The only people I see who have death panels are insurance companies. You guys should know full well that they constantly decide who lives and who dies. Some of these crazy bastards just deny deny deny deny and fight the hell out of the people often right when they're hardly in any state to fight back. Insurance companies ARE death panels.
Exactly. I love it when people get outraged over something that has been around for decades as if it were something new. Insurance companies have been doing this from day one. So, someone gives it a new name “death panel” and suddenly people get animated.
The reality is we do need to ration care. When someone is seriously ill at 90 years old, it makes no sense to spend a million dollars of public/pooled/insurance money to prolong their life for two more months when the quality of life means they will be lying unconscious in a bed. If the family of this individual is rich and wants to spend their own money on that kind of care they are welcome to do so.
Private and public conversations about end of life care are long overdue. There is nothing wrong with formalizing conversations and the reasoned judgments of physicians, medical ethicists, and family members when seriously ill people are nearing the end of life.
Death panels in the form of insurance companies or even individual doctors have always existed and will never go away.
