Sarah Palin really needs a hobby. Wasn't everybody (outside of Alaska) better off when she had a job?
The unemployed former governor is back with another Facebook note concerning health care reform, and it reads like a first-draft response to yet another imagined slight. Concerning the 'Death Panels' finds Palin attempting to elevate herself to President Obama's level by claiming he was directly responding to her at the New Hampshire town hall meeting, although her name never came up:
Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.
Here is what Obama said:
“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.”
Actually, Obama cleverly framed the bogus "death panels" fantasy put forth by Palin within the larger context of what those ignorant words have spawned: the hysterical, viral misinformation campaign to which actual lawmakers such as Chuck Grassley are now clinging. The former small-state governor who quit mid-term was used as a prop to mock; a tool to present the main story line.
Palin ends her rambling diatribe thusly:
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.
What would Sarah Palin know about "real health care reform?" The people in the state she once so poorly governed might like to know, too.
State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life -- taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom -- are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found.
The situation is so bad the federal government has forbidden the state to sign up new people until the state makes necessary improvements.
No other state in the nation is under such a moratorium, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In the meantime, frail and vulnerable Alaskans who desperately need the help are struggling. One elderly woman is stuck in a nursing home, for lack of care at home. Another woman, suffering from chronic pain and fatigue, said she's so weak, she often can't even pop dinner into the microwave.
The moratorium is expected to last four or five months. State officials estimate about 1,000 Alaskans will be affected.
A particularly alarming finding concerns deaths of adults in the programs. In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help.
Sarah Palin lecturing anybody on health care reform is about as credible as would be a Sarah Palin handbook entitled, "Task Completion: Getting the Job Done."
