Death Panels? So says former Obama Car Czar, Steve Rattner. Apparently, he thinks to truly reduce Medicare costs, we need a better way of “allocating” – code word for rationing – health care.

A couple of weeks ago, Rattner wrote an OP-Ed piece for the New York Times saying this:

“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.”

Remember when Sarah Palin was ridiculed and excoriated after boldly calling out the Obama Administration’s plan for death panels under Obamacare? Sarah’s prediction of death panels even earned her “Lie of the Year” by the snarling left.

Here’s an excerpt from Sarah Palin’s now famous FB 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. 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.”

Yep. Downright evil.

Steve Rattner apparently is a fan of Britain’s “Death Panel” body. He goes on to say:

“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.”

Ah, the Independent Payment Advisory Board…Obamacare’s death panel.

According to this article, Obamacare deliberately insulated the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB, from normal Congressional oversight and approval. Why am I not shocked? Apparently, the IPAB’s word and decisions are LAW unless Congress steps in. (Unless Congress approves a budget and priorities however, IPAB cannot act.) IPAB works by dictating overall spending levels. They will restrict care without knowing who they’re doing it to — in essence, leaving the dirty work of deciding exactly who should and shouldn’t receive care to hospitals and other medical providers. The patient and family? Not even part of the equation. Consider it death panel outsourcing.

We all know that Medicare is unsustainable and difficult choices are in our future no matter which candidate wins the presidential election. We need the entire Affordable Healthcare Act repealed in its entirety and we need to start over on healthcare reform.

And Sarah Palin…

Was she right about the death panels and the intention of the Obama Administration to implement them? Yes. The real lesson here is to remember: whatever the Liberals make fun of, is usually true.