Death Panels? Try the Insurance Industry

Robert Wright, over at Andrew Sullivan's blog ...

What more is there to say about Sarah Palin’s now-famous claim that President Obama’s health-care plan features “death panels” that will give patients the thumbs up or thumbs down? Just that, if this were Obama’s plan, it would have more in common with our current system than you might think.

In Palin’s fantasy, the death-panel “bureaucrats” were going to pick winners and losers based on a judgment about their “level of productivity in society.” Well, if you view income as a gauge of a person’s productivity in society—and God knows there are Republicans who do—then the quality of health care is already correlated with “productivity in society.” Obama’s plan, by making health care more affordable to lower income people, would make that less true.

Read the rest.