Richard Lamm Quotes
I believe for some high-technology medicine, like transplants and kidney dialysis, age should be a consideration in the delivery of that technology. In a world of limited resources, we have a larger duty to a 10-year-old than to a 90-year-old.
Lamm, Richard D. The Brave New World of Health Care. Fulcrum Publishing, 2003.
This notorious quotation was the first time anyone had ever used the term "death panels". As Wickipedia says,"Death panel" is a term that originated during the 2009 debate about federal health care legislation to cover the uninsured in the United States. Sarah Palin, former Republican Governor of Alaska, coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents or children with Down's syndrome—were "worthy of medical care." When Palin was challanged to show where in the proposed Obamacare bill, there was any mention of dealth panels or anything like them, Palin's spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options. But there was absolutly nothing about withholding medial care. Just the opposite Obama care guaranteed medical care to many millions more Americans regardless opf age or medical condition. However, the bill was ovr 2000 pages long and very few people had read most of it, including the members of Congress who voted for and agaisnt it. A number of conservatives repeated the false accusatuins (See Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) Quotation 644139. One poll showed that after it spread, about 85% of respondents were familiar with the charge and of those who were familiar with it, about 30% thought it was true and Palin's new term won the dubius distinction of winning the "Lie of the Year" award. Despite the fact that it was totally false, in order to win Obamacare be a single vote, the President had to eliminate the part of the bill that allowed payment to physicians to take the time and explain to patients and/or their families, the various options of palliative treatment during the last months of life. Many people thought that the doctors would form death panels.
Richard Douglas Lamm is an American politician, writer, and attorney. He served three terms as 38th Governor of Colorado as a Democrat (1975–1987) and ran for the Reform Party's nomination for President of the United States in 1996. Lamm is a Certified Public Accountant and currently the Co-Director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver.
