Like Shootin’ Moose In A Barrel, Sarah Palin Slaps Barack Obama Down Again Over Death Panels

Can you imagine being Barack Obama these days?

I mean here you are only seven and a half months into your one and only term as president and your whole world is crashing down around you. Your signature issue, turning America into some sort of communist utopia, by usurping the constitution through your "health care" plan, is circling the drain.

You have angry Americans who have never been politically active in their lives fired up against you and the rest of your party. You will basically go down in history as the person who destroyed the democrat party. An epic failure.

And then there is this woman who your minions have been trying to destroy for almost a year who has your number, big time!

First she let you and the party have just enough rope and then calmly wrote two words on her Facebook page, "death panels."

Then she just kicked backed and watched you, the democrats, the RINOs, the media, and well, everybody, go nuts trying to get out of this mess.

Now normal people understand that there won’t literally be death panels.

They also understand, however, that between the various medical boards who will decide what sort of standards and practices will be used, and what procedures will be appropriate for each group, combined with the bean counters, there will be defacto "death panels."

Every nation that has socialized medicine rations health care. That’s indisputable fact.

But you, Barack Obama, along with your party had to take the bait didn’t you!

Instead of regrouping, you’ve sent Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of the bunch out to call American citizens a "mob" and "Nazis," which is hilarious, because Nazis were socialists, kinda like modern day democrats!

You even sent out the union thugs from SEIU to attack unarmed dissenters!

But while you were doing all of this, those two little words from Sarah Palin, were turning the debate on it’s ear! Regular folks were hearing "death panels" and going to see what that was all about. They actually started reading the House bill H.R. 3200, all 1017 pages of it, for themselves.

That really got ‘em fired up!

But Mr Obama, you couldn’t let well enough alone. Since you obviously are allergic to the air in Washington, or think you are still campaigning for office, you went running off to Portsmouth, NH for a totally spontaneous and completely unrehearsed "townhall meeting."

Group photo of participants at Portsmouth, NH townhall event:

Sarah, is in your head for sure and it shows!

Since TOTUS tried to commit suicide on you a few weeks back, you have not been at your best. No one to keep you from saying really stupid stuff like when you told the totally neutral and unbiased Portsmouth crowd that AARP was on board with your devious plans.

AARP was pretty quick to come out and say "not really pal!"

But this was classic! Here you are trying to sell the country on your communist boondoggle:

"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems"

___Barack Obama

I’m sure plenty of beverages were spewed all over America when they heard that one!

The very best though was when you took a swing and a miss at the ball Palin pitched to you. You actually had to bring up the death panels again! You ever think at some point people might just forget the bad stuff if you quit bringing it up?

You really are making this too easy!

At this point Sarah is just playing with you. I mean it’s like having a cat and a string.

Barack Obama and democrat party "leaders" pictured below:

So from her lakeside home in beautiful Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah has sent you a message via her Facebook page:

Concerning the "Death Panels"

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these "unproductive" members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

"Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything."

__Barack Obama

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled "Advance Care Planning Consultation." With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often "if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." During those consultations, practitioners must explain "the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice," and the government benefits available to pay for such services.

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is "to reduce the growth in health care spending." Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 "addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?"

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite "purely voluntary," as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, "purely voluntary" means "not unless the patient requests one." Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit "formulation" of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would "place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign," I don’t think he’s being realistic.

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described "true believer" who "will almost certainly support" "whatever reform package finally emerges", agrees that "If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending."

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a "rumor" to be "disposed of", as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign.

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which "produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated."

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

Now Mr Obama, Barack, I know being a community organizer must give you a lot of insight or something cool like that, but while you were running around the country campaigning for president on the taxpayers dime, after abandoning your Senate seat, Sarah Palin was actually dealing with a health care crisis in Alaska! Thanks to the federal government, it’s rules, and regulations the poor and elderly had long waits and poor health care.

You see, elderly Medicaid patients were facing those "mythical" death panels daily. Thanks to Palin’s efforts she was able to reduce the Medicaid backlog by 83 % in just two years. An incredible feat.

So Barack Obama, democrats, media, whoever, please keep on quoting Sarah Palin. Keep talking about her. Heck, even make fun of her!

All of you are just pawns on her chess board!

Sarah Palin has your number and it’s going to be a really long 3 years!