Level of productivity in society

In a speech the other day Palni complained that Obama wanted to kill her disabled infant and her parents by having a "death panel" ration health care according to "level of productivity in society".

I'm not sure what all this whining about rationing is. We have to ration health care simply because we don't have unlimited health care resources. Flu shots go first to those at highest risk, that's a form of rationing. Transplants are rationed, primarily according to judgements about probability of success. We ration drugs of all kinds according to who can pay. We ration health care all the time, and the criteria for the rationing depends on the particular care being rationed and the particular and specific circumstances.

So why is rationing a problem? We can't get rid of it. But we can be explicit about the criteria we'll use.

We will ration. I'm pretty sure that "level of productivity in society" will be at least part of the criteria used to ration. But it certianly won't be all of it, probably not even most of the criteria and the rationing won't be done by a "death squad".

If you don't realize that right at the gitgo then you're either insane or an idiot.

Althouse appears to have become insane.

... death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats 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. ...

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.

Free Republic tells us where the phrase comes from.

Fact checking Palin's speech

Palin had a very good delivery of her speech last night.

I'm not so sure it was a good speech, it was good in the sense that she applause at all the right spots. But much of it was really just sound byte bullshit. It seems that's what sells though.

One example (I'll try to do some more examples later) is when she said.

"There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you where winning meant survival and losing meant death".

Of course McCain lost (that's how you become a POW, you lose) but survived so she was using just a little bit of hyperbole.

The crowd loved it though.

Earrings and Denim

This is just too much.

Some ignorant yankee who blogs at Americablog.com doesn't like Palin's choice of earring. Earring.



The commenters are particularly funny. They can't seem to agree on whether or not hoop earrings are "dressing up" or "trollopy". Of course they're all a bunch of ignorant yankees and don't understand that hoop earrings aren't either. They're just ordinary.

Maybe they aren't ordinary in NYC. I don't know. But they sure are ordinary in the United States. Alaska is part of the United States. She's from Alaska. Mississippi is in the United States. She's wearing them in Mississippi.

I'm reminded of an event from when I was a graduate student in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, in the piney woods of East Texas.

We got ourselves a new dean. A guy from Albany, New York. A guy who had gone to school at SUNY, Albany and had worked at SUNY, Albany most of his career. A guy from New York. Not the City, from upstate, but New York nonetheless.

One of the first things he did was establish a dress code for the deans office staff which included a NO DENIM rule. No denim. In Texas. In rural East Texas.

I think he might have meant no jeans, that was never clear. But some of those women didn't own a skirt that wasn't made of denim. The reaction to the announcement of that rule was hilarious. His deanship went downhill from there. He's not at Sam Houston any more. His replacement as dean was a woman who often wore denim dresses.


h/t althouse