Former Obama czar: 'We need death panels'; Conservatives: So, Palin was right?

Remember when Sarah Palin was ridiculed as an alarmist nut job for suggesting Obamacare would usher in “death panels”? The New York Times called the “false ‘death panel’ rumor” a “boogey-man spell” that “resonated with some impressionable folk.”

#NYT today: I argue that to truly contain Medicare costs, we need a better way of allocating (rationing) health care: http://t.co/GRW7y9qF

— Steven Rattner (@SteveRattner) September 17, 2012

Impressionable folk like Obama’s former “Car Czar” Steven Rattner?

We need death panels.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical procedure or pharmaceutical.

Hold on … the savior in chief’s health care overhaul won’t work without death panels doling out an Obama-approved “fair share” of health care?

Steven Rattner looks to save Obamacare like he did GM…with death panels. http://t.co/1rqV8lwX

— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) September 29, 2012

But, but, that means the unthinkable!

Apologetic letter to Sarah Palin to follow. http://t.co/ZjlwcjqW

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) September 29, 2012

No doubt these liberals will be issuing apologies to Sarah Palin, who they mocked for saying liberals wanted death panels, any day now

— Brian Chilton (@IssacharsHeirs) September 29, 2012

Take Britain, which provides universal coverage with spending at proportionately almost half of American levels. Its National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence uses a complex quality-adjusted life year system to put an explicit value (up to about $48,000 per year) on a treatment’s ability to extend life.

At the least, the Independent Payment Advisory Board should be allowed to offer changes in services and costs. We may shrink from such stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable.

Medicare is unsustainable and difficult choices are in our future no matter which candidate wins the presidential election. But as Palin wrote in her now-famous Facebook note on “death panels”:

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.

Still strike you as paranoid and alarmist, libs? Steven Rattner doesn’t think so.