Have they no shame?

Don't be ridiculous, of course they don't. They are Republicans and corporate shills.

No shame, no decency, no soul....

The last thing anyone should do is listen to "Dr. Palin."

They should ask her what previous experience she has dealt with to make such an unfounded statement.

The lesson from the elections was to let her keep talking until she exposes her shallow comprehension of the topic and arouses suspicion of her true motives.

This is a good point and a valiant effort.

But I fear we are letting the GOP set the agenda for discussion.

Let's call "death panels" the BALDFACED LIES that they are and move on to talking abotu how insurance companies kill and maim their customers -- recission, preexisting conditions (the fetus, for example) , and so forth.

Insurance companies are savaging Americans regularly, leading to bankruptcy, illness and death, and yet we are being distracted by GOP swiftboating.

Time to return the favor and savage the insurance cartels. The public hates these bastards. They always screw up the billing, try to shake down customers, and continually jack up premiums.

People are hearing that it's voluntary a lot, but when you counter something like "Death Panel" with "it's voluntary!", it just sounds like someone's going to lay on a guilt trip.

We need to make clear it's not just voluntary, it's saying IF you ask for it, your insurance must pay for it. If you never ask, nobody is going to contact you, pressure you, or guilt trip you into this counseling.

Who gets to make the final decisions, REALLY?

If you don't want to call it a death panel, then what name should we give it, A board that determines your not worth the expense?

Sec. Reich's situation is not the only END OF LIFE scenario.

When a team of doctors, in order to protect one another gets together and recommends proper treatment, and each one tells why they don't think the prognosis is good, you'll understand fear of the Death Panel.

Or maybe we can play another semantic game we'll call it a panel to decide if you LIVE,
What term makes you feel fuzzy LIVE or DEATH?

Like the term Compassionate Conservative, or how about this one; CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN, turns out to be a minute incremental change, barely noticeable, but it is change. Can’t help, it wasn’t what you expected. SUCKER

Eventually the masses being forced to accept TORT reform, the carrot for the health insurance companies to sign on.

Obama too smart, or Smarting from Obamas cures.
Of course Obama will blame Congress and Congress will blame Obama.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/erica/2009/08/i-just-flamed-david-axelrod--a.php#comment-3560965

The American Way: You are entitled to live until your bank account is empty. Let those who made the bad decision to have a small or no bank account pay for their bad decision by not living nearly as long. After all they could have stolen a lot of money too, just like insurance companies do.

Now, put your hand over your heart and say the pledge of allegiance to the corporations.

I believe it is seriously mistaken to conflate the “death panel” idea with the health care bill provisions to support end of life counseling. I believe the counseling provision is but a small part of citizens’ concerns with “death panels.” Of much greater concern is the Obama administration’s proposal to create a commission, the Independent Medicare Advisory Commission (IMAC), appointed by the president to make final determinations re what procedures will be paid for by medicare, under what circumstances, and at what rates of reimbursement. This commission would be specifically mandated to reduce medicare expenditures. These critical medicare decisions, now made by Congress, would be taken away from our elected representatives, and given to bureaucrats accountable to the President.

The medicare cuts that have been called for by Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget are in excess of $500 billion. We are told that this will be achieved by eliminating “unnecessary tests,” eliminating only the wasteful expenditures. Most people realize that cutting $500 billion will of necessity mean dramatic reductions in the actual delivery of medical services to the people who need them. The group that has been most often identified as the “target” for these cuts are elderly people with terminal illness, where the cost saving scheme would be to provide more palliative care instead of more costly medical procedures that may add only six months to a year to life expectancy. Or even elderly people who are not ill but who may only benefit from a hip replacement for a couple of years because they are old. These are the kind of medical “ethics” issues on which Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of Obama’s top medical advisors, has written extensively. Emanuel is infamous for writings such as his advocacy that scarce medical resources be allocated according to principles he calls “complete lives,” which would provide young people in their 20s and 30s with two or three times as much access to scarce medical resources as would be available to senior citizens. (See pp.428-429 of “Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions,” The Lancet, Jan 2009).

A panel of appointed bureaucrats, not answerable to congress, whose mandate is to reduce medicare expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars, populated by behaviorist crackpots such as Ezekiel Emanuel, is what a lot of people would consider to be a “death panel.” If Obama and Orszag need to cut costs by $500 billion, let’s start with reversing the bank bailouts. Instead of the backdoor sweetheart deals that the administration has made with Big Pharma and the hospital industries, and instead of continuing to line the pockets of the big health insurers, we should have a single payer system like the rest of the modern world.