News That Matters

Time to move past scare tactics

Dr. Daniel Fass

As the debate about health-care reform continues, gross misrepresentations of fact have supplanted intelligent discourse on the merits of the legislation working its way through Congress.

The most egregious of these distortions is the concept of government run “death panels” – government entities that would determine who receives life-prolonging treatment and who would be left to die, or, worse, put to death. While it is easy to dismiss former Gov. Sarah Palin’s rants against the “death panels” as the ramblings of an embarrassment to the electoral process, other notable figures have weighed in with similar missives.

The genesis of this Machiavellian fairy tale stems from a provision in HR 3200 that reimburses physicians if they provide end-of-life counseling. Those who are opposed to any change in our current insurance system have seized on this as evidence of sinister forces at work that plan to deny granny life-saving care in order to save the federal treasury precious heath-care dollars. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Via: Time to move past scare tactics | LoHud.com | The Journal News.

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