False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots

[steven johnson]

Organized disinformation for profit again rears it's ugly head.

Published: August 14, 2009
WASHINGTON - The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama's health care proposals would create government-sponsored "death panels" to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.
Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party's last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.
But the rumor - which has consistently come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false - was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.
Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton's health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, the lieutenant governor of New York).
...David Brock...
"In the 90s, every misrepresentation under the sun was made about the Clinton plan and there was no real capacity to push back," he said. "Now, there is that capacity."


http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=422005&single=1&f=19">False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots

[tj2001]

1. "Death panel" has the fingerprints of Frank Luntz & Karl Rove all over it

Typical eye-catching distortion.

[RandomThoughts]

2. This is not pretty but I think it is true, and makes a point about why death panels have meme'd

When any legislation gets passed, and anyone gets denied care, they will use that as propaganda.

They are attaching anyone that dies under a public plan, as that happening from an intent for that to happen by Democrats. They are taking something that happens, death, and trying to blame the Democrats, and President Obama for it, when the same things already happen in private sector. But they do not call there denial of care death panels, they call it 'only buisness'

If Death Panel sticks, they will use it in smear adds. Notice the big part of the statement is not that everyone can have 100 million dollar care, but that one group wants to kill another. So when people do die, because not everyone will get 100million dollar care, they will say the program killed them. But that already happens, and if they say that, then logically the Insurance industry should currently be in jail for murder. It is a backwards false argument.

That is one reason the insurance industry needs to be shown that they do have people deciding who gets care and who does not for profit. They have the same thing. Not just there is no death panels, but that sometimes people die, and many things determine how much care their is for people when sick. The term Death Panel, is being used for visceral response, but it implies something vile without showing that currently it is done by decisions in private sector.


The whole point of death panels is like saying people die from disease so we need private drug research. People die weather it is public or private, but by attaching those things to the public plan, and obscuring the reality that it is also in the private plan, they have a loaded attack for the future. In the case of the drug research, less would die with public research, but you can still make the argument some would die. They have created an argument that says if every person is not given unsustainable massive expensive care, then their argument about private being better then public is correct. It is a false argument being set up that needs to be challenged by pointing out what is really different between public and private options, not something that is the same and blaming it on one side and hiding the fact that it is also on the other side.

Another example.(Not a comment on public housing issue now just using as an example.)
If I say it is a simple truth that not everyone can have 5 houses in a public housing system built in some area, some people would scream public housing will not give everyone in that system 5 houses. So a public housing program starts somewhere and people in that system do not get 5 houses, and they scream 'told you so'. Right now in private housing, people do not have 5 houses, that would be the obvious flaw in the argument. Say that again, they are making a false argument to set up a slam.

It is true that not everyone can have 10 million dollar care. That is true, it sucks, but it is true. So first time someone does not get that, I would guess the right is planing on yelling death panel.

And It is also true that insurance companies do the same thing!

And if you think the answer is to fold on defending peoples lives by getting more and better care with a public option, that is wrong also, why, because then you give into the corruption of the deception and false argument because of fear to point out some of the limitations of our system.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. couldn't open the link, but did you see this thread on Falwell's connection?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6284499

some 'foundation' funded by him got the ball rolling around the same time, coincidentally, as the woman you cite in your OP

[Gabi Hayes]

4. Liberty Counsel

Founded in 1989, the Liberty Counsel is a nonprofit law firm and public policy organization with offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Its founder and chairman is Mathew D. Staver (in photo), who also serves as the dean of Liberty University School of Law, and its president is Staver's wife, attorney Anita L. Staver. Before becoming a lawyer, Mathew Staver was a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, a conservative Protestant sect that believes in the infallibility of the Bible.

Liberty Counsel established its reputation with lawsuits successfully challenging the division of church and state and became affiliated with Liberty University/Falwell Ministries in 2004. Before he died in 2007, Falwell said that he could "think of no greater work being done right now in America for the sake of our religious freedom and Christian heritage than that being done by Liberty Counsel."

The group made the news recently for its legal fight in Florida against a gay couple who received a judge's permission to adopt two children they helped rescue from a crack house. It's also won widespread attention for its Help Save Christmas® campaign as well as its annual Day of Purity™ promoting sexual abstinence among youth.

On July 29, 2009, Liberty Counsel released its talking points about the health care reform bill. Among the many parts of the legislation it raises concerns about is the page cited by Palin, about which it states:

* Sec. 1233, Pg. 425, Lines 4-12 - Government mandates Advance (Death) Care Planning consultation. Think Senior Citizens and end of life. END-OF-LIFE COUNSELING. SOME IN THE ADMINISTRATION HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED RATIONING HEALTH CARE FOR THE ELDERLY.

* Sec. 1233, Pg. 425, Lines 17-19 - Government WILL instruct and consult regarding living wills and durable powers of attorney. Mandatory end-of-life planning!

* Sec. 1233, Pg. 425-426, Lines 22-25, 1-3 - Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.

The section of the bill referred to does nothing resembling "rationing health care for the elderly" or "guiding you in death." As we already noted, it simply promotes advance care planning under the Medicare program by encouraging doctors to discuss with their patients advance directives such as living wills and durable powers of attorney -- legal documents that give individuals the power to state what they want in advance so that decision isn't left up to anyone else. You can read the entire bill with the pertinent page numbers here .