Politifact has named “death panels” it’s 2009 lie of of the year, and rightfully so. There is not a thing in any of these bills that amount to “death panels”, and I have gone through the bill pretty thoroughly and spent most of the day yesterday going back through while merging in the Senate changes. Still no death panels.
But are there?
While the bill doesn’t do anything to create a so-called “death panel”, it doesn’t do anything to remove the current “death panels” that is ran by the insurance companies. I am talking about the practice of insurance companies dictating health care to your physician. Insurance companies still have the power to tell your doctor “no don’t give them this drug, give them that drug”, or “don’t do this test, do that test”. This was a big issue I wanted to see addressed by health care reform, yet it never was.
Let the doctors be doctors and not servants of the insurance company, then we can start to call this health care reform.