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November 17, 2009

But... But... There Are No Death Panels

Posted by Gregory of Yardale at November 17, 2009 10:33 AM

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel of doctors and scientists, has decided that women under 50 don't need Mammograms, and women probably shouldn't perform self-examinations either.

This Panel ... similar to the Comparative Effectiveness Research Commission (CERC) (Section 1401(a), p. 738) in the PelosiCare Bill ... has determined that these tests cost too much, and don't save enough lives to justify them. Tell that to the 40,000 women under 50 who are diagnosed with breast cancer every year.

Left-wingers often caricature the notion of "Death Panels" as though right-wingers are claiming there will literally be bureaucrats before whom sick and elderly people will stand before being sent to the Soylent Greenworks. What the right is concerned about is more insidious than that. The right is concerned about panels like CERC deciding that certain treatments and certain levels of care simply will not be provided to whole classes of people on the basis of these bureaucratic assessments. Which is exactly what happens in Britain under its equivalent to the CERC.

BTW, these commissions would be staffed by unelected, bureaucratic, political appointees. Voters would have no say whatsoever in who was on the commission, and no way of removing them.