Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has received the dubious distinction of being recognized by Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact for telling The Lie Of The Year.
To refresh your memory, here is the lie (posted to her Facebook page) Sarah Palin told:
Seniors and the disabled "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."PolitiFact says:
Sarah Palin, Friday, August 7th, 2009.
Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.Congratulations, Sarah!
"Death panels."
The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.
Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"
I would so much prefer to stand before a government death panel than the current alternative, which is to stand before the death panel of a for-profit insurance company.
ReplyDeleteYou see, a government bureaucrat is not interested in making a profit and only has to follow printed regulations that are, in theory, applied equally to every patient. And, as in any government program, there would be a defined appeal process in the event of rejection.
On the other hand, a medical director at a for-profit insurance company would have to deal with the fact that each patient might have a different contract and therefore different coverage. He or she would have the conflict of interest of trying to apply the contract terms fairly while realizing that his management wants him to reject as many claims as possible in order to maximize the corporation's return on investment.