Nothing speaks to the degeneracy of the Republican Party more than its campaign to turn something as profoundly important as living wills and end-of-life counseling into something as scary sounding as “death panels,” which Facebook blogger Sarah Palin called “evil” last week.
But last year, when Palin was governor of Alaska, she was 100 percent behind end-of-life counseling. In fact, as governor, she decreed April 16, 2008, to be “Death Panel Day” — er, sorry — “Healthcare Decision Day”:
…Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions…
[One] of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives…
[As] a result of April 16, 2008, being recognized as Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska, more citizens will have conversations about their healthcare decisions; more citizens will execute advance directives to make their wishes known; and fewer families and healthcare providers will have to struggle with making difficult healthcare decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient.
Of course, there is no provision to create death panels in Section 1233 of one of the House reform bills. Sarah Palin knowingly lied about that.
So here’s a question: When is Sarah Palin goin’ to stop makin’ stuff up?
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