As the fight over Obamacare raged in 2009, Sarah Palin coined a phrase that would draw years of ridicule from the Left. Palin warned that government-run healthcare would empower bureaucratic "death panels" to decide who received treatment and who was left to die.
Leftist media outlets like The Economist dismissed Palin's claim as an "outrageous allegation," while Democratic mouthpiece Jon Meacham said it was "a lie crafted to foment opposition" to Obamacare.
Yet time has a way of vindicating those scorned. Dark developments across the Western world show Palin was simply early, not wrong, when it came to governments wielding their power over healthcare to cull their citizenry.
For one example, consider Canada and the insidious concept of MAID. The phrase is an acronym: Medical Assistance in Dying. MAID was initially sold in 2016 as a way for those terminally ill or in excruciating pain to leave the mortal coil on their own terms.
Inevitably, MAID became a convenient way for the Canadian government to start culling citizens.
Late last month, Canada's national broadcaster reported on a Saskatchewan woman considering MAID because she could not access surgery for a rare and painful thyroid condition. Jolene Van Alstine's ordeal through Canada's health bureaucracy rivals the pain of her disease. No surgeon in her province performs the needed procedure, and no endocrinologist is available to provide a referral for out-of-province care.
While accessing treatment proved impossible, accessing MAID was frighteningly simple. Van Alstine was approved for assisted death within a few weeks of applying.
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A slight glimmer of hope to this story, conservative commentator Glenn Beck has vowed he will pay for Van Alstine to come to America and receive the surgery if there's a doctor to perform it. But not all Canadians are so lucky, and the state is hellbent on getting rid of them.
Canadian citizen Roger Foley suffers from a degenerative brain disorder requiring frequent hospital care. During his visits, staff repeatedly raised MAID with him without provocation. Unnerved, Foley began recording his conversations with hospital staff, including one in which the director of ethics emphasized that his care exceeded $1,500 per day.
When Foley asked about alternatives, he was told the purpose of the conversation was not to find solutions, but to gauge his interest in killing himself.
Disturbing as that is, Canada seems like child's play compared to Western Europe.
Germany's drug commissioner, Hendrik Streeck, recently stated on national television that elderly patients should be denied certain life-saving drugs due to cost. He argued there are "phases in life" when such medications should no longer be used.
This is, by Palin's definition, a government death panel. It is the state deciding that some citizens are more valuable than others, and those deemed unworthy should be denied care. It is also the exact system the Left wants to bring here.
To be clear, America's healthcare system is deeply flawed as well. Under Obamacare, premiums have soared while consumer choice and access to care have sharply declined. But the solution is not allowing government into the hospital room.
Americans benefit from a system that keeps the state at arm's length from their medical care. Were we to invite bureaucrats in, Canada and Germany's morbid and murderous view of healthcare would follow. Instead, Americans must seek to reform the current healthcare system, not wholesale discard it in favor of leftist-approved socialized medicine.
Given the choice between a death panel and private-sector inefficiency, I'll choose inefficiency every time. Oh, and take my advice. Try not to get injured in Canada. They say the healthcare up there can be murder.
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