A year ago, former Obama administration official Steven Rattner conceded in an op-ed in the liberal New York Times, “We need death panels.” If you click on the link and read the article, he adds numerous qualifiers. But he did say that.

Now the liberal Slate magazine has run an article admitting the same thing. It's by Canadian Adam Goldenberg, who compares his country's government-run system to the one America now is imposing. “Canada Has Death Panels” is his headline; the sub-headline: “And that's a good thing.” He wrote:

Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country [I think he means the USA], it was imaginary.

Yet as Goldenberg himself concedes, it's not “imaginary” under Canada's government-run system, and “Canadians have come to accept” it. Whether Americans come to accept it remains to be seen.

Sarah Palin

As economist Robert P. Murphy reminds us:

Remember in 2009 when Sarah Palin warned that Obamacare would lead to “death panels”? People ridiculed her alleged right-wing paranoia; PolitiFact christened her accusation the “Lie of the Year.” In this context, it’s ironic that a recent Slate article admits that socialized medicine goes hand in hand with government death panels. What’s even more disturbing is that the author–Adam Goldenberg–applauds the practice.

Indeed, how can it be any other way? During the recent partial government shutdown, when the government ran out of money, some bureaus were closed along with national parks and monuments. Bureaucrats decided what to close, and what not to close.

When Obamacare is in charge of your health care, and costs rise, inevitably it's going to cut some people's treatment. Given that around one third of medical costs are in the last few months of life, an easy way to cut back is to cut out those last few months. If Grandma is in agony anyway, many people will be less upset if a Death Panel hastens her inevitable demise.

But then government bureaucrats will start making life-and-death decisions on other matters. How about a child with leukemia? Is a $200,000 treatment worth it?

How about a football player who gets hit hard, suffers a concussion, and goes into a long-term coma? In a private system, his family might use his multi-million-dollar salary to keep him going in hopes of a miracle. But an Obamacare death panel could pull the plug the day before he recovers consciousness.

And if government starts killing a lot of people, you could end up with a Weimar Republic scenario, where the country's democratic government instituted the destruction of what they called “life unworthy of life.” Which soon lead to something far more sinister.

By Chris Reed

In April 2010, three weeks after Obamacare was signed into law, The New York Times got around to writing an analysis of the measure that looked at how a key provision had worked at the state level in New York. Here’s what I wrote about the ridiculously overdue analysis:

“[The Times noted that] New York’s health insurance system … [was] ‘a working laboratory for the core provision’ of Obama’s planned health overhaul: guaranteeing insurance would be available ‘even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills,’ and that these individuals would not have to pay higher rates.

“The Times’ analysis was grim: ‘Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net … is falling apart.’

“Why? Because New York’s requirement that ‘insurers within each region of the state charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk’ made premiums much more expensive for healthy people, many of whom promptly dropped their coverage.

‘The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.’”

Now, in keeping with the American journalistic tradition of only acknowledging the immense flaws of Obamacare after it is law, The Los Angeles Times has an analysis that finally noted a huge headache for California that I’ve been writing about for years:

“SACRAMENTO — As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama‘s healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren’t enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients. …

“Currently, just 16 of California’s 58 counties have the federal government’s recommended supply of primary care physicians, with the Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley facing the worst shortages. In addition, nearly 30% of the state’s doctors are nearing retirement age, the highest percentage in the nation, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges.”

If they gave reverse Pulitzers, much of the national media would win prizes for its coverage of health “reform.”

Here’s a confident prediction: At some point this year, a reporter for the N.Y. Times, L.A. Times or Washington Post will look at internal documents on how the Obama administration plans to keep health-care costs down going forward and will figure out that sharply reducing the costs of caring for extremely sick people in their final months and years of their lives is a de facto federal priority.

And this reporter will write an article saying, you know what? Sarah Palin was right about death panels!