Talk:Death panel

Possible sources

• 'Obamacare' tackles health care costs. Will Congress? CSM Commentary/David R. Francis. "Those opposed to Obamacare, usually Republicans, have likened the Medicare diversion to "killing Granny." The conservative Liberty Counsel calls it a "euthanasia bill." The demagoguery "makes it almost impossible to do anything without having Hitler [and Nazi-style death panels] rubbed in your face," says Reinhardt".
• The Perennial Quest to Lower Health Care Spending Uwe Reinhardt. "The future trajectory of the volume variable, QG, might possibly be bent down ever so slightly through cost-effectiveness analysis of alternative therapeutic approaches, or by more widespread use of living wills – an idea once actively promoted by Newt Gingrich. But those ideas were met in the past year by dark allusions to rationing,' to Nazi-style death panels and to 'killing Granny.' Therefore, strike lowering QG, as well, from a strategy for bending the cost curve".
• 'Rationing' Health Care: What Does It Mean? July 2009. Uwe Reinhardt. "To suggest that the main goal of the health reform efforts is to cram rationing down the throat of hapless, nonelite Americans reflects either woeful ignorance or of utter cynicism. Take your pick."
• Kill Grandma? Debunking A Health Bill Scare Tactic Julie Rovner. "So why have the demonstrably false claims about death gotten so much life? Harvard public opinion expert Robert Blendon says it's because seniors are very sensitive about their health care. 'Seniors worry more about their health care than any other group in American life,' Blendon says. 'They feel more vulnerable.'"
• 'Death Panels' Revisited: Studies Show Seniors Seek End of Life 'Comfort Care'
• Palliative care found to extend life of cancer patients "It shows that palliative care is the opposite of all that rhetoric about 'death panels'", said Dr. Diane E. Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and co-author of an editorial in the journal accompanying the study. "It’s not about killing Granny; it’s about keeping Granny alive as long as possible — with the best quality of life."

Provision section

• End-of-life uncertainty; Americans need to be more assertive in detailing the medical treatment they want as they age LA Times editorial. 29 November 2010. quote: "Another challenge is finding the right advocate for this kind of planning. Health insurers don't have the requisite credibility, given their obvious interest in cutting costs. Doctors and hospitals, meanwhile, have little incentive to do so. Medicare pays more for aggressive treatment than for 'palliative' care that's aimed only at relieving pain and reducing symptoms. And physicians can't seek extra dollars from Medicare for the time they spend counseling patients about end-of-life options; when Democrats included such a provision in the healthcare reform bill, critics said they were trying to create 'death panels.'"
• Frank Talk About Care at Life’s End "A similar provision in the original federal health care overhaul proposal, which would have reimbursed doctors for the time it takes to have such conversations, was withdrawn when it was erroneously labeled by conservatives as a 'death panel' option." Jesanj (talk) 19:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Context/background

Contextual content was removed with this edit, which intended that some of the content be restored. The section was largely derived from Table 1 of the Nyhan publication (page #9). Nyhan writes about how the phrase emerged in the context of a circulating myth. I think restoring this material would strengthen the article by letting readers know about the extent of coverage that contributed to the spread of this concept. Talk radio, for example, is not currently mentioned in the article. Any comments/concerns? Jesanj (talk) 04:28, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

NPOV?

This whole article is such a crock of shit, and its existence is a almost a violation of NPOV.

If and when true universal health care is adopted in the US, it is simply a FACT that care will have to be rationed. It is rationed already--but by jerks in the insurance industry. If and when the federal government takes over health care, then they will have to be the ones doing the rationing. What do I mean by "rationing"?

Like it or not, there are just so many dollars to go around. Not everyone can have everything they want--that's the singular truth behind economics--both right and left wing versions. So sometimes, someone who has a terminal illness gets denied treatment because it's judged not to be a good use of money to spend $500,000 adding another month onto some old geezer's life. And there's nothign wrong with that! Palin condemned it, others condemned her for naming it, but the FACT is that it happens now, and it'll happen later, no matter who runs health care.

An objective media would have recognized the truth behind this and condemned Palin for her economic ignorance. But instead, because she accidentally revealed a nasty truth that the pols (especially on the left) want to keep hidden, they condemned her for "lying". But she only showed her stupidity--she did not "lie". 98.82.190.226 (talk) 06:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yawn. Derekbd (talk) 22:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

98.82.190.226, "Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject". For what it is worth Uwe Reinhardt in his July 2009 blog posting "'Rationing' Health Care: What Does It Mean?" said "As I read it, the main thrust of the health care reforms espoused by President Obama and his allies in Congress is first of all to reduce rationing on the basis of price and ability to pay in our health system". Perhaps this perspective should be included in the rationing and defense of claim section. Also, we reflect what media says in order to remain neutral. If you have an axe to grind with the media then take that up with them. =) Thanks. Jesanj (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Move to "Death Panel"?

Should this page be moved to Death panel? Currently that title is just a redirect to here. WP:TITLE says that names should be kept concise...I could see the parenthetical "political term" being used for disambiguation if necessary, but currently there is nothing to disambiguate from. WP:PRECISION seems to indicate the parenthetical isn't needed. Kelly ^hi! 21:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

Death panels (political term) → Death panel — As stated above, to be concise per WP:TITLE, parenthetical not needed per WP:PRECISION. Kelly ^hi! 02:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose this is not the only use of "death panel" Instead it should be Death panel (hyperbole about Obamacare). Death panel should be a disambiguation page to various sections of articles and other articles about death panels. Jan Brewer has her own death panels so the term is not restricted to Obamacare criticism. Arizona's Brewercare death panels are highly prominent at the moment. The term has been used before the 21st century as well [1][2] -- such as use for those empanelled for death penalty sentencing / appeal 65.93.13.227 (talk) 06:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

  I'm not sure why we would need a disambiguation page at this point, since no articles exist on the topics you've cited. (Though I could see including examples in this article, if they were notable.) Kelly ^hi! 19:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose Removing the parenthetical gives the term more legitimacy and reality than it deserves. The current title Death panels (political term), imparts the correct impression at the outset -that there is some hyperbole, controversy or partisanship involved because the term originates from the political arena. - KeptSouth (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Addendum - I also strongly believe that if the article must be renamed it should be to Death panels in the plural because for one thing, that is the way the term was first rolled out to the American public, and that is the way it is most commonly used. In addition, the singular form has a slightly different and scarier feel because it brings the concept down to the level of an individual hospital or clinic. I might not worry or believe that death panels are part of "Obamacare", but I would surely worry if there were a death panel at my local hospital. I could see the WP article title Death panel on a Google search and think OMG, this is happening! It's hard to explain, but the term Death panel just seems more immediate and real than Death panels. Therefore, it seems like a type of POV pushing to drop the s. To summarize: because the term is most commonly used in the plural, and because Wikipedia not a place to alter terms or spelling (WP:NOT), I would vote for an article title of Death panels if push came to shove. But my first choice would be to keep the article title exactly as it is. - KeptSouth (talk) 22:02, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

These types of political terms are not normally given a parenthetical to label them as such. As a matter of fact, I couldn't find a single other example...see, for instance, Evil empire, Two Americas, or any of the other similar polemical terms in Category:American political slogans.

I'm not sure how removing the parenthetical violates WP:POVTITLE, given that the first line says "Death panel is a political term...". "Death panel" is just more concise, I honestly don't understand the controversy. I'm not hung up on whether we title it "Death panel" or "Death panels", but I would note that when Palin coined the term in her original Facebook post, she used the singular form.[3] Kelly ^hi! 23:45, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Kelly, What the article says in the first line is subject to multiple edits at any time, so I am not sure how that shows that parenthetical in the title should be removed. I am also a bit confused on your singular/plural argument. Here you say it doesn't matter, though you proposed the change, but in the next post you argue for a change to the singular form. -Regards- KeptSouth (talk) 10:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I just ran across WP:SINGULAR - article titles should be singular, not plural. Kelly ^hi! 03:34, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:SINGULAR says "Article titles are generally singular, then it lists examples of when they are not. This term, death panels is generally in the plural. Per WP:POVTITLE titles should reflect the sources -When a subject or topic has a common name "as evidenced through usage in a significant proportion of English-language reliable sources), Wikipedia should follow the sources and use that name as our article title".KeptSouth (talk) 10:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

<-[Redent] Comment: I noticed that Kelly, who proposed the page move, seems to have done some further reading of WP Policies, Guidelines, etc., so I took this as a good cue to do a little more reading of these myself. [WP:Moving a page]] says "Pages may be moved to a new title if the previous name is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or for a host of different housekeeping reasons such as that it is not the common name of the topic." Basically, this rule is about 75% against the page move, and it certainly supports keeping the plural form Death panels as that is the common name of the topic. KeptSouth (talk) 10:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

• Support: No other articles named Death panels exist. All arguments that advocate the abuse of the disambiguation feature for political purposes should be rejected for obvious reasons. Quigley (talk) 00:19, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no disambiguation being done or being advocated here, so there simply can be no "abuse of the disambiguation feature". However, moving the page, something you support, will create another re-direct. That could be considered abuse, but I believe in following the AGF rule -- perhaps you do not? KeptSouth (talk) 10:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

A parenthetical qualifier such as "(political term)" is a disambiguation feature, or at least that is how it is intended to be used. You yourself in opposition are pretty clear that the rationale behind not wanting to move is to discredit the term "death panel" and the politicians who use it, so I don't see how AGF applies. Quigley (talk) 21:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Comment for now. Wouldn't moving create more ambiguity? It seems we could use something less ambiguous. At WP:TITLE under the first section the bullet for precision states "titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously". In my opinion, "Death panel" identifies the topic of this article ambiguously. There has been mention of the death penalty and an old paragraph discusses capital punishment. (Back then the article was titled Death panel, but it has since had a history merge.) But the death penalty is not the topic of this article. So I think the inital IP comment was on to something, but they were overly precise and descriptive. The topic of the article is clearly a 2009 phenomenon. In order to identify the topic unambiguously, I think that the article might be better off at Death panels myth. This wording is consistent with a couple publications cited in the article, including the study by Nyhan, which is the most in depth scholarly treatment of the term/myth. Alternatively there is always Death panels controversy, but I think controversy is more ambiguous than myth. Jesanj (talk) 16:12, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

  I think using "myth" or "controversy" would fall afoul of WP:POVTITLE. People seem to approach the "death panel" statement from two wildly different angles - either they think Palin was referring to literal decision-making bodies with life-or-death powers, or that it was a metaphor/polemical term[4] referring to government decisions on rationing. Then there's a lot of people talking past each other. That's why I felt, to maintain neutrality, we should just follow the example of other examples in Category:American political slogans. For instance, there are not really "Two Americas", but we don't call the article "Two Americas myth". Cheers - Kelly ^hi! 18:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, but I doubt you can find reliable sources that say Two Americas was thoroughly debunked in the press, was false/a myth, a lightning rod, was a finalist on word/lie of the year lists, etc. But, I still think you are on to something. While death panels myth is documented, there are only two sources on the article that use that title. Perhaps it would just be an acceptable redirect. I guess moving to Death panels would be an improvement over the current name. Kelly, do you have a current opinion on whether death panels trump death panel?

  A National Journal article calls it the death panels controversy. Joanne Kenen (September 25, 2010). "End-Of-Life Care Without 'Death Panels'". National Journal: 7. Jesanj (talk) 12:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

- Kelly - I disagree with your reasoning and comparison, and believe that having "political term" in the title is neurtal, descriptive, and necessary.

When coined, the phrase "death panels" was in no way equivalent in either meaning or effect to "two Americas". It was closer to "baby killers" and the "final solution" because it implied mass killing and because it had did in fact have an incendiary effect. We should not forget the very angry and sometimes menancing people who attended the townhalls in the summer of 2009. If we actually look at how the media described the events at the time, at least two things are apparent: people got very riled up and mobilized; and, the actual existence of both death panels and proposals for death panels was widely debunked. Neither of these very salient facts, (the resulting anger and fear or the basic falsity of the charges), are adequately discussed in the article now. The term's evolution in meaning or multiple meanings are also given short shrift. By this I mean: euthanasia type panels, government rationed health care, and more recently government panels which have the power to remove drugs from the market)

Regardless of the changes in meaning or multiple meanings, and regardless of what the wiki article here now says - death panels have never existed and were never proposed - that is a simple fact. And in all the uses, "death panels", is a political term. To remove political term from the title is POV itself, because it gives the term, "death panels" a reality and validity, when it really is something which does not exist, except in the world of politics.

As an alternative, I agree with Jesanj's proposal of "Death panels controversy". Sometimes controversy can be a POV term, but sometimes, as here, it is a simple reality. Rather than being POV, the term in this instance illustrates there was more than one side to the issue. People were very upset on both sides, the media often described it as a controversy, it perfectly fits the term controversy. Webster's: controversy is "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views, a dispute" Examples: "The decision aroused much controversy... A controversy arose over the new law." Thesaurus: "an often noisy or angry expression of differing opinions <the seemingly imperishable controversy over the teaching of evolution>" Dictionary.com: "a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion...contention, strife, or argument.[5]

Therefore I think the title should stay the same, or should be renamed "Death panels controversy" because this is what it is, and there are no death panels in the real world. In addition this usage already exists: there are a number of articles in the popular press with "death panel controversy" in their titles or in the body of article. -Regards-KeptSouth (talk) 14:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Some potential problems with Death panels controversy may be that it would be difficult to establish when exactly the controversy ended (or began). Perhaps the "controversy" persists today. After all, some people think 'death panels' exist today in America, and some don't know [6]. Perhaps it would create too much of the POV that there is legitimacy to the idea that 'death panels' exist. Perhaps it suggests that some rational people and reliable sources still believe 'death panels' exist in America. However, Nyhan's publication (the most comprehensive scholarly article) defines it as a myth that was spread through the media during a specific time -- the summer of 2009 (it also credits Betsy with specific false statements that started the myth). The NYT reported that "A similar provision ... was withdrawn when it was erroneously labeled by conservatives as a 'death panel' option" (my emphasis). So it is clear, from RS, that the death panel chatter in the summer of 2009 was part of a myth. Perhaps controversy gives it too much credence. I don't know of any reliable sources that think end of life discussions between a doctor and patient are death panels. If there were any, the NYT wouldn't call the death panel label erroneous. I think there has to be a dispute for a controversy to exist. Jesanj (talk) 18:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm - maybe a better example than Two Americas would be Evil empire. I'm old enough to remember how controversial that was. Kelly ^hi! 14:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The evil empire was the Soviet Union; the insult didn't inflame Americans. Changing the example does not address my argument. Regards KeptSouth (talk) 14:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, there were Americans on the left inflamed by "evil empire". But I think this may be another case of people talking past each other...is this article about the polemical term "death panel" as coined by Palin, or is it about the concept of a government body rationing health care? I was thinking in terms of the former. Kelly ^hi! 15:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we can distingish between the two. I think Palin's polemical term included the concept of a government body rationing health care (even though it was in reference to voluntary discussions between doctors and patients). Jesanj (talk) 19:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Removal of Isakson quotation

In two places in the article (the lede and further down), I'm removing a one-word quotation from Johnny Isakson which states that he "called Palin's interpretation 'nuts'". The presentation is problematic and definitely needs to be reworked if it's to be re-included, because he never said that. From the Ezra Klein interview:

I understand -- and you have to check this out -- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts.

The problem here is that Palin never said anything about people being euthanized. From her original FB post:

And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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.

Palin never mentions euthanasia - to my knowledge, she never has throughout the healthcare debate, consistently stating that her concern has been health care rationing. It's apparent that Isakson is reacting to inaccurate information he received second- or third-hand, not to anything Palin actually said. Kelly ^hi! 02:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

On the same day that Palin made her Facebook statement, 8/7/09, the prolife publication, Life News posted this story: "Sarah Palin Opposes Health Care Bill Over Abortion, Euthanasia Components" [7]. (emphasis added) So whether she actually said this in an interview with the prolife publication or whether they read it into her words, it certainly looks like both sides of the debate thought she said this from day one. It is certainly a very reasonable interpretation of the term death panels=euthanasia panels. (I don't, however, have a problem with your removing of the particular quote) KeptSouth (talk) 11:10, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Unbalanced article

I've added the {{Unbalanced}} template to the page for now - the POV presented from the given sources is almost entirely from proponents of the health care reform legislation, with little space given to statements made by Palin herself and other opponents of the initiative. Right now the article (and especially the lede) reads like an attempt to discredit Palin's position rather than a neutral presentation of the origins and use of the term, as well as reactions to it from notable sources of various ideological persuasions.

In the process of gathering sources now, but one issue I can open with is that the article and criticism focuses almost entirely on the end-of-life counseling provisions that were removed from the legislation following this controversy, rather than the health care rationing concerns that Palin consistently has said were her motivation for coining the metaphor. Examples:

Palin's original FB note, 7 Aug 2009:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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.

Clarification to her original post, 14 Aug 2009.

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

Written Testimony Submitted to the New York State Senate Aging Committee - 8 Sep 2009

It is unclear whether section 1233 or a provision like it will remain part of any final health care bill. Regardless of its fate, the larger issue of rationed health care remains.

Hong Kong speech - 23 Sep 2009

I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs.

Comments on passage of the bill - 22 Dec 2009

Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

Take back the 20 - 24 Sep 2010

And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all.

Election Day post - 1 Nov 2010

Every day we hear about doctors leaving the Medicare system; increased premiums with talk of price controls; rationing becoming standard practice; and panels of faceless bureaucrats deciding which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (which I called a “death panel”).

That's probably enough of a wall of text regarding this point. :) Kelly ^hi! 03:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

There's a huge difference between trying to get people to believe that the bill includes death panels (the lie that Palin originally vended) and arguing that sometime in the future there's going to be rationing. There's also the point that rationing goes on NOW, at the decision of the big for-profit insurance companies rather than with any public accountability.

Coming down to specifics, it's extremely dubious under Wikipedia practice for you to put such a tag on when you've proposed no specific change in the article. I'll leave it up temporarily so as not to get in a silly edit war about that, but this can't go on very long.

As to the edits you've already made, they display a clear POV. For example, you want us to assert in the introductory section that "death panels" was a metaphor. It wasn't presented that way originally. Palin may now be trying to spin it that way to cover up her blatant disregard of the facts, and we can quote any post hoc explanation by her to that effect, but that's because we report facts about opinions. We do not state such opinions as facts.

I don't have time now to examine the rest, such as the point you make above about the Isakson quotation, so I'll have to return to this later.

In general, there's no reason not to add opinions from opponents of the health care legislation, provided that they're about the specific subject of the supposed "death panels" (not about the evils of the bill in general) and provided that opinions are reported and attributed, not adopted. JamesMLane t c 01:08, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Addressing the point of the term being a metaphor for rationing, since the term is attributed to Palin in the lead sentence, then presumably the definition is what she claims it to be and belongs there as well. If others have assigned a different definition to the term, then those other definition(s) should be attributed and cited. To my knowledge, Palin has used the term strictly in the context of government-dictated rationing - if others have used it in the term in the context of private-sector rationing, I certainly don't have any objection to examples being included so long as they meet Wikipedia guidelines. Kelly ^hi! 01:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

That Palin uses a term doesn't mean that she gets to decide what it means. Example: I call Palin a "pension pickpocket", a term I invented. When I'm queried about it, my authorized spokesperson explains that it refers to Palin's theft of public employee pensions while she was Governor. Palin sues me for defamation. I then claim that it was merely a metaphor for the way her short-sighted policies were robbing Alaskans of their future. What result? Palin wins. The statement was defamatory regardless of how I later try to spin it.

I don't object to including Palin's subsequent spin, properly attributed. It's included in my edit. You reshuffled the material to put it out of chronological order, giving high prominence to Palin's spin and conveying the impression that her use of the term "metaphor" was contemporaneous with her use of the term "death panel" rather than coming some months later. I've reverted to my version, which reports the criticism (attributed) and then Palin's response.

I put the word "metaphor" in quotation marks to indicate that it's a direct quotation from Palin. I didn't intend it as an instance of scare quotes. My guess is that the average reader wouldn't read it that way -- especially given that, contrary to the most common Wikipedia practice, you've given the full Palin quotation in the footnote, instead of merely linking -- but if this explanation doesn't satisfy you, go ahead and remove the quotation marks. JamesMLane t c 14:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Palin did make an extensive contemporaneous explanation explaining that her concern in making the original statement was health care rationing, making extensive citations to her sources (though granted, she didn't use the word "metaphor"). To my knowledge, she's never given the definition that appears to be attributed to her in the lead sentence. If someone has given that definition, it needs to be attributed and cited. With respect - Kelly ^hi! 14:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

<--Redent. Wow, this discussion is already 1,400 words long. I didn't see any huge issues with balance when I read the article, and I haven't had time to read the discussion above thoroughly yet. But I tend to think some of the issues can be resolved by a simple clean up and then by reference to WP policies on balance, NPOV, undue weight, etc. But in the meantime, I would like to ask Kelly if she could summarize the main issues she is raising, just for the sake of conciseness, please. Thank you.- KeptSouth (talk) 12:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I took a couple[8][9] suggestions of yours Kelly. I'm hesitant to quote much from Facebook though, as it is self-published. Here is something Palin said on FB titled "Obama Is Being Misleading About 'Death Panels'" that was published on an NPR blog:

“ 'With all due respect,' the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee writes, 'it's misleading' for President Barack Obama to say that provisions in one of the health care overhaul bills simply increase the information offered to Medicare recipients about end-of-life issues. 'The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context. ... Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?'[10] ”

It appears clear to me that Palin blends rationing with end of life consultations in this quote. So, perhaps Palin has consistently focused on rationing, but not because she has never addressed the end of life consultations. Are there any remaining concerns about balance? Perhaps it would be OK to take down the tag. Jesanj (talk) 13:52, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It's OK to quote Facebook if you're only using that as a source to represent Palin's views and statements, per WP:ABOUTSELF. I don't have any objection to taking off the "unbalanced" tag. I'll do some further work on the article this weekend if I get time. Kelly ^hi! 16:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Jesanj that Palin interpreted end of life consultations as being death panels, but I think there is a potential for abuse in such consultations, so Palin was not totally incorrect to confabulate the two. Since the lead is just a summary of the important points usually limited to 3 or 4 paragraphs, I don't think we have to draw all the distinction in the lead, but this could be pointed out a little better in the body of the article, using RSs of course.

I agree with most of the condensing of the lead that Jesanj did, and I followed up with a bit more. I do think the current version is now more balanced and fair to Palin especially since some repetition has been eliminated such as describing the liar of the year designation and then saying she was criticized.

As far as the quote from the oncologist goes, I think it is ok, but I believe it should follow the quote from the linguistic experts, as they are probably more authoritative and in a better position to define the current usage of the term. I also think Facebook should be mentioned in the lead, because it is notable, but my feelings aren't strong on this, and I would not object to the Facebook reference being removed from the lead.

I strongly disagree that the balance tag should come off --more work is need to be done on the body of the article, imho. -Regards-KeptSouth (talk) 17:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Pre-Palin usage, opening sentence

It appears that the term "death panel" has been used in the past, though not in a widespread fashion, to refer to a panel of judges authorized specifically to issue or review a judicial death sentence. Example. In light of this, I'm wondering if the opening sentence should changed from "Death panel is a phrase coined by...Sarah Palin" to "Death panel is a phrase popularized by...Sarah Palin". Kelly ^hi! 00:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It is a phrase co-opted by Palin, since she didn't popularize the existing usage. 184.144.165.37 (talk) 04:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The other uses of the phrase are, as far as I can tell, nonnotable. They wouldn't merit the prominence of being included in the introductory section (maybe a passing mention somewhere in the body). You can read about some other non-Palin "death panels" at this old version of the article; the consensus was that all that stuff wasn't relevant to this article. JamesMLane t c 04:58, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! Yeah, I agree on notability. I need to to look at the sources currently being used for this article to see if any of them say Palin "coined" the term. Kelly ^hi! 05:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Under the section Coining the first sentence is "On August 7, Palin coined the term on her Facebook page..." and there are NYT and NEJM sources for the word. Jesanj (talk) 12:45, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Clean up

Kelly and others have raised some interesting questions about balance in this article, but I find that it's sometimes best to clean up the article first, before getting into the heavier and most disputable issues of POV, balance, etc. Some issues that can later turn into disputes can be taken care peremptorily by, for example, simple fact checking and verifying the existing references, removing or summarizing repetitious material. So, I am going to do some housekeeping, (boldly), but note it all here. I have placed the clean up tag on the article, while clean up is in progress, to alert readers and editors that clean up issues exist and to the discussion on this page.-KeptSouth (talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I wound up making so many edits that I can't possibly note them all here, as I said I would, but I did provide detailed edit summaries and I will do my best to describe the edits generally and will add a few diffs here. So far, I have major-edited the article up to the section titled "Sarah Palin". Basically I don't think I removed any references - or possibly I removed one - and what I did was read sources, then summarize or re-summarize the main points based on my reading and the previous text. There are a couple of short but total rewrites because I felt the main points-- the points that the authors were making about the health care law and death panels - had been missed. I will hunt for these now and post diffs here in a little while. -Regards-KeptSouth (talk) 13:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

• In this edit I removed a quote from 1975 by someone - I don't see how it applies to the death panel term minted in 2009 - did they even have an insurance crisis back then?
• As I went through the article I found a couple of phrases I thought were repetitious or that added little or nothing, and I commented them out rather than removing them for now. [11] and [12]
• I re-wrote the discussion of what Dr. Corn said here, because based on my reading of the article, it seems to me that these are his major themes that relate to this article. It's probably easier to see if I put the change in column form

Original text	Revised text	Reasoning
Benjamin W. Corn, MD, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, interpeted the death panels fear as evidence of a general fear of death common in the Western world. Specifically,to Corn, patients perceive their vulnerability if end of life discussions are initiated. Corn cautions that some patients may never be comfortable discussing the subject but notes that when his patients contemplate their mortality it helps them set priorities and many discover "a profound appreciaton of life".	Dr. Benjamin W. Corn, a cancer specialist and supporter of end of life doctor-patient discussions, remarked that although health care reform was being debated "thought leaders have been remarkably reticent with respect to ... end-of-life care." He said that the death panels controversy showed that Americans were uneasy about discussing topics related to the dying process and argued that certain issues "must be confronted squarely", including whether experimental therapies should be reimbursed, the possible expansion of hospices, restoring dignity to the process of dying, and guidelines for physician assisted suicide.	Based on my reading of the article, it seems to me that these are his major statements that relate to this article. He was basically talking about the policy debate, rather than the reactions of individuals though that was part of it.
A discussion on political lies between Paul Waldman of The American Prospect and Brooke Gladstone on the NPR show On the Media—which contrasted between policy lies and personal lies—used the death panels charge as an example. Waldman proposed that personal lies lead people to question a person's moral characther while policy lies do not, despite the possibility policy lies might have more real world effects.	Journalist Paul Waldman of left-leaning The American Prospect, characterized Palin's claim that the health care bill provided for death panels as an "extremely pernicious" political lie about a policy "that had definite effects", which resulted in the provision for end of life planning being removed from the bill. He added that the "whole death panel argument almost brought down the whole bill"	This change is a little hard to see from the diffs so I put it here. I think it is very clear that this is what he was saying in relation to the death panel term, and that his theory on personal vs. policy lies is a little less noteworthy for this article

Well, I think those are all the main changes. I have spent the time and wall space discussing this for the sake of transparency, because I know this is a controversial article. I think there is more clean up work to be done, but this is the bulk of it. -Regards- KeptSouth (talk) 14:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Date formatting

Why is the international format, day before month being used? This is a US subject. Although normally the consistent format shouldn't be changed, this is the exceeption to the rule. Per MOS, WP:STRONGNAT, so I have changed the dating. KeptSouth (talk) 12:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I used it because I didn't know any better. Thanks for changing it. Jesanj (talk) 12:48, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, no big deal. KeptSouth (talk) 13:12, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

It is beginning to seem that this talk page will be getting lengthy. So I will be setting up an auto-archive for old posts every 30 days. Of course, it can always be adjusted it to a longer time frame if necessary. KeptSouth (talk) 12:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

synthesis?

A paragraph was removed with the edit summary "rm synthesis unrelated to 'death panels' term". I am unsure as to why it is a synthesis, or unrelated, however. Here is part of the Orlando Sentinel source that was removed:

“ The ... rumor [of] "death panels" ... seemed to arise from nowhere ... Advanced even this week by ... Sarah Palin and Charles Grassley ... the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns ... But the rumor ... was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy, cyberconspiracy theorists. Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were key to defeating President Bill Clinton's health-care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, The American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey ... [I]n the past few months, early fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda -- combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other "end of life" services -- fed the rumor. The specter of government-sponsored, forced euthanasia was raised as early as Nov. 23, just weeks after the election and long before any legislation had been drafted, by an outlet decidedly opposed to Obama, The Washington Times. In an editorial, the paper reminded its readers of Nazi Germany's Aktion T4 program ... Noting the 'administrative predilections' of the new team at the White House, it urged 'anyone who sees the current climate as a budding T4 program to win the hearts and minds of deniers.' ”

Perhaps there are better ways to word the paragraph. But I don't see why the edit summary justifies removing the entire paragraph. Jesanj (talk) 13:37, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I only have a few minutes right now, but promise to be be back later - I did want to make a quick response here. The whole "Background" section was, and is, problematic - it contains a lot of opinion journalism cited as fact in regards to what Palin's motivations or sources were for coming up with the term. (There's a problematic sentence further down from an Institute that speculates she got the term from some Christian group's talking points.) However, Palin herself has said what led her to coin the term. In her original posting, she cited Thomas Sowell's comments on rationing, mentioned Michele Bachmann, and linked a video of Bachmann reading comments from a piece about Ezekiel Emanuel. A week later, she significantly expanded her explanation, mentioning Section 1233 specifically, citing sources to explain the origin of her position, and once again mentioning Emanuel's positions on health care delivery. As we actually have an explanation of the term's origin published by the person who coined the term, it doesn't seem encyclopedic to include speculation by opinion journalists about Nazis, etc. when common sense that they would really have no way to know for themselves how the phrase originated.

A little off-topic, but here a snippet from a recent TIME article about Palin/death panels that might be worthy of inclusion here:

“ Her first Facebook post, in August 2009, accused the Obama White House of creating "death panels" as part of health care reform.

That offhand remark, as inaccurate as it was incendiary, helped incite weeks of embarrassing town-hall meetings for Democrats, which in turn nearly brought down the Administration's top priority. Palin, working at the time in San Diego on her first book, was surprised by her post's galvanizing power. With just a few keystrokes, she discovered, she could ruin White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' day, or as she puts it, "I find it a great way to communicate with people directly without the media filter."

”

I hadn't realized that the "death panel" post was her first on Facebook. Also shows that she didn't expect the reaction the term got. Kelly ^hi! 19:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Independent Payment Advisory Board

Is it worth noting that Palin has also applied the term to the Independent Payment Advisory Board?[13] Kelly ^hi! 20:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think so, but the additional new uses, and any sort of cogent presentation of the issues or history of the term, are likely to be buried.

By the way I took a quick look at your Sandbox list of new sources and that guy from St. Vincents - not too reliable as he wanted to sell his own kit of end of life forms to the VA at $5/each. After explaining the situation on the Sunday talk shows, Duckworth pulled the re-issued Bush era publication off the shelves immediately, as I recall. -Regards- KeptSouth (talk) 23:53, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Commenting out statements that are extremely tangential

This article is about the death panel term coined by Sarah Palin. Before Palin introduced the term, Betsey McGaughey made some statements. One of the statements was about Rahm Emanuel's brother. It is going quite far afield to discuss what Rahm Emanuel's brother said. In other words, it is irrelevant to this article, which is about the term death panel that was introduced by Sarah Palin. I have commented it out this material, and refactored the sentence that mentions Palin being inspired, so it is clear that the NYT said the charges against Emanuel were false. Most of what I have commented out is perhaps best discussed in the Emanuel article. Otherwise, we are getting into six degrees of Kevin Bacon type of irrelevancies here. Maybe that's the point, I don't know, but I will continue to AGF -KeptSouth (talk) 00:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Not if the article is to make it clear what death panels are, and are not, the difference between fact and fiction. Also, Wikipedia has requirements for mention of a living person in any article. See WP:BLP for details.Jimmuldrow (talk) 02:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

If there are enough well-documented reasons why the idea is false, and there are, it is inaccurate to avoid the issue, and very relevant to include the facts about this. The rest of the article includes lots of opinion, but few specific facts about them.Jimmuldrow (talk) 02:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for removing what someone thought was the very relevant (not really) misrepresentation that the quote in question was from Emanuel and not McCaughey. You didn't object to that up till now.Jimmuldrow (talk) 02:12, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually Palin herself said that the statements of Ezekiel Emanuel were one of the main reasons she coined the term.[14] Kelly ^hi! 03:07, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Very true. Let's get all the referenced facts to that. Those that disagree can add there own very well referenced facts as well, which is fine, as Wikipedia encourages more than one point of view.Jimmuldrow (talk) 03:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

After all, I'm certainly not the censor, the endless mass-deleter, of such issues, and those individuals certainly do exist.Jimmuldrow (talk) 03:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Jim, I'm sorry, but I think you added just one piece of good content. (And yes, the article should say RS characterized Betsy's statements as false.) But I have to say, I don't think most of it belongs.

Emanuel is an opponent of legalization of doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia. FactCheck.org said, "We agree that Emanuel’s meaning is being twisted. In one article, he was talking about a philosophical trend, and in another, he was writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited." An article on Time.com said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources ... 'My quotes were just being taken out of context.'" Regarding page 425 of a health care bill Blumenauer (who sponsored the legislation) said the measure would block funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, and called references to death panels or euthanasia "mind-numbing".

The good: 1) Blumenauer sponsored the legislation (but that belongs in the provision section). 2) You added a FactCheck.org source (but it can just go behind a NYT source and I don't see content that should stay, perhaps there is some there that should be expanded upon.)

The bad: 1) Emanuel is not the topic of this article.

I am going to remove the material. Jesanj (talk) 13:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Both McCaughey and Palin said a great deal about Ezekiel Emanuel, and most of it was selective and misleading, and it's not honest to pretend otherwise.Jimmuldrow (talk) 15:00, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind things being added in the "Prelude" section about what was said before Palin coined the term. In fact I think more about Emanuel would be helpful. I am saying (as did KeptSouth) that you didn't add content in a productive way. Jesanj (talk) 18:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I would assume good faith if possible. It's not possible. Before, the article misrepresented Ezekiel Emanuel as saying, "medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled," which was a very big lie. Now mass-deletions enforce another, equally big mistatement that "Emanuel is not the topic of this article" even though a huge mass of ink was spilled by McCaughey and Palin describing Ezekiel as part of what Palin called a "death panel."

Honest people have as much a right to edit this article as the rest. Way it is. Get used to it.Jimmuldrow (talk) 16:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

For anyone who didn't read up on the subjsect, Palin said that Ezekiel Emanuel was the architect of a "downright evil", "Orwellian", "disturbing", "shocking" "death panel." She got this from Bachmann's description of a Betsy McCaughey editorial, according to Palin.Jimmuldrow (talk) 16:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that kind of stuff Palin said would probably be after her Aug. 7th coining. So I think it should go under Death_panels_(political_term)#Sarah_Palin. Jesanj (talk) 18:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Likewise, Blumenauer's reaction would go under Death_panels_(political_term)#Politicians, and not in the Prelude section. Jesanj (talk) 18:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Paul Kettl in the Use section

The JAMA piece states

“ In one of the original health care reform proposals, periodic discussions with elderly patients about their advance directives would be recognized and funded by Medicare. But in some bizarre way, in the news cycle of talking heads with great hair and a smile that ceases only when trying to portray intense concern, this idea of physicians actually being paid to talk with patients about their care was turned into “death panels.” People like their physicians to talk with them. People are generally in favor of physicians getting paid. But the concept of physicians being paid for time to talk with patients and their families about advance directives somehow generated into the fear of decisions about life and death being controlled by the government. The idea was torpedoed not because it was a bad thing, or because people didn't want it, or because it wasn't needed. Our experience showed that it was desperately needed, and funding for it was needed just as much—but the idea was transformed successfully into a negative sound byte with a memorable catchphrase.

We shouldn't be surprised.

...

That's why I’m in favor of “death panels.” But it won't be in this or any bill in the near future. The proposal was sunk by a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides this one. Physicians could take the time to talk with families on their own, but many physicians don't work on their own and must follow the schedules, rules, and procedures dictated by their employers, who follow the dictates of insurance companies, legislation, and changing funding patterns. We tried to do this on our geriatric unit, but the unit was closed. We didn't make enough money.

”

Currently the article reads "Psychiatrist Paul Kettl noted that the attention-catching phrase death panels became a lightening rod for several objections to the health care bill". I think this cuts Kettl's sentence short so as to remove its full meaning. I formerly summarized Kettl with this: "Paul Kettl, MD, MHA, writes that it was 'a phrase that caught attention and served as a lightning rod for objections to a series of ideas about health care besides' end of life discussions." But, the bolded text above appears to be the best representation of how Kettl thought the term was being used. I plan on making some edits on this. Jesanj (talk) 14:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Ivan Illich quote from 1975 book "Medical Nemesis"

It seems there is a minor dispute about the relevance of this quote that presently appears in the article.

Annas writes that "Ivan Illich seems to have gotten it right in his 1975 Medical Nemesis: 'Socially approved death happens when man [sic] becomes useless not only as a producer but as a consumer. It is at this point that [the patient] ... must be written off as a total loss. Death has become the ultimate form of consumer resistance'

I think it is obviously irrelvant, and removed it with an explanatory edit summary earlier, [15] but my action was reverted [16] with a discussion on my talk page that was not responded to, so I am stating my reasons for removing the quote again here in more detail. The passage was written in 1975, and is apparently quoted with approval in an introduction to a text written in 2010 by a bioethicist who does not even discuss the meaning of the quote. I do not think it is relevant at all or helpful to the average reader who wants to know what the 2009-10 death panel controversy has been about. I think the quote has been condensed to the point where only someone who is familiar with the bioethical issues or who has read other works by Illich would be able to either fully understand what Illich was saying in 1975 or why the 2010 author was putting it in his intro. I will hazard a guess on the meaning which is that Illich was saying 35 years ago that once someone stops buying things, stops being a consumer, then society is ready to deny medical treatment and that this will happen with elderly people because they have stopped buying things. But, not only is the argument far afield from the topic of this article, it is antiquated in many respects. Why? Because a person now can actually be quite a huge consumer of medical products and services while they are on life support or while they are taking all kinds of experimental cancer treatment drugs or undergoing all kinds of cognitive and physical therapies as for example, Terri Schaivo was. And let's not forget the medical industry is 1/6th of the U.S. economy. From the point of pure capitalism, dying and debilitated people are great cash cows. If this article was an academic discourse on euthanasia or do not resussitate orders or the like, rather than a Wikipedia article on the death panels political term, then perhaps the Illich quote would deserve mention here. But it is WP:NOT The quote has very little bearing on the arguments Sarah Palin made in 34 years later, does not aid the reader in understanding the recent death panels political controversy, or the current use of the death panels term - which is what this article is about. Because I see absolutely no reason to keep it here, and because after 2 or 3 days I have not gotten a response to my discussion of this that was begun on my talk page, I am removing this passage, and will look back here for further discussion, even though I really don't see how reasonable people can disagree that the quote is irrelevant. KeptSouth (talk) 10:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't make it more clear on your talk page why I thought the quote was relevant. Some of this is already on your talk page but here is my explanation. Gawande says "In late 2004, executives at Aetna, the insurance company, started an experiment. They knew that only a small percentage of the terminally ill ever halted efforts at curative treatment and enrolled in hospice, and that, when they did, it was usually not until the very end. So Aetna decided to let a group of policyholders with a life expectancy of less than a year receive hospice services without forgoing other treatments. A patient like Sara Monopoli could continue to try chemotherapy and radiation, and go to the hospital when she wished—but also have a hospice team at home focussing on what she needed for the best possible life now and for that morning when she might wake up unable to breathe. A two-year study of this concurrent care program found that enrolled patients were much more likely to use hospice: the figure leaped from twenty-six per cent to seventy per cent. That was no surprise, since they weren’t forced to give up anything. The surprising result was that they did give up things. They visited the emergency room almost half as often as the control patients did. Their use of hospitals and I.C.U.s dropped by more than two-thirds. Over-all costs fell by almost a quarter".[17]

Martenson says "half the money that we spend in this country on Medicare is spent on patients in the last six months of their lives ... [And that] There are a lot of financial interests who don't want to have this propensity to treat and treat and treat - that's lucrative, subject to close examination".[18]

In LaCrosse Wisconsin "more than 90 percent of people in town have directives when they die, double the national average. The reliance on directives has an impact on the type of care people receive: Gundersen patients spend 13.5 days on average in the hospital in their final two years of life, at an average cost of $18,000. That is in contrast with big-city hospitals such as the University of California at Los Angeles medical centers (31 days and $59,000), the University of Miami Hospital (39 days, $64,000) and New York University's Langone Medical Center (54 days, $66,000)".[19]

(Gawande [20] and Martenson also detail in depth how dying in a hospital is not pleasant, nor is it what people often desire.)

So, it is pretty clear to me that, in response to the death panels charge, Annas is stating there were societal interests that did not want their consumers to stop consuming. That he quoted Illich from 1975 to make this point is, forgive me for being blunt, what I find irrelevant. When I started reading Annas on page 12 at "Finally, and most importantly..." I found it pretty easy to conclude Annas was continuing on the same thread as Gawande and Martenson. Annas notes Obama talking about his grandmother and cost. Annas quotes Goodman of the Boston Globe, who says "The end of life is the one place where ethics and economics can still be braided into a single strand of humanity". In other words, some think Americans are not getting the death services they want, but if they did, it would just so happen to also cut medical expenditures. Annas is, so far, the only person I’ve seen who has touched on the potential relationship between the phrase and the demand for medical services. Gawande notes that when people have options explained to them, demand for medical services declines. How would you recommend incorporating Annas into the article to make this clear? Perhaps we should take things out from his earlier pages. I agree that in 1975 there weren't as many medical technologies to artifically extend biological function. Perhaps the second sentence should not be reincorporated. In general, it appears Annas implies that because people are afraid of death, the medical system makes money off of this fear, and wants to this income stream to continue. It also appears that Annas suggests the phrase helped keep that money flowing. I think the meaning of Annas's quote of Illich may not be immediately clear to readers without some more explanation, but, in my opinion, it is certainly relevant. And if we disagree on a way to help explain its relevance with absolute certainty, then being subject to some interpretation seems admissible. Annas is an established expert in the field and his book was published by Oxford University Press; scholarly sources are highly respected on Wikipedia, after all. Jesanj (talk) 14:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Removing vague internally referential quotes from academics

No one has responded the lack of relevance tag I placed on the section I have copied below, so I am removing the last two paragraphs of vague quotes that possibly say something about American culture being anti-death and that refer to someone worrying or being expected to worry about being accused of setting up death panels --none of which, even if was comprehensible, is actually relevant to this WP article or helpful to the general reader. I am certainly amenable to further discussion, if someone wants to try to explain how these quotes are relevant.

===Professional===

"In the wake of the 'death panel' controversy, Atul Gawande, a physician who writes on health care topics for The New Yorker, was asked to refrain from writing about palliative care by physicians who were concerned the article might be manipulated to create another political controversy—and as a result, hurt their profession.

Bishop et al. authored "Reviving the conversation around CPR/DNR" published in the January 2010 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics. Scripko and Greer commented that while

“ Bishop and colleagues accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death ... they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions. ”

Bishop et al. replied that this was cautioning them

“ to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of 'death panels' await us. ”

I will be removing the quotes from Scripko (great name!) and Bishop and combining the first paragraph into the preceding section. KeptSouth (talk) 11:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The last quote comes from the following source: Bishop JP, Brothers KB, Perry JE, Ahmad A (2010). "Finite knowledge/finite power: 'death panels' and the limits of medicine". Am J Bioeth. 10 (1): W7–9. doi:10.1080/15265160903493070. PMID 20077324. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Perhaps my style of presenting the back and forth in the literature was not encyclopedic. I remain confident that at least the something from the reference above deserves mention in the article. The article states "In the era of rhetoric centered on fictional “death panels,” we have grown fearful for how our paper would be heard" & "Scripko and Greer (2010) likewise find our diagnosis to be accurate and concur with Truog that strong cultural forces are at work that make changing culture extremely difficult. Scripko and Greer note: “While Bishop et al accurately describe the strength of the American culture that drives fighting death, even when it is not indicated, they fail to emphasize the resistance that is likely to be met should we present our efforts for change as trying to overhaul policies regarding end of life decisions” (74). It is here that they caution us to be very careful in how we address the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of “life-at-all costs” that medical technology has advanced. They seem to suggest, without saying so, that land mines of “death panels” await us." & concludes by referencing historical aspects of medical culture, religious approaches, a fear of death, medical technology, and a call for medical humility as "the medical establishment resists admission to finitude". How about this?: "Bishop et al. were fearful how their paper on CPR/DNR would be received, because it addressed "the quest for immortality implicit in US culture, a culture of 'life-at-all costs' that medical technology has advanced" in "the era of rhetoric centered on fictional 'death panels'". Bishop et al. interpreted comments from their peers as a suggestion that "that land mines of 'death panels' await us". I find this material relevant because 1) it documents an impact of the death panels myth on medical professionals 2) it documents scholarly opinion on what could trigger further 'death panels' concerns. Also Bishop is not merely an "academic"; he is also a MD/trained internist. Jesanj (talk) 13:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)