How G survived the National Health Service death panels

Sarah Palin has let loose on the topic of health care reform. In her latest Facebook outburst, as reported by Patricia E. Bauer among others, she stated:

“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.”

Absolutely bonkers. I’m not going to bother pointing out the numerous factual inaccuracies in that statement. Fact Check points out that “nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision”, while PolitiFact rates the statement “Pants on Fire!”

What I will do, as someone who lives in a country with government-supplied health care, is confirm that there are no death panels on the National Health Service – at least not that I am aware of. What we do have, however, is multiple health visitors, portage workers, speech and language therapists, and physical therapists, not to mention heart scans, hearing tests, and learning assessments, all supplied free of charge and regardless of our income. Had G needed it, he would also have been able to have an operation to fix any problems associated with his heart or any other organs, again free of charge regardless of our income.

As a writer on Huliq news points out, “what Sarah Palin fails to note, or perhaps does but intentionally omits, is that such a ‘death panel’ of bureaucrats already exists. It’s called the insurance companies, and the employees at them which deny health care left and right.”

The NHS isn’t perfect, but having read numerous accounts of parents hit with massive hospital bills for the delivery of their children and the massive cost of health care insurance for children with disabilities, given the choice between the UK and US systems I know what I’d pick.

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