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Sarah Palin was excoriated in the media as some kind of fool for saying she didn't want her son or anyone else to have to stand before a "death panel" which would judge his worthiness to receive health care. (web site) Yet the uproar she caused by pointing out that care would necessarily be rationed under any government-run system was such that Obama felt compelled to answer her (web site) in one of his scripted, staged "town hall" speeches. The best the supposedly great orator could do was ridicule, not reply -- and the people understood that. They understood even better when Palin produced another Facebook comment lashing out at the provision which mandated that doctors initiate end-of-life counseling sessions. So -- in the Senate version, at least -- the provision was removed. (web site)

Not too bad for a stupid, marginalized, quitter ex-Governor from a backwater state who supposedly gave up her place on the national stage and killed her own political career, is it?

However, the person who originally (at least, in the current debate) brought up the idea of health care being rationed out by a group of individuals not directly answerable to the people was not Sarah Palin, but Barack Obama himself, (web site) in April of 2009. As Tom Maguire pointed out in the blog Just One Minute, "Obama actually advocated end-of-life panels issuing voluntary guidelines with Timesman David Leonhardt, as reported in the (New York) Times." (web site)

THE PRESIDENT: So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you -- how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

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