge of their state government.
This information was current as of December last year, when Health Care for America Now originally published their report Lives and Livelihoods Lost: The High Cost of Rejecting Medicaid Expansion
Here's a slightly more current map of states that are currently still refusing to embrace the medicaid expansion offered by the ACA.
It is apparent from the preponderance of Republican-controlled states in this list that MANY in the GOP believe that refusing billions of Federal Dollars is a fiscally savvy position to take, but those states' refusal to accept the Medicaid Expansion increases the probability that
REAL PEOPLE WILL DIE because they will not have access to the healthcare coverage that can save their lives:!
So, as we can see, the truth is that
Death Panels DO exist, and it turns out that it is the Republicans themselves who are making the decisions that will likely cost some Americans their lives.
This is an unforgivably heartless approach to "governance" - even the slapdash half-assed style "governance" that many in the GOP take for granted as "sufficient".
It's incumbent on ALL Americans to SPEAK UP to STOP THIS MURDER BY INDIFFERENCE! If you are as appalled by this indifference as I am, voice your extreme displeasure by contacting the governors of states that have not yet embraced the Medicaid expansion, and demand they do so. Along with the lists above, here are two links that will help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://www.usa.gov/...
Ultimately, it is incumbent on all americans to restore balance and caring by voting out ALL the heartless GOP governors and legislators and replacing them with souls who care about ALL Americans, not just RICH Americans.
GET MAD, GET BUSY!