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The New York Post has run an article in which they claim to expose the vast Obama conspiracy to kill us all through a government run death panel of doctors. You can read the full piece titled "Deadly Doctors" here.
The article is written by Betsy McCaughey who helped kill the Clinton health care reform package and now has come back for an encore presentation. McCaughey is the one who has been spreading false information about the "forced" end-of-life consultations on page 425 of the health bill which, in reality, are not forced at all. McCaughey's own views on health care are so controversial that her own Republican running mate dumped her before the 1998 election.
As to the article itself. You will first notice, as The New Republic did, that nowhere in McCaughey's article does she ever cite any portion of the bill which creates the so-called "death panel." This is because it does not exist but instead is a creation of the paranoid imagination of McCaughey.
Instead, McCaughey spends most of the article attacking one of the President's health advisers Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Emanuel is the brother of the President's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, and according to McCaughey that will make Dr. Emanuel one of the health care doctors on the death panel. Again, curiously McCaughey gives no evidence that such a panel will even exist and even if it does exist McCaughey gives no evidence that Dr. Emanuel would be on the panel. Instead, McCaughey abusively takes McCaughey's quotes out of context to try to make him seem like a radical who wants to kill all old people. McCaughey's picks a few phrases, not even full sentences, from Dr. Emanuel's hundreds of applications to make her claims. Most glaringly, McCaughey neglects to mention Dr. Emanuel's published piece in which he explicitly opposes euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.
McCaughey's argument amounts to nothing more than guilt-by-association at its worse. It reeks of the same logic from Sean Hannity that President Obama supported terrorism because he once knew Bill Ayers who advocated terrorists acts some 30 years ago. That argument fell flat when the American public realized how ridiculous the logic was. It is ridiculous to say that President Obama automatically believes in every statement made by those around him. Do we really want to go down this road because I am sure McCaughey has some questionable associations which we could impute on her. Robert Gibbs certainly did a good job of pointing out how, by his logic, Sean Hannity must be an anti-Semite because he interviewed an anti-semite (Video link here). Hopefully the American public is wise enough to see through McCaughey's claims based on the same faulty logic.
In the video below notice how Newt Gingrich twice gets corrected when he tries to make McCaughey-like claims without ever referring to anything in the bill. When Gingrich can not tell of anywhere in the bill where he finds the alleged "death panel" he runs to the "government is scary" argument. The problem with Gingrich's argument is that government is already in charge of health care for seniors through Medicare. If government really equaled death panels we should be seeing such death panels already.
Comments
Between Limbaugh's operation Chaos and Sean Hannity's accusations of "palling around with terrorists" I'm not sure which did more to help the Democratic ticket. I sure hope Palin and Hannity run for office in 2012!
Now NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MSNBC, CNN et all need to scream "This is a lie" from them mountaintop. This article in journalism. What we see on TV and read in the papers is quote regurgitation.
This column was a refutation of a strawman, for what this column described was "Execution Panels" which take active measures to end lives. "Death Panels" are inherent in the cost control mandate of this legislation in that denying care will lead to death for those deemed unworthy by bureaucrats.
This distinction can be seen by comparing imaginary police "death squads" and police who are forbidden from responding to certain dangerous situations. The former are taking an active measure to end life while the latter are not taking active measures to SAVE lives, thereby making death more likely.
When this column argues that no one is proposing the active taking of life, then this column is arguing against a position that no one has advanced. Only fools would be persuaded by an argument against a strawman.
Rationing in a government run system, which is what ObamaCare is designed to morph into, means that there are no choices left, and one must accept the final decisions of bureaucra
I just listened to Mr. Dean say that he never had Medicare say they would cover some procedure. I am on Medicare and when I went on it I was appalled at what it did not cover. Just to get reasonable coverage I had to go outside the standard Medicare coverage.
The left keeps telling us that the system is broken, that Medicare is on the verge of bankruptcy and then keep telling us how well Medicare works. Do they think we are a bunch of idiots?
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