First of all, Dr Insanity does not reference a bill, or the statement in the House bill that relates to “end of life counseling”. Instead, he BEGINS his logical progression by presenting that government will have to reign in costs by rationing. So, in his first step in proving that death panels is not a slippery slope argument, he uses the final result of a slippery slope argument. Here is the progression of that slippery slope argument for the uninitiated –
government does public option.
everyone flocks to public option because it will run a deficit and be cheaper
all insurance companies will die off, being unable to compete.
Now we have what liberals really want, defacto single payer.
Single payer will run out of money like all government programs do, and now we have rationing. This is step 1 in Dr. Sanity's argument.
So let's poke some holes in this first. 1. We don't even have a 100% chance of getting public option in this bill. For number 2,. In all of the bills that have a chance of passing, employers with more than 50 employees must keep their private insurance. Single payer is not just unlikely in this bill, it is illegal. Number 3: Non partisan projections put the number that will forgo private insurance for public option at between 10 to 30 million. This will hurt insurance companies, so it is no wonder they produce commercials against public option. Will it kill them? No. 4: Obama has said he has favored single payer, if he were starting from scratch. He's not starting from scratch, he's also not all that involved in writing this bill except for some lofty ideals that are unlikely to reduce costs. 5. is not the inevitable result, and in fact all non partisan analyses of this bill project increasing health care costs, far from reigning them in.
So Dr. Sanity's first step in making a logical progression argument is itself a fallacy. I could stop here, but let's examine some of his other points anyway.
“So, what criteria for rationing health care (particularly at the end of life) is likely to be used? “
If presenting a logical argument, what follows in the series of events MUST occur, or if saying a high probability exists, that probability must be scientifically presented. They can't be “likely”, or your progression includes an “appeal to probability” and is thus downgraded to a slippery slope fallacy.
It is TRUE that Ezekiel Emanuel presents arguments in a theoretical paper to ethically determine who should get care, in the UNDESIRABLE event that rationing becomes necessary AND a panel must be formed to decide in what order care should be received. This is far from a blueprint on how to suck money from a health system so you can put your dastardly death panel in place.
Is it likely that his ethical approach would be used should the unlikely string of events ever happen? Who knows. Is it even likely, if single payer were inevitable, that it would progress so fast to it that we would see it during Obama's presidency, much less see it run out of money during that time? That would kind of make what Obama and Emanuel want irrelevant, wouldn't it?
And to Deborah Gyapong who loves to end her posts with "Chilling." I say "Chill."
