•December 2, 2015•

By Trudy Lieberman
Rural Health News Service

What a difference six years makes!

In 2009 at the height of the debate on the Affordable Care Act, New York’s former lieutenant government Betsy McCaughey appeared on television and made this startling remark: “Congress would make it mandatory-absolutely require-that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

McCaughey said the proposed law would help the elderly learn how to “decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care…all to do what’s in society’s best interest or in your family’s best interest and cut your life short.”

Her remarks, though false, played well in the media. Former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin showed up on TV to talk about “death panels” that she and others claimed would ration care at the end of life.

“No death panels” became a rallying cry for opposition to the health law. A man I interviewed at a Pennsylvania Wal-Mart that summer brought up the so-called death panels. “If people are going to die, he [Obama] is going to put them to sleep,” he told me. “It’s like Soylent Green (a 1973 science fiction movie). That’s his health plan.”

Another man I met outside a church in Scranton told me, “I am against a panel of doctors telling you when you can live and die.” When I explained that wasn’t what the law would do, he said he didn’t believe me.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.