Canada Has Death Panels

And that’s a good thing.

A woman holds the hand of her mother, who is dying from cancer, during her final hours at a palliative care hospital in Winnipeg on July 24, 2010. In the neighboring province of Ontario, a tribunal, rather than a patient's family or doctors, can make final health care decisions.

Photo by Shaun Best/Reuters

See Slate's complete coverage of Obamacare. David Auerbach explains what's gone wrong with healthcare.gov, and David Weigel explains why Republicans are calling for Kathleen Sebelius to be fired.

Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.

Via: Slate

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