By Evan Falchuk
The latest New York Times/CBS poll shows that rumors about “death panels” remain alive and well.
With all the attention paid to the subject, you’d think these stories should be dead by now. But when asked if they think something like “death panels” are real, only 23% said “no.” A full 73% said they didn’t know or thought the answer was “yes.”
Why do these stories stay alive? Here is my list of three reasons.
It’s almost impossible to prove something doesn’t exist
As kids, we’re raised with stories of ghosts and magic and invisible forces that shape our lives. As we get older, we learn there is no such thing. But almost everyone has had some strange coincidence or other experience that makes you wonder if maybe, after all, there’s something to it. That kind of belief is almost impervious to arguments that there is no proof. No evidence of UFOs or Bigfoot? Well, they’re hiding from us. In fact, large majorities of Americans believe in these kinds of paranormal things, including among the highly-educated.
Is this going on with the death panels?
In a way, yes. In popular culture, the U.S. government is commonly portrayed as a mysterious villain up to some kind of no-good that hasn’t been revealed…yet. In movies, the government is busy covering-up or committing some terrible crime, running networks of brainwashed assassins, or sending suspected terrorists to secret prisons (oh, wait, that last one’s real). The notion that the government would create a secret panel to decide who gets medical care seems perfectly plausible – including the idea that those behind it would deny the panels even existed. Or that they would try to hide plans for them in thousand-page bills…..
No one is reading the legislative proposals
The originator of the “death panel” idea looked very silly on Jon Stewart’s show when he proved she hadn’t really read the bill in which she claimed the panel lurked. But it happens on the other side, too. One very prominent Senator explained his vote against making the Senate Finance Committee bill public before the vote on it, saying “let’s be honest about it, most people don’t read the legislative language.” It’s enough to make even the most trusting soul worry that maybe, just maybe, there’s something there that someone sneaked in while no one was paying attention.
Not talking about difficult trade-offs, while still making them
But you don’t need to live in a fantasy world to believe that government officials meet in private to decide on issues of end of life care. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog linked to a report on efforts by federal government and New York officials to figure out how to ration ventilators in case of a very bad outbreak of swine flu. The discussion, according to the Health Blog, has happened “largely out of the sight of the public.” And, according to the original story, “the measures under discussion go far beyond anything the public understands about how hospitals might handle severe pandemics.” They include removing ventilators from patients deemed unlikely to survive.
Don’t get me wrong. The kind of important effort that these officials have worked on should never be smeared with the term “death panel.” Nor should the important efforts to reform our health care system. But the extent to which these kinds of things are done in a hurry or without getting the public on board creates the risk they will be misconstrued as something they are not.
UPDATE: More interesting insights on this from Dr. Robert Centor here.
