KEITH OLBERMAN ON END OF LIFE DECISIONS ABOUT HIS FATHER AND THE SUBHUMAN DEATH PANELISTS

Having taken care of a lot of people in this situation I really appreciate Keith Olberman for sharing his father's story. People who are critically ill are often tortured with all the treatments they receive. Keeping them medicated does help them tolerate the misery, but they get very depressed. Keith does an excellent job of describing his father's reaction and how he advocated for his father's wishes. It sounds like his father has sepsis(systemic infection). A huge part of our immune systems are in our colons, his father had to have his colon removed. People should be free to make decisions for themselves and need information from healthcare providers to do this. The doctors and nurses have to talk to them about what they want done if they can't speak for themselves, it has to be written in the chart by the doctor, this requires a discussion, questions, and giving the patient information. As their situation changes, they sometimes change their wishes. Sarah Palin and some others who are all clearly of the clueless ilk have used this bit of counseling to offer people information to assist them to make their own choices if their life should be close to it's end as a mercenary tool against their own citizens who have no health insurance. They seek to take personal choices from individuals and replace them with their own warped radical religious beliefs. They used their braying about the Death Panel against the interests of the citizens of this country because they are owned by the corporate interests who seek to deny health care to a large number of people. I worked with a Cajun doctor who would start the questions about what is called code status by saying, "If you should stop while you are in the hospital, do you want us to try and start you up again?", then depending on what they answered he would get more specific with his questions, "Do you want us to push on your chest?", "Do you want us to put you on a breathing machine?", "Are there any medications that you would object to?. People can choose which mix of rescue efforts or treatments they want, even all or none. The point is it is their choice, their life.

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"That is the God Damned death panel Sarah Palin".

RONALD REAGAN’S POLICIES PUT THE MENTALLY ILL IN JAILS AND ON THE STREETS, SO SARAH PALIN USED HER “COMMON SENSE” AND MADE HIM HER HEALTH CARE HERO

She Who Quits's ghost writer wrote this In an op-ed for the WSJ:

Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that "no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds.

You would quote Ronald Reagan on health care? You mean Ronald Reagan's death policy for the mentally ill? He emptied the mental hospitals and closed some of them down. The mentally ill now fill the prisons and live on the streets. The prisons in this country have poor to no health care. For example the Alaskan prisons which lie to the public about providing adequate health care and are quite brutal to the mentally ill. Living on the streets is dangerous to begin with, poor nutrition, inability to get enough sleep, exposure to those who would prey upon the vulnerable, and difficulty getting health care needs met are all factors which contribute to low quality of life and death. I believe taking mentally ill people and putting them in situations where they are traumatized repeatedly has caused many to commit crimes they would have never done if in a better environment. How can you quote a man on health care who would treat the most vulnerable among us like throwaways?

There was a reason those people were in mental health facilities, they could not function in society and they needed a safe place to live. I worked in a state hospital in Washington in the 1980s when Reagan‘s policies were being implemented. Later president Reagan would cut aid for federally-funded community mental health programs. Then Ted Kennedy and others wrote the community mental health systems act in an attempt to protect the mentally ill and Reagan blocked it. Oh, by the way Sarah a lot of them were developmentally disabled like your "son" Trig. Ronald Reagan is the main reason we have so much widespread homelessness and increased crime. These same kinds of policies have been played out in Alaska to the point of 12 dead homeless people in Anchorage Alaska this summer.

Alexander R. Thomas, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Northeastern University had this to say about Reagan's policies designed to remove assistance from the mentally ill, "The shifts in such policies were not the result of overt attempts at change, but rather part of an overall effort to realign the political economy to be more profitable for business." tp://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html.

Ronald Reagan also said, “Don't be afraid to see what you see.” I see the insurance industry handing you your op-ed already written. Why? Well, I just used used that common sense your ghostwriter was talking about.