When Obamacare was being debated in the early months of the Obama administration, one of the most criticized features was the “death panel.” This term was employed by Sarah Palin and other conservatives to describe the appointed bureaucrats who would decide how to allocate precious health care resources based on the severity of the illness, the life expectancy of the patient, and the cost of the treatment. Since the members of the death panels would not be emotionally involved in these cases, they would be able to make objective calculations about how much and what kind of treatment would be available, and when to withhold treatment and allow a patient to die. A death panel is needed now, and ObamaCare is the patient.
