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Did Sarah Palin say Obama's "death panel" might kill her baby?

Eric Kleefeld writes:

In a new posting on her Facebook account, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made a dire statement about health care reform -- that it could result in an Obama-created "death panel" killing her infant son with Down Syndrome...

Here's the full text of her Facebook post. Excerpt:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama?s ?death panel? so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ?level of productivity in society,? whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

She doesn't say that the government will kill disabled (or elderly) persons directly, but that death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats who with the power to determine who can receive various treatments. I don't know why "level of productivity in society" is in quotes, nor do I know whether it is the plan to ration care on this basis. Those are actually serious matters, and I'd like to know the answers. What Kleefeld is doing is trying to sweep Palin aside as a big crazy wacko.

Yes, she used a colorful expression "death panel," but it's a good and fair polemical expression if in fact life-saving care will be rationed on this basis. I have found myself saying, in conversation, "I'm afraid Obama is going to kill me." Now, I'm not picturing him or one of his minions coming over to murder me, but I am afraid that as I get older and need expensive care to keep me alive that I will be told I cannot have it, because at my age, in the government's opinion, there's not enough life left in me to be worth the money that I would take from the system that needs to pay for everything.

This isn't a phantom fear. It's a fear stoked by things like this:

(There's a longer version of that clip, plus discussion, here.)

And here's the end of the Palin post, which I think is cool-headed and manifestly sane:

We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, ?Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we?ll ever see on this earth.? Let?s stop and think and make our voices heard before it?s too late.

Kleefeld and others like him ? the Andrew Sullivan post title is "Obama's Gonna Kill My Baby!" ? would love to squelch that debate.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 08, 2009 (boomark / email).