Palin's "Death Panel" for the Elderly in Alaska

[kpete]

Palin's "Death Panel" for the Elderly in Alaska
by booksnmore4you

Mon Aug 10, 2009 at 10:37:16 AM PDT

By now, most of us have heard Sarah Palin's "death panel" comment on her Facebook page.

But what we may not know is that, during her tenure as governor, an important program for in-home elder care became an actual "death panel" for over 250 vulnerable Alaskans.

On August 7, 2009, on her Facebook page, Palin wrote,
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434

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.

But as the Anchorage Daily News reported this last July, the situation in the state's Medicare- and Medicaid-funded in-home elder care program became so bad that the federal government had to step in and force Alaska to make necessary improvements.
http://www.adn.com/life/health/story/864670.html

In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help.

more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/10/764573/-Palins-Death-Panel-for-the-Elderly-in-Alaska

[krispos42]

1. Hypocracy... proud to be the first Rec n/t

[crikkett]

13. sp. "hypocrisy" ...unless you were making a joke abt the Alaska system of govt.

In which case, that was pretty funny.

[krispos42]

14. D'oh

I mean... "yeah,that's what I meant... like plutocracy"

:hide:

[silverweb]

2. Call out the lies and hypocrisy each & every time!

:kick:

[kpete]

10. full time job

kp

[silverweb]

12. Which is why I love DU.

Many minds, hearts, and hands on the job full time! :loveya:

[noiretextatique]

3. this won't make a bit of difference to her rabid supporters

but it does make me despise her more. she's a liar and a hypocrite.

[smoogatz]

4. I didn't think I could despise her more

than I already did. But now I do. K&R.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[noiretextatique]

8. she's the gift that keeps on giving eom

[uppityperson]

5. SHAME, more telling quote re $#'s, and wtf? Used to be a great system there.

Shame on Palin and her cohorts. Here is the telling quote since I wanted to see how recently this has happened (from adn article in OP)

An earlier attempt to reform the personal care assistance program may have inadvertently created some of the current trouble. After costs soared from $8 million a year in fiscal 2000 to $80 million five years later, the Legislature ordered the state Department of Health and Social Services to control the spending. The state eventually decided to hire its own nurses to determine who needed how much care. The cost of that program dropped.

But a nationwide nursing shortage means about 40 percent of the nurse positions stay vacant, hence the backlog, said Marcy Rein, chief of programs for senior and disabilities services.

I worked as a Home Health Nurse in AK in the early 90's and we had a great program going then. SHAME on those who ruined this.

[gratuitous]

7. Gosh! Has anyone informed CBS, ABC or NBC?

They all seem to think the sun shines out Sarah's nether regions. Well, yes, there have been one or two unfortunate remarks made, but really, the popular media are totally expert at separating the wheat from the chaff and deciding what's a significant betrayal of someone's black inner soul and what's just a picayune misstatement. See, for example, Al Gore's serial lying and exaggerations. Because he's a liar, who may have worked his family's farm during the summer, but saying that he did so was an unconscionable breach of the truth.

[MisterP]

9. just like she defended wolf hunting to "prevent starvation"

and then it came out that inlanders had to choose between freezing and starving
but her whole thing reminded me of Mao: violent, populist rhetoric, quasi-Stalinist policies

[Odin2005]

11. Don't forget that she made rape victims pay for rape kits!

:grr:

[malaise]

15. Send this to KO and Rachel

Plueeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

[thereismore]

16. All you need to do is take what they accuse us of and find out that they have already done it. nt