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The lead section of this page seems to mis-represent both the origin of the term "Death panel", and the description provided in its main source, Nangia and Wilson's Foreign Policy article. Most of the problematic content appears to have been added by an editor or editors at IP 209.6.238.201, possibly in violation of WP:SOAP. I will call on the other editors, as well as the IP editor, to revisit this issue and either come to a consensus on the proper content of this issue, or propose it for deletion. Cnilep ( talk) 16:02, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
The whole article as written up recently has no merit. It was clearly intended to justify the death panel argument by implying that there are places where such panels exist. I read the four pages and they do not come close to making peoples decisions for them, though the closest was probably the Texas example. And there is no indication that Palin was taliking about Texas. In similar situations in the UK (and of course they do exist in almost every country), when a hospital wanting to terminate life support against the wishes of the family or the known view of the patient, the court of protection appoints an attorney to represent the interests of the patient. The attorney, the relatives and the hospital trust then go to court seeking a judicial review of the case. The judge's decision, which has to based on law, including the Human Rights Act, is usually final, though in theory it too can be appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. The NHS certainly has no powers to end a life willy-nilly. The only example that came close to the health care system setting up a "death panel" to decide who shall live and who shall die in the cause of saving money is the Texas example, but this panel is not known as a "death panel" but rather an "ethics or medical committee" so it is disingenuous of the editor to claim that it is the same thing as a "death panel" as . Neither is NICE a "death panel". It just says what costs the public system will meet and which it will not and the appropriate circumstances. It does not prevent a person from getting treatment but just sets a coverage rule. One can get out-of-system care in in England if you can fund the care personally or carry additional insurance because there are providers outside the public system. It NEVER considers individual cases, just the research data about success rates in various circumstances.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 17:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia can legitimately cover such topics as physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, living wills, Bush's "futile care" law that permitted the death of Sun Hudson, capital punishment, procedures for the evaluation of the effectiveness of new drugs, etc.
None of these topics, however, involves a "death panel". That phrase was coined by Palin to refer to an alleged (but actually nonexistent) provision in the health-insurance reform bill that would allow government bureaucrats to deny care to people deemed unworthy of it.
209.6.238.201 writes: "The project encourages a {{worldwide}} POV in articles, not merely a view specific to one region or debate. I did give Sarah Palin's view the second paragraph though." This has it precisely backwards. The term "death panel" is exclusive to U.S. political discourse, and this article is attempting to use the term as a coatrack for a whole bunch of worldwide practices that have nothing to do with the outlandish "death panel" allegation by Palin and her ilk.
The extraneous material should be eliminated. When it's eliminated, there's probably not enough left to justify a full article, so the redirect to the relevant section of America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 should be restored. The only reasonable alternative would be a short article that concerned solely Palin's statement and the controversy about it. JamesMLane t c 17:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: While I was writing the foregoing, Hauskalainen was making that very change. Obviously, I approve of Hauskalainen's edit. JamesMLane t c 17:53, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
The correct redirect should be Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, since apparently Palin coined the term and the term is explained and debunked there. Directing the link to America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 suggests Palin's characterization has merit. -- Evb-wiki ( talk) 21:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
It appears to me that the term "death panel" in the sense of "a panel of people who make decisions related to the death of other people" did not exist prior to the current political debate in the US. So far, the only uses of the phrase that I can find prior to 2009 have the sense of "a panel in a diptych depicting Life and Death". Of course, searching is complicated by the fact that the current usage is so prominent and widely repeated. There may be older uses that I haven't found yet. Cnilep ( talk) 17:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
If there's no objection, and since I've been the only constructive contributor, I'll move the content to List of panels making life or death decisions. I've never seen so many editors violate WP:PRESERVE with such eagerness before. Some of us are just trying to write an encyclopedia. -- 209.6.238.201 ( talk) 18:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
For anyone interested, I have raised the abuse of this article by the anonymous (IP) user at the NPOV noticeboard.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
[copied from above]The correct redirect should be Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, since apparently Palin coined the term and the term is explained and debunked there. Directing the link to America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 suggests Palin's characterization has merit. -- Evb-wiki ( talk) 21:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Redirecting to Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, whatever its long-term merits might be, doesn't work right now. That section is the subject of an edit war. Information about the truth of Palin's "death panels" charge is routinely expunged from the article, with some editors insisting that the article must contain nothing that disagrees with Sarah Palin's views in any way. Another editor is fighting to add extensive information about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel's brother).
When and if things stabilize there we can revisit the issue. In the meantime, I'm changing the redirect back to where Hauskalainen had it on September 13: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009#Reimbursement for counseling about living wills. The necessary content is there and is apparently more stable at the moment. JamesMLane t c 17:10, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I almost understand what you say about consensus. Anyone that clicks on a link does so for one reason - to learn more. Editors at the Political positions of Sarah Palin page strongly prefer the less is more approach. They have their reasons, but there is extreme tension between what they desire, and what anyone who wants to learn more would want. It's impossible to poll people who click on links, but it's possible to get a very good guess as to their consensus, which is to learn. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 17:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Since the result of the above discussion appears to be unclear, and the target continues to be changed back and forth, possibly due to at least two editors (me being one) starting at opposite opinions the changing to support a third option, I propose taking a poll.-- Evb-wiki ( talk) 17:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
If the redirect is such a persistent problem, maybe we should go back to having a standalone article, but without all the extraneous stuff (like physician-assisted suicide) that was in at least one earlier version. JamesMLane t c 20:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
This whole article is such a crock of shit, and its existence is a almost a violation of NPOV.
If and when true universal health care is adopted in the US, it is simply a FACT that care will have to be rationed. It is rationed already--but by jerks in the insurance industry. If and when the federal government takes over health care, then they will have to be the ones doing the rationing. What do I mean by "rationing"?
Like it or not, there are just so many dollars to go around. Not everyone can have everything they want--that's the singular truth behind economics--both right and left wing versions. So sometimes, someone who has a terminal illness gets denied treatment because it's judged not to be a good use of money to spend $500,000 adding another month onto some old geezer's life. And there's nothign wrong with that! Palin condemned it, others condemned her for naming it, but the FACT is that it happens now, and it'll happen later, no matter who runs health care.
An objective media would have recognized the truth behind this and condemned Palin for her economic ignorance. But instead, because she accidentally revealed a nasty truth that the pols (especially on the left) want to keep hidden, they condemned her for "lying". But she only showed her stupidity--she did not "lie". 98.82.190.226 ( talk) 06:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Yawn. Derekbd ( talk) 22:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I've added the {{ Unbalanced}} template to the page for now - the POV presented from the given sources is almost entirely from proponents of the health care reform legislation, with little space given to statements made by Palin herself and other opponents of the initiative. Right now the article (and especially the lede) reads like an attempt to discredit Palin's position rather than a neutral presentation of the origins and use of the term, as well as reactions to it from notable sources of various ideological persuasions.
In the process of gathering sources now, but one issue I can open with is that the article and criticism focuses almost entirely on the end-of-life counseling provisions that were removed from the legislation following this controversy, rather than the health care rationing concerns that Palin consistently has said were her motivation for coining the metaphor. Examples:
Palin's original FB note, 7 Aug 2009:
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Clarification to her original post, 14 Aug 2009.
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.
Written Testimony Submitted to the New York State Senate Aging Committee - 8 Sep 2009
It is unclear whether section 1233 or a provision like it will remain part of any final health care bill. Regardless of its fate, the larger issue of rationed health care remains.
Hong Kong speech - 23 Sep 2009
I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs.
Comments on passage of the bill - 22 Dec 2009
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.
Take back the 20 - 24 Sep 2010
And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all.
Election Day post - 1 Nov 2010
Every day we hear about doctors leaving the Medicare system; increased premiums with talk of price controls; rationing becoming standard practice; and panels of faceless bureaucrats deciding which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (which I called a “death panel”).
That's probably enough of a wall of text regarding this point. :) Kelly hi! 03:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
<--Redent. Wow, this discussion is already 1,400 words long. I didn't see any huge issues with balance when I read the article, and I haven't had time to read the discussion above thoroughly yet. But I tend to think some of the issues can be resolved by a simple clean up and then by reference to WP policies on balance, NPOV, undue weight, etc. But in the meantime, I would like to ask Kelly if she could summarize the main issues she is raising, just for the sake of conciseness, please. Thank you.- KeptSouth ( talk) 12:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
“ | 'With all due respect,' the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee writes, 'it's misleading' for President Barack Obama to say that provisions in one of the health care overhaul bills simply increase the information offered to Medicare recipients about end-of-life issues. 'The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context. ... 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?' [3] | ” |
It appears that the term "death panel" has been used in the past, though not in a widespread fashion, to refer to a panel of judges authorized specifically to issue or review a judicial death sentence. Example. In light of this, I'm wondering if the opening sentence should changed from "Death panel is a phrase coined by...Sarah Palin" to "Death panel is a phrase popularized by...Sarah Palin". Kelly hi! 00:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Kelly and others have raised some interesting questions about balance in this article, but I find that it's sometimes best to clean up the article first, before getting into the heavier and most disputable issues of POV, balance, etc. Some issues that can later turn into disputes can be taken care peremptorily by, for example, simple fact checking and verifying the existing references, removing or summarizing repetitious material. So, I am going to do some housekeeping, (boldly), but note it all here. I have placed the clean up tag on the article, while clean up is in progress, to alert readers and editors that clean up issues exist and to the discussion on this page.- KeptSouth ( talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Original text | Revised text | Reasoning |
---|---|---|
Benjamin W. Corn, MD, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, interpeted the death panels fear as evidence of a general fear of death common in the Western world. Specifically,to Corn, patients perceive their vulnerability if end of life discussions are initiated. [1] Corn cautions that some patients may never be comfortable discussing the subject but notes that when his patients contemplate their mortality it helps them set priorities and many discover "a profound appreciaton of life". | Dr. Benjamin W. Corn, a cancer specialist and supporter of end of life doctor-patient discussions, remarked that although health care reform was being debated "thought leaders have been remarkably reticent with respect to ... end-of-life care." He said that the death panels controversy showed that Americans were uneasy about discussing topics related to the dying process and argued that certain issues "must be confronted squarely", including whether experimental therapies should be reimbursed, the possible expansion of hospices, restoring dignity to the process of dying, and guidelines for physician assisted suicide. | Based on my reading of the article, it seems to me that these are his major statements that relate to this article. He was basically talking about the policy debate, rather than the reactions of individuals though that was part of it. |
A discussion on political lies between Paul Waldman of The American Prospect and Brooke Gladstone on the NPR show On the Media—which contrasted between policy lies and personal lies—used the death panels charge as an example. Waldman proposed that personal lies lead people to question a person's moral characther while policy lies do not, despite the possibility policy lies might have more real world effects. [2] | Journalist Paul Waldman of left-leaning The American Prospect, characterized Palin's claim that the health care bill provided for death panels as an "extremely pernicious" political lie about a policy "that had definite effects", which resulted in the provision for end of life planning being removed from the bill. He added that the "whole death panel argument almost brought down the whole bill" | This change is a little hard to see from the diffs so I put it here. I think it is very clear that this is what he was saying in relation to the death panel term, and that his theory on personal vs. policy lies is a little less noteworthy for this article |
Why is the international format, day before month being used? This is a US subject. Although normally the consistent format shouldn't be changed, this is the exceeption to the rule. Per MOS, WP:STRONGNAT, so I have changed the dating. KeptSouth ( talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
It is beginning to seem that this talk page will be getting lengthy. So I will be setting up an auto-archive for old posts every 30 days. Of course, it can always be adjusted it to a longer time frame if necessary. KeptSouth ( talk) 12:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
The JAMA piece states
“ | In one of the original health care reform proposals, periodic discussions with elderly patients about their advance directives would be recognized and funded by Medicare. But in some bizarre way, in the news cycle of talking heads with great hair and a smile that ceases only when trying to portray intense concern, this idea of physicians actually being paid to talk with patients about their care was turned into “death panels.” People like their physicians to talk with them. People are generally in favor of physicians getting paid. But the concept of physicians being paid for time to talk with patients and their families about advance directives somehow generated into the fear of decisions about life and death being controlled by the government. The idea was torpedoed not because it was a bad thing, or because people didn't want it, or because it wasn't needed. Our experience showed that it was desperately needed, and funding for it was needed just as much—but the idea was transformed successfully into a negative sound byte with a memorable catchphrase.
We shouldn't be surprised. ... That's why I’m in favor of “death panels.” But it won't be in this or any bill in the near future. The proposal was sunk by a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides this one. Physicians could take the time to talk with families on their own, but many physicians don't work on their own and must follow the schedules, rules, and procedures dictated by their employers, who follow the dictates of insurance companies, legislation, and changing funding patterns. We tried to do this on our geriatric unit, but the unit was closed. We didn't make enough money. |
” |
Currently the article reads "Psychiatrist Paul Kettl noted that the attention-catching phrase death panels became a lightening rod for several objections to the health care bill". I think this cuts Kettl's sentence short so as to remove its full meaning. I formerly summarized Kettl with this: "Paul Kettl, MD, MHA, writes that it was 'a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides' end of life discussions." But, the bolded text above appears to be the best representation of how Kettl thought the term was being used. I plan on making some edits on this. Jesanj ( talk) 14:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
It seems there is a minor dispute about the relevance of this quote that presently appears in the article.
Annas writes that " Ivan Illich seems to have gotten it right in his 1975 Medical Nemesis: 'Socially approved death happens when man [sic] becomes useless not only as a producer but as a consumer. It is at this point that [the patient] ... must be written off as a total loss. Death has become the ultimate form of consumer resistance'
I think it is obviously irrelvant, and removed it with an explanatory edit summary earlier, [6] but my action was reverted [7] with a discussion on my talk page that was not responded to, so I am stating my reasons for removing the quote again here in more detail. The passage was written in 1975, and is apparently quoted with approval in an introduction to a text written in 2010 by a bioethicist who does not even discuss the meaning of the quote. I do not think it is relevant at all or helpful to the average reader who wants to know what the 2009-10 death panel controversy has been about. I think the quote has been condensed to the point where only someone who is familiar with the bioethical issues or who has read other works by Illich would be able to either fully understand what Illich was saying in 1975 or why the 2010 author was putting it in his intro. I will hazard a guess on the meaning which is that Illich was saying 35 years ago that once someone stops buying things, stops being a consumer, then society is ready to deny medical treatment and that this will happen with elderly people because they have stopped buying things. But, not only is the argument far afield from the topic of this article, it is antiquated in many respects. Why? Because a person now can actually be quite a huge consumer of medical products and services while they are on life support or while they are taking all kinds of experimental cancer treatment drugs or undergoing all kinds of cognitive and physical therapies as for example, Terri Schaivo was. And let's not forget the medical industry is 1/6th of the U.S. economy. From the point of pure capitalism, dying and debilitated people are great cash cows. If this article was an academic discourse on euthanasia or do not resussitate orders or the like, rather than a Wikipedia article on the death panels political term, then perhaps the Illich quote would deserve mention here. But it is WP:NOT The quote has very little bearing on the arguments Sarah Palin made in 34 years later, does not aid the reader in understanding the recent death panels political controversy, or the current use of the death panels term - which is what this article is about. Because I see absolutely no reason to keep it here, and because after 2 or 3 days I have not gotten a response to my discussion of this that was begun on my talk page, I am removing this passage, and will look back here for further discussion, even though I really don't see how reasonable people can disagree that the quote is irrelevant. KeptSouth ( talk) 10:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
No one has responded the lack of relevance tag I placed on the section I have copied below, so I am removing the last two paragraphs of vague quotes that possibly say something about American culture being anti-death and that refer to someone worrying or being expected to worry about being accused of setting up death panels --none of which, even if was comprehensible, is actually relevant to this WP article or helpful to the general reader. I am certainly amenable to further discussion, if someone wants to try to explain how these quotes are relevant.
“ | Bishop and colleagues accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death ... they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions. | ” |
Bishop et al. replied that this was cautioning them
“ | to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of 'death panels' await us. | ” |
I will be removing the quotes from Scripko (great name!) and Bishop and combining the first paragraph into the preceding section.
KeptSouth (
talk) 11:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
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ignored (
help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) Perhaps my style of presenting the back and forth in the literature was not encyclopedic. I remain confident that at least the something from the reference above deserves mention in the article. The article states "In the era of rhetoric centered on fictional “death panels,” we have grown fearful for how our paper would be heard" & "Scripko and Greer (2010) likewise find our diagnosis to be accurate and concur with Truog that strong cultural forces are at work that make changing culture extremely difficult. Scripko and Greer note: “While Bishop et al accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death, even when it is not indicated, they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions” (74). It is here that they caution us to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of “life-at-all costs” that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of “death panels” await us." & concludes by referencing historical aspects of medical culture, religious approaches, a fear of death, medical technology, and a call for medical humility as "the medical establishment resists admission to finitude". How about this?: "Bishop et al. were fearful how their paper on CPR/DNR would be received, because it addressed "the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced" in "the era of rhetoric centered on fictional 'death panels'". Bishop et al. interpreted comments from their peers as a suggestion that "that land mines of 'death panels' await us". I find this material relevant because 1) it documents an impact of the death panels myth on medical professionals 2) it documents
scholarly opinion on what could trigger further 'death panels' concerns. Also
Bishop is not merely an "academic"; he is also a MD/trained internist.
Jesanj (
talk) 13:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)This article is about the death panel term coined by Sarah Palin. Before Palin introduced the term, Betsey McGaughey made some statements. One of the statements was about Rahm Emanuel's brother. It is going quite far afield to discuss what Rahm Emanuel's brother said. In other words, it is irrelevant to this article, which is about the term death panel that was introduced by Sarah Palin. I have commented it out this material, and refactored the sentence that mentions Palin being inspired, so it is clear that the NYT said the charges against Emanuel were false. Most of what I have commented out is perhaps best discussed in the Emanuel article. Otherwise, we are getting into six degrees of Kevin Bacon type of irrelevancies here. Maybe that's the point, I don't know, but I will continue to AGF - KeptSouth ( talk) 00:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I would assume good faith if possible. It's not possible. Before, the article misrepresented Ezekiel Emanuel as saying, "medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled," which was a very big lie. Now mass-deletions enforce another, equally big mistatement that "Emanuel is not the topic of this article" even though a huge mass of ink was spilled by McCaughey and Palin describing Ezekiel as part of what Palin called a "death panel."
Honest people have as much a right to edit this article as the rest. Way it is. Get used to it. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 16:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who didn't read up on the subjsect, Palin said that Ezekiel Emanuel was the architect of a "downright evil", "Orwellian", "disturbing", "shocking" "death panel." She got this from Bachmann's description of a Betsy McCaughey editorial, according to Palin. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 16:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
About the "strays from the topic" remark for the Prelude section:
There were NO complaints about a flagrant lie implying that McCaughey's statement was made by Ezekiel, which is false.
Endless complaints about sourced facts showing that McCaughey (her Deadly Doctors editorial was only one example) and Sarah Palin (repeatedly and at length) made Ezekiel Emanuel a large part of what Palin called a death panel.
Provide proof that many, many statements made by McCaughey and Palin about alleged euthanasia and rationing claims related to Ezekiel Emanuel were forged somehow, or admit that the "strays from the topic" claim is another flagrant lie. You have until New Year's day. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 13:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Jesanj, for reminding us to use reliable sources. However, please keep such suggestions from becoming too inside-out by actually reading such reliable sources. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 04:08, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
Here are some sources which may be useful:
http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001528
http://www.mcknights.com/new-congressional-report-lends-credibility-to-end-of-life-provision-in-house-reform-bill/article/146444/
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:47, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
In two places in the article (the lede and further down), I'm removing a one-word quotation from Johnny Isakson which states that he "called Palin's interpretation 'nuts'". The presentation is problematic and definitely needs to be reworked if it's to be re-included, because he never said that. From the Ezra Klein interview:
I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts.
The problem here is that Palin never said anything about people being euthanized. From her original FB post:
And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.
Palin never mentions euthanasia - to my knowledge, she never has throughout the healthcare debate, consistently stating that her concern has been health care rationing. It's apparent that Isakson is reacting to inaccurate information he received second- or third-hand, not to anything Palin actually said. Kelly hi! 02:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Is it worth noting that Palin has also applied the term to the Independent Payment Advisory Board? [14] Kelly hi! 20:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
From the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, today:
“ | The real death panel myth is that the term ever had anything to do with something so potentially beneficial. (end of life counseling) We wrote at the time that Sarah Palin's coinage was sensationalistic, but it was meant to illustrate a larger truth about a world of finite resources and infinite entitlement wants. | ” |
There additional analysis there on coinage and reception of the term. Kelly hi! 21:12, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree that this should be included and have added a link to http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/01/death-panels-and-maxwells-silver-hammer-end-of-life-planning/ although I'm not picky about what sources are used. What I am concerned about is a laundry list of every instance of the term's use, which is why I've trimmed a considerable amount of that. If anyone has any issues with what I've done, I'll happily discuss the merits of each case under Wikipedia's weight guidelines. Dabnag ( talk) 00:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
The WSJ article is opinion though not attributed (surprise surprise). The clue being the link at the bottom (next in opinion).-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 07:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
In the past day or so the article has been completely reorganized in a way that I think was detrimental. Material that had been usefully organized into topical sections was restructured into a giant, unreadable list of "reactions." I am adding the "controversial" template and I would like to request that major changes be discussed before they are made.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 15:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
In the coining section, under Palin's original quote, this has been added again (I reverted it once and placed it in Palin's section). This addition has nothing to do with Palin's coining of the term, and, in my opinon, is in the wrong place. The edit summary reads "Palin's correction of the misimpression given by her spokeswoman needs to be explained early on". The text added includes the sentence "In November 2009 Palin corrected the impression that had been given that the source of the claim against Obama was connected to the advanced health directive rewards in Medicate [sic]." As far as I can tell, the ideas that there was a "misimpression" that was "corrected" are unsupported. I think they are harmful to the article. I propose scrapping the text added by this edit, as I have incorporated Palin's explanation elsewhere. Jesanj ( talk) 18:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm unsure as to why the movie critic Roger Ebert's blog posting is encyclopedic here. I removed it once but it was reinstated with an edit summary that said it was accidentally removed, but my removal was purposeful. Jesanj ( talk) 23:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't see why he should be any less qualified to speak on this subject than Sarah Palin. He is probably more intelligent and certainly makes sense in what he writes and can make an argument. I am still waiting for Palin's explanation of how Obama has a death panel in front of which her granny or her grandchild coud appear.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 01:55, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Should this page be moved to Death panel? Currently that title is just a redirect to here. WP:TITLE says that names should be kept concise...I could see the parenthetical "political term" being used for disambiguation if necessary, but currently there is nothing to disambiguate from. WP:PRECISION seems to indicate the parenthetical isn't needed. Kelly hi! 21:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. Most of the oppose votes are based on the fact that by not disambiguating the term we give the idea too much credence or that we may annoy people. However neither of these reasons are supported by policy or guidelines, whereas our article title policy say we only disambiguate when necessary. Hence I find a clear consensus in favour of this move as the move arguments are stronger. There appears to be less consensus on whether the plural should be used so for now I went with WP:SINGULAR and move to the singular. However given that there was no clear consensus this discussion should not stop another discussion on whether the plural should be used should any editor wish to start a move discussion on that issue. Dpmuk ( talk) 15:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Death panels (political term) →
Death panel — As stated above, to be concise per
WP:TITLE, parenthetical not needed per
WP:PRECISION.
Kelly
hi! 02:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
<-[Redent] Comment: I noticed that Kelly, who proposed the page move, seems to have done some further reading of WP Policies, Guidelines, etc., so I took this as a good cue to do a little more reading of these myself. [WP:Moving a page]] says "Pages may be moved to a new title if the previous name is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or for a host of different housekeeping reasons such as that it is not the common name of the topic." Basically, this rule is about 75% against the page move, and it certainly supports keeping the plural form Death panels as that is the common name of the topic. KeptSouth ( talk) 10:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
When coined, the phrase "death panels" was in no way equivalent in either meaning or effect to "two Americas". It was closer to "baby killers" and the "final solution" because it implied mass killing and because it had did in fact have an incendiary effect. We should not forget the very angry and sometimes menancing people who attended the townhalls in the summer of 2009. If we actually look at how the media described the events at the time, at least two things are apparent: people got very riled up and mobilized; and, the actual existence of both death panels and proposals for death panels was widely debunked. Neither of these very salient facts, (the resulting anger and fear or the basic falsity of the charges), are adequately discussed in the article now. The term's evolution in meaning or multiple meanings are also given short shrift. By this I mean: euthanasia type panels, government rationed health care, and more recently government panels which have the power to remove drugs from the market)
Regardless of the changes in meaning or multiple meanings, and regardless of what the wiki article here now says - death panels have never existed and were never proposed - that is a simple fact. And in all the uses, "death panels", is a political term. To remove political term from the title is POV itself, because it gives the term, "death panels" a reality and validity, when it really is something which does not exist, except in the world of politics.
As an alternative, I agree with Jesanj's proposal of "Death panels controversy". Sometimes controversy can be a POV term, but sometimes, as here, it is a simple reality. Rather than being POV, the term in this instance illustrates there was more than one side to the issue. People were very upset on both sides, the media often described it as a controversy, it perfectly fits the term controversy. Webster's: controversy is "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views, a dispute" Examples: "The decision aroused much controversy... A controversy arose over the new law." Thesaurus: "an often noisy or angry expression of differing opinions <the seemingly imperishable controversy over the teaching of evolution>" Dictionary.com: "a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion...contention, strife, or argument. [19]
Therefore I think the title should stay the same, or should be renamed "Death panels controversy" because this is what it is, and there are no death panels in the real world. In addition this usage already exists: there are a number of articles in the popular press with "death panel controversy" in their titles or in the body of article. -Regards- KeptSouth ( talk) 14:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Linked the section title for some reason. †TE† Talk 05:47, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
U.S. Alters Rule on Paying for End-of-Life Planning †TE† Talk 17:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The article is somewhat confusing. As far as I can tell, there are two basic aspects to the death panel allegation. They are rationing of care, and allegedly coercive "end of life" counseling. The lede emphasizes only rationing, and the "Provision identified by the charge" section emphasizes only "end of life," when it seems to me that both are of equal importance (some might argue that they are more or less the same thing.) Then the section on rationing has an "undue weight" tag, which seems inappropriate. There is also a lack of clarity about the arguments being made in defense of IPAB (which may be unavoidable) -- the defenders seem to both be saying that it's not rationing, while also saying that a degree of rationing is necessary and that if aid recipients don't like it they should find some money and buy their own health care.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 15:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
::That might be an interesting issue to discuss, but it's off-topic. The point of the "death panel" term is that when certain therapies, such as dialysis or cancer drugs, are denied due to budgetary considerations, people die. All sorts of arguments could be made in the name of "scarce resources" or "fiscal responsibility," but the patient is still dead. Ultimately, the debate is about priorities, such as bank bailouts vs. patients with expensive diseases.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:50, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I boldly removed a decent amount of things to clear up a variety of issues that have been identified on this talk page, such as clarity/organization/should we mention the IPAB/Arizona/etc. by observing what I see as a fairly strict call for notability in WP:NEO. Jesanj ( talk) 03:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
::Please stop with the deletions. They appear to be based on POV rather than some procedural guideline. The article is not overly long.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
In this edit and this edit, an editor says he deleted sourced material because he disagreed with the source. This is unacceptable. These deletions should stop. If someone wants to argue that the source is unreliable, the proper venue is to go to the reliable sources noticeboard. 99.60.52.7 ( talk) 15:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
:This article is about a political controversy. Clearly, editors may feel that one or the other side of the controversy is the correct one. However, under NPOV, it is not permitted to delete the side that you disagree with, provided the material comes from reliable sources. If you believe that National Review and Wall Street Journal are unreliable, the noticeboard is here:
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:20, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
There are clearly editors at work on this article who are desperately trying to lend justification to the idea that Sarah Palin was right in her claim about Obama's America is a place where her elderly parents or her disabled son could one day be dragged before some panel,a so-called "Death Panel" and have to plead for their lives on the grounds that the panel felt their life night not be worth living.
The strategy is to conflate several ideas and tap into a deep fear implanted in the heads of the American public many years ago about so-called socialized medicine.
It is argued on two false premises in order es to come to a false conclusion. The false premises are (1) there are death panels in England with bureaucrats determining people’s access to medical services, but not yet in America (2) that America's new health reform is creating a panel or board with a similar structure or purpose to that in England, and the false conclusion is (3) that very soon therefore Palin could well be right that people (maybe not her her parents or her son, but someone covered by "government run insurance") will one day find themselves in front of such a panel.
The use of Wikipedia to promote this ideas based on this type of construct IS TOTALLY AGAINST THE RULES OF EDITING.
Before we consider the rules, we need to consider the premises on which this house of cards has been built.
Clearly this is nonsense. There are NO panels in England before which a person can be dragged and have to prove that his or her life is worth the spend on the care they need. That is not to say that there is no evaluation as to when and how an intervention to defend a life is justifiable and when it is not or how collective funds can be spent. The clearly is, as there is any collective insurance system a process by which there are checks and balances to ensure that collective funds are spent wisely. The loss adjuster who checks my auto insurance claim does this. In America’s private medical insurance system it is done by insurance company clerks armed with insurance company rule books about what is and why is not accepted medical practice in certain situations, and by the caps and restrains within the policy (annual limits, applications of deductibles and co-pays and whether o not a policy has access to a level of drug formulary which can fund a pharmaceutical intervention. Every insurance company has these formularies and has rules about when and whether a drug in that formulary can be used. These are all intended to “ration” the spend of the insurance company’s funds. The NHS in Britain is, in effect, a publicly owned insurer and makes the same kind of decisions but in practice this kind of care over spending is easier to exercise by the medical profession because medical profession knowns that it has to weigh out costs and benefits, and for the most part the rationing done by insurance company bureaucrats in America is done by the medical profession in England and Wales in every possible medical setting, based on medical judgment. When it comes to assessing expensive new technologies, the NHS has going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that there is an even handed approach in every region of the country and that there is no “postcode lottery” where some regions pay for services that are not funded elsewhere. NICE (which is a comparative effectiveness body) has taken on the challenge of examining costs and benefits of expensive medical intervention and determining, based on real clinical evidences, what works and what does not. The QALY is an effective tool in comparing outcomes, and costs can be associated to a QALY gained based on clinical effectiveness. This determines the upper spend limit for an intervention. It is highly scientific, based on evidence, and the people of England and Wales generally support the aims of both NICE and the NHS as evidenced by the overwhelming support the British public have for the NHS. The NHS is not a rationing body in the way that food or petrol(eum) may be rationed in times of shortage, with a body deciding who can have coupons to get what they need and how many. This is the American fear factor about health care “rationing” and it is totally wrong. The only “rationing” that goes on in the NHS is a cost/benefit analysis, with the intention of getting the best quality of outcome at the lowest price. Some things that NICE does not do is to determine doctor and hospital re-imbursement levels (this is what the MEDPAC does now, subject to congressional approval, and what the new IPAB will do with only congressional oversight (to get the politicians OUT of the decision making loop). This is what Britain did with the NHS years ago and it has been unversaly admired and copied around the world. It does this in full cooperation with the medical profession, the medical devices and pharmaceutical industry, and with ´representation from patient bodies. Its about as public and transparent as you can get. Contrast this with the coverage rules of American medical insurance companies whose rules are Byzantine, as was amply demonstrated in the Michael Moore documentary Sicko! which lifted the lid on the secret world of insurance company denial letters. So getting back to the premise that there are death panels in England with bureaucrats determining people’s access to medical services, but not yet in America, this is clearly not only FALSE, but it is actually the other way around. There are bureaucratic decisions made in AMERICA of a kind that simply do NOT happen in England.
Now lets look at premise 2.
Lets assume that the panel or board in England is NICE, I.e. a comparative effectiveness body making decisions about what treatments work and deliver benefits and which do not, and, (very infrequently) determine whether a new drug delivers benefits worth the high cost the pharmaceutical company wants to charge and in what circumstances. NICE does not determine doctors contractual reward (salaries or hourly rate for bough in services). Doctors salaries in England and Wales are set at market rates in order to attract sufficient doctors to the service, just as some US hospitals do, America is a bit weird internationally in terms of hospital care as doctors there are a separate billing entity.. Therefore insurers like Wellpoint and United Health Care, and public ones such as Medicare, have to set limits on what they are prepared to pay for their services. All that IPAB does for Medicare is to set that rate. It is the same price rationing that Blue Cross and Blue Shield and thousands of other insures do, It is not a unique activity and it is nothing like what NICE does. Following the references there are sóme stories relating to the cancer drug Avastin. This had been approved by ´the medicines regulators in the US and in Europe but NICE had not found benefit for it in all the circumstances for which it had been approved, or if there was, not enough benefit to justify the cost in every circumstance. So it had set limitations on its use within´the NHS. Although the drug companies managed to get a lot of noisy articles in the right wing press, by and large, the government stood firm and backed NICE, as I suspect would the British public. Recently, the US regulator has looked again at new clinical data from the use of Avastin and have found it to deliver much less benefit than had previously been found. Because the drug also has negative consequence, the US regulator has now withdrawn some of its earlier recommendations. Some have claimed WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE that this was a rationing decision, and did this IN SPITE OF A STRICT DENIAL FROM THE REGULATOR THAT COST HAD ANY ROLE TO PLAY IN THE DECISION. Such claims should not be made and they should certainly not receive any recognition by Wikipedia unless the claims can be substantiated.
So what are we left with? Two false premises and one false conclusion. It really is not acceptable to use Wikipedia to spread this kind of ridiculous notion.
The question now is who is trying to push these two false premises and its conclusion (apart from the editors here of course)? Well we have a chappie by the name of AvikRoy who writes for an line journal. What is his expertise? He works as a “health care analyst” for a company called “Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co.”. Well, health care analyst makes him sound like he should know what he is talking about, and if his firm was in the health care business he could be just the man to make us question where the analysis above went wrong, But in fact Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. is actually a stock broking firm and what he analyzes in health care stocks and the health care money making machine, not the effectiveness of medicines and treatments but their effects on the bottom lines of medical insurance companies and medical service providers. Ultimately, he is partisan, representing those who own pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and medical services groups. He writes on medical matters in political journals presumable to sway political opinions. Quite simply, he cannot be considered to be a neutral or a reliable source when it comes to determining the rights and wrongs of this case. This is quite clear when you read any of the stuff he has written which is biased and clearly intended to pull at emotional strings rather than taking a hard headed analytical and detached approach to his subject. Take a look at this article which is carried in a link from the NRO story titled “what the British NHS does today”, to his own blog web page. The first story is about Avastin (surprise surprise) in which it is claimed that doctors are pressurized by the system NOT to tell patients about a drug not approved for use by the NHS but which the patient could buy privately. The story is totally anecdotal and cannot point to any place where there is a policy in place not to tell patients about such drugs, And why should it? The NHS would save money if the patient instead checks into to a private hospital for treatment. It looks tome like a story planted in the press by the makers of Avastin. Personally I am not surprised that doctors do not recommend patients to seek these expensive treatments, If they are bad value for the NHS they are presumably going to be bad value for the vast majority of NHS patients seeking to pay for them out of pocket. The second story is titled “Sentenced to Death on the NHS “, a wonderful headline for those already convinced that you might go into a NHS hospital on your feet but likely to come out in a box. On closer inspection it is about what to do when all the people with medical responsibilities, consultants, doctors, nurses and other are all in agreement that end of life is near, They instigate a protocol to ease the persons last days without taking steps to cure the patient, Every doctor all around the world has seen this and I don't have any reason to think what happens in England is any different to what happens in America. The best palliative care is offered. But what is new here is that some UK doctors are saying “but what if we all got it wrong when we said death was close and inevitable”? As the article says, forecasting death is an inexact science, and we should expect that sometimes the initial diagnosis will be wrong and they are arguing that there ought to be ways to review´and revise that initial decisions. That is all that this doctor is saying and presumable the very same argument could be made in every health care setting, including those in the U.S. I feel absolutely sure that the procedures the UK doctors and and nurses is fundamentally no different to that which goes on the the US, It is natural that the whole team agree before putting a patient on a pathway intended to ease their passing with palliative care only. In the final analysis, the headline “sentenced to death” was pure tabloid sensational plash hardly worthy if the label “journalism”,
Or this one in which he makes a classical mistake of equating medical services consumption with other forms of consumption. He says here that “The entire reason death panels exist in Britain is because, when the NHS was founded in 1948, few people understood that making health care “free at the point of care” would lead people to use more of it: much more. To the point that today, in Britain, the U.S., and nearly every other country, health care is sinking the budget.” Again he makes an unsubstantiated claim (there there are death panels in England) but then he goes on to make a classic mistake, equating medical services consumption the same as the consumption of cars or chocolate,; an assumption that people will want more of something the cheaper it becomes, In fact, any medical economist will tell you that medical services have “a negative utility of consumption”.. i.e. a person who consumes lots medical services is generally worse off than someone who consumes none. These are fundamental errors and makes this guy's opinions worthless.
This man works for a stockbroker and thus represents medical industry. He is not a journalist but a health care analyst in the financial world. He is not a reliable source.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 19:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
:Hauskalainen, you are operating on a mistaken assumption about how Wikipedia policy works. Mr. Roy is not the source. We don't evaluate Mr. Roy. We evaluate the National Review -- it is their job to evaluate Mr. Roy's qualifications. If you go to
WP:RSN and enter "National Review" in the search box, you will see that there have been numerous discussions about the use of that publication as a source. I would suggest that you read them, and then if you like, start a new thread regarding NR as a source in this article. But keep in mind that under
WP:V which is a core policy: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 22:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I find this section to be totally biased by its very presence.
In the article we establish that Palin was originally influenced by Bachmann who was influenced by what she misread in Emmanuel's papers. Emmanual was not at all talking about "rationing" but about the problems of getting consent for End of Life care AFTER the person needing care is unable to communicate their preferences. Getting an advanced care directive is intended to alleviate the stress on relatives, cares and doctors and not save money and certainly not to deny care to people who would prefer to receive it.
Then we establish that Palin's spokesperson confirms that this is about advance care directives.
Then Palin seems to change her mind. She then starts talking vaguely about how to contain costs in a system where everyone has access to care (as if the problem does not arise even in the present situation when not everyone is insured. Because she cannot connect it to Obama and the specific legislation, she then admits that she is talking in only very vague terms rather in the same way Regan did about the Evil Empire - long on rhetoric but nothing of any substance.
So far so good. But now the article takes a highly POV turn. First of all it introduces a section called "Rationing of care". The Christian Science Monitor article makes the general point that the claims had been found to be false but that therhetoric over rationing was carrying on. Not that this was based on anything concrete, but just the vague notion that if the government got involved it would begin rationing. And it is fairly even handed giving examples of claims of rationing both specific examples of rationing in the present health care system as well as claims that the new health care system would have more (though as I say, not backed up with anything concrete. So the article is fairly balanced but it is used to introduce the idea that Republicans say this is about rationing.
Gingrich is then quoted making the same vague claims.
The Nyhan article is less vague but comes down firmly on the side of the rationing being mostly myth. He cals it "a myth" and "highly inflammatory". There is one sliver of a quote that might be twisted to make it seem the contrary. Nyhan says "While efforts to reduce growth in health care costs under Obama’s plan might lead to more restrictive rationing than already occurs under the current health care system, that hardly justifies suggestions that reform legislation would create a “death panel” that would deny care to individual seniors or disabled people" Whoever inserted that quote missed off the first words of the quote that I show in italics, thus making it seem much more certain than it really is. Cannon's point that the "rationing" if any coming from Advanced care directives is not "government rationing" but consumer directed rationing --- i.e. the patient decides and not the bureaucrat.
None of the above has anything to do with anything to do with anything that Palin has said and nothing to do with "a panel of bureaucrats deciding who gets treatment or not", the so-called "death panels" (And if anyone wants to claim that NICE is a "death panel" it is no more a death panel than the bureaucrats in America's private insurance companies that say which drugs and treatments that they will fund. You only have to read a little about the movie Sicko! to know that these bureaucrats exist. NICE does NOT deny anyone access to care. People are free to insure themselves over and above the coverage provided by the NHS (such policies do exist but there is virtually no demand for them) or to pay out of pocket for private treatment. Other bodies in the NHS fund care, not NICE so even the notion that it is a rationing body is far from the truth.
So what we have is quite a large section on the topic of "rationing of care " which gives little or no evidence of any health care rationing, real, planned. Only that in the mind Palin, Gingrich, and Michael Steele. I conclude therefore that the section is there only to give the lazy reader the impression that this is about rationing and there is enough of it to warrant its own section. Sorry folks, but this is all too POV for me. I do not mind the text appearing and I kept it in before when deleting the section title. But now that someone has added it all back so thjis time I am just going to delete the whole section on the grounds of POV pushing. If the person wants to add the content back, that is fine and I may reserve the right to balance it out somewhat. But that section titles of "rationing of care" has to go.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 18:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
For the very reason that it— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hauskalainen ( talk • contribs) 18:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
User:Kelly I just noticed it was you that reverted, but are not taking account of the argument I have made for the delete. I quite accept that Palin has implied she is talking about rationing. That can be stated quite simply in the text. None of the examples in the section that I deleted contains ANY example that could fit "Obama's death panels" and it is therefore simply misleading to have a section which writes it up as though it is discussing the issue. As far as I can see there is no argument made for the presence of rationing in the bill or in any of "Obama's" plans (tho he did not write the Bill as I understand it). There is in Palin's words, and Steele's words, and Gingrich's words, and in Boehner's words, just some vague notion that if the government is involved then there will be rationing. And of course that is nonsense because EVERY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD RATIONS CARE. In this sense I do agree with the editor above who said that the health insurance industry rations care.
Which brings me nicely to Jesanj's point with his NYT quote that "While the board is not supposed to be able to cut benefits, industry groups fear that its actions would result in rationing care. The board, known as IPAB, could cut payments to health care providers." It may come as news to you, but all public bodies in the USA as well as in most other countries can only act with the powers delegated to them. If they have no power to cut benefits then they cannot do it. To me it would be illogical if the IPAB was not able to determine rates because otherwise health care providers could charge what they like. Maybe this is why the US has the highest health care costs in the world and why American doctors are paid so highly compared to those in other countries. In any case I do not see that this has anything to do with terminating Grandma or not valuing baby Trig or whatever he is called. If we are to have a section with the word rationing in it, it must be related to a "death panel" - a body of bureaucrats which decides who gets treatment and who does not and it must be labeled neutrally such as "alleged rationing" or "claims of rationing" because as it is, it is totally POV and I will take this as far as it needs to get it corrected. WP is NOT here to mislead its readers but to inform them. Palin's claim of rationing is not justification for a section titled "health care rationing" without substantial evidence that this is justifiable.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
And having said all that, perhaps Kelly will be kind as to respond to the issues I have raised in this section.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I know I can provide reliable sourcing to provide balance but this just gets messy. And just because there was some attention to fair play with the article name is no excuse for playing fast and loose with the section titles. I am very dubious about "rationing" because all finite resources are rationed. Its just a question of how you do it. By price and ability to pay, or by some other criterion such as your how sick you are. There is no right or wrong answer but it is disingenuous to think that there is health care rationing in England but not yet in America. As far as i can see, Obama is sticking with a limited cost containment within the price rationing model. Americans will be grappling regularly with balancing out the generosity in subsidies versus the tax burden, but they have done this for years with Medicaid so nothing new there then.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 22:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
There are many reliable sources that have made the connection between NICE and "death panels," between IPAB and "death panels," and between IPAB and NICE. Whether Sarah Palin has made these connections is not really important (although apparently she has.) The article not a bio of Sarah Palin. Reliable sources have connected "death panels" with rationing, and therefore it belongs in the article -- it is the effort to delete this material that is POV, not the effort to include it. Also, I object to this revert, which was done without explanation. It is clear that NICE and IPAB are very similar agencies, and reliable sources have commented on this. Any effort to obscure or suppress the connection should be regarded as POV-mongering. 99.109.197.144 ( talk) 00:21, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
There has been some interest in connecting NICE with the IPAB in the section that discusses rationing. [25] [26] And above the IP said "It is clear that NICE and IPAB are very similar agencies". Above I noted 1) the first diff had a politician's editorial as the source so i didn't think it was a reliable source for that connection and 2) this is the death panels page. The second time it is added we get another opinion cited that only says "[IPAB] may be borrowing an unfortunate model from overseas [(NICE)]" (my emphasis). The conservative thinktank unambiguously associates the two, granted. But here's the problem: entire sections of the death panels article are devoted entirely to the summer 2009 episode. This new content seeks to place 2010 murmurs ahead of a 2009 yelling. But 2009 is the only reason we have an article, because it was notable. So, I don't find it appropriate to keep moving things to the top of a section header that are not associated with why this term is notable. Jesanj ( talk) 20:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
:I am puzzled by this claim, which is also reflected in the way the article is written, that the only reason the term "death panel" is article-worthy is because of events in 2009. It looks to me like it is appearing now with greater and greater frequency now in the press. The term is notable because reliable sources refer to it, generally, not because of Sarah Palin or some other particular event.
Angel's flight (
talk) 20:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
:::The definition supplied refers to it as a "new term" in 2009. It is no longer a new term. It is now more widely in use, and it is abundantly clear that the term has been widely applied to the aforementioned rationing boards. I think that
this deletion and topic split are unacceptable -- every reference to IPAB that is cited is in the context of the rationing controversy. What is your rationale for moving it out of the section on that controversy?
Angel's flight (
talk) 02:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
::::Since I am getting no response, I'll put it back. I also found a cite from the London Times that says Palin's initial use of the term was a reference to NICE.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
::::::Let me remind you that until recently, this article was called "Death panels (political term.) There is a controversy about the concept, and that is the topic of the article. For you to argue that the Wall Street Journal or the London Times do not qualify as mainstream sources seems like an effort to exclude them based on POV. This is not primarily a medical controversy, it is a political one, because (as most sources seem to agree) some level of rationing is inevitable since resources are not infinite. Therefore the question becomes, under conditions of economic collapse, whether to take measures to revive the economy, or attempt to solve the problem by cutting entitlements, government services of all kinds, and medical care. The material which you have repeatedly deleted is well-sourced, and there is plenty of room for it in this moderately-sized article. Under NPOV, viewpoints which differ from the ones you prefer must be included if they appear in reliable sources, and they do.
Angel's flight (
talk) 18:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
No. This gets us into Chicken Licken territory. Just because Chicken Licken said the sky is falling in doesn't mean we have to report it. It would be reportable if Chicken Licken was in the White House or in Congress, or national health care advisor, but the scribblings of a Wall Street trader's hack (Avik) about at institute he clearly does not understand properly (NICE), does not warrant giving him any attention. And we cannot let things be quotable just because reliable source X said it. Wikipedia would be full to to the brim of complete sh**e if we reported everything the newsmedia reports. NICE does not even fit the definition of a "Death panel". Reference to NICE in this article should be scrubbed. Hauskalainen ( talk) 03:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
phobia
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).LettingGo
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).NewStudies
was invoked but never defined (see the
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The lead section of this page seems to mis-represent both the origin of the term "Death panel", and the description provided in its main source, Nangia and Wilson's Foreign Policy article. Most of the problematic content appears to have been added by an editor or editors at IP 209.6.238.201, possibly in violation of WP:SOAP. I will call on the other editors, as well as the IP editor, to revisit this issue and either come to a consensus on the proper content of this issue, or propose it for deletion. Cnilep ( talk) 16:02, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
The whole article as written up recently has no merit. It was clearly intended to justify the death panel argument by implying that there are places where such panels exist. I read the four pages and they do not come close to making peoples decisions for them, though the closest was probably the Texas example. And there is no indication that Palin was taliking about Texas. In similar situations in the UK (and of course they do exist in almost every country), when a hospital wanting to terminate life support against the wishes of the family or the known view of the patient, the court of protection appoints an attorney to represent the interests of the patient. The attorney, the relatives and the hospital trust then go to court seeking a judicial review of the case. The judge's decision, which has to based on law, including the Human Rights Act, is usually final, though in theory it too can be appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. The NHS certainly has no powers to end a life willy-nilly. The only example that came close to the health care system setting up a "death panel" to decide who shall live and who shall die in the cause of saving money is the Texas example, but this panel is not known as a "death panel" but rather an "ethics or medical committee" so it is disingenuous of the editor to claim that it is the same thing as a "death panel" as . Neither is NICE a "death panel". It just says what costs the public system will meet and which it will not and the appropriate circumstances. It does not prevent a person from getting treatment but just sets a coverage rule. One can get out-of-system care in in England if you can fund the care personally or carry additional insurance because there are providers outside the public system. It NEVER considers individual cases, just the research data about success rates in various circumstances.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 17:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia can legitimately cover such topics as physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, living wills, Bush's "futile care" law that permitted the death of Sun Hudson, capital punishment, procedures for the evaluation of the effectiveness of new drugs, etc.
None of these topics, however, involves a "death panel". That phrase was coined by Palin to refer to an alleged (but actually nonexistent) provision in the health-insurance reform bill that would allow government bureaucrats to deny care to people deemed unworthy of it.
209.6.238.201 writes: "The project encourages a {{worldwide}} POV in articles, not merely a view specific to one region or debate. I did give Sarah Palin's view the second paragraph though." This has it precisely backwards. The term "death panel" is exclusive to U.S. political discourse, and this article is attempting to use the term as a coatrack for a whole bunch of worldwide practices that have nothing to do with the outlandish "death panel" allegation by Palin and her ilk.
The extraneous material should be eliminated. When it's eliminated, there's probably not enough left to justify a full article, so the redirect to the relevant section of America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 should be restored. The only reasonable alternative would be a short article that concerned solely Palin's statement and the controversy about it. JamesMLane t c 17:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: While I was writing the foregoing, Hauskalainen was making that very change. Obviously, I approve of Hauskalainen's edit. JamesMLane t c 17:53, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
The correct redirect should be Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, since apparently Palin coined the term and the term is explained and debunked there. Directing the link to America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 suggests Palin's characterization has merit. -- Evb-wiki ( talk) 21:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
It appears to me that the term "death panel" in the sense of "a panel of people who make decisions related to the death of other people" did not exist prior to the current political debate in the US. So far, the only uses of the phrase that I can find prior to 2009 have the sense of "a panel in a diptych depicting Life and Death". Of course, searching is complicated by the fact that the current usage is so prominent and widely repeated. There may be older uses that I haven't found yet. Cnilep ( talk) 17:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
If there's no objection, and since I've been the only constructive contributor, I'll move the content to List of panels making life or death decisions. I've never seen so many editors violate WP:PRESERVE with such eagerness before. Some of us are just trying to write an encyclopedia. -- 209.6.238.201 ( talk) 18:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
For anyone interested, I have raised the abuse of this article by the anonymous (IP) user at the NPOV noticeboard.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
[copied from above]The correct redirect should be Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, since apparently Palin coined the term and the term is explained and debunked there. Directing the link to America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 suggests Palin's characterization has merit. -- Evb-wiki ( talk) 21:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Redirecting to Political_positions_of_Sarah_Palin#Health_care, whatever its long-term merits might be, doesn't work right now. That section is the subject of an edit war. Information about the truth of Palin's "death panels" charge is routinely expunged from the article, with some editors insisting that the article must contain nothing that disagrees with Sarah Palin's views in any way. Another editor is fighting to add extensive information about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel's brother).
When and if things stabilize there we can revisit the issue. In the meantime, I'm changing the redirect back to where Hauskalainen had it on September 13: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009#Reimbursement for counseling about living wills. The necessary content is there and is apparently more stable at the moment. JamesMLane t c 17:10, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I almost understand what you say about consensus. Anyone that clicks on a link does so for one reason - to learn more. Editors at the Political positions of Sarah Palin page strongly prefer the less is more approach. They have their reasons, but there is extreme tension between what they desire, and what anyone who wants to learn more would want. It's impossible to poll people who click on links, but it's possible to get a very good guess as to their consensus, which is to learn. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 17:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Since the result of the above discussion appears to be unclear, and the target continues to be changed back and forth, possibly due to at least two editors (me being one) starting at opposite opinions the changing to support a third option, I propose taking a poll.-- Evb-wiki ( talk) 17:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
If the redirect is such a persistent problem, maybe we should go back to having a standalone article, but without all the extraneous stuff (like physician-assisted suicide) that was in at least one earlier version. JamesMLane t c 20:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
This whole article is such a crock of shit, and its existence is a almost a violation of NPOV.
If and when true universal health care is adopted in the US, it is simply a FACT that care will have to be rationed. It is rationed already--but by jerks in the insurance industry. If and when the federal government takes over health care, then they will have to be the ones doing the rationing. What do I mean by "rationing"?
Like it or not, there are just so many dollars to go around. Not everyone can have everything they want--that's the singular truth behind economics--both right and left wing versions. So sometimes, someone who has a terminal illness gets denied treatment because it's judged not to be a good use of money to spend $500,000 adding another month onto some old geezer's life. And there's nothign wrong with that! Palin condemned it, others condemned her for naming it, but the FACT is that it happens now, and it'll happen later, no matter who runs health care.
An objective media would have recognized the truth behind this and condemned Palin for her economic ignorance. But instead, because she accidentally revealed a nasty truth that the pols (especially on the left) want to keep hidden, they condemned her for "lying". But she only showed her stupidity--she did not "lie". 98.82.190.226 ( talk) 06:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Yawn. Derekbd ( talk) 22:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I've added the {{ Unbalanced}} template to the page for now - the POV presented from the given sources is almost entirely from proponents of the health care reform legislation, with little space given to statements made by Palin herself and other opponents of the initiative. Right now the article (and especially the lede) reads like an attempt to discredit Palin's position rather than a neutral presentation of the origins and use of the term, as well as reactions to it from notable sources of various ideological persuasions.
In the process of gathering sources now, but one issue I can open with is that the article and criticism focuses almost entirely on the end-of-life counseling provisions that were removed from the legislation following this controversy, rather than the health care rationing concerns that Palin consistently has said were her motivation for coining the metaphor. Examples:
Palin's original FB note, 7 Aug 2009:
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Clarification to her original post, 14 Aug 2009.
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.
Written Testimony Submitted to the New York State Senate Aging Committee - 8 Sep 2009
It is unclear whether section 1233 or a provision like it will remain part of any final health care bill. Regardless of its fate, the larger issue of rationed health care remains.
Hong Kong speech - 23 Sep 2009
I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs.
Comments on passage of the bill - 22 Dec 2009
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.
Take back the 20 - 24 Sep 2010
And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all.
Election Day post - 1 Nov 2010
Every day we hear about doctors leaving the Medicare system; increased premiums with talk of price controls; rationing becoming standard practice; and panels of faceless bureaucrats deciding which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (which I called a “death panel”).
That's probably enough of a wall of text regarding this point. :) Kelly hi! 03:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
<--Redent. Wow, this discussion is already 1,400 words long. I didn't see any huge issues with balance when I read the article, and I haven't had time to read the discussion above thoroughly yet. But I tend to think some of the issues can be resolved by a simple clean up and then by reference to WP policies on balance, NPOV, undue weight, etc. But in the meantime, I would like to ask Kelly if she could summarize the main issues she is raising, just for the sake of conciseness, please. Thank you.- KeptSouth ( talk) 12:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
“ | 'With all due respect,' the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee writes, 'it's misleading' for President Barack Obama to say that provisions in one of the health care overhaul bills simply increase the information offered to Medicare recipients about end-of-life issues. 'The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context. ... 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?' [3] | ” |
It appears that the term "death panel" has been used in the past, though not in a widespread fashion, to refer to a panel of judges authorized specifically to issue or review a judicial death sentence. Example. In light of this, I'm wondering if the opening sentence should changed from "Death panel is a phrase coined by...Sarah Palin" to "Death panel is a phrase popularized by...Sarah Palin". Kelly hi! 00:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Kelly and others have raised some interesting questions about balance in this article, but I find that it's sometimes best to clean up the article first, before getting into the heavier and most disputable issues of POV, balance, etc. Some issues that can later turn into disputes can be taken care peremptorily by, for example, simple fact checking and verifying the existing references, removing or summarizing repetitious material. So, I am going to do some housekeeping, (boldly), but note it all here. I have placed the clean up tag on the article, while clean up is in progress, to alert readers and editors that clean up issues exist and to the discussion on this page.- KeptSouth ( talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Original text | Revised text | Reasoning |
---|---|---|
Benjamin W. Corn, MD, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, interpeted the death panels fear as evidence of a general fear of death common in the Western world. Specifically,to Corn, patients perceive their vulnerability if end of life discussions are initiated. [1] Corn cautions that some patients may never be comfortable discussing the subject but notes that when his patients contemplate their mortality it helps them set priorities and many discover "a profound appreciaton of life". | Dr. Benjamin W. Corn, a cancer specialist and supporter of end of life doctor-patient discussions, remarked that although health care reform was being debated "thought leaders have been remarkably reticent with respect to ... end-of-life care." He said that the death panels controversy showed that Americans were uneasy about discussing topics related to the dying process and argued that certain issues "must be confronted squarely", including whether experimental therapies should be reimbursed, the possible expansion of hospices, restoring dignity to the process of dying, and guidelines for physician assisted suicide. | Based on my reading of the article, it seems to me that these are his major statements that relate to this article. He was basically talking about the policy debate, rather than the reactions of individuals though that was part of it. |
A discussion on political lies between Paul Waldman of The American Prospect and Brooke Gladstone on the NPR show On the Media—which contrasted between policy lies and personal lies—used the death panels charge as an example. Waldman proposed that personal lies lead people to question a person's moral characther while policy lies do not, despite the possibility policy lies might have more real world effects. [2] | Journalist Paul Waldman of left-leaning The American Prospect, characterized Palin's claim that the health care bill provided for death panels as an "extremely pernicious" political lie about a policy "that had definite effects", which resulted in the provision for end of life planning being removed from the bill. He added that the "whole death panel argument almost brought down the whole bill" | This change is a little hard to see from the diffs so I put it here. I think it is very clear that this is what he was saying in relation to the death panel term, and that his theory on personal vs. policy lies is a little less noteworthy for this article |
Why is the international format, day before month being used? This is a US subject. Although normally the consistent format shouldn't be changed, this is the exceeption to the rule. Per MOS, WP:STRONGNAT, so I have changed the dating. KeptSouth ( talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
It is beginning to seem that this talk page will be getting lengthy. So I will be setting up an auto-archive for old posts every 30 days. Of course, it can always be adjusted it to a longer time frame if necessary. KeptSouth ( talk) 12:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
The JAMA piece states
“ | In one of the original health care reform proposals, periodic discussions with elderly patients about their advance directives would be recognized and funded by Medicare. But in some bizarre way, in the news cycle of talking heads with great hair and a smile that ceases only when trying to portray intense concern, this idea of physicians actually being paid to talk with patients about their care was turned into “death panels.” People like their physicians to talk with them. People are generally in favor of physicians getting paid. But the concept of physicians being paid for time to talk with patients and their families about advance directives somehow generated into the fear of decisions about life and death being controlled by the government. The idea was torpedoed not because it was a bad thing, or because people didn't want it, or because it wasn't needed. Our experience showed that it was desperately needed, and funding for it was needed just as much—but the idea was transformed successfully into a negative sound byte with a memorable catchphrase.
We shouldn't be surprised. ... That's why I’m in favor of “death panels.” But it won't be in this or any bill in the near future. The proposal was sunk by a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides this one. Physicians could take the time to talk with families on their own, but many physicians don't work on their own and must follow the schedules, rules, and procedures dictated by their employers, who follow the dictates of insurance companies, legislation, and changing funding patterns. We tried to do this on our geriatric unit, but the unit was closed. We didn't make enough money. |
” |
Currently the article reads "Psychiatrist Paul Kettl noted that the attention-catching phrase death panels became a lightening rod for several objections to the health care bill". I think this cuts Kettl's sentence short so as to remove its full meaning. I formerly summarized Kettl with this: "Paul Kettl, MD, MHA, writes that it was 'a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides' end of life discussions." But, the bolded text above appears to be the best representation of how Kettl thought the term was being used. I plan on making some edits on this. Jesanj ( talk) 14:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
It seems there is a minor dispute about the relevance of this quote that presently appears in the article.
Annas writes that " Ivan Illich seems to have gotten it right in his 1975 Medical Nemesis: 'Socially approved death happens when man [sic] becomes useless not only as a producer but as a consumer. It is at this point that [the patient] ... must be written off as a total loss. Death has become the ultimate form of consumer resistance'
I think it is obviously irrelvant, and removed it with an explanatory edit summary earlier, [6] but my action was reverted [7] with a discussion on my talk page that was not responded to, so I am stating my reasons for removing the quote again here in more detail. The passage was written in 1975, and is apparently quoted with approval in an introduction to a text written in 2010 by a bioethicist who does not even discuss the meaning of the quote. I do not think it is relevant at all or helpful to the average reader who wants to know what the 2009-10 death panel controversy has been about. I think the quote has been condensed to the point where only someone who is familiar with the bioethical issues or who has read other works by Illich would be able to either fully understand what Illich was saying in 1975 or why the 2010 author was putting it in his intro. I will hazard a guess on the meaning which is that Illich was saying 35 years ago that once someone stops buying things, stops being a consumer, then society is ready to deny medical treatment and that this will happen with elderly people because they have stopped buying things. But, not only is the argument far afield from the topic of this article, it is antiquated in many respects. Why? Because a person now can actually be quite a huge consumer of medical products and services while they are on life support or while they are taking all kinds of experimental cancer treatment drugs or undergoing all kinds of cognitive and physical therapies as for example, Terri Schaivo was. And let's not forget the medical industry is 1/6th of the U.S. economy. From the point of pure capitalism, dying and debilitated people are great cash cows. If this article was an academic discourse on euthanasia or do not resussitate orders or the like, rather than a Wikipedia article on the death panels political term, then perhaps the Illich quote would deserve mention here. But it is WP:NOT The quote has very little bearing on the arguments Sarah Palin made in 34 years later, does not aid the reader in understanding the recent death panels political controversy, or the current use of the death panels term - which is what this article is about. Because I see absolutely no reason to keep it here, and because after 2 or 3 days I have not gotten a response to my discussion of this that was begun on my talk page, I am removing this passage, and will look back here for further discussion, even though I really don't see how reasonable people can disagree that the quote is irrelevant. KeptSouth ( talk) 10:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
No one has responded the lack of relevance tag I placed on the section I have copied below, so I am removing the last two paragraphs of vague quotes that possibly say something about American culture being anti-death and that refer to someone worrying or being expected to worry about being accused of setting up death panels --none of which, even if was comprehensible, is actually relevant to this WP article or helpful to the general reader. I am certainly amenable to further discussion, if someone wants to try to explain how these quotes are relevant.
“ | Bishop and colleagues accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death ... they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions. | ” |
Bishop et al. replied that this was cautioning them
“ | to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of 'death panels' await us. | ” |
I will be removing the quotes from Scripko (great name!) and Bishop and combining the first paragraph into the preceding section.
KeptSouth (
talk) 11:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
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ignored (
help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) Perhaps my style of presenting the back and forth in the literature was not encyclopedic. I remain confident that at least the something from the reference above deserves mention in the article. The article states "In the era of rhetoric centered on fictional “death panels,” we have grown fearful for how our paper would be heard" & "Scripko and Greer (2010) likewise find our diagnosis to be accurate and concur with Truog that strong cultural forces are at work that make changing culture extremely difficult. Scripko and Greer note: “While Bishop et al accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death, even when it is not indicated, they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions” (74). It is here that they caution us to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of “life-at-all costs” that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of “death panels” await us." & concludes by referencing historical aspects of medical culture, religious approaches, a fear of death, medical technology, and a call for medical humility as "the medical establishment resists admission to finitude". How about this?: "Bishop et al. were fearful how their paper on CPR/DNR would be received, because it addressed "the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced" in "the era of rhetoric centered on fictional 'death panels'". Bishop et al. interpreted comments from their peers as a suggestion that "that land mines of 'death panels' await us". I find this material relevant because 1) it documents an impact of the death panels myth on medical professionals 2) it documents
scholarly opinion on what could trigger further 'death panels' concerns. Also
Bishop is not merely an "academic"; he is also a MD/trained internist.
Jesanj (
talk) 13:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)This article is about the death panel term coined by Sarah Palin. Before Palin introduced the term, Betsey McGaughey made some statements. One of the statements was about Rahm Emanuel's brother. It is going quite far afield to discuss what Rahm Emanuel's brother said. In other words, it is irrelevant to this article, which is about the term death panel that was introduced by Sarah Palin. I have commented it out this material, and refactored the sentence that mentions Palin being inspired, so it is clear that the NYT said the charges against Emanuel were false. Most of what I have commented out is perhaps best discussed in the Emanuel article. Otherwise, we are getting into six degrees of Kevin Bacon type of irrelevancies here. Maybe that's the point, I don't know, but I will continue to AGF - KeptSouth ( talk) 00:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I would assume good faith if possible. It's not possible. Before, the article misrepresented Ezekiel Emanuel as saying, "medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled," which was a very big lie. Now mass-deletions enforce another, equally big mistatement that "Emanuel is not the topic of this article" even though a huge mass of ink was spilled by McCaughey and Palin describing Ezekiel as part of what Palin called a "death panel."
Honest people have as much a right to edit this article as the rest. Way it is. Get used to it. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 16:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who didn't read up on the subjsect, Palin said that Ezekiel Emanuel was the architect of a "downright evil", "Orwellian", "disturbing", "shocking" "death panel." She got this from Bachmann's description of a Betsy McCaughey editorial, according to Palin. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 16:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
About the "strays from the topic" remark for the Prelude section:
There were NO complaints about a flagrant lie implying that McCaughey's statement was made by Ezekiel, which is false.
Endless complaints about sourced facts showing that McCaughey (her Deadly Doctors editorial was only one example) and Sarah Palin (repeatedly and at length) made Ezekiel Emanuel a large part of what Palin called a death panel.
Provide proof that many, many statements made by McCaughey and Palin about alleged euthanasia and rationing claims related to Ezekiel Emanuel were forged somehow, or admit that the "strays from the topic" claim is another flagrant lie. You have until New Year's day. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 13:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Jesanj, for reminding us to use reliable sources. However, please keep such suggestions from becoming too inside-out by actually reading such reliable sources. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Jimmuldrow ( talk) 04:08, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
Here are some sources which may be useful:
http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001528
http://www.mcknights.com/new-congressional-report-lends-credibility-to-end-of-life-provision-in-house-reform-bill/article/146444/
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:47, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
In two places in the article (the lede and further down), I'm removing a one-word quotation from Johnny Isakson which states that he "called Palin's interpretation 'nuts'". The presentation is problematic and definitely needs to be reworked if it's to be re-included, because he never said that. From the Ezra Klein interview:
I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts.
The problem here is that Palin never said anything about people being euthanized. From her original FB post:
And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.
Palin never mentions euthanasia - to my knowledge, she never has throughout the healthcare debate, consistently stating that her concern has been health care rationing. It's apparent that Isakson is reacting to inaccurate information he received second- or third-hand, not to anything Palin actually said. Kelly hi! 02:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Is it worth noting that Palin has also applied the term to the Independent Payment Advisory Board? [14] Kelly hi! 20:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
From the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, today:
“ | The real death panel myth is that the term ever had anything to do with something so potentially beneficial. (end of life counseling) We wrote at the time that Sarah Palin's coinage was sensationalistic, but it was meant to illustrate a larger truth about a world of finite resources and infinite entitlement wants. | ” |
There additional analysis there on coinage and reception of the term. Kelly hi! 21:12, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree that this should be included and have added a link to http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/01/death-panels-and-maxwells-silver-hammer-end-of-life-planning/ although I'm not picky about what sources are used. What I am concerned about is a laundry list of every instance of the term's use, which is why I've trimmed a considerable amount of that. If anyone has any issues with what I've done, I'll happily discuss the merits of each case under Wikipedia's weight guidelines. Dabnag ( talk) 00:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
The WSJ article is opinion though not attributed (surprise surprise). The clue being the link at the bottom (next in opinion).-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 07:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
In the past day or so the article has been completely reorganized in a way that I think was detrimental. Material that had been usefully organized into topical sections was restructured into a giant, unreadable list of "reactions." I am adding the "controversial" template and I would like to request that major changes be discussed before they are made.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 15:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
In the coining section, under Palin's original quote, this has been added again (I reverted it once and placed it in Palin's section). This addition has nothing to do with Palin's coining of the term, and, in my opinon, is in the wrong place. The edit summary reads "Palin's correction of the misimpression given by her spokeswoman needs to be explained early on". The text added includes the sentence "In November 2009 Palin corrected the impression that had been given that the source of the claim against Obama was connected to the advanced health directive rewards in Medicate [sic]." As far as I can tell, the ideas that there was a "misimpression" that was "corrected" are unsupported. I think they are harmful to the article. I propose scrapping the text added by this edit, as I have incorporated Palin's explanation elsewhere. Jesanj ( talk) 18:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm unsure as to why the movie critic Roger Ebert's blog posting is encyclopedic here. I removed it once but it was reinstated with an edit summary that said it was accidentally removed, but my removal was purposeful. Jesanj ( talk) 23:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't see why he should be any less qualified to speak on this subject than Sarah Palin. He is probably more intelligent and certainly makes sense in what he writes and can make an argument. I am still waiting for Palin's explanation of how Obama has a death panel in front of which her granny or her grandchild coud appear.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 01:55, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Should this page be moved to Death panel? Currently that title is just a redirect to here. WP:TITLE says that names should be kept concise...I could see the parenthetical "political term" being used for disambiguation if necessary, but currently there is nothing to disambiguate from. WP:PRECISION seems to indicate the parenthetical isn't needed. Kelly hi! 21:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. Most of the oppose votes are based on the fact that by not disambiguating the term we give the idea too much credence or that we may annoy people. However neither of these reasons are supported by policy or guidelines, whereas our article title policy say we only disambiguate when necessary. Hence I find a clear consensus in favour of this move as the move arguments are stronger. There appears to be less consensus on whether the plural should be used so for now I went with WP:SINGULAR and move to the singular. However given that there was no clear consensus this discussion should not stop another discussion on whether the plural should be used should any editor wish to start a move discussion on that issue. Dpmuk ( talk) 15:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Death panels (political term) →
Death panel — As stated above, to be concise per
WP:TITLE, parenthetical not needed per
WP:PRECISION.
Kelly
hi! 02:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
<-[Redent] Comment: I noticed that Kelly, who proposed the page move, seems to have done some further reading of WP Policies, Guidelines, etc., so I took this as a good cue to do a little more reading of these myself. [WP:Moving a page]] says "Pages may be moved to a new title if the previous name is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or for a host of different housekeeping reasons such as that it is not the common name of the topic." Basically, this rule is about 75% against the page move, and it certainly supports keeping the plural form Death panels as that is the common name of the topic. KeptSouth ( talk) 10:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
When coined, the phrase "death panels" was in no way equivalent in either meaning or effect to "two Americas". It was closer to "baby killers" and the "final solution" because it implied mass killing and because it had did in fact have an incendiary effect. We should not forget the very angry and sometimes menancing people who attended the townhalls in the summer of 2009. If we actually look at how the media described the events at the time, at least two things are apparent: people got very riled up and mobilized; and, the actual existence of both death panels and proposals for death panels was widely debunked. Neither of these very salient facts, (the resulting anger and fear or the basic falsity of the charges), are adequately discussed in the article now. The term's evolution in meaning or multiple meanings are also given short shrift. By this I mean: euthanasia type panels, government rationed health care, and more recently government panels which have the power to remove drugs from the market)
Regardless of the changes in meaning or multiple meanings, and regardless of what the wiki article here now says - death panels have never existed and were never proposed - that is a simple fact. And in all the uses, "death panels", is a political term. To remove political term from the title is POV itself, because it gives the term, "death panels" a reality and validity, when it really is something which does not exist, except in the world of politics.
As an alternative, I agree with Jesanj's proposal of "Death panels controversy". Sometimes controversy can be a POV term, but sometimes, as here, it is a simple reality. Rather than being POV, the term in this instance illustrates there was more than one side to the issue. People were very upset on both sides, the media often described it as a controversy, it perfectly fits the term controversy. Webster's: controversy is "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views, a dispute" Examples: "The decision aroused much controversy... A controversy arose over the new law." Thesaurus: "an often noisy or angry expression of differing opinions <the seemingly imperishable controversy over the teaching of evolution>" Dictionary.com: "a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion...contention, strife, or argument. [19]
Therefore I think the title should stay the same, or should be renamed "Death panels controversy" because this is what it is, and there are no death panels in the real world. In addition this usage already exists: there are a number of articles in the popular press with "death panel controversy" in their titles or in the body of article. -Regards- KeptSouth ( talk) 14:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Linked the section title for some reason. †TE† Talk 05:47, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
U.S. Alters Rule on Paying for End-of-Life Planning †TE† Talk 17:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The article is somewhat confusing. As far as I can tell, there are two basic aspects to the death panel allegation. They are rationing of care, and allegedly coercive "end of life" counseling. The lede emphasizes only rationing, and the "Provision identified by the charge" section emphasizes only "end of life," when it seems to me that both are of equal importance (some might argue that they are more or less the same thing.) Then the section on rationing has an "undue weight" tag, which seems inappropriate. There is also a lack of clarity about the arguments being made in defense of IPAB (which may be unavoidable) -- the defenders seem to both be saying that it's not rationing, while also saying that a degree of rationing is necessary and that if aid recipients don't like it they should find some money and buy their own health care.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 15:52, 6 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
::That might be an interesting issue to discuss, but it's off-topic. The point of the "death panel" term is that when certain therapies, such as dialysis or cancer drugs, are denied due to budgetary considerations, people die. All sorts of arguments could be made in the name of "scarce resources" or "fiscal responsibility," but the patient is still dead. Ultimately, the debate is about priorities, such as bank bailouts vs. patients with expensive diseases.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:50, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I boldly removed a decent amount of things to clear up a variety of issues that have been identified on this talk page, such as clarity/organization/should we mention the IPAB/Arizona/etc. by observing what I see as a fairly strict call for notability in WP:NEO. Jesanj ( talk) 03:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
::Please stop with the deletions. They appear to be based on POV rather than some procedural guideline. The article is not overly long.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
In this edit and this edit, an editor says he deleted sourced material because he disagreed with the source. This is unacceptable. These deletions should stop. If someone wants to argue that the source is unreliable, the proper venue is to go to the reliable sources noticeboard. 99.60.52.7 ( talk) 15:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
:This article is about a political controversy. Clearly, editors may feel that one or the other side of the controversy is the correct one. However, under NPOV, it is not permitted to delete the side that you disagree with, provided the material comes from reliable sources. If you believe that National Review and Wall Street Journal are unreliable, the noticeboard is here:
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:20, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
There are clearly editors at work on this article who are desperately trying to lend justification to the idea that Sarah Palin was right in her claim about Obama's America is a place where her elderly parents or her disabled son could one day be dragged before some panel,a so-called "Death Panel" and have to plead for their lives on the grounds that the panel felt their life night not be worth living.
The strategy is to conflate several ideas and tap into a deep fear implanted in the heads of the American public many years ago about so-called socialized medicine.
It is argued on two false premises in order es to come to a false conclusion. The false premises are (1) there are death panels in England with bureaucrats determining people’s access to medical services, but not yet in America (2) that America's new health reform is creating a panel or board with a similar structure or purpose to that in England, and the false conclusion is (3) that very soon therefore Palin could well be right that people (maybe not her her parents or her son, but someone covered by "government run insurance") will one day find themselves in front of such a panel.
The use of Wikipedia to promote this ideas based on this type of construct IS TOTALLY AGAINST THE RULES OF EDITING.
Before we consider the rules, we need to consider the premises on which this house of cards has been built.
Clearly this is nonsense. There are NO panels in England before which a person can be dragged and have to prove that his or her life is worth the spend on the care they need. That is not to say that there is no evaluation as to when and how an intervention to defend a life is justifiable and when it is not or how collective funds can be spent. The clearly is, as there is any collective insurance system a process by which there are checks and balances to ensure that collective funds are spent wisely. The loss adjuster who checks my auto insurance claim does this. In America’s private medical insurance system it is done by insurance company clerks armed with insurance company rule books about what is and why is not accepted medical practice in certain situations, and by the caps and restrains within the policy (annual limits, applications of deductibles and co-pays and whether o not a policy has access to a level of drug formulary which can fund a pharmaceutical intervention. Every insurance company has these formularies and has rules about when and whether a drug in that formulary can be used. These are all intended to “ration” the spend of the insurance company’s funds. The NHS in Britain is, in effect, a publicly owned insurer and makes the same kind of decisions but in practice this kind of care over spending is easier to exercise by the medical profession because medical profession knowns that it has to weigh out costs and benefits, and for the most part the rationing done by insurance company bureaucrats in America is done by the medical profession in England and Wales in every possible medical setting, based on medical judgment. When it comes to assessing expensive new technologies, the NHS has going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that there is an even handed approach in every region of the country and that there is no “postcode lottery” where some regions pay for services that are not funded elsewhere. NICE (which is a comparative effectiveness body) has taken on the challenge of examining costs and benefits of expensive medical intervention and determining, based on real clinical evidences, what works and what does not. The QALY is an effective tool in comparing outcomes, and costs can be associated to a QALY gained based on clinical effectiveness. This determines the upper spend limit for an intervention. It is highly scientific, based on evidence, and the people of England and Wales generally support the aims of both NICE and the NHS as evidenced by the overwhelming support the British public have for the NHS. The NHS is not a rationing body in the way that food or petrol(eum) may be rationed in times of shortage, with a body deciding who can have coupons to get what they need and how many. This is the American fear factor about health care “rationing” and it is totally wrong. The only “rationing” that goes on in the NHS is a cost/benefit analysis, with the intention of getting the best quality of outcome at the lowest price. Some things that NICE does not do is to determine doctor and hospital re-imbursement levels (this is what the MEDPAC does now, subject to congressional approval, and what the new IPAB will do with only congressional oversight (to get the politicians OUT of the decision making loop). This is what Britain did with the NHS years ago and it has been unversaly admired and copied around the world. It does this in full cooperation with the medical profession, the medical devices and pharmaceutical industry, and with ´representation from patient bodies. Its about as public and transparent as you can get. Contrast this with the coverage rules of American medical insurance companies whose rules are Byzantine, as was amply demonstrated in the Michael Moore documentary Sicko! which lifted the lid on the secret world of insurance company denial letters. So getting back to the premise that there are death panels in England with bureaucrats determining people’s access to medical services, but not yet in America, this is clearly not only FALSE, but it is actually the other way around. There are bureaucratic decisions made in AMERICA of a kind that simply do NOT happen in England.
Now lets look at premise 2.
Lets assume that the panel or board in England is NICE, I.e. a comparative effectiveness body making decisions about what treatments work and deliver benefits and which do not, and, (very infrequently) determine whether a new drug delivers benefits worth the high cost the pharmaceutical company wants to charge and in what circumstances. NICE does not determine doctors contractual reward (salaries or hourly rate for bough in services). Doctors salaries in England and Wales are set at market rates in order to attract sufficient doctors to the service, just as some US hospitals do, America is a bit weird internationally in terms of hospital care as doctors there are a separate billing entity.. Therefore insurers like Wellpoint and United Health Care, and public ones such as Medicare, have to set limits on what they are prepared to pay for their services. All that IPAB does for Medicare is to set that rate. It is the same price rationing that Blue Cross and Blue Shield and thousands of other insures do, It is not a unique activity and it is nothing like what NICE does. Following the references there are sóme stories relating to the cancer drug Avastin. This had been approved by ´the medicines regulators in the US and in Europe but NICE had not found benefit for it in all the circumstances for which it had been approved, or if there was, not enough benefit to justify the cost in every circumstance. So it had set limitations on its use within´the NHS. Although the drug companies managed to get a lot of noisy articles in the right wing press, by and large, the government stood firm and backed NICE, as I suspect would the British public. Recently, the US regulator has looked again at new clinical data from the use of Avastin and have found it to deliver much less benefit than had previously been found. Because the drug also has negative consequence, the US regulator has now withdrawn some of its earlier recommendations. Some have claimed WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE that this was a rationing decision, and did this IN SPITE OF A STRICT DENIAL FROM THE REGULATOR THAT COST HAD ANY ROLE TO PLAY IN THE DECISION. Such claims should not be made and they should certainly not receive any recognition by Wikipedia unless the claims can be substantiated.
So what are we left with? Two false premises and one false conclusion. It really is not acceptable to use Wikipedia to spread this kind of ridiculous notion.
The question now is who is trying to push these two false premises and its conclusion (apart from the editors here of course)? Well we have a chappie by the name of AvikRoy who writes for an line journal. What is his expertise? He works as a “health care analyst” for a company called “Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co.”. Well, health care analyst makes him sound like he should know what he is talking about, and if his firm was in the health care business he could be just the man to make us question where the analysis above went wrong, But in fact Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. is actually a stock broking firm and what he analyzes in health care stocks and the health care money making machine, not the effectiveness of medicines and treatments but their effects on the bottom lines of medical insurance companies and medical service providers. Ultimately, he is partisan, representing those who own pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and medical services groups. He writes on medical matters in political journals presumable to sway political opinions. Quite simply, he cannot be considered to be a neutral or a reliable source when it comes to determining the rights and wrongs of this case. This is quite clear when you read any of the stuff he has written which is biased and clearly intended to pull at emotional strings rather than taking a hard headed analytical and detached approach to his subject. Take a look at this article which is carried in a link from the NRO story titled “what the British NHS does today”, to his own blog web page. The first story is about Avastin (surprise surprise) in which it is claimed that doctors are pressurized by the system NOT to tell patients about a drug not approved for use by the NHS but which the patient could buy privately. The story is totally anecdotal and cannot point to any place where there is a policy in place not to tell patients about such drugs, And why should it? The NHS would save money if the patient instead checks into to a private hospital for treatment. It looks tome like a story planted in the press by the makers of Avastin. Personally I am not surprised that doctors do not recommend patients to seek these expensive treatments, If they are bad value for the NHS they are presumably going to be bad value for the vast majority of NHS patients seeking to pay for them out of pocket. The second story is titled “Sentenced to Death on the NHS “, a wonderful headline for those already convinced that you might go into a NHS hospital on your feet but likely to come out in a box. On closer inspection it is about what to do when all the people with medical responsibilities, consultants, doctors, nurses and other are all in agreement that end of life is near, They instigate a protocol to ease the persons last days without taking steps to cure the patient, Every doctor all around the world has seen this and I don't have any reason to think what happens in England is any different to what happens in America. The best palliative care is offered. But what is new here is that some UK doctors are saying “but what if we all got it wrong when we said death was close and inevitable”? As the article says, forecasting death is an inexact science, and we should expect that sometimes the initial diagnosis will be wrong and they are arguing that there ought to be ways to review´and revise that initial decisions. That is all that this doctor is saying and presumable the very same argument could be made in every health care setting, including those in the U.S. I feel absolutely sure that the procedures the UK doctors and and nurses is fundamentally no different to that which goes on the the US, It is natural that the whole team agree before putting a patient on a pathway intended to ease their passing with palliative care only. In the final analysis, the headline “sentenced to death” was pure tabloid sensational plash hardly worthy if the label “journalism”,
Or this one in which he makes a classical mistake of equating medical services consumption with other forms of consumption. He says here that “The entire reason death panels exist in Britain is because, when the NHS was founded in 1948, few people understood that making health care “free at the point of care” would lead people to use more of it: much more. To the point that today, in Britain, the U.S., and nearly every other country, health care is sinking the budget.” Again he makes an unsubstantiated claim (there there are death panels in England) but then he goes on to make a classic mistake, equating medical services consumption the same as the consumption of cars or chocolate,; an assumption that people will want more of something the cheaper it becomes, In fact, any medical economist will tell you that medical services have “a negative utility of consumption”.. i.e. a person who consumes lots medical services is generally worse off than someone who consumes none. These are fundamental errors and makes this guy's opinions worthless.
This man works for a stockbroker and thus represents medical industry. He is not a journalist but a health care analyst in the financial world. He is not a reliable source.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 19:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
:Hauskalainen, you are operating on a mistaken assumption about how Wikipedia policy works. Mr. Roy is not the source. We don't evaluate Mr. Roy. We evaluate the National Review -- it is their job to evaluate Mr. Roy's qualifications. If you go to
WP:RSN and enter "National Review" in the search box, you will see that there have been numerous discussions about the use of that publication as a source. I would suggest that you read them, and then if you like, start a new thread regarding NR as a source in this article. But keep in mind that under
WP:V which is a core policy: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
Delia Peabody (
talk) 22:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC) sock of banned user
Will Beback
talk 07:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I find this section to be totally biased by its very presence.
In the article we establish that Palin was originally influenced by Bachmann who was influenced by what she misread in Emmanuel's papers. Emmanual was not at all talking about "rationing" but about the problems of getting consent for End of Life care AFTER the person needing care is unable to communicate their preferences. Getting an advanced care directive is intended to alleviate the stress on relatives, cares and doctors and not save money and certainly not to deny care to people who would prefer to receive it.
Then we establish that Palin's spokesperson confirms that this is about advance care directives.
Then Palin seems to change her mind. She then starts talking vaguely about how to contain costs in a system where everyone has access to care (as if the problem does not arise even in the present situation when not everyone is insured. Because she cannot connect it to Obama and the specific legislation, she then admits that she is talking in only very vague terms rather in the same way Regan did about the Evil Empire - long on rhetoric but nothing of any substance.
So far so good. But now the article takes a highly POV turn. First of all it introduces a section called "Rationing of care". The Christian Science Monitor article makes the general point that the claims had been found to be false but that therhetoric over rationing was carrying on. Not that this was based on anything concrete, but just the vague notion that if the government got involved it would begin rationing. And it is fairly even handed giving examples of claims of rationing both specific examples of rationing in the present health care system as well as claims that the new health care system would have more (though as I say, not backed up with anything concrete. So the article is fairly balanced but it is used to introduce the idea that Republicans say this is about rationing.
Gingrich is then quoted making the same vague claims.
The Nyhan article is less vague but comes down firmly on the side of the rationing being mostly myth. He cals it "a myth" and "highly inflammatory". There is one sliver of a quote that might be twisted to make it seem the contrary. Nyhan says "While efforts to reduce growth in health care costs under Obama’s plan might lead to more restrictive rationing than already occurs under the current health care system, that hardly justifies suggestions that reform legislation would create a “death panel” that would deny care to individual seniors or disabled people" Whoever inserted that quote missed off the first words of the quote that I show in italics, thus making it seem much more certain than it really is. Cannon's point that the "rationing" if any coming from Advanced care directives is not "government rationing" but consumer directed rationing --- i.e. the patient decides and not the bureaucrat.
None of the above has anything to do with anything to do with anything that Palin has said and nothing to do with "a panel of bureaucrats deciding who gets treatment or not", the so-called "death panels" (And if anyone wants to claim that NICE is a "death panel" it is no more a death panel than the bureaucrats in America's private insurance companies that say which drugs and treatments that they will fund. You only have to read a little about the movie Sicko! to know that these bureaucrats exist. NICE does NOT deny anyone access to care. People are free to insure themselves over and above the coverage provided by the NHS (such policies do exist but there is virtually no demand for them) or to pay out of pocket for private treatment. Other bodies in the NHS fund care, not NICE so even the notion that it is a rationing body is far from the truth.
So what we have is quite a large section on the topic of "rationing of care " which gives little or no evidence of any health care rationing, real, planned. Only that in the mind Palin, Gingrich, and Michael Steele. I conclude therefore that the section is there only to give the lazy reader the impression that this is about rationing and there is enough of it to warrant its own section. Sorry folks, but this is all too POV for me. I do not mind the text appearing and I kept it in before when deleting the section title. But now that someone has added it all back so thjis time I am just going to delete the whole section on the grounds of POV pushing. If the person wants to add the content back, that is fine and I may reserve the right to balance it out somewhat. But that section titles of "rationing of care" has to go.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 18:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
For the very reason that it— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hauskalainen ( talk • contribs) 18:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
User:Kelly I just noticed it was you that reverted, but are not taking account of the argument I have made for the delete. I quite accept that Palin has implied she is talking about rationing. That can be stated quite simply in the text. None of the examples in the section that I deleted contains ANY example that could fit "Obama's death panels" and it is therefore simply misleading to have a section which writes it up as though it is discussing the issue. As far as I can see there is no argument made for the presence of rationing in the bill or in any of "Obama's" plans (tho he did not write the Bill as I understand it). There is in Palin's words, and Steele's words, and Gingrich's words, and in Boehner's words, just some vague notion that if the government is involved then there will be rationing. And of course that is nonsense because EVERY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD RATIONS CARE. In this sense I do agree with the editor above who said that the health insurance industry rations care.
Which brings me nicely to Jesanj's point with his NYT quote that "While the board is not supposed to be able to cut benefits, industry groups fear that its actions would result in rationing care. The board, known as IPAB, could cut payments to health care providers." It may come as news to you, but all public bodies in the USA as well as in most other countries can only act with the powers delegated to them. If they have no power to cut benefits then they cannot do it. To me it would be illogical if the IPAB was not able to determine rates because otherwise health care providers could charge what they like. Maybe this is why the US has the highest health care costs in the world and why American doctors are paid so highly compared to those in other countries. In any case I do not see that this has anything to do with terminating Grandma or not valuing baby Trig or whatever he is called. If we are to have a section with the word rationing in it, it must be related to a "death panel" - a body of bureaucrats which decides who gets treatment and who does not and it must be labeled neutrally such as "alleged rationing" or "claims of rationing" because as it is, it is totally POV and I will take this as far as it needs to get it corrected. WP is NOT here to mislead its readers but to inform them. Palin's claim of rationing is not justification for a section titled "health care rationing" without substantial evidence that this is justifiable.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
And having said all that, perhaps Kelly will be kind as to respond to the issues I have raised in this section.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 20:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I know I can provide reliable sourcing to provide balance but this just gets messy. And just because there was some attention to fair play with the article name is no excuse for playing fast and loose with the section titles. I am very dubious about "rationing" because all finite resources are rationed. Its just a question of how you do it. By price and ability to pay, or by some other criterion such as your how sick you are. There is no right or wrong answer but it is disingenuous to think that there is health care rationing in England but not yet in America. As far as i can see, Obama is sticking with a limited cost containment within the price rationing model. Americans will be grappling regularly with balancing out the generosity in subsidies versus the tax burden, but they have done this for years with Medicaid so nothing new there then.-- Hauskalainen ( talk) 22:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
There are many reliable sources that have made the connection between NICE and "death panels," between IPAB and "death panels," and between IPAB and NICE. Whether Sarah Palin has made these connections is not really important (although apparently she has.) The article not a bio of Sarah Palin. Reliable sources have connected "death panels" with rationing, and therefore it belongs in the article -- it is the effort to delete this material that is POV, not the effort to include it. Also, I object to this revert, which was done without explanation. It is clear that NICE and IPAB are very similar agencies, and reliable sources have commented on this. Any effort to obscure or suppress the connection should be regarded as POV-mongering. 99.109.197.144 ( talk) 00:21, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
There has been some interest in connecting NICE with the IPAB in the section that discusses rationing. [25] [26] And above the IP said "It is clear that NICE and IPAB are very similar agencies". Above I noted 1) the first diff had a politician's editorial as the source so i didn't think it was a reliable source for that connection and 2) this is the death panels page. The second time it is added we get another opinion cited that only says "[IPAB] may be borrowing an unfortunate model from overseas [(NICE)]" (my emphasis). The conservative thinktank unambiguously associates the two, granted. But here's the problem: entire sections of the death panels article are devoted entirely to the summer 2009 episode. This new content seeks to place 2010 murmurs ahead of a 2009 yelling. But 2009 is the only reason we have an article, because it was notable. So, I don't find it appropriate to keep moving things to the top of a section header that are not associated with why this term is notable. Jesanj ( talk) 20:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
:I am puzzled by this claim, which is also reflected in the way the article is written, that the only reason the term "death panel" is article-worthy is because of events in 2009. It looks to me like it is appearing now with greater and greater frequency now in the press. The term is notable because reliable sources refer to it, generally, not because of Sarah Palin or some other particular event.
Angel's flight (
talk) 20:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
:::The definition supplied refers to it as a "new term" in 2009. It is no longer a new term. It is now more widely in use, and it is abundantly clear that the term has been widely applied to the aforementioned rationing boards. I think that
this deletion and topic split are unacceptable -- every reference to IPAB that is cited is in the context of the rationing controversy. What is your rationale for moving it out of the section on that controversy?
Angel's flight (
talk) 02:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
::::Since I am getting no response, I'll put it back. I also found a cite from the London Times that says Palin's initial use of the term was a reference to NICE.
Angel's flight (
talk) 17:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
::::::Let me remind you that until recently, this article was called "Death panels (political term.) There is a controversy about the concept, and that is the topic of the article. For you to argue that the Wall Street Journal or the London Times do not qualify as mainstream sources seems like an effort to exclude them based on POV. This is not primarily a medical controversy, it is a political one, because (as most sources seem to agree) some level of rationing is inevitable since resources are not infinite. Therefore the question becomes, under conditions of economic collapse, whether to take measures to revive the economy, or attempt to solve the problem by cutting entitlements, government services of all kinds, and medical care. The material which you have repeatedly deleted is well-sourced, and there is plenty of room for it in this moderately-sized article. Under NPOV, viewpoints which differ from the ones you prefer must be included if they appear in reliable sources, and they do.
Angel's flight (
talk) 18:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
No. This gets us into Chicken Licken territory. Just because Chicken Licken said the sky is falling in doesn't mean we have to report it. It would be reportable if Chicken Licken was in the White House or in Congress, or national health care advisor, but the scribblings of a Wall Street trader's hack (Avik) about at institute he clearly does not understand properly (NICE), does not warrant giving him any attention. And we cannot let things be quotable just because reliable source X said it. Wikipedia would be full to to the brim of complete sh**e if we reported everything the newsmedia reports. NICE does not even fit the definition of a "Death panel". Reference to NICE in this article should be scrubbed. Hauskalainen ( talk) 03:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
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