A small part of the healthcare debate involved a certain amount of fearmongering that there would be death panels as part of Obamacare and there would be a team of Washington bureaucrats determining if your grandma got to live or die.
Obamacare proponents assured people that no, there would be nothing of the sort and did everything they could do distance the idea of death panels from universal healthcare.
But why? What's so bad about death panels?
The lamestream media knows that fear is the best motivator for viewership so they like to pretend that death panels would basically be situations where a perfectly healthy 70 year old is on his way to his granddaughter's graduation and a bunch of Feds jump out of a black suburban and drag gramps to a gas chamber.
That, we can pretty much all agree, would not be ideal.
We probably shouldn't subject relatively healthy people to death panels, regardless of age.
But what of the terminally ill with little to no functionality remaining? I'm talking about people who are 20 or lower on the Karnofsky scale here.
A huge percentage of Medicare spending is on hospice or hospice equivalent services for people who are essentially lying around waiting to die. People who are unable to speak, ambulate, feed themselves, etc. People whose quality of life is miserable and has no legitimate chance at improvement. Many of whom would openly tell you they'd prefer to die.
What's the downside of a little euthanasia in such instances?
I see a lot of positives: 1) money saving: maybe we can keep Medicare solvent; 2) alleviation of suffering: grandma's not in pain anymore; 3) re-allocation of non-money resources: more doctors and nurses available for people not on death's door; 4) encouragement to be healthy and awesome: stay healthy and active or wind up on the list faster.
The only real negative i see is that like all policy it will be abused by people with power and influence. Poor people, racial minorities, etc. would probably be targeted for death panels quicker than rich white men. Thats definitely no good, but with the right amount of rigid quantifiable metrics and an appeals process a lot of that could be prevented.
So what say you? What's so bad about death panels?
2. "Well there would have to be solid quantifiable metrics" In response to Reply # 1
based on patient's condition.
I don't really know enough to set the exact thresholds but a Karnofsky of 20 seems like a good starting point. Or if that's too subjective make it a combination of objective factors, ie: IF patient a) is unable to ambulate, b) has less than 6 words of meaningful communication per day, AND requires more than X amount of narcotics to live without severe pain THEN (s)he is reviewed for death.
And there should be a reasonable but not especially lengthy appeals process.
5. "Yearly cap is over $26k. So they messed their average all up by" In response to Reply # 4
Certifying a bunch of patients who weren't really terminal.
I dunno if this is supposed to be a counterpoint or what but give me a dignified death panel over the for-profit hospice industry making health decisions for the benefit of their own finances any day.
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
General Discussion
