Praising End of Life
Cliff
"Gov. Palin Issued Proclamation Praising End of Life Counseling in 2008 (&
later referred to the same couseling as "death panels")"
[
Sarah Palin may seem like a person of strong opinions, and she probably is, it
just turns out that she doesn't even agree with herself some of the time. Take
the case of the extremely important furor over fictitious death panels, a furor
that has hurt the country by derailing reasonable debate and striking fear
unnecessarily into the hearts of many.
For the facts and full story, see (just click the link)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/opinion/15blumenauer.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
the Op-Ed piece about the history of this legislative text, written for NYT by
Democratic Representative from Oregon, EARL BLUMENAUER. It turns out that many
Republicans supported the need to provide end-of-life counseling for dying
people, something that insurance companies don't pay for and patients (i.e.
people) badly need (paraphrased from the NYT article); quoting from the NYT
piece by Rep. Blumenauer:
"..., I reached out to Republicans, including conservative members of Congress
who often expressed support for the concept, and worked with national experts in
palliative care and advocacy groups in devising the end-of-life provision. My
Republican co-sponsor, Charles Boustany of Louisiana, told me he had many
end-of-life conversations as a cardiovascular surgeon but unfortunately they
often were too late. He wished that he could have spoken to patients and their
families when they could have reflected properly, not when surgery was just
hours away."
Gov. Palin supported this counseling so strongly that she issued an official
State Proclamation praising it. Click the link to see the proclamation.
http://gov.state.ak.us/archive.php?id=1094&type=6
However, later, in order to create fictitious reasons to fight against the
President's health care reform plans, to divide the country and to attempt to
derail Congressional efforts to implement these plans, Palin issued the famous
August 7 "death panel post" on her Facebook page, a post that earned Sarah Palin
a prize for Lie of the Year (2009) and which also disagreed 100% with her own
earlier proclamation. I guess the truth doesn't mean anything to some people,
even when it is (or was) their own truth.
......
]